Placing a node:
To install a merchant node, you must know the following information before you begin:
Largest radius of the room to monitor. this can be determined by standing in the exact center of the room and counting the tiles to the furthest wall. Keep in mind that the nodes check line of sight. So for buildings that are not rectangular, you must base your centering on the assumption that the building is rectangular. once you have your radius, you must create your NPCs.

Note that merchant NPCs are designed to be permanent and should not be created by the .createnpc command or a spawn point. Use the .createnode command to begin setting up the node.


The create node gump:


The createnode gump is pretty straight forward. simply fill in the radius in the spot labeled “Define Listener Range” and choose whether the node controls merchants or bankers. Choose Merchant for this tutorial. Setting a node to "banker" will cause the node not to run restock. So do not use this setting on normal merchants.

The "Next Respawn" field is the amount of time between restocks in minutes. Each npc will restock his inventory on that interval. The default of 30 minutes is recommended for all merchants except reagent vendors which seem to work best at 12 minute restock intervals. Once all the relevant information is entered, click the "okay" button.

You will get a target cursor. This is for placing the node. Place the node at the center of the room, even if it is within a wall or outside the actual building.


Using the node:
Once the node is created, double-click on it and a gump will appear.
If you do not see the node, use the .info command and target yourself. Click the blue button next to Pivileges. In the list of privileges click the blue button next to seeinvis to enable seeing invisible items. Before we look at the gump in detail, let's spawn your first merchant. There is a checkbox in the upper left hand side of the gump. Click on that to create a merchant. The gump will disappear and you will be asked to enter the type of merchant you wish to spawn. Enter alchemist and press <enter>. You will receive a target cursor. Choose where you wish the merchant to appear. The node will spawn the merchant at that location. Please note that it my take up to 60 seconds for the merchant to appear in game.

There are occasions when you might want more than one merchant in a shop or location. So to place another merchant use the node again (double-click) and click on the checkbox in the gump and follow the procedure above for placing another merchant.


The merchant node gump:


This is an example of a merchant node gump. At the top left you see the number of enabled merchants on the left side of the slash and the total number of merchants created by this node on the right. In this cae three enabled of three created. The node has been used to spawn three merchants, a tailor, a mage, and an alchemist. You can see it shows the merchant type and its location. Note that the location information does not show the realm. This is because a node can only be used to spawn merchants in the same realm as the node.

There are also three check boxes next to each merchant listed, Enabled, Delete, and Rebuild Stock. If the merchant is enabled its information will be shown in green and the Enabled check box will have a check mark. To disable a merchant click on the check box and click the Apply button in the lower left. Disabling a merchant will remove it from the game world but not from the node.This can be useful when you wish to setup nodes with certain merchants that are only available at certain times such as during quests. When a merchant is disabled its information will be shown in red. The Delete button is used to delete a merchant from the node. To delete a merchant check the Delete check box and click the Apply button. Once you click the Apply button the merchant will be deleted. This operation cannot be reversed. The Rebuild Stock option is not enabled and thus the check box does nothing.

At the bottom left just above the Apply and Cancel buttons are two radio buttons, Enable Node and Disable Node. You can only activate one button. When a node is enabled it will appear as a bright glowing green crystal. When a node is disabled it appears as a dark green crystal. When you disable a node the merchants will be removed from the world but not from the node. If you re-enable a node, the merchants will be respawned in the world.

On the lower right of the gump are two check boxes, Restock Merchants and Respawn Merchants. Restock Merchants will instantly restock the inventory for all merchants on this node. This is useful if you are running a quest and players are buying out a particular merchant's inventory faster than the restock time the node may have been set to at creation. Use the Respawn Merchants check box for times when a merchant might have been killed. Please note that the merchants in the Distro are set to be invulnerable. So they cannot be killed. You are free to change their invulnerable privilege by editing their templates in the npcdesc.cfg file located in the main /config directory.

 Remember no choices will take effect until you click the Apply button.