Concerning the recent merchant discussion, I'd like to toss in my
2 pennies.

I've been a merchant for quite some time, I got basically everything at
100%+, got boons in stats, regen and moon impro. I got regen in about
150 on a good day. I tossed approximately 300megs just to merchanting,
and I still suck. It takes for-friggin-ever to cast fw's and prots to
a big set. I keep my prices low just for this (and give an automatic
discount depending how many items I go through). I have not made much
money with this, but atleast I sometimes see happy customers. Why do
I do this? Because I'm not a greedy bastard and I think some people
tax too much for their services.
This leads to people not taking fw's since they know it's slow and
expensive.

However, I think the merch guild is well balanced atm. You can make
insane amounts of money if you put your mind and time to it, or you
can be an idling lazyass like me and still make a decent income
(that is after you've paid the 10m a merch reinc from zero costs
at minimum).

My suggestion to this fw/prot-problem is the same I've suggested
before: multiple item fw's.
I don't know how this would be best to actually implement, but
maybe give merchs a special floating disc and when they cast fw
to that disc, all its contents will be fw'd as if they were
cast one by one. This would burn the merch sp's way below zero
of course. Or just give a possibility to cast fw at your whole
inventory at once.
You could also make this a new spell, costing like hell or perhaps
requires a certain amount of quests or reputation. That would
eliminate people reincing to a multifw-merch-only in a whim
for one night and humping the prices.

~/A