[Poruku]

Coming from an idea tossed around in Trexmaster's thread, I want to suggest a system to do trading.

How to be a merchant
Each major city and minor settlement (vale and fairview) now has a trading post. This is an NPC or interactable object. From here, you must form a caravan and get trade goods, before going to sell it elsewhere.
Form caravan - 25 murai
When selected, your character is now on a horse and pulling a carriage. Could be different tiers of caravans down the line.

You are limited to roads and certain passage areas when in caravan mode, for instance you can't enter buildings, dungeons, etc. We can use the byond area thing and just add the trade route area to the map.

Instead of a caravan which would be perhaps a technical challenge, I propose an alternative where you get a big backpack. You lose it if you enter a fight, and it slows you down a little, but you can go anywhere with it.

Probably more realistic to implement, especially for the first release.

Purchase Goods
You open up a menu similar to a shop and buy stuff. 

You can only have up to 5 trade goods in your caravan. These are like items, but you can only carry them in a caravan. You're basically buying crates of things to sell elsewhere.

Time to travel
When you have goods, you want to travel elsewhere to sell them. Each nation will buy stuff at different prices. Just interact with the trading post over there.

Once you sell the goods, you're gonna get money and xp. The experience is based on how much xp you would get from defeating mobs of your level, and multiplied by the trade price bonus.

Loot
When you sell at a profit, there's a chance to get a box of goods based on the total bonus value. You can open it and it'll give you items kind of like a dungeon chest. This is to make up for the fact traders wouldn't get any gear or items otherwise. No point in hitting level 60 with a whip

Price Bonus
So how do you get good prices? There's 3 factors:
1: Distance
Going from meiaquar to geladyne gives +100%, similar with all the other adjacent cities. Going to the city opposite to the current one, like Geladyne-Telegrad, gives you +200%. Fairview-Meiaquar would probably be something like +25%.
2: Demand
Each city has certain demand for different goods. This value is randomized every in-game day. It can be anywhere between -100% and 100%. Yes, sometimes you will not get much from selling something even if you go far away.
Demand isn't entirely random however. For each good in each town, there is a certain range. For instance, Geladyne will always pay a good price for vegetables, but will pay almost nothing for metal imports. Telegrad won't pay much for potatoes, but they have a high price for metal tools. Duyuei will buy fabrics and salt at a good price. Meiaquar will buy exotic goods and spices. Just as an example, you could say that the bonus for selling spices in Meiaquar can be anywhere between 50% and 80% depending on the day. Selling metal in geladyne is going to be between -20% and -40%.
3: Imports (market saturation)
Whenever you sell stuff to a trading post, the demand for that item decreases by 3% or something like that. Every hour, bonus reduction from imports is restored by 5%. Meaning if you keep doing the exact same route, it'll become less profitable. This is also true if multiple people do the same route. In the end, doing a route that is less popular is often a good idea. But you can return to your favourite route later. And of course, selling something really far away is always gonna be at least decently profitable if you're willing to make the trek. But shorter routes with high demand items can mean quick profits.

Recap (TL;DR)
Buy good in trading post, go far away and sell it to a place that desires that item. Get xp and gold. You need to be in caravan mode to do that. You can get out of caravan mode at any time (but that drops any trade goods). Switch up your routes to keep the prices fresh. Take advantage of high prices.

Oh yeah and you can trade those trade goods with players as long as they have space in their caravan.

I was considering showing a spicy excel sheet with math to make like a realistic economy but I figured keeping it really simple and static is best. This should be possible to do using mostly mechanics that are already in the game, and the math is simple, yet also dynamic enough to stay interesting as long as it's well balanced.

Pros:
- Players can now gain xp and murai from a non-combat activity. Meaning not everyone in this world is obligated to be a monster hunter.
- People spend time in the world going in places with people instead of being secluded in dungeons.
- This type of activity is absolutely going to generate a ton of roleplay and new character concepts.
- Huge potential for future updates, interacting with new mechanics, adding new things like special trade goods, etc.
- Bring players all over the world, make travelling feel good.
- Trading events???
- Highway robbery is now cool. Just bring your empty backpack on the road and plunder people's caravans (with consent)
- Less people taking the mob spawns in dungeons
- Makes the world feel more real, makes the nations feel like they have a bit more identity. Improves immersion.

[sirtrex]

This is very similar to the trade system in Mabinogi. I like the concept, but I think it could be expanded to have some more mechanical effects outside the trading system.

Maybe the costs of goods players regularly use could go up and down in response to the demand and supply thing. Like if Telegrad was low on tools, pickaxes cost more and vice versa.

Or when players sell weapons or other types of items in towns they are registered as some type of trade good to be put into the market function. Some items themselves could even by recycled as the rewards the traders recieve. Theorheticall a player grinding could sell an item at a pawnshop, and a trader could get it as a rewards box, or buy it using the murai they gained on route. A less random type of smuggler gear shop.