6.18.2.3 Shop Caches
Shop Caches are a way of storing herbs, organs, inks and basically
anything a normal cache could hold for the purpose of selling these
items in your shop. Why would you use this method instead of stocking
the items the normal way, you ask? The biggest and most obvious benefit
is that it allows you to save stockroom space. Items in the shop cache
won't count towards the 500 item limit of stockrooms.
INFORMATION FOR THE CONSUMER
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Buying from the shop cache is the same as buying any normal item:
BUY [quantity] <item>.
Quantity is optional, but is needed to take advantage of any bulk
discounts the shop has. One thing to note: When buying normal items,
quantity is limited to 50 items at once. This doesn't apply when buying
from the shop cache.
If a shop has goldenseal being sold from the cache, and goldenseal
stocked in the normal way, and you try to BUY GOLDENSEAL, it will always
try to buy from the shop cache first. If you want to buy the goldenseal
that was stocked in the old way, then you would need to specify its item
number, e.g., BUY GOLDENSEAL1234.
For organs, sliced organs will always need to be referred to as
organ_slice, e.g., BUY KIDNEY_SLICE.
SHOP CACHE ITEMS IN WARES
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The following is an example of how goldenseal in the shop cache will be
displayed in the shop's WARES listing, compared to goldenseal stocked
the normal way:
-----(Item)------(Description)--------------------------(Stock)-(Price)
[Herbs]
Goldenseal 30gp each, 25gp over 50, 20gp over 100 136 30gp
goldenseal99020 a stack of 20 goldenseal roots 10 290gp
The first is quite obviously the goldenseal that is being sold from the
cache. There are several things to note here. First of all, items being
sold in the shop cache will always appear at the top of their shelf in
the WARES listing. Second, there are several prices associated with it.
The shopowner will set the price of an item, then has the option of
specifying up to two bulk discounts on that item. In this example, the
shop is selling goldenseal at a base price of 30 gold each. However, if
you purchased 50 or more goldenseal at once, then it would only cost
you 25 gold for each goldenseal, and if you buy 100 or more goldenseal
at once, it will only cost you 20 gold per goldenseal.
To take advantage of the bulk discount, you need to buy in quantity.
E.g., BUY 100 GOLDENSEAL in this example shop would buy goldenseal you
100 goldenseal at 20 gold each, for a total of 200 gold. But doing BUY
GOLDENSEAL a hundred times will buy them at 30 gold each, for a total of
300 gold.
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STOCKING YOUR SHOP CACHE
------------------------
The shop cache can only be accessed from the shop stockroom, and only by
people who can run the shop (the owner and, if allowed, her allies). To
access the shop cache, use these commands:
SHOPINC: to put things into the shop cache; works just like INC.
SHOPOUTC: to remove things from the shop cache; works just like OUTC.
SHOPIC: shows the contents of the shop cache.
PRICING ITEMS IN YOUR SHOP CACHE
--------------------------------
To price items in your cache, use this syntax:
PRICE CACHE <item> <price> [<qty>:<price> [<qty>:<price>]] [SHELF
<shelf>]
This may look a little complicated but it's quite easy really. In the
simplest case, you put some bloodroot into your shop cache, and want to
sell it at 60gp each:
PRICE CACHE BLOODROOT 60
You also put some prickly ash in, which you want to sell at 15gp each
from shelf 4:
PRICE CACHE ASH 15 SHELF 4
You happen to have a lot of gold inks to sell and want to encourage bulk
sales so you offer a bulk discount: 100gp each, or for those buying more
than 20 at a time, 90gp each.
PRICE CACHE GOLDINK 100 20:90
While you're at it, let's get rid of all those extra sulphurite slices
with two different bulk discounts: 10gp each, or 8gp each in quantities
over 50, or 6gp each in quantities over 200.
PRICE CACHE SULPHURITE_SLICE 10 50:8 200:6
Let's put it all together by selling moss at several prices, in shelf 4.
PRICE CACHE MOSS 30 50:28 200:26 SHELF 4
If you do use bulk discount prices, you can have no more than two, and
they must be logically arranged: the first bulk amount has to be less
than the second, for instance, and the discount prices have to be lower.
If there isn't enough of the item stocked to cover the bulk discount's
required quantity, that discount won't be listed in WARES. Don't worry,
it's still recorded, and it'll reappear once the stock levels rise
enough to offer it.
You can also UNPRICE CACHE <item> to unprice the cached item so it won't
be sold.
Note that all the items in the shop cache will either have no price, or
one single set of prices. You can't have some of an item for sale and
some reserved not for sale, nor can you have some for sale at one set of
prices and some for sale at a different set of prices.
PRICE POLICIES AND SHOP CACHES
------------------------------
Any price policies you have in effect will apply to items sold from your
shop cache the same as they do to items sold from the stockroom floor.
Similarly, if shelves are restricted, shop cache items will be affected
by the same restrictions.
If you apply a discount with a shop policy, that discount will be
applied before a price is multiplied by a quantity, to avoid rounding
error. For example, suppose you're buying 100 lobelia, and at that
quantity, the price would be 10gp each; but you're a favored customer
and you get a 6% discount. The price will be listed at 9gp each, since a
6% discount on 10gp is rounded to 9gp. Buying 100 will thus cost 900gp.
(It won't end up costing 940gp, which is what you'd get if you
multiplied the 10gp price by the 100 quantity before applying the 6%
discount.)
