This guide is directed largely at newbies who want to learn the basics of starting a shop. The reason it won’t be of much help to advanced owners is because I am not an advanced owner at all! Anyway here goes, but bear in mind that there isn’t a set way to running a shop, much is down to your own imagination and preferences.
1. Getting your shop up and running is cheap, it’s only 150 np at the time of writing this article (May 2004). To start with, your shop can only hold 5 items.
2. You should upgrade your shop size a few times to start with. Each upgrade costs more than the last but their isn’t any need to go any higher than size 3 to begin with.
3. Now you have to find some things to sell! If you are a newbie, you might want to go for some risk free items before getting a bit more ambitious.
4. Spooky food is usually a safe thing to sell in your shop. I concentrated mainly on Spooky Gooplecream, Skeith Juice Cocktails and Tongue with Veggies all of which you can usually find on the shop wizard priced at between 10-60 np and which you can sell in your shop for around 100np. If you don’t get good prices on the shop wizard, refresh it a few times.
5. Sand in a bottle has its uses. Bottled sands can be bought very cheaply on the shop wizard and often won as booby prizes on the Tombola. If you go to the mystery island cooking pot and combine two different colored sands you will often get a sand sculpture. The exact combinations needed can be found on this site under cooking pot recipes. The sand sculptures sell for around 30-50 np which doesn’t exactly sound great, but is better than just having bottles of sand and not doing anything with them!
6. Omelettes can be found for free (although only once a day) in Tyrania. You can sell these for about 5-10 np, unless they’re rare ones like tomato or BBQ sauce flavor which can be sold for over 100np. I tend to use them to feed my pets with however.
7. Once your happy with how the basics work, you can try to make bigger profits. Upgrading your shop is useful (remember each upgrade allows you to hold 5 extra items). Unless you intend to spend a long time on your shop every day though it’s not worth upgrading much beyond size 10.
8. There are many different ideas of what you should buy and sell in your shop. It’s really mostly down to your taste. However there are some items that will work better than others.
9. You can buy faeries in the magic shop cheaply and then sell them for around 5 times the price. However this isn’t worth trying unless you have an extremely fast internet connection because there will be hundreds of other people all waiting for the restocking. You would need to be very quick.
10. More realistic is to try and deal in toys or books. These will also disappear quite rapidly from the shops, but you should be able to grab a few even with a slow internet. They also make a decent profit.
11. Chocolate also makes a good profit, especially white chocolate, although you will need to be fast to grab any.
12. Healthy foods are a good option. They will make you a reasonable profit and are not so hard to get. I find Organic Celery, Leeks, Organic Leaks, Celery, Kyrii Crackers and Carrots to be particularly useful.
13. You could try using cooking pot recipes to make a more profitable piece of food.
14. Experiment with different items and food to see what will bring you the best profit.
15. Have fun with your shop!! – Patrick Gower