Great Ways to Lose Money Running a Stall

Here are some of the best ways to lose money while running a stall or shoppe. There are probably plenty of other perfectly good ways to run yourself dry, but here are a few of the most famous.

Underpay Yourself

Labor costs are always an issue. Pay too little and you don't get enough employees. Pay too much and you can't make a profit. A great answer is to work at your own stall for very little pay. Perhaps 1/1/1 for Basic/Skilled/Expert labor. That way, you get to tap in to all of your own labor, but pay next to nothing for it!

Just forget about the fact that you can make over 1,000 PoE per day on your own labor, working elsewhere. Absolutely do not track the loss of 1,000 PoE each day as a loss against your net gain. Your profit margins will soar because of your incredibly low labor costs. This is a very useful technique to distort your actual gains and should be used all the time.

Move Small Quantities

Nearly every shoppe owner has to deal with the joy of moving commodities. Sooner or later, someone will actually expect you to "make" something for them or they won't pay you. It's total nonsense, but that seems to be the way some people think. When that time comes, you'll have to hop onto your trusty ship and go pick up the commodities and bring them back to your shoppe. I'd suggest using a sloop - for everything. The small cargo size is somewhat of a hindrance, but the ease of which they can be sailed by yourself makes up for that and then some. Moving wood? No worries - only 7 trips with your trusty sloop will carry as much as one trip with those clunky merchant brigs. And those 7 trips are so easily done that it just doesn't make any sense to do it any other way. It's certainly not worth asking for a bit of help from a good mate to move one of those big ugly beasts.

And, whatever you do, don't bother to track the cost of the rum used on those voyages as costs against your shoppe. After all, it's just a bit of rum and it would make your profits look worse. No reason to include it. No reason, at all. Moving in bulk might save you a bit on rum but, pfft - it's only a bit of rum!

Never Plan Ahead

Some people get so tied up with how commodity prices fluctuate over time. Personally, I think they're all well on their way to getting coronary diseases. There's just no reason to fret over things like that. When you need a commodity, go buy it! You can try finding somewhere to bid on the item and save yourself a bit of PoE, but don't overlook an opportunity to purchase something dockside. Nothing like instant, overpriced, gratification!

Don't bother trying to build up a surplus of commodities when their prices are low. It's just too much headache and it requires you to have too much money tied up in your inventory. Those times that everyone worries that commodity prices are too high? I don't believe they exist.

Bid Fees, Bid Shmees

Okay, so despite my recommendation to purchase things dockside, you've decided to try to save a few PoE by bidding on commodities and then waiting an excrutiatingly long time for that bid ticket to fill. Fine. I can't save everyone.

When you bid on something, there's a bid fee attached. It's such a rip-off. You know who gets that PoE? No one! It just vanishes! Stupid Three Rings. Nonetheless, it's such a minor amount compared to what you're paying for the commodities that there's no reason to track that as a cost. Sure, that bid fee could be thousands of PoE, but, if it is, you're paying so much more than that for the commodities, itself, that it just seems insignificant.

Don't bother tracking it as an expense. It'll only make your profit numbers look worse. Save your energy for pillaging.

Booch Your Order Prices

In most industries, such as distilling or iron mongering, you sell virtually everything dockside (except swords, I suppose). As such, you really don't need to worry about properly setting your order prices. No one will come along and order your goods at far below market value and then sell them off to make a profit on their own. It just doesn't happen. Seriously. People are too paranoid.

Ignore Rent

You ever notice how once a week, some invisible tax collector comes by and takes PoE out of your coffers? If he doesn't find the PoE lying around, he cuts the power! What a total jerk! There's nothing that can be done about this guy. He's just too wily. I've had pirates try to hunt him down. I've hired the mates of El Pollo Diablo to get after him. I've even tried ninja assassins. He can't be stopped!

As such, best to just ignore him. Just forget about the PoE he takes. It's better to just let him take it and ignore the lost PoE than to spend hundreds of thousands of PoE on good-for-nothing skellies that can't catch a stupid invisible tax collector. As you can't do anything about it, don't bother to track rent as an expense. If you do, it'll make your profit numbers look worse than everyone else's because everyone else ignores it. Trust me - they do.

Conclusion

Those are some great ways to grind your stall into the ground. There are others out there, but this help you get started. See you on the high seas, pillaging to keep your stall running!

Pillaging in a Merchant Brig

Over the last couple weeks, my flag has run into the issue of having about 9-11 people that all want to pillage together. Unfortunately, that means that we have too many for a sloop, but I don't care to take out a war brig with anything less than 15, at the least. In a couple occasions, I've recommended that we take out a merchant brig and got a lot of funny looks (well, as much as an animated pirate with limited facial expressions can give, anyway). Here's my take on the matter...

Sloops are excellent pillage ships - they're easy to handle, move quickly, and just a few good pirates can keep the ship running smoothly. Unfortunately, you often need to keep the crew to 6, meaning everyone needs to do a good job to keep things going well, or you begin spawning brigs, which are far tougher to defeat in a sloop. Regardless, with 8 or more folks looking to pillage together, sloops are simply out of the question.

From there, a lot of folks want to move up to a Cutter. A poor idea, in my opinion. Cutters seem logical, but they have some issues. On the up side, they do move well as they still acquire maximum sailing speed and can place 4 movement tokens per turn in sea battle. The biggest downfall for a Cutter, however, is that you will be spawning war brigs. To max a war brig with the small shot fired from a Cutter, you need to hit them 15 times. And, of course, you're firing only one shot per round. That war brig, on the other hand, firing medium shot, needs to hit you only 5 times to max out your swordfight damage. Plus, they're firing two shots per round. Literally, you can be maxxed in about two movement tokens, as opposed to the 15 it will take to max them. I don't care how great a b-navver you are, those just aren't good odds.

So, if Cutters stink, I guess we should just go to a War Brig, right? They use medium shot and can fire twice per turn, so it would seem the perfect option. However, if you don't have enough people to staff a War Brig, things can get ugly, in a hurry. My rule of thumb is that you need about 15 pirates to run a War Brig. Even with that many, you can still get in trouble, easily. It takes far more effort to do much of anything on a War Brig - generate sail tokens, reduce damage, empty the bilge. If you're running with a skeleton crew and take even a small amount of damage, it can be difficult to recover. A little damage that can't be removed leads to filling bilge, which leads to reduced sail tokens, which leads to additional damage; wash, rinse, repeat. Without enough people on board, a War Brig is essentially a floating coffin with lots of guns.

Based on this, I turn to the Merchant Brig. Most people discard it as a pillaging vessel due to the fact that the word "Merchant" appears in the title, but that doesn't mean it can't be used as such. Merchant Brigs are surprisingly easy to sail - many folks have been known to solo them in order to move commodities around. Seriously, with 1 good carpenter, 1 good bilger, and 2 good sailors, you can stay on top of things. Any more than that is just gravy. And, seeing as we're talking about what to do when you have 8-15 folks that want to pillage, you do have more than that. A Merchant Brig simply doesn't have the effort issues that a War Brig has - they're much, much easier to keep afloat and running smoothly.

In terms of fighting capability, they're not as good as a War Brig because they only fire one shot per round. On the other hand, they beat a Cutter because they fire medium shot, rather than small shot. The "token-to-max" ratio goes from 15:3 in a Cutter to 10:4 in a Merchant Brig. Obviously, it's still not great, but it's a heck of a lot better. The Merchant Brig can take nearly double the damage of a Cutter and deals far more damage, thanks to the medium shot. The only thing you give up from a Cutter is the ability to move 4 tokens per turn. Considering that you'll only be fighting other things that can't move more than 3 tokens per turn, I find this to be only an inconvenience, rather than a real issue.

Sure, it's a niche ship only really useful when you have 8-15 people looking to pillage, but it serves its purpose. A Merchant Brig can be a useful pillaging ship, despite its name.

On a side note, a Merchant Brig carries over three times the payload of a Cutter, making them significantly better at carrying commodities.

Do me a favor. Never buy a Cutter.

Utilizing Labor Hours

I'm going to talk about subscription oceans, specifically, here, so don't get your pants all in a knot about doubloon oceans. Much of this doesn't apply to doubloon oceans or, if it does, is slightly different.

On a subscription ocean, every subscribed account is given 24 hours of labor, per day, to work with. So what? Well, your labor is a great source of income for you. Whether you use it to forage or to work at shoppes, using your labor is a way to put PoE in your pocket. Nonetheless, I'm always surprised how many people don't understand the labor system and are wasting a lot of their potential. Seriously, on Midnight right now, 24 hours of labor can be worth well over 1,000 PoE per day.

I won't go over every detail, but here are a few highlights. (If you want greater detail, go here.)

Labor is Split Evenly Between Alts

That means that, if you have two pirates on your account, each is given 12 hours to work with each day. I constantly hear people say things like, "I have 3 pirates on my account, but only one of them has jobs, so it's okay." No! It's not! The hours are split up among your alts whether you use them, or not. Unused hours from one alt do not transfer over to other alts. So, if you have multiple pirates on one account and some of them don't have jobs, you're wasting labor. The only way to get more than 24 hours of labor available to you is to pay for a second account.

Active Puzzling and Foraging Uses "Advance" Labor

Whenever you try to forage or puzzle at a shoppe, the game checks to see if you have any "labor credit" available. Everyone gets 24 hours of "credit." Assuming you have labor available, you're allowed to puzzle and provide labor or forage. Every time you use an hour in this way, you must wait one real hour for that hour of labor to become available again.

So, if you happen to use 24 hours of in-game labor within 1 hour of real time, what happens? I'm so glad you asked.

If you're foraging, it's quite simple. The game tells you that you've used up your labor for the day. If you're puzzling at a shoppe, it tells you that you've used up all your labor for the day. You're still allowed to play the puzzle and your standing can change, but you can not provide labor, based upon your work.

Once your advance labor is all used up, you need to start waiting real time for it to become free, again. For example, if you were to go out and forage 24 times, you'd be stopped, by the game, from continuing to forage. After 1 real hour, you'd be able to forage one more time. After two hours, you'd be able to forage twice more, etc. After 24 hours had elapsed, all of your "labor credit" would again be available to you.

In General, Shoppe Puzzling Doesn't Pay

For the most part, if doesn't make good economic sense to play shoppe puzzles. Occasionally, you need to renew your labor or perhaps you want to work on improving your standing. However, if you're interested only in producing labor or making money, puzzling at shoppes isn't a great way to do it. You can make similar amounts of PoE working with the navy and far more pillaging. Meanwhile, your labor hours can be used up automatically, whether you're online, or not.



That's all I'm going to discuss, here. If you want more details, check the YPPedia. I just find that a lot of folks have misconceptions about the labor system, so I thought I'd post something quick about it.