Nia became a merchant, currently only non- NPC merchant in Daka village. She discovered the joys and pains of being one after a session of talks with the veteran merchant -Aurrum. If he had not relented a bit to give a boost for newcomer, she would have suffered a huge loss there. She found that she would get points on striking a deal. The number of points would depend on multiple factors- affinity between the two people, the size of transaction, the difficulty levels, the bargaining effort and lots more.
After gaining knowledge from deal struck with Aurrum, Nia decided to strike deals with all others. She did not even forget the half shop opened by elderly NPC to counter loneliness. He was retired officer, who had lots of time but all his kids were working in and around the capital. His wife had died just few years ago and he was feeling lonely, all alone at home. So he talked with the Chief Tomashi and struck a board that he was doing business. He occasionally sold few trinkets sent by his kids to justify and show that he was indeed a businessman. Nia did not spare him too. Nor did she spare the woodcutter, who did not even have two coins to rub each other. He was the obligatory drunkard and fool present in every story. Yeah, he had a sad backstory which Nia listened and yet she did not feel pity on him. Instead, she struck a deal with him.
Now she had to make some items for the off-game barter. She still had few hours left till she exited the game. She took another route to go to Grandma Esla's place. She could help the ladies in the prep work as she had another place to visit. Yep, she would hole herself in workshop room. Basic red and blue pots were must. She now had few more recipes she had to try including a sobering potion which had high failure rate.
Failure rate was new term she had to grapple with when dealing with better potions. Simpler the potions and higher the grade of potioneer/alchemist, lesser would be the failure rate. In higher level potions, the age and condition of herbs and other items would affect the potion's level and failure rate.
Nia started making potions in batches and becoming deaf to audio reports. She did not even see the percentage levels of potion effect. Only when she finished making two full stacks of each potion did she take time to sort them out. She forgot that she had not received any alchemy points[life style points] for most of the time. She tried few potions which was possible currently. After all, she had no idea she would need such and such items for making such type of potion.
Her heart started aching at seeing failure products. Now she understood why other potions had huge price. Now that she had finished with all the raw materials, she had no idea how to gather raw materials for potions and other materials for merchant deals. Being a merchant was not easy. If it was this difficult in a small village, she wondered how much more difficult it would be in towns, cities and capitals.
There was no other way. She had spent most of her day within the village. Tomorrow, as soon as she got the extra stat buff, she had to explore the maps and try to collect as many products as possible. Good thing about still being in village part, that is, in novice player stage was the game system protected the players. If she needed the dropped item for quest, the item would automatically enter her inventory. She had no need to individually pick the items.
This effect would vanish once players left the novice village. They had to pick the items and store them. Others might also try to pickpocket or steal your items. They could also kill you to get those items. After all, the drop in XP, drop in levels, drop of items, drop of equipment -all such things would happen only after leaving the novice village stage.
As she did not have enough time to even reach nearest monster map, she decided to go near village square and look at the players and their makeshift market. Even after game had increased the area of village square multiple times to adjust for the new population, the place was crowded. The queue was still present. Ohh, it had turned into two queues. One for getting quest and one for completion of quests.
Though there was no physical guild, the effects of guilds were still present. They chose best places, had two-to-three vendors for each makeshift shop and mighty looking warriors as bouncers to guard them.
Nia had to admit the guilds were pro when coming to doing business. Their shops had clear parts- one for weapons, one for equipment, one for potions, one for resources , one for miscellaneous etc. They mostly sold items but bartering and purchasing happened too.
In contrast were individual players or party of players. They sat where they had space. They hawked loudly. Only few had presence of mind of holding placards.
Players had learnt their lesson from previous day. They knew they had to be inside warehouse when they exit the game, so last few minutes of game would be spent on selling miscellaneous items they got from grinding in the monster maps. Tomorrow would be a new day and they needed spaces in their inventory to be free but coins in their purse to be full.