Jhet Bhlak

Here is a little trick that I have found works well when in Buyer Mode.  When you dont have alot of money to spend but you need an item that has a higher buy price than you can afford, try setting up a buy line for an item that drops off the same mobs that the drop that you want drops from but no one has a buy line up for. You wont be able to buy alot of the drop that you want but you will buy some. This works especially well if you are looking for tradeskill items.

Example: Say that you want to buy Rhenium Ore but the buy prices are currently set at 500p per ore. You can’t afford it. So now you are forced with the choice of either spending countless hours farming or not getting the Rhenium you need for that new set of armor your smith is making. Well guess what. Iridium Ore drops off the same mobs that Rhenium Ore drops from. If you see that no one has a buy line up for Iridium, you just may be able to get some of that Rhenium you need. Set up a buy line for Iridium ore at lets say 1pp per ore. Now set up a buy line for Rhenium ore at a price that you can afford. Let’s say 50p per ore. Keep the Iridium buy line up for as long as you need the Rhenium Ore. To mitigate the cost of the Iridium ore, you can put whatever you buy onto a trader and sell it for what you bought it for.

Why this works: This works because people do not alway check the buying price of every item that drops after a night of xp’ing. They see that a lot of Iridium or dropped so they check who is buying it and run to them and sell the ore. They have 25 Iridium Ore and 1 Rhenium ore in their inventory so they just go ahead and sell that single ore to you instead of going through the bother of looking up buyers, finding the best price and running over to where ever that buyer is and selling that single item. It also works because people are just in a hurry sometimes. The group they are with wants the split from the night and to get to bed or whatever it is that they want to do.

Don’t expect to satisfy a tradeskill junkie level of demand for drops through this method of buying. You will be extremely frustrated if you do. But, you can expect to pick up a few items here and there that you need to make that final armor piece or pottery charm.

I see this question often enough asked in the bazaar that I figured I could do a short post on it. Merchant Tekrama sells the Trader’s Satchels that allow you to sell you goods to other players. He is located in the bazaar at location 72 x -41. If you are looking to make some money, here are some tips on earning platinum.

Trader Satchels can also be made with platinum thread, a backpack pattern, a high quality [cat, bear, rockhopper] pelt steel boning and the backpack dye used in handmade backpacks.

This plat earning strategy has seemed to work well for me on The Nameless server recently. If you have a character that has a high spell research skill level, making spells level 61 to 65 seems to return some decent profit. Generally I will sell spells in that level range for 3k to 5k each spell. Ironically, I have had the least success with the people that specifically ask for certain spells to be made. Often times they buy it from another spell researcher before I have it on my trader or they disapear from eq for a time.

I’ve had the most success making spells for magicians and shamans. Enchanter spells have not sold well for me despite the fact that there are few for sale in the 61 to 65 range. I have had mixed results with hybrid spells. Generally, what I like to do is make sets of spells once I have enough parchments for a complete level. Or I’ll make a specific line of spells all at once. Such as, I’ll make all of magician pet spells for 61 to 65 and put them up for sale.

To get the most return on investment don’t buy the spell parchments from traders. Use /buyer. I really can’t stress that enough. For example, I often see sooty fine runic vellum for sale by people in /trader for around 5k. Now that might sound like a decent deal if you can sell a level 70 spell for 12k but if you consider that I put up a buy line for 100p and have had people sell them to me on a consistent basis, it no longer looks as appealing. It’s really a choice of whether you want to earn about 11.5k or about 6.5k.

Another thing to keep in mind is that inks such as Ink of Pain or thickener such as Conjuring Thickener is all player made. There are no vendor sources for inks and thickeners. The good news is that you should be able to make all of the inks with components sold from the two PoK research vendors next to the small bank.

Here is something new to try instead of beating out other buyers by 1 plat.  Try price matching. A lot of times people wont price war with you if you simply match them. It lowers your chance to win what you are looking for but it also eliminates the hassle of trying to beat everyone out on price. Also, it seems like a lot of people won’t go into a bidding war if you match them on price instead of trying to beat them out. Personally I still try and beat the other person on price if it is something that I need for tradeskill skill ups but otherwise I’m just like…meh whatever.

So I decided to do the quest the will allow me to make the Exalted level of cultural augs. I can’t make the Sublime symbols yet because I don’t have the SoF expansion. I wanted to be prepared to make the augs by time I finished the quest so I decided to buy some Alkalai Loam, the rare drop for that recipe, ahead of time. 

First I decide to check the bazaar to see if I can pick some of these things up relatively cheap. Ahhh..no.  The prices were at 12-13k each.  A full set of augs would be a bit costly for my miserly self. Well, I can always set up a buyer and pick them up for less, I thought. And so the fun begins…

Here is where Nooknook enters the story. Nooknook is a level 9 dark elf shadowknight that is also purchasing Alkalai Loam and is paying somewhere over 1k per. I don’t remember the exact price he was buying at so let’s say it’s 1100p ea. So I’m thinking that isn’t too bad of a price and set my buy line at 1101p ea. I figure that since it is kind of late no one will catch that I’m beating out everyone elses bids. Just to be sure I search for a few things and then recheck the buyers list to see if I’m still paying the most. Whoops! Nookiepoo must be monitoring the buy lines as well because he has upped his bid by small amount.

Since not that many people are so anal as to monitor competing buy lines every 30 seconds (looks in the mirror), I decide to up the bid again by another plat. So I set my price, get distracted by RL events for about twenty seconds and then check the bids to make sure that mine is showing correctly in the buy list…WTH?!?  Nookums has upped his bid in the time it took me to move something from one part of my desk to another. Comprehension begins to dawn on me as an evil grin overtakes my face. This could be fun…

Now that I know my little Nookaroo is paying minute attention to the bid prices I proceed to consistently up his bids by 1 plat within seconds of him posting his new prices, while laughing my arse off at him. Our prices quickly start climbing up past 2k when I realize something. Nooknuts is trying to up the price exceptionally high so that he can run over and sell me a bunch of loam for well over what he paid to get it! Clever, but not clever enough.

I quickly run to the bank in between bids and deposit the majority of my cash. I run back to my buyer stall and resume my 1 plat bid war knowing that I won’t be able to purchase more than 1 or 2 of the loam when Nookboy runs over to try and deplete me of my hard earned plat.

Our bidding climbs and climbs until it finally reaches the apex of 5001p per Alkalai Loam.  Then little Nookaroo’s buy line goes dead. Here comes the Nookie. Now I have to decide if I’m going to actually buy the single loam that my cash on hand will allow me or if I will have him make his run for nothing. And then I remember the bazaar prices for the loam…12 to 13k per.

Nooknook is browsing your buy lines…

Ohhhh ya!

You have bought 1 Alkalai Loam for 5001 platinum.

Well I know what I’m gonna do with this one.

Nooknook is browsing your buy lines…

Sorry Nookienook, but you can’t sell me anymore!  Ha! As the dejected Nooknook heads back to his buyer platform, I decide it is appropriate to rub some salt in the wound with a short but sweet personal tell of, thanks Not to be outdone, sir Nookalot sends back the retort of, np I have plenty more! I bet you do Nookie, I bet you do!

Now I know you are thinking that this is the end of it but you would be as wrong as Nookers in his misguided attempt to outbid his fellow EQ buyers without checking selling prices first. There’s one more round to go. Nooknook saunters back to his buyer slot with the grim satisfaction of having ‘beat’ me at this buying thing. Or perhaps he crawled back to his buyers cage with despair at the futility of his actions. In either case he promptly re-did his buy line for the Alkalai Loam at a more reasonable price of 1700 plat each…which, I promptly outbid at 1701 plat after a quick run to the bank…

Well I hope none of you take any of this all that seriously. I had a lot of fun messing with Nooknook but there was no real malice in it. I just needed some entertainment and Nookie stepped forward help me out some. Thanks again Nooknook!

 Oh yes, and for those of you wondering what happened to the original Alkalai Loam I bought for 5001p…I sold it for close to 10k and used the proceedes to purchase more loam at a reasonable rate. Ahhh buyer arbitrage is fun :)

Well the bazaar arbitrage with taaffeite and presti … something is over….sigh.  It looks like the drop rate was increased or maybe the zones they are droped in were increased and that is why the buy prices were much higher than the sell prices originally. The buy prices for taaffeite are now 10k max when they were 27k max. Another arbitrage item used to be dweric powder. I use to buy that for 5 gold and resell it to buyers for 10 plat each. I think the buyers are starting to watch what I’m selling them =/

On another note, I think I’ve found a not so bad way to raise my jewelry making skill from 252 to 300. The uncut alexandrite gems and those like them seem to do the trick nicely. They drop frequent enough that they are not overly expensive in the bazaar and there are only two other components. A jewelers glass and a cut tool.  The cut tool is different for each gem and will start with a specific name such as trilion, marquise, etc. In reality they are all the same tool. To cycle through the tools you put one of them in your jewelers kit by itself and combine it. It’s a bit annoying but it works I suppose.

I noticed something this weekend that is very much to my advantage and I thought I’d share.  Saturday night I was grouped with Crimson Snow guildies and we ran across some tradeskill gems such as Taaffeite and Prestidigitase and we decided to throw them up on one of our traders and split the cash.

I wasn’t the one selling the gems but when I logged onto my trader I checked out what the bazaar and barter prices were for some of the gems.  Taaffeite was up for sale anywhere from 25K to 30K+  Cool, it looked like we were going to get some decent cash.

Then I checked barter to see what people were buying it at. The prices range from 300pp to 27k. *singsong voice* “Do you see what I see, Do you hear what I hear” If you do, you’ll see that I have an opportunity to make a quick 2K and hear Cha-ching! just like I did.

So this tells me two things. First, the people selling their crap …ahem… merchandise are not checking out what people are really paying for those items. Why?  I don’t know. It sure beats sitting in the bazaar all night hoping for a sale. Second, the people in barter are not checking their prices against other barter people and they are also not checking for people selling for lower than they are offering.

 Since Saturday I’ve made between 3-4k off of bazaar arbitrage.