Mabinogi Commerce Guide

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Commerce 101

Commerce is one of the most dynamic and beautifully simple systems in Mabinogi. The game of commerce is all about profits and if you're not earning profits then you're commercing wrong.

The first step that you should always take in commerce is to gather as much information as you can. It only takes a minute or two to hop into the moongates for Tir Chonail, Dunbarton, Bangor, Tailteann, Emain, and Tara to see who is paying the most for your time. Multiply the quantity of goods that you can carry by the profit (green number) to see how much you will earn from a trip. This little detour will increase your profits for the rest of the day.

However, commerce is dynamic; prices shift constantly and excessive trade will change how much profit you are earning. Repeat your information gathering every day before you begin to commerce and if you notice your earnings drop off at any point then change routes.

No one town will always be the most profitable and no one route will always be the safest. Stay alert and watch prices carefully to make sure that you're in the know about where to trade and which routes are best.

Your time is valuable so measure which destinations will give you the most profit over the shortest period of time. There are handy charts here to help with that!  

Raise your level commerce rating in towns to earn discounts, unlock goods, and generally improve your profits. You raise your rating with a town by selling goods from that town a lot.

Commerce Mastery

There is a skill that earns you more gold, experience, and ducats per trip: Commerce Mastery. This skill increases your profits by 1% for every rank up to a total of 15% at rank 1.

This handy little skill does not show you that it is earning you anything anywhere except for the final profit screen. You train commerce mastery by earning profits through commerce. Split your sales up to level commerce mastery faster. [IMAGE]

While commerce mastery is nice, it is not necessary and probably not a wise investment of your AP until you have ranked a few combat skills. Unless you're already confident in your ability to handle bandits, don't bother with Commerce Mastery just yet.

Bandits

Bandits are a nasty lot that will steal your goods and harass you until you hate commerce. The solution is to keep your eyes out and watch for bandits whenever you are commercing.

A good merchant almost never spawns bandits. Even if you can handle fighting bandits, they are a huge waste of time. Most trade routes are only a few minutes long and a bandit fight can drag out for as long as 3 minutes. This means less profits. If you want to fight bandits then go bandit hunting through the Wanted Board. [IMAGE]

Sometimes there are nasty little bugs that can make bandits worse than they should be. Sometimes, when you spawn bandits all of the other bandit markers become invisible to you. You cannot hear or see them and the imp will not warn you about them. You can still spawn them by getting to close to them though. What this means is that you're going in blind and you're going to have to fight dozens of bandits.
You can fix this bug by map transitioning. It is advisable to do so if you notice that bandits are spawning out of nowhere.

Bandits will increase in difficulty as you increase the value of your cargo and the distance from the cargo source. Longer, more valuable trips will spawn stronger enemies. This should be taken as a general guideline and not a hard and set value.

Newbie Bandits: 2,000 Ducats or less cargo
Trained Bandits: 2,001 to 20,000 Ducats
Hardened Bandits: 20,001 to 50,000 Ducats
Veteran Bandits: 50,001 to 200,000 Ducats
Master Bandits: Towards the end of trips worth 200,000+ Ducats

It is up to you to know your limits with bandits. Different builds and strategies will work better on bandits than others. If you're consistently losing goods to bandits, try a level down and see if that helps at all.

You can spawn more difficult bandits than normal if you spawn them near the Smuggler. The smuggler is only around from 10pm to 6am in-game time every day. You will only be told the smuggler's location if you have a Life Talent active.

Routes

All numbers are recorded in seconds. Every 60 = 1 minute.
Foot movement speed is the same as humans, carts are 110%, elephants are 134%, and wagons are 188%.

Not all routes are equal, some routes are more dangerous than others.

Safest routes: Lake Abb Neagh, Tailteann, Sliab Cuilin, Dunbarton, Gairech Hills

Why: These areas are open and big. This lets you spot any bandits well ahead of time and go around them. There are almost no locations for bandits to hide behind such as forested areas or large rocks.

Dangerous routes: Blago Prairie, Corrib Valley, Dugald Isle, Sen Mag Plateau.

Why: These locations are either cramped or have a lot of places for bandits to escape your view. This often means that you will accidentally run into a bandit or that even if you spot them there will not be room to go around them.

You'll Probably Die on This routes: Osna Sail

Why: Osna Sail is the fastest way to go between Bangor and Emain Macha but it is cramped and there are a lot of hostile spawns there. Not only can you usually not avoid bandits if you see them, wolves will quickly aggro you and distract you from the bandits.

The Smuggler

The smuggler's name is Byrun. Byrun has a price chart separate from other towns and often pays more for goods. The catch is that any goods sold to Byrun lower your rating level with the town you bought the goods from equal to 2x the profit of your sale. If possible avoid selling goods to the smuggler until you have spare town rating you can afford to lose. You do not earn gold from trading with the smuggler.

The daily trade good will not lower your merchant rating with a town. The next item sold after the daily trade good is multiplied in value by 1.5x. You can only do this once per in-game day.

Towns will display the value of items of the smuggler if you have a Life Talent active and the smuggler has spawned. Notifications will also run across the top of the screen listing the smuggler's location and the daily trade good.

Bandits tend to be stronger than normal around the smuggler and even low value goods from nearby can spawn master bandits.

The location of the smuggler changes every in-game day. You can find where he is with handy charts such as this one: http://wiki.mabinogiworld.com/view/Smuggler#Locations

General Tips:

• Bandits always aggro 2 at a time.
• Bandits can only begin aggroing you when you have moved. Standing perfectly still at the start of an encounter is a great way to charge magic, alchemy, puppets, or archery skills.
• Bandits will only steal goods if they disappear with stars.
• Bandits normally only flee once they have 5 stars. They can flee with fewer stars if you're low on goods.
• A bandit who despawns with any stars at the end of combat will have stolen goods.
• Goblin Bandits will blindly rush at you by default. Defend or Counter them if you can.
• Human Bandits pause before they rush at you and will often load Windmill and Smash.
• Goblin Archer Bandits do an insane amount of damage and wound, will not pause, and are faster than you if you are human. They aim very quickly.
• Imp Bandits love to circle you, spam bolt spells, and generally be obnoxious. These should be your priority targets to kill since they have very little health and do the most damage of any basic bandit enemy.
• Giant Bandits use knuckles, so they have a 5 hit attack. They generally do low damage unless they crit. Giants will do nothing for a very long time, standing right beside you. If you windmill giants they will attempt to basic attack you when they get up. Normally you can leave them be while you kill other enemies.
• Boss Human Bandits are identical to Human Bandits but have a lot more health and do a lot more damage.
• Boss Ogre Bandits have a huge amount of health, damage, defense, and protection. It is almost impossible to kill these enemies by yourself at times. If possible, never let this enemy hit you; instead keeping them at bay with high knockdown rate skills such as firebolt, counterattack, smash, etc.
• If all else fails, bandits will leave you alone once they've stolen ~30% of your goods. Any that you spawn after that will just leave once an encounter starts.
• Lost goods can be recovered by bounty hunters. You'll get some ducats back in the mail. 
• Bounty Hunters will always spawn Veteran and Master bandits.
• Merchants with bounty hunters accompanying them probably want to be the ones to spawn the bandits.