Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, May 18, 2016

BDO business: vendor it!

Remember the picture from yesterday?

After I was pleased how well I filled the Heidel storehouse, I listed the possible 30 wares and went to sleep. In the morning I've found about 10 sold, 20 didn't. That's not a problem for someone believing in deep undercutting, I take them out and relist them lower until they sell. Except, I couldn't, since BDO sets price ranges and these items were already at the minimum, along with hundreds of others. It was obvious that they'll have to wait a lot before they sell (I guess equal value orders are sorted by age).

Instead of crying over the broken teapot, I salvaged the situation. At first I needed a simple method to determine what has chance to sell and what doesn't. It's important, because a non-selling item fills up one of the 30 market slots, keeping me from listing something that would sell. It wasn't that hard: the game has an automatic price recommendation which matches the lowest listed price. If it is equal with the range min, you will compete with lots of identical orders:

OK, we now determined what will not sell. What to do with these? Vendor them! And when I did, I noticed something weird: I didn't even lose much compared with the lowest sell order. I mean the vendor prices were pretty high, while the AH sales had taxes. I compared the price I got from the vendor and the taxed prices of several materials:

The red items aren't simply unlikely to sell. They are unworthy to sell on the marketplace. For 10-15 silver extra, you lock up a market order for a long time and you have to haul:
  1. (Offline) travel to farming town storage
  2. Take out item from storage to cart
  3. (Offline) travel to selling city storage
  4. Move item from cart to storage
  5. List item from the storage marketplace interface
If you sell to a vendor, the task is much simpler:
  1. (Offline) travel to farming town storage
  2. Take out item from storage to inventory
  3. Move few steps to the nearest vendor
  4. Sell
Please note that if the item(s) are in large quantity and don't fit into one cart, you have to visit the same town multiple times in the first case, while in the second, you simply make more walks between storage and vendor. Saving that effort is really worth selling for 10-15% cheaper.

15 comments:

Smokeman said...

What strikes me as really weird in this game is, in direct opposition to the hyper complexity and pseudo-realism of many of the mechanics... you have only "silver coins" as a currency. Millions and millions of silver coins.

Even if these coins were the size of a Drachma or a Denarius from back in the day (84 to 96 coins per pound. Let's round up to 100 coins per pound.) which would be a tiny coin smaller than a US dime... a million of these would weigh 10,000 pounds.

Even a thousand of these would be a whopping 10 pound bag of silver.

Gevlon said...

coins do have weight and are recommended to keep in storages

Anonymous said...

Something you may have overlooked: you can list to Marketplace directly from storage.

That might not change your decision on what is and isn't worth listing, but it's worth knowing regardless.

Unknown said...

I really appreciate what you're doing here, Gevlon. Although I'm no trader by any stretch of the imagination, the information is useful and well-presented, helping to broaden my knowledge of the game.

At the moment, I don't have time to go through all the guides, so I need to find one which is reliable and readable. I'll stick with you, because I know your pedigree!

Smokeman said...

Oh, I get that they have "weight" and they should be kept in your warehouse. But it's still ridiculous.

So, you collect some resources, and sell them to a vendor. Your cut is 2134 silver coins. A trivial amount, I might add...

The vendor starts... one, two, three... He IS counting individual, microscopic silver coins. It's a ridiculous concept.

If you're going to go for realism, do it. Design a currency system that makes sense. Partial measures like this are fail.

Gevlon said...

@Anon: really? That's a great feature and will check it out!

Destabilizator said...

It's better melting ("L" -> Heating) weapons/armor than vendoring them, you can also do it on the go. Especially Knots (zerker offhand) and Talismans have fair chance of melting into Pure Crystal.

Vendoring raw mats is hardly a good way to make money - process them. Birch Planks/Plywood sells quite a lot and any plank/plywood needed for Calpheon Timber Crate as well.

seanas said...

Vendoring mats? That's... something I'd not thought to do. I keep looking at my listed Asset Value and thinking 'that value is so fake, I'll never be able to sell all those mats' - but vendoring the ones that don't sell? That's a really good idea. Finally, that mountain of unsellable Ash timber has a use!

Other ways to tell what will and won't sell: that green scroll icon underneath the 'Max' in your screenshot is Total Lifetime Sales of that item; the blue bag icon above the 'Min' in your screenshot is Total Current Listings for that item - it's easy to check if there is demand for the item you're listing, and how big the competing supply is - and as you can see, Seleth weapons and gear simply don't sell.

Also: when you open a given tab in the Marketplace, the default sorting is Total Lifetime Sales - so if you're trying to sell something and it's not on page 1 of the Marketplace, it had better be a high-value item.

One suggestion with the Seleth gear (and other, similar gear): when melted down, weapons and armour have a chance of returning Pure X Cystals (Seleth can give Pure Lead Crystals, for example), which always sell for north of 100k. Whether it's worth the gample of destryong the gear and losing the vendors 10-15k sale price for a possible Crystal 10x as valuable is a value judgement - if I'm on an alt with high Processing, I melt; if not I sell.

Vincent said...

When you gather items these item have an origin and if you sell them at a vendor far away you will sell at much higher.

I've learned that from a video... I don't find it now but I will try to.

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon - yep, in towns that have a marketplace, there is a "Marketplace" button on the Warehouse UI. Click that, and you can list from there.

You still have to go to the merchant to buy, and to collect payments, however.

Anonymous said...

@Smokeman: I'd assume the shopkeeper would just use scales to give you the correct amount of coins.

Destabilizator said...

@Vincent you are confusing trade items (which you can get as rare proc during gathering, eg. insect in ember, crystallized blood, etc.) and raw mats (these have no origin or anything).

Gevlon said...

@Destabilizator: good idea on melting armor. I did not vendor Birch, I sold them. Processing obviously increases the value of the material, but cost either energy points or contribution points (workshop + lodging for the worker).

@seanas: thanks

@Vincent: yes, but materials don't have origin, just trade items

@Anon: post updated for that feature.

Destabilizator said...

@Gevlon: never, ever, process with worker what you can process yourself - you will proc much more (eg. 4 shards from 5 ore), your worker will never proc anything. At higher processing lvl, you proc more and also get energy discounts (pretty noticeable, I can process ~2500 ore with 300 energy)... if you don't do any processing, you'll never lvl it up :)

Gevlon said...

@Destabilizator: I focused on cooking with my energy, so I can't also do processing at large.