Hello,

My heart is till shaking from panic due to the message I got from the create
money spell. I hit enter to get a clean prompt, and the spell took it as a
botting attempt and logged me in a botter, or so it said. Moral: non-botters
will never use the spell again (or at least not for a long long time and only
when I really need it), while botters will not care 'cause they already know
what's gonna happen to them but they think no one will catch them and so will
continue to bot.

Anyway, I was thinking the other night about the merchant guild and realized
that we really don't do much, except make chests and remove scars, and make
reagents. That's pretty much all our skills are used to make money for. I know
there's blacksmithing and gem cutting and mining and all that, but I mean as
merchants, or providing services to the rest of batmud, that's all we do. No
one takes us seriously and the guild doesn't get the recognition it deserves
as a major component in an adventurer's life. Most of these ideas require
changes in other components of batmud. So I let the arches decide if they're
feasible or not. These are just ideas to add flavor to the guild as well as
offer solutions to problems which the guild now faces.

Here goes:

PCity changes...Allow for pcities' conditions to change. Let cities
deteriorate over time, like a wall may crumble, or a bridge may collapse,
allowing free entry to anything and everything. This would require the
services of a mason or carpenter to fix. Also, depending on material used and
skill and level of merchant, that would determine the new wall's resistance.
This would integrate other aspects of the mud which seem to be important 'only
as they happen' leaving a more lasting impact. eg. meteor shower can change
the condition of pcities and stuff.

Allow for merchants to build pcity modules like shops and fountains and stuff.
A lot of money goes into the pcity system, but none goes to merchants which
are supposed to be the builders and makers of the mud. Back in the day when
pcastles were around, there was a greater demand for sculptures and statues
and such. Bring that back to merchants. Give pcities a CHA flag, the lower the
stat, the uglier the city, and the more likely it is to attract wild animals
and stuff, which would vandalize it and destroy walls and fountains and
stuff...Let merchants make sculptures to raise the city's CHA. Make it so that
sculptures have a point value, the higher the level of the maker, the more
points the sculpture has, and the more high-pointed sculptures the city has,
the less sculptures it needs, or vice versa. Quality versus quantity here.

With the introduction of mounts and stuff, let us build stables for pcities to
house them. Give us animal-farming skills so we could raise animals and sell
them when they're big enough.

Since we can't use our shopping carts for personal use besides selling stuff,
allow us to build our own wagons using the carpentry skill. I really love the
chest making process, so it could be something similar: use carpentry at build
wagon, use carpentry at reinforce wagon, use carpentry at complete wagon. You
could either pull/push it, spending some eps, or add a mount to it spending no
eps, but you gotta feed your horse, or it might die if you're crossing a
desert or something...unless you have a camel