Businesses

1. Buy one

   Shops stand in every town - dozens of them, each keeper's sign reading "Shop for sale" - and every tavern is a business too. Talk to the keeper: a shop costs 7 500 groschen and a tavern 25 000, paid from your purse or your account. With the right of your rank, you can also buy one for your faction from its coffers. Each character may own up to two.

2. Name it

   Talk to your keeper and the counter's window opens. Its Manage tab (visible to you alone) holds the counter's name, which shows over the keeper and on the live map, with you as its owner.

3. Stock the counter

   Manage > Stock from your pack: pick anything you carry, then how many to put out (one by default, up to all you carry), then the price of each. The rest stays in your pack. Worn pieces go on the counter with their condition shown (a blade at 72%, a loaf no longer fresh) and leave it in that condition. Each condition of an item is a separate ware with its own price. A dish that lost a point or two on the way is still taken, in its own condition. Stocking more of a ware already on the counter (same item, same condition) sets the new price for all of it. Sell blades from your forge, potions from your bench, dishes from your kitchen, or anything you found. The goods in your sack are listed too, marked "sack" - ores, timber, hides, meat, fish, steel, leather and the other crafting parts: they are stocked, priced, taken back and counted in the ledger like any ware, and a buyer receives them in their sack, so a purchase must fit in the room it has left. Contraband never goes on a counter.

4. Let it sell

   Anyone who talks to the keeper sees the wares with their pictures and condition ("Longsword · 72%"), can search them and sort them by name, price or quantity, and buys as many as are left and their purse can pay for. The coin waits in the till, and you are told of each sale if you are in the game.

5. Run it

   In Manage, each ware has a price you can change and a quantity to take back: type how many (or press All) and they return to your pack; the rest stays on sale. The arrows beside each ware set the order your customers see: up or down a step, or with Shift to the very top or bottom. New wares come after the ones you placed until you move them, and a ware sold out keeps its place for when you stock it again. A customer sees each weapon's Strength and Agility requirements (the game's own) in the list - hover a ware - and in its details, in red where theirs fall short. Manage also lets you empty the till, hand the business to your faction (a tavern: the estate window's tavern card > Open it to your faction, or /bizfaction at it), or sell it back to the town (60% of its price, plus the till; a second click confirms). A faction's business is run by the ranks with the right to run it (selling it back is a separate right), and its till goes to the faction's coffers. Whatever you take back, or whatever comes back to you when the business closes, returns in its own condition.

6. Sell it to a player

   Manage > More > Sell to a player: pick someone beside you or type the name of anyone in the realm, and set your price, from nothing at all up to 1 000 000 groschen (a second click sends the offer). The keeper's menu has the same Sell to a player option, and /sellbusiness player price works at the business (or anywhere, if you own only one). The buyer sees a card with the business, its town, the price, what comes with it and the weekly upkeep. They have two minutes to pay in coin or through the moneylender, or to decline (/accept and /decline work too). A buyer may own two businesses at most. Once it is paid, the till is emptied into your purse, the unsold goods come back to your pack, and the price goes to your account - less a tenth for the town's treasury in a town whose court sits. The business is then the buyer's alone: its name, its decorations (except those bought with KCD Points, which stay yours) and any upkeep weeks already paid go with it. The court is not asked: it approves the town's own sales, not sales between players. A faction's business is sold by the ranks allowed to sell it back; its goods must be taken off first, and the price and the till go into the coffers.

7. Managers

   Whoever runs a stall or a tavern can name up to 3 managers: characters who keep the counter while the owner is away. On the counter's Manage tab - or, for a tavern, in the tavern's own window beside the innkeeper's shelf - the Managers card takes a character's full name (they need not be in the realm); a second click on Take off removes one at any time. A manager opens the same Manage tab and may stock the counter and the innkeeper's shelf from their own pack, set the prices, take goods back into their pack and empty the till into their purse, and read the ledger, where everything they do is written under their name. They cannot rename the business, sell it or give it to a faction, lend its keys, let its rooms or name managers of their own. A manager may step down from the same card. When the business changes hands, its managers lose their place. /shopmanager [add|remove|leave] [name] does the same in the chat, at the counter.

8. Each their own or a common pot

   Whoever runs the business chooses, on the Manage tab, how a counter shared with managers pays. Common pot (the default): every sale goes into the till, and any manager may take any piece back and empty the till. Each their own: every piece stays whose it is - a manager takes back only the pieces they put up (the owner may take back any), each sale of a manager's pieces is paid straight into that manager's account at the Warehouse Manager (less the town's toll), even while they are away, and the owner's own pieces pay into the till, which only the owner empties. The Manage tab shows under each ware whose pieces are on the counter. A manager who steps down or is taken off, or a business that changes hands or goes back to the common pot, gives every manager's pieces back to them - into their pack, or at their next arrival with a letter from the town clerk.

9. Read the ledger

   Every business keeps a ledger: each stocking, each taking back, each price change and each sale, with who did it, the ware, how many and the price. The counter's Ledger tab (for the owner, or for a faction's business the ranks allowed to run it) lists the entries newest first, 50 at a time, filtered by kind (stocked, taken back, sales, prices) or by member. Beside them, By member sums up 7 days, 30 days or everything: what each member stocked, how much of their stock sold and the coin it brought in - the figures a leader needs to reward the members who keep the shop full. A sale is credited first in, first out: to whoever stocked that ware first, and each sale says whose pieces they were and who was paid (a manager's account, or the till). Goods already on the counter before the ledger existed count as "before the ledger", and taking goods back takes your own pieces first. /shopledger [days|all] gives the same summary in the chat (7 days by default), at the business or anywhere if you run only one. A new owner starts a fresh ledger: nobody reads the entries of the owner before them.

10. Run the innkeeper's shelf

    A tavern you own sells its own food and drink: the innkeeper no longer sells from his endless catalogue but from the tavern's shelf, at your prices, and the coin goes into the same till as the counter's sales (less the town's toll, written in the ledger). When the tavern first becomes yours, the shelf holds the innkeeper's whole stock: every drink, bread, dish and kitchen piece he sold, at his prices, as many as he keeps on hand (30 of each drink and bread, 10 to 20 of each dish and raw piece). After that, nothing restocks it but you. The innkeeper's menu sorts it in tabs: Drinks (every beer, wine, mead and schnapps, water and milk), Kitchen (dishes and bread), Travel food (what never spoils: dried meats and fish, dried salami and cheese, dried fruit and mushrooms, sauerkraut, nuts) and Pantry. Drinking water and milk come from no merchant: whoever runs the tavern buys water for its shelf with /innsupply water 30 (at most 100 at a time, at the innkeeper's price, from the purse) - milk comes from the farmers' cows, never from the carter - and cooks boil drinking water at a kitchen (cooking 1: a log makes six). The innkeeper's window > The innkeeper's shelf (for the owner, or the ranks allowed to run a faction's tavern) works like Manage: stock food and drink from your pack (your dishes, bread, the kitchen's pieces, the beer and wine you brewed), set each price, take back as many as you like, empty the till, and read the shelf's own ledger. A line that sells out stays on the bill of fare as sold out until you stock it again or take it off the bill. The shelf belongs to the tavern: when the tavern is sold, to a player or back to the town, or lost for its upkeep, what is left on it stays for the next owner and is not refunded (the counter's other goods still come back to you as before).

11. Buy ingredients with buy orders

    Your cook needs meat, fish, malt or hops while no hunter of yours is online? The innkeeper's window > Buy orders: ingredients (the owner, the ranks allowed to run a faction's tavern, its managers) posts a standing order: an ingredient of the cooking or the brewing - venison, boar meat, hare, the fishers' catch, barley malt, hops, honey, grapes, plums, the farm's crops, nettles, sage, chamomile, and the kitchen's raw pieces (pork, beef, chicken, eggs, milk, cheese, onions, garlic...) - how many you want and the price you pay for each, written as "20 6" (no gear, no firewood, no contraband; up to 20 orders, one per ingredient). Orders are paid from the tavern's till: keep coin in it, or use Put coin in the till to add some from your purse. Change how many are still wanted or the price at any time, or close an order. Each piece bought goes where your cook takes it from: a food of the pack onto the innkeeper's shelf, a sack's good or a herb onto the tavern's counter (an existing line keeps its price, a new one is priced at half again what it cost) - take it back into your pack or sack to cook with it, or leave it on sale. Every purchase is in the ledger as stocked by "seller (buy order)". The orders belong to the owner: they end when the tavern changes hands.

12. Sell ingredients to a tavern

    Hunters, fishers and farmers can sell to a tavern even when nobody runs it at that moment: talk to the innkeeper > Sell ingredients (shown while the tavern has an open order). Each line says what the innkeeper buys, the price each, how many are still wanted and how many you carry - a good from your sack, or the game's raw pieces from your pack at 50% freshness or better (the freshest go first). Type how many (empty: as many as you can) and you are paid at once from the tavern's till. A sale is refused when the till cannot pay all of it, and never goes past what the order still wants. Those who run the tavern cannot sell to their own orders.

13. Keep the tavern like a house

    A tavern you own is yours like a house: its chests and its doors. Every chest inside the tavern is locked to everyone else and opens for you, for the ranks of your faction allowed to run its businesses (for a faction's tavern), for the people you give a spare key, and for the staff on duty. Those chests are storage, not loot: they are never restocked and nothing is taken out of them. When the tavern changes hands, what is in them stays with the tavern for the next owner and is not refunded. A tavern for sale leaves its chests as they always were: open to all. The rooms upstairs are the tavern's too: their doors and chests are the tavern's like the rest, for the innkeeper to give to whom he likes - they are never let. Its doors are open to all when you buy it (an inn is public). The innkeeper's window > Doors and keys (or /door in the tavern or at one of its doors, or F2 > My belongings > Houses) locks them: they then open only for those who hold a key, for each of you as you walk up to the door. Locking never shuts anyone in: whoever is inside when you lock up can still go out. Give up to six spare keys (a cook, a barmaid) from the same card, from your belongings page, or with /tavernkey name, and take them back with one click or /taketavernkey. When the tavern is sold or lost, its doors open again and every spare key stops working. To see who opens which chest - the main hall's and each room's upstairs, with the owner, the faction's ranks, the spare keys, a chest's own list or a room's tenant - look at the tavern's Chests and keys card in F2 > My belongings > Houses, or the Chests tab of /mybusiness; Show marks a chest on your compass. If a door of the tavern was missed, stand at it and use /linkdoor tavern; /unlinkdoor removes one.

14. Lock one door only

    The cellar, the storeroom, the back office: stand at that door and pick the action wheel > Here > Lock this door only (or /lockdoor, also /doorlock, within 3 m). Whoever holds a key to the tavern may do it - the owner, the ranks running a faction's tavern, the spare keys. That door then stays locked to everyone else while the rest of the tavern is open, and opens for the key holders as they walk up to it, like any locked door. Whoever was behind it without a key can still go out. The innkeeper's window counts the doors locked this way under Doors and keys. The same again unlocks it; /door still locks or opens all the doors at once. A room's door keeps the rooms' own lock, and a tavern that changes hands has its doors locked this way open again.

15. Hire staff

    A tavern or a bathhouse can hire staff of its own: /mybusiness > Staff, standing inside the business where they should stand (up to 4 at a time). A tavern hires serving girls (a jug of ale and a bowl of stew, 8 groschen) and a doorman; a bathhouse also hires bath maids (a hot bath and a scrub, 15 groschen). The bath maids and the serving girls are women. Their first week's wage (150 groschen, a doorman 200) is paid from the till when you hire them, then every week from the till again - if the till cannot pay, they leave until you hire them back. Whoever talks to them buys their service, and the coin goes into the till, less the town's toll.

16. Play music in it

    A tavern you own can have its own music: the innkeeper's window > Music in the tavern (for the owner, or the ranks allowed to run a faction's tavern). Pick a piece from one list: the game's own (the wedding's, the feast's and the camp's musicians, songs, the shepherd's flute - the bells and horns are the staff's alone, they carry across half a town) and our music - 28 royalty-free medieval recordings for the tavern, the feast, the church and the camp (their credits: kcdroleplay.com/music/credits). A game piece's Preview plays a few seconds where you stand; a recording's Listen plays it in your own window alone. Set its volume and, if you like, its name. (The staff may also paste a YouTube link or an https link to a sound file.) Press Play it here: it plays in a loop for everyone within 16 m of the innkeeper, and in time - whoever walks in hears the piece where the others are. To keep it to your room, lower its Reach in the same window (5 to 16 m, never more), or type /music radius 8 in the tavern. A recording grows louder as you come in and fades as you leave, and the game's own score is held quiet while you hear it; the game's own tunes sound from the spot like any sound of the game. The music belongs to the tavern while it is yours: it stops when the tavern is sold, given away or lost for its upkeep. Each player chooses their own volume, or turns the music off, in Settings > Music or with /music.

17. Make a playlist

    One piece on a loop gets old: the music window's Playlist tab holds up to 10 pieces of the game's music and ours. Put a piece in with the + beside it on the Game music tab, move it earlier or later with the arrows, take it out with the cross, and turn Shuffle on for a different piece each time. Press Play the list: the pieces play one after the other, each as long as it lasts (a piece without a known length, about 3 minutes), then from the first again - everyone inside hears the next one start together. A change to the list is heard from the next piece. Play it here on a single piece plays that one on a loop again (the list is kept for later), Stop the music silences both. The list stays with the tavern through a restart and goes when the tavern changes hands.

Where the shops and taverns are