Mythwind | The Merchant | First Impressions

I’ve been playing a ton of Mythwind over the past few weeks, and as I move into Month 13 (that’s the beginning of Year 4!) I’ve had the pleasure of playing all the characters in the core box. With The Merchant, I think I have found my favourite. I love manipulating the market to make things work in my favour, but the unpredictability of customers and rivals keeps you on your toes, and keeps the game fresh.

As The Merchant, players will be buying and selling stock, working to increase (or decrease) the market value of specific goods to their advantage. Originally, I was working to get every good as high up on the market track as I possibly could, but quickly realized there is a benefit to tanking the price of a good as well. That’s because of all the characters, I find The Merchant the hardest to play, but the most interesting by far.

Manipulating the marketplace is hard work, but if you want to buy our your rivals and get those oh-so-helpful skills, you might need to tank the market price of an item to make buying out a rival much easier. Yes, The Merchant is all about buying and selling goods, but if there is one thing you are aiming to do as this character it’s buying our rivals so you can purchase skills. And buying out your rivals is a VERY expensive endeavour, unless you learn to manipulate that marketplace.

Like everything in Mythwind, you never really lose, and honestly, eventually you will always get to where you want to go. I could NOT manipulate the marketplace and after two seasons, I’d have enough money to buy out a rival at a cost of 60, 70 or potentially even more coins. But where is the fun in that, I say! To buy out a rival you need to add up all their coins, the market value for the goods they possess, and then double that number. It’s expensive, especially if the value of a good is 5 or 6 coins, instead of, say, 3 coins! So if you tank the market value of that specific good, 3 goods at 3 dollars each, doubled, is only $18. If you were working with $5 goods, times 3, and then doubled, you are looking at $30. That’s a huge financial swing for Mythwind as money doesn’t necessarily always come easy.

What I assumed would be the case for Mythwind definitely is coming true – the more difficult the character, the more fun you can probably have. With The Merchant, I’m having about as much fun as I’ve had since I started playing with The Farmer. While the other characters are very good, perhaps even great, I think The Merchant is excellent. I have a lot more to play, but overall I’m quite impressed.