Adventurer's Weekly #10: Investing,Grandma Shu,10,1

<i>Welcome to Adventurer's Weekly, where I answer you youngins' questions on money.</i>


Today's letter comes all the way from a lass in Port Kapul: <color=blue>"Grandma Shu, now that I've some money, I'm thinking of investing in some businesses. Which ones will give me the highest return?"</color>

Ah, to be young, naive, and utterly ignorant. Girl, investment doesn't make you money. You think you can throw some orens at a shopkeeper and that sucker has to pay out to you forever?
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Oh, if only — I could've retired fifty years earlier. Maybe that's how things work in Yerl where it's every man for himself, but here in North Tyris we've yet to replace our hearts with mechanical abominations.


<b>Business vs Town</b>

First thing you youngins need to know is that you can either invest in individual shops, or to a town as a whole at a secretary. Add a shop's level to the town's, and you get its actual level.
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The difference might not seem important to you youngins, but let's say you take a liking to a business and want to invite the owner home. Well, if you invested in the town, your investment's not transferable. Same thing with investing in a shop — anything happens to the shopkeeper, like you banishing the poor soul from your town, you're not getting your money back.

You can see how that might be a problem, eh?

Other thing to note is that investments to towns don't count for merchants' guild contribution. Don't ask me why, those were the rules when I joined and still were when I retired.

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<b>Benefits</b>

So if you don't invest to make money, what good does it do you? Well, higher-levelled shops stock more goods, and better ones at that. What "better" means depends on the shop: inns sell more nutritious dishes, blacksmiths carry more powerful gear, magic shops stock rarer spells. There was a promising bakery in Palmia Grandma Shu threw a couple million at; when I next visited, they'd the best bread outside of the palace.

Now, there ain't no guarantee. A low-level shop can still carry something really rare, while a high-level one might not have what ya want; there's no threshold at which this or that starts appearin'. Nevertheless, the higher the shop's level, the more likely you'll see what you want, if only by virtue of having more goods in stock.
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Investing will also earn you influence in that town — unsurprisingly, going around handing out money gains you goodwill.


<b>Investment Tips</b>

Now youngin', Grandma Shu's going to be blunt: no matter how you cut it, investing's gonna take a LOT of money, and you'll never have enough. That being said, there're ways to make your orens work a little harder.

Everyone knows being good at investing makes it cheaper. What they don't know is having a pretty face also helps. Charisma's about half as effective, but looking good's much easier than knowin' what them big financial words that're coming out of yer mouth actually mean.
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Investin' in a town and its shops is counted separately, so if the cost of either is getting too high you might want to switch to the other for a while.

Some kinds of shops can only get so good when it comes to product quality. Others don't have limits. Don't keep investing in the first hoping to get better products on the shelves.

That's all the advice Grandma Shu has for you, simple enough that even my cow-shaped granddaughter can understand. Now go out there and make yourself a pillar of the local economy!

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<i>- In next week's issue, we'll be heading to the mages' guild to learn more about the finer details of spellcasting in a group!</i>
