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Merchant Mining
by Ellesidil (DenMother's Note: the following process will not work for Paineel merchants, other than the newspaper vendor, due to the fact that Paineel merchants refuse to sell back any items that they purchase from players) I have heard of this thing called "vendor mining" what is that? In order to answer this question, you have to understand merchants and their inventory in EQ. When you sell a merchant an item, if they have an open visible slot, it fills that slot. What happens when a merchant has no visible open slot? The item you just sold them goes "under the counter". It is not deleted, just not visible. Knowing this, it is possible for a vendor to have 100 or more pelts that you may be interested and you cannot see them. Mining vendors can be a useful way to get a large number of pelts in a short amount of time. I personally do not use it when looking for specific pelts like HQ bear. It tends to be too costly for the return, but if you are looking for any quality pelt, it can be well worth your time. That being said, often the best places to mine are vendors that can have at least two or more of the following in various qualities cat, wolf,and bear pelts, and/or spider and spiderling silks. Where do I choose most often? The vendor in Everfrost, near the Halas zone line. Why would I travel that far, three major reasons. First and foremost, it is that far away from everywhere else and that will deter most people from going out there to mine. Secondly, there are wolves, bears, and spiderlings killed in large quantities in the canyons nearby. Third there are two vendors on top of each other and when I stand between them, I can buy from one, turn and click on the other and sell directly back to the other. How do you mine a vendor? Well there are a couple of steps.
Some general statements about mining. When you sell a "test" item and it does not appear in the window, if you do not mine the merchant you will not be able to get it back. If you decide not to mine the merchant, you will have to kill mobs until you get a replacement "test" item. I usually will not mine unless I have in excess of 500 plat to throw into it. Nothing more disconcerting then spending your last 200 plat and not finding your "test" items. The main reason for that is if the merchant has that much "junk", most likely noone has mined them for a while, and you could hit the jackpot with another 100 plat. Or not. Charisma and faction are key to the price you pay and the price you get, try raising faction in the area for a while before mining that merchant, it will cost you less in the long run. Mining is a result of a lot of luck and some preparation, some things to keep in mind, if your server has been down recently, or the merchant has been killed recently, they will loose their inventory. Never mine a merchant the day after a server comes up, and never mine merchants who are routinely killed for exp (Shady in EC Tunnel on my server). You can try to mine for only one item, but that tends to be a huge risk, when I am mining Everfrost, I keep the spider legs (baking), the bone chips (necro alt), the med and low quality pelts get made into padding, the ruined get made into patchwork for nearby low level players. The high quality gets made into backpacks (bear) and reinforced leather (wolf)when I needed the skill ups, now they get downgraded for padding), and the polar bear pelts get traded for faction to continually get me to ally status in Halas (better prices). That is how I make the best of it. You can get as lucky as I have and pull over 200 ruined pelts, 75 low quality, 50 medium quality and 30 high quality bear pelts (same ratio and quantity of wolf pelts), 15 polar bear pelts (good for halas faction), too many bone chips to count (had to stop buying them when I ran out of room), and over 250 spiderling silks like I did in 3 hours in Everfrost once, or you could blow 500 plat and get 15 total pelts like I did one other time in Everfrost. It really is a gamble, but one I am willing to take occasionally in the game. :: Copyright :: © :: 2002 :: | xellosmod |:: |