Ok so, I'm not sure what it's like on NA, but on EU alchemy and cooking are floundering for the most part. If you make the vast majority of potions and meals, you will rarely sell any if at all, and most of those that do sell will be well below the price of mats to make them. Yes you can gather yourself, but it will take days/many many hours, and those same hours if grinding would net you magnitudes more in silver.

Some of the problems.

Not enough playerbase using most of the items, more players are making and trying to sell than buying (which is just driving prices down constantly) many of them are obselete due to cron meals/draughts etc and the crons/draughts which are the big ticket items are what every cook and alchemist *mostly* go to make so that there will always be far more of those in supply than are demanded too. Even the prices on those aren't as high as they should be imo and make no sense to make anymore.

I know PA is aware of the problems because they needed to add imperial trading to try and take meals/potions out of the game and reward some silver for them (not enough imo), but even those are limited by the day as to how many you can trade in, leading to wasted time server hopping. Why limit the number and make people server hop? They are still going to get the items traded in, you're just throwing aded annoyance into the mix for no reason.

I'm not going to ask for extra silver for trading items in, but at least

-Vastly increase the number each servers trader will take of each item

-Perhaps increase the number your chars are allowed to trade every day

-Get a move on and increase the variety/types of each meal and potion the imperial traders will take

The situation is only going to get worse as I have noticed through the past 6 months the playerbase dropping lower and lower.

Trading is also unrewarding. I'm master 10 and by far the best option is port ratt trading for daily silver

The problem is, two to three trades from port ratt to the traders on the mainland will hit you with the trade debuff, forcing you to server hop far more to get the same number of trade goods for your next trade. You can make 50mil roughly with the first trade, but even on that best run it takes over an hour to do on a good sailboat and you only get that good run for a couple of times.

  So master 10, upgraded blue part sailboat, forest wagon. Conversely, nvm aakman/hystria/gyffin etc, I can make 100mil, sometimes more, an hour at just the lowly waragons!

 I don't want to hear someone say "b-but lifeskills shouldn't come close to grinding it's more risky and takes more effort to grind" No, grinding is mindless and I'll maybe have to defend a spot once or twice a day, some days not at all.

Anyway, once that trade debuff hits the first time, your wings are clipped. The second stage of the debuff chops off your bloody legs. Not only is port ratt trading kaput until the reset at 1am(uk) but you can't even do normal trading anymore as every trade item is limited by that debuff across the map.

-Double/triple the amount of trade items the Imperial trader will take on each server

-Extend how much limited port ratt trade items you can buy before you're hit with that debuff

-Make the debuff effect only applicable to port ratt trade items

Bear in mind, the pc version has far more servers than us on console also. That should also factor in.

Anyway, just my opinion and probably won't even be seen judging by the stupid layout of this new forum.

Thank you for the suggestion, I will send this off to the devs today!!   :)