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UO Vendors in a Nutshell
by Kitiara
Here's a little essay on running a successful UO vendor. It
was originally my reply to a new merchant's question in a forum somewhere. These
are the very basics of running your UO vendor. There are tons and tons more tips
and ideas and philosophies to be found - this is just a surface-scratcher, if
you will! But do enjoy it, and I hope you find it useful!
Choose Your Wares Carefully
What should I sell at my shop? Well, if you plan on running
your own vendors (and not sponsoring other people's vendors at your house), you
should probably specialize and be very specific in what you sell (unless you
have the time to play UO 24/7). Vendor ownership can be very time consuming (not
to mention addictive!) As a shopper, I much prefer a shop with a few very well
stocked vendors as opposed to lots and lots of half empty ones.
Keeping your vendors stocked (or making sure the people you
sublet space to do the same) is hugely important if you want people to come back
to your shop!
If you plan on subletting your space, I'd focus on getting a
variety of items, at GM or near quality if possible. Depending on your goals,
you may want to focus on the needs of a particular segment of the UO crowd. For
example, a warrior's shop would have plenty of GM armor and weapons available,
as well as healing necessities such as bandages, potions, reagents, major
scrolls and the like. A interior decoration supply shop would have lots of
furniture, house addons, and tinkered home decor. A mage's pit stop would offer
reagents in bulk, scrolls of all circles and in bulk, full spellbooks,
runebooks, blank runes, etc. Know who your main customer target is, and gear
your inventory to their needs. You may also wish to offer specialty items -
custom completed runebooks, collectible UO library books, rare or semi-rare
items, shipwreck treasure, lottery vendors, etc.
Appearance is important as well (your store display, if you
will). A bunch of plain brown bags filled with random unorganized stuff - not
very appealing. A well organized vendor is likely to bring people back. Color
code your packs, and use helpful descriptions on your sale items (for example,
don't throw a magic sword on your vendor without adding the description of what
enchantment it holds - many people don't have ID skill, and will only see the
description "a magic sword" when clicking the item). Lock a brown book down on
your floor near the vendors for special requests and customer service. Group
your items appropriately on the vendors. It's also impresseive (at least to me!)
to see multiple vendors dressed in a similar clothing scheme. All of my vendors
wear orange dresses and orange floppy hats (I'm a Philadelphia Flyers fan!)
A note on books: the brown books are the only ones that
customers can write in while locked down. Also, shoppers can NOT write in OR
read the contents of any books if they're in your vendor's pack. (Only the title
of the book can be seen). So here's my advice: lock down a brown book for
customers to leave notes for you. Lock down a purple book with your latest news,
contact information, etc. as well. Customers can't erase the brown books while
locked down - they can only read them, so they're great for announcements and
things of that nature.
As far as running the vendors, realize that you've got to
make your house public in order to place vendors there. And, if you want to let
other people run vendors at your house, they must be made friends of the house,
meaning they'll be able to access any secure containers that you designate as
available to friends.
Maintaining your inventory is pretty simple. Simply put, you
drop items for sale onto the vendor's backpack. There are two components of your
inventory records - the item price and its description. Enter the two when
prompted by the game, separated by either a space, or a comma. For example, if I
was selling a broadsword of defense at a price of 250 gold pieces, I would type
at the prompt:
250 Defense
or
250, Defense
which would result in a
broadsword, priced at 250 gold, with the description of "Defense" shown when the
item was clicked. If you would like to leave off the description, simply type a
price and hit enter. If I were to do that with my broadsword of defense, for
example, I'd end up with a broadsword, priced at 250 gold, that simply said "a
magic broadsword" (the UO game default description) when clicked. If you choose
to type only a description at the prompt, the UO system will automatically price
the item at the NPC vendor current price (typically much less than the player
market will pay). The exception to this is if you are placing a book for
information, a container for grouping items, or a key ring. Those items can be
made "not for sale" by simply typing the description with no price, or hitting
the ESC key (which results in a nondescriptive "not for sale" when you click the
item).
If you'd like to sell a group of items at a single price
(for example, a full set of GM leather armor for 1500gp), put all of the items
into a container away from the vendor, then drop the entire container full of
items onto the vendor and set the price and description as described above,
like:
1500 A Full Set of GM Quality Female Leather Armor
This will result in the container set to sell at 1500gp, and
when a shopper buys the container, he or she will get the container itself and
its contents.
Here's a summary of the Inventory options:
| Enter |
Result |
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Price, Description
Price Description |
Description Item will sell for the designated price, and
display your typed description as well as the UO game default
description when clicked. |
| Price only |
Item will sell for the designated price, and display the UO game
default description for the item. |
| Description only |
If the item is a container, key ring, or book, it will be "not
for sale" and display your description when clicked. If it's a
salable item, it will sell for the UO game default price, and display
your description when clicked. |
| ESC Key |
If the item is a container, key ring, or book, it will be "not
for sale" with no additional description. If it is a salable item, the
game will price it at UO default price and warn you that
only the 3 above types of items are allowed as "not for sale."
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Show Me The Money!
Here's a list of the common commands you'll use on a daily basis to interact
with your vendor. (See explanations below).
| Command |
Result |
[name] status
[name] info |
Shows the amount of gold vendor is holding, his current fees, and how
many UO and Earth days he'll continue to work for you. |
[name] get
[name] collect
[name] gold |
Retrieves your gold profits from the vendor. If you've
earned more than 4999 gold, he will cut you a check. If under 4999,
he'll hand you the max you can carry in gold pieces. |
| [name] dismiss |
Terminates your contract with the vendor. He'll pack up
his things and be on his merry way, so be sure to collect
your gold before dismissing him! |
* [name] should be replaced with either the vendor's name, or the word
"vendor," or a general greeting word. Capitalization is irrelevant - but
spelling is important! Examples:
"Vendor Status" - "Azora Status" - "Hi
Status"
To grab your profits from the vendor, use the keywords "get," "gold," or
"collect." Vendors keep their gold in two separate accounts - one for their own
pay (which is the gold you manually drop on them), and one for the gold they've
collected for you from selling your wares. If the vendor runs out of gold in his
payment account, he will subtract his fees from your profit account as a
courtesy. (Note that there have been rumors of bugs where vendors fail to do
perform that courtesy, and disappear when their payment account runs out
regardless of if there's gold in the profit account, so beware! Always feed your
vendors gold, just in case). When you request gold from your vendor, he will
give you gold pieces up to the amount that you can physically carry up to 4,999
gold pieces. If he's holding more gold than you can carry, or the amount exceeds
4,999gp, he'll cut you a check for the total amount up to 1 million gold. Beyond
1 million, he'll hold the remainder until the next time you request your sales
profits. The check will appear in your backpack. Take this check to any bank,
and drop it on the head of any NPC banker or minter. They will deposit the funds
to your bank account in the form of gold pieces.
Checking vendor status is important! If your vendor runs out of gold, they
quit working for you, and all of your items disappear along with the vendor. You
pay your vendor by dropping gold onto them.
Keep tabs on your vendors by checking his/her status frequently - use the
keyword "status" (like, "vendor status"). This will tell you how much gold the
vendor is holding for you, as well as how much he's holding in his payment
account, how many UO and earth days the vendor will continue to work for you.
Keeping Your Employees Happy
So how much will this vendor cost you? The minimum daily fee that a vendor
will charge you is somewhere between 20 and 24 gp per UO day. One day in UO time
is about the same as 2 hours in Earth time. That means there's 12 UO days in 1
Earth day! If your vendor claims to charge 20 gold per day, it will cost you 240
gold per Earth day to keep him alive (20gp x 12 UO days). UO vendors set
their rates based on the retail value of the items they're selling for you. So,
the higher the total sale amount of your inventory, the higher the vendor's
daily rate will be. The first 500gp of your inventory value is included in the
vendor's minimum fee. Beyond that, for each additional 500gp in inventory value
the vendor adds 1gp to his fee.
Here's an example: I place items on my vendor and the total of all sale
prices (my inventory value) is 10,000 gp. Let's say that my vendor's minimum
rate is 24gp. (I checked this when his pack was empty using the "status"
keyword). Keep in mind that the first 500gp of inventory value is covered by the
minimum rate, and every 500gp additional in inventory value costs me 1gp in
vendor fees.
(10,000 - 500) = 9,500 ----> This is my adjusted inventory value
9,500
/ 500 = 19 ----------> This is the additional fee I pay for my
inventory
24 + 19 = 43 --------------> This is my vendor's total charge
per UO day
To sum that up in one equation:
[(Total Inventory - 500)/500] + Minimum
Daily Fee = Total Daily Fee in UO time
or, in my example,
[(10,000 - 500)/500] + 24 = 43gp
How much is that in Earth time? Multiply the result by 12. For my
vendor,
43 x 12 = 516gp per Earth day. I must drop at least 516gp on my
vendor's head every day in order for him to continue to work for me. I like to
keep at least 4 or 5 Earth days worth of pay on my vendor at the very minimum
(in case for some reason I'm unable to log in, etc). Remember to check your
vendor's status regularly by saying "vendor status" - make sure he's got enough
pay for a few Earth days.
Good Luck!
Kitiara
UO Craft
Email Address.
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