Trading is buying goods where they are cheap and selling them where they are not, across a road other players are trying to take them on. There are three ways into it, and they carry very different amounts of risk.
- Job activities
- Quests picked up from NPCs, mostly trade- or transport-shaped. They pay Job EXP and are the safest way to raise a job level.
- Consignment
- Hand goods to an NPC and let them trade on your behalf. You invest in specialty goods and take a return proportional to the investment if the trade succeeds. Indirect, and correspondingly safer.
- Target trading
- Load the goods yourself and run them. This is the real thing: the large payouts and the caravans other people ambush.
Where to go
Trade NPCs stand in Constantinople, Jangan, Donwhang, Samarkand and Hotan. Hunters deal with the merchants; Thieves deal with the smugglers. Trade itself is always with an NPC, never directly with another player.
The goods
- Trade goods and contraband
- What a job run actually carries. They can only be stored in the transport animal you summon with a job skill, which is why the animal is the thing people attack.
- Specialty goods
- Needed for consignment and target trading. In normal mode you get them by hunting. In job mode you get them from monsters, or by taking them off the other side's caravans.
What a run pays
- Blue Stone / Black Stone
- Hunters receive Blue Stones on a successful trade, Thieves receive Black Stones. Both are the material for Shining Stones, which job promotions cost.
- Tickets
- You receive one ticket per trade good successfully delivered, and tickets are what the reward tables on every server are denominated in.
| Media handed in | Tickets |
|---|---|
| 10 lowest-quality | 1 |
| 10 low-quality | 3 |
| 10 medium-quality | 5 |