Mastering the Scrolls
Being a Scroll Master
Lets face it, a League with an active Scroll Master has an advantage over a league without one. Why? Mainly because instead of each league member posting a trade for scrolls they need, offering one of the limited number of duplicate or extra scrolls they might have, and hoping for someone to accept it, a Scroll Master with a large vault of scrolls can search out and trade much more successfully due to the wider trading options available. Players get the scrolls they need sooner, and can progress through the Scroll Arts faster, giving them access to better troop types sooner and increasing their offense and defense strength.
The whole process depends on league members sending unneeded scrolls to the Scroll Master. Without the wide variety of scrolls to trade, it doesn’t work. It takes a great deal of faith to give up your opportunity to trade and send that extra scroll off to someone you don’t really know, so the players need to know that the Scroll Master is doing everything he/she can do to get them the scrolls they need, and that the loss of their extra scrolls are worth it.
Good communication is essential! Let them know what you're doing, and respond when they ask for a scroll, even if you have to tell them it isn't available right now. Let your league know which scrolls you need, and follow up with players you know have researched that set and may be sitting on extra's.
Sitting and waiting for scrolls to show up on the market really isn’t the most efficient way to find the scrolls you need for your players. You need to anticipate what will be needed next and dive into the market to actively search for what is available and trade for the scrolls ahead of time. When you have duplicates, search out available trades to fill the gaps in the sets. Don’t forget to look at even the low level scroll trades, even if your players don’t need those scrolls – sometimes someone will be desperate for a specific scroll and will offer a higher level scroll to get it. Sometimes you will have to offer a higher level scroll for a lower one yourself, just to find a scroll to fill a league trade. Having the scrolls ahead of time saves a lot of time and effort later when the players are sending you repeated emails asking for specific scrolls to finish their set.
You can also join or form a Cooperative – contact other Scroll Masters from allied leagues, and help each other by trading between yourselves when you can’t find a specific scroll you need. The easiest way I’ve found is to set them as personal allies, so you can click the trading filter for Allies and easily see what they have to offer. Just as you don’t offer every scroll you have for trade, they don’t either, and it is likely that one of them will have that hard to find scroll you need. Keeping the trades fair can generate good will that may pay off the next time you have a player in desperate need of the final scroll for their set, especially when it’s one that is hard to find and the other Scroll Master really doesn’t want to let it go.
Being a Scroll Master isn’t easy – it’s time consuming, frustrating, and sometimes tedious while you wait hours for a caravan to return with a scroll, only to send that scroll back out to trade for the one you really need, if it's still on the market by that point that is. It takes a high degree of organization to keep the trades straight, so you will probably be maintaining a list or spreadsheet of available scrolls, so the league can see what to set trades for. It is hard to juggle your time for your own playing with the time needed to help the league. You sometimes have to decide what is more important, the need for your caravans for raiding or your own resource trading, or the needs of the League. Not something someone who only spends a couple hours a day on Stormfall should attempt – it can sometimes take hours, and a sequence of trades, to acquire a single specific scroll.
Having an organized scroll trading system set up in your league can give you an advantage over leagues who don’t have one and force their players to find their own scrolls. It’s a lot of time and effort, but seeing your players achieve the different levels of Scroll Arts before those of other leagues can be quite rewarding, especially if you enjoy the actual hunt and the trading process.