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  • Merchant Mining

    http://www.eqtraders.com/articles/ar...r=070000000000

    It is my understanding that this information is largely out of date. Such "hidden" items are no longer stored out of sight, but rather are simply deleted.
    Visionary Beldhyr Jogues, Sigil of Mindspark, Consul. Entrancer of Brell Serilis, Nameless (Innoruuk) Server
    Master Artisan, Researcher, & Tinker.

  • #2
    Anyone up to rewriting this for us? I haven't done much of this lately, so I might miss things. I'm also curious whether the Paineel vendors still behave differently.
    Retiree of EQ Traders...
    Venerable Heyokah Verdandi Snowblood
    Barbarian Prophet & Hierophant of Cabilis
    Journeyman Artisan & Blessed of Brell
    EQ Players Profile ~ Magelo Profile


    Smith Dandi wipes her sooty hands on her apron and smiles at you.

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    • #3
      rewrite

      I've put together a rewrite of the page, that briefly mentions how it used to work (where items could be recovered from "under the counter") but focuses more on the tricks that still apply, like leaving one of an item on a merchant so that the merchant will continue to carry it. I mailed Verdandi the link; I'd rather not publish it since the link will go stale if the contents get moved somewhere on the site. Let me know if there's something else I should do with it?

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      • #4
        Guide to Merchant Mining (aka Vendor Diving)

        Well, I exchanged mail a couple times with Verdandi, but she hasn't been able to find time to read and comment on my new Guide to Merchant Mining. So I'm just going to go ahead and post it here. If someone wants to move it to the FAQ or wherever the old link to the topic was, that's cool too.


        If a player sells an item to an NPC merchant, the merchant often holds onto the item, and another player may then buy it from the merchant. This can be a source of amazing treasures for the patient tradeskiller, since many players do not pay attention to which tradeskill ingredients are rare or in demand, and simply sell all their loot to NPCs. Ingredients that might take hours to hunt or cost thousands of plat in the Bazaar, can sometimes be found for mere coppers on an NPC. "Merchant mining", also called "vendor mining" or "vendor diving", refers to rummaging around in NPC merchant inventories looking for useful stuff.

        First, it helps to understand how NPC merchants manage their inventories, especially since it has changed a bit since the early days of EverQuest. Each merchant is limited to showing 80 different items. (It's probably not a coincidence that this is the most item slots a character can carry: eight 10-slot bags.) NPC merchants carry some items as their "regular stock". These show up in the merchant window with a dash in the "Qty" (quantity) column, meaning that the merchant always has those items for sale. If you sell something to an NPC who didn't already have that item for sale, your item goes into the NPC's inventory and gets added to the list of items for sale, but only if the NPC has room for your item. NPC merchants do have one advantage over players in that NPCs can "stack" everything, so if you sell more than one of the same thing, or if two players sell the same thing to an NPC, they only take up one slot on the NPC and the quantity available just goes up.

        It used to be that, if you sold something new to a merchant who already had 80 different items for sale, the merchant kept all such items "under the counter"; the extra items were not visible and thus not for sale, but as earlier items got purchased then items from under the counter might start to appear for sale. The original writeup about Merchant Mining described some tricks for how to check whether an NPC had useful items under the counter, and how to make them appear. But life is much simpler now, because merchants holding 80 different items now simply throw away anything new that gets sold to them. Even so, there are still some useful tricks to keep in mind, though the process might now be better described as "farming" instead of "mining".

        A few merchants actually have 80 items in their regular stock; those NPCs always throw away anything players sell to them. All other merchants hold onto new items until they hit the limit of 80 different items, including their regular stock. But if players buy back all of one kind of new item, that slot becomes available to hold something else. The key is to reserve slots for the items you care about.

        Suppose you are looking for large numbers of, oh, spider silk. Find an area where players who are killing stuff for experience are likely to be collecting large numbers of spider silks, and look for the merchants that they might be selling their loot to. This includes merchants in the area itself, plus of course merchants in PoK and the Bazaar, and near home city gates and banks. The problem is, even though players may be selling lots of that lovely spider silk at those very merchants, if the merchants are full they're just throwing it all away!

        Let's say you get lucky, though, and find a merchant holding lots of silk, so you buy it all up. Now the merchant has an empty slot, so he'll hold onto the next new item anyone sells to him. If that item isn't silk, he's going to start throwing away silk from now on. So what you want to do is leave just one silk on the merchant, to hold the slot. Then if more silk comes his way, he'll add it to the stack, and you can come around later and see if he's got more for you.

        Now, suppose the merchant doesn't have any silk, but you suspect people do sometimes sell silk there. (Maybe you remember finding silk on that merchant before.) Here's where you can decide whether to go fishing: if you're willing to use one of your items as bait, you can try to catch some more. If you want to try it, first check whether the merchant is at the 80-slot limit. With practice you can tell from the length of the scrollbar in the merchant window, or you can try selling something cheap such as a water flask (unless that's part of the regular stock, of course) and seeing whether it appears or got discarded. If it appears, buy it back to reopen the slot, then sell one of the item you're trying to collect.

        If the merchant is full, look at the items that are not part of his regular stock, that is, the ones that have limited quantities. Pick one where the item is cheap and/or the quantity is small, and buy up all of that item. That opens up a slot, so immediately sell one of the item you're trying to collect, so it fills the slot. You can then sell back the other items you bought. (It's important, then, to make sure that the sellback price isn't too far from the purchase price. Don't buy fine steel weapons to open up merchant slots! And of course, as always when dealing with merchants, get your faction and charisma up to where you get the best possible prices. Indifferent faction -- including via sneaking -- and charisma 104 is sufficient.)

        Having seeded the merchant with one of your items, you then go about your business. Occasionally you can swing past the merchant to check on your investment. Sometimes you'll see your one lonely spider silk still sitting there. Sometimes you'll find more, in which case you should buy all but one, leaving the last one to hold the slot. And of course, sometimes you'll find your original silk is gone. This can happen for two reasons. First, if the server goes down or the zone resets, all merchants revert to just their own starting inventories. So if you're going to try seeding merchants, do it just after the servers come up, not when they're about to come down! But second, obviously, another player might come around and decide to buy your item. The player probably didn't even realise that he was screwing up your attempt to collect more silks.

        A good habit to get into, when you see useful player-sold stuff on an NPC, is to avoid buying the last one. Feel free to take advantage of someone else's seed, but leave the seed itself, and that way everyone can continue to profit from it. This is relatively easy advice to follow for cheap stuff like silk, bone chips, etc., but I admit it has its limits. Personally I tend to draw the line at Blue Diamonds; I know those will vanish soon anyway, so I'll clean them out if I find them. But just about anything cheaper I'm willing to leave a seed behind. If you simply can't resist cleaning out an item, consider leaving a new seedling in its place. (When I clear out a stash of Blue Diamonds, I'll sell back a bone chip or crystallized sulfur or the like to fill the slot.)

        A few NPCs are weird in that some of their "regular stock" has limited quantities. Refined and High Quality Ore fall in this category, as does Tracker's Water Extractor. Merchants start with a certain quantity of those items, but once the items are gone, they're gone. In the case of the ore merchants, they'll restock if you do a quest for them; I'm not sure what happens if the merchant is full of other stuff when you try to restock them. It's probably a good idea to avoid the ore merchants when sowing your seed items, because your seeds might get wiped out if the merchant runs out of ore, fills up, then gets restocked with ore.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Sukrasisx View Post
          In the case of the ore merchants, they'll restock if you do a quest for them; I'm not sure what happens if the merchant is full of other stuff when you try to restock them.
          In the unrefined ore quest, the NPC merchant despawns and immediately respawns, same as if it were somehow killed. Thus, all previously held inventory is gone and it starts fresh.

          B
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          • #6
            Paineel Vendors

            I was also curious about the paineel vendors. They no longer act differently. I logged in my untwinked erudite necro *finder of the hole key* hehe

            And eerily enough the Hole Key Vendor who never displayed anything before when you sold stuff, now displays the stuff you sold.

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