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Vendor
A vendor (a.k.a. merchant) is a special type of NPC commonly found in the cities of Norrath which may deal business with the player. To open the vendor window, approach the NPC and right-click them. This action will break invis. Vendors will not do business with players who have less than apprehensive faction with them, and will likely insult them instead. If you are looking for general prices of commonly dropped items to know whether you want to sell or destroy them, check Vendor Junk.
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Vendor inventory
Every vendor has two inventories, a permanent inventory and a temporary inventory. For example, an innkeeper may have Bandages, Torches, and Water Flasks in his permanent inventory and many things which players sold to him such as Bat Wings and Fire Beetle Eyes in his temporary inventory. Temporary inventories are accessible by all players on a server. When the vendor dies and respawns, his temporary inventory is deleted. This includes server resets which respawn all NPCs. (Some server resets on p99 will virtually retain and rollback NPCs to their state before the reset, this includes outages and many maintenance resets. Simulated respawns aka earthquakes may respawn all merchants.)
The quantity of each item in his permanent inventory is always unlimited, while the quantities of items sold into his temporary inventory are limited to the number sold to them.
When a vendor buys enough items from players, some of his temporary inventory might not be accessible. It seems that the oldest items sold to him will be visible first. When the older items are depleted, and the vendor window is closed and reopened, then newer items may become visible if available. Only about 40 different items of either inventory should be visible. On the green/teal interface, some information that was available in the luclin UI has been removed, including these quantities, but it still works the same way.
Faction floor
All vendors have an effective faction floor of dubious, even if the player's actual faction level is lower. This means that merchants will never body aggro (initiate combat) with players for having bad faction. It also means that the player will have to find another NPC to consider if they want to determine if they are KOS to other non-vendor NPCs on that faction. If a player accidentally attacks a vendor, they will defend themselves, and are often very strong for their levels.
Bankers do NOT have this faction floor, and will attack the player like any other NPC!
Vendor Pricing, Charisma, and Faction
As far as vendor prices are concerned, factions can be broken up into three categories.
- Dubious or worse ~ If your faction with the merchant is dubious or worse, of course, the merchant simply won't sell to you (I have something here that %Rs use..let me see...it's the EXIT, now get LOST!).
- Apprehensive ~ If you're at apprehensive, the merchant will sell to you, but is going to charge you an arm and a leg unless you can get your charisma WAY up there.
- Indifferent or better ~ Lastly, any faction indifferent or better will get exactly the same prices for the same charisma. It doesn't matter if you're ally or sneaking and indifferent.
There are several crucial charisma numbers to shoot for.
1. Key to this is that, whether your faction is apprehensive or indifferent or better, there's a stretch from 62 to 76 that gives exactly the same prices. So, if you can get your charisma up to 62, don't bother getting any more charisma boosters until you can get enough to get you to 76. However, when you do get to 76, the prices will suddenly drop by about 6%, instead of the 0.5% boost you get for most individual points of charisma.
2. Better known is the "magic number" of charisma, 104. This is the point at which indifferent or better merchants will give you the best price they're ever going to give you. This price seems to be based on 1.05 times a "actual value" that you will never see used, but is only directly known by the server. For instance, many gem and metal prices are clearly based on this. And, if you notice the prices at which the vendor will buy such things back from you, although it looks like a very irregular number, for instance 95pp 2gp 3sp 8cp for a bar of platinum or a sapphire, that just happens to be 100pp divided by 1.05.
3. The last and highest number to shoot for is 132. This is the charisma at which you can normally get the cheapest prices even with apprehensive faction.
Greedy Merchants pay the least for your loot and charge the most when selling to you. When you are trying to build up some funds it's good to know who to avoid.
- Merchant Ueaas—Kelethin
- Aimie Moonspin—North Freeport
- Naresa Sparkle—West Commonlands
- Boomba the Big—West Freeport
- Ping Fuzzlecutter—West Freeport
- Tubal Weaver—North Qeynos
- Everyone—The Overthere
The Pricing Roller Coaster
When many players have been buying from or selling to a merchant, he seems to get it into his head that "Hey, I'm so popular, I can charge better prices now!". Unfortunately, "better" in this context means "better for the vendor". I'm still carrying out research on this issue, but merchants that will normally give best prices at 104 charisma and indifferent faction can go at least as high as needing 134 charisma to get best prices, even with ally faction.
It seems that, with less charisma than that needed for best prices, a set amount is added to the price you would normally get, i.e. whether your charisma is 120 or 50, a vendor might add 3sp to the price you would pay from a vendor who hasn't been getting so much action. The actual amount can vary widely. This is particularly noticeable on merchants in very busy areas, for instance vendors located in or right at the entrance to newbie areas, or those in banks. In these cases, it's almost impossible to distinguish a "greedy" merchant from a merely "opportunistic" merchant.
(p99 Note: Greedy Merchants introduced on Dec 18 2011 Patch: "Greedy Vendors: Certain merchants, usually in easy to reach locations, buy for half price, and sell for double. Buyer beware.".)
Every item has a "best price".
Q: How do I get a merchant to sell me an item at its best price?
For most merchants, you need indifferent faction and 104 charisma. This is to say that 1) at any given charisma, a merchant will give you the same price at indifferent, amiable, kind or warm faction (but worse at apprehensive), and 2) if your faction is at least indifferent, you will stop getting better prices beyond 104 charisma.
Now I said most merchants up there. The first statement is always true, but I've observed two exceptions to the second. First, the merchants in your guild in your hometown only require 93 charisma. Second, there are a handful of merchants who require MUCH higher than 104 charisma. These are usually the merchants near banks and at entrances to cities. Examples are: Tubal at the Qeynos gate, Boomba the Big at the WFP gate, Aimee at the NFP bank, Merchant U-something (the dufrenite merchant) outside the Kelethin bank. Don't buy or sell from them if you can avoid it. At 170+ charisma and indifferent-to-warm faction, I still can't get them to give me best prices.
Q: How can I tell if a merchant is buying or selling an item at its best price?
Check how much the merchant offers you for a peridot (Everyone carries a stack of peridots for their clerics and chanters right?). If you're offered 9.88pp for it, you've succeeded. You won't be able to buy for less or sell for more. If you're offered less than 9.88pp, you can do better with higher charisma. Now it doesn't have to be a peridot. Any item will do as long as you know its best price. I happen to know what the best price is for a peridot.
-- Balidil Anla'shok (EQTraders) and Khazim (Quellious)
