INTRO:
As you may or may not know, I am Shurima. You may have seen me on USW2 merching, and if you have traded using Realmeye, you may have seen some of my offers.
Some brief credentials:
I am a pro mercher and was at one point considered by many to be one of the wealthiest players in the game. I had a peak net worth of over 24,000 life back in a time when having 100 life was considered to be impressive. I have sold virtually every single trading item in the game more than a few times, and have operated upwards of 300 mules with access to close to 10,000 inventory slots.
Purpose:
The purpose of this guide is to condense the years of trading into a single guide that panders to everyone from new players to experienced traders. It is a WIP, and probably will be in perpetuity.
THE TLDR:
For those of you that are just looking for a quick read, I have gone ahead and posted a quick little tips guide to give a quick and dirty overview of some of the concepts that can help you be a better mercher.
MERCHING TIPS
1. DON’T SCAM
I know it can sometimes be tempting with multiwindow trades to take the life and run, but it only takes one instance caught on video or one person following you around yelling “scammer” to ruin your trade career. Merching is about building trust. Relationships matter, and if you can prove that you are trustworthy, it’s pretty easy to develop clients that will come back and buy from you on a regular basis, because they trust you. Plus you risk getting banned, which, if you’ve spent a year building up your wealth, it would really suck if you had to start over again.
2. POST TRADE OFFERS TO REALMEYE
I cannot tell you how many countless trades I have made off realmeye, but I can tell you that probably 60% of my trades come from realmeye pms. It is nice. It is convenient. It doesn’t take much time to do. There is nothing better than doing a dungeon, something otherwise productive, and having someone message you asking to buy an item you have posted. I cannot stress this enough. USE REALMEYE.
As seen above, the trading offers can be located on our realmeye profile under the “Offers” tab. It is pretty self explanatory how to post and save offers.
3. REFRESH YOUR TRADE OFFERS OFTEN
This little refresh button is your BEST FRIEND. Every time you press it, your offers get pushed to the top of the list, so anyone searching for offers for a particular item will see yours first. Why is this important? Because no one likes to scroll super far down the list of items
As you can see above, pressing “Save Changes” will readd my offer so that it gets pushed to the top of the search list. Anyone who is looking for the item, will have to see and consider my offer first. I CONTINUOUSLY refresh my offers, about once every five minutes or so and sometimes more frequently, just to make sure my offers are always being seen.
4. USE THE CURRENT OFFERS TAB TO TRADE
I can’t tell you how many people I know just post offers to Realmeye, but don’t actually look through the offers. This is like only using half of a resource. While this doesn’t have to be done as often as refreshing your offers, I’d say that if you are actively trying to buy or sell something, it might be worth it to scroll through the offers every hour or so just to see if there are any good deals for items that you are looking to buy or sell.
Located on Realmeye, the current offers tab will bring up a selection menu of a list of items. Clicking on an item will bring up an item query.
The query function can be used to find offers that match a specific set of inputs, for example trading life for DECA rings. This is extremely helpful when trying to buy a specific item. In fact, I have much more luck when buying items for life using this method than by simply posting on my realmeye trade offers that I am buying.
5. CHECK PRICES WITH THE CURRENT OFFERS TAB
This will be mentioned elsewhere in the guide, but people ask me all the time, “How do you know the prices for items that you sell? How do you know the market value?” Well, it’s pretty simple. All I do is check the current offers tab for the item. I take the LOWEST price that someone is selling for and I take the HIGHEST price that someone is buying for. I add them together and divide by 2, effectively taking the average. Most of the time, no one will be buying for a higher price than the lowest sale price, but if they are, I almost always immediately trade them, because it is likely that they are paying ABOVE market value.
FOR EXAMPLE:
As you can see, the highest price anyone is willing to BUY a ggen for is 1L.
As you can see, the lowest price anyone is willing to SELL a ggen for is 3L. As such, the average of 1+3 is 2, so the market price of ggen can be codified as: 2L, 1-3L, or 1 to buy, 3 to sell. All of these are useful metrics and can help determine how much inventory is worth and how much profit can be made.
6. ONLY MERCH ITEMS YOU CAN MAKE 1L+ PROFIT ON
In my professional opinion, there is absolutely no reason to try and merch something that is worth less than one life. I might even extend this blanket statement to saying that things need to be worth at least 2L to merch them. Note that I am saying “merch,” not “trade.” The reason for this? You want to be as efficient as possible with your trades. If you trade an item worth 1L for 2L, in one trade, you made a 1L profit. If you trade an item worth 1 def for 2 def, you just made a 1def profit. In both cases, you just made a single trade, that takes up a certain amount of your time. Why waste time making trades that net you a defense when you could be making trades that net you 8L of profit or more.
7. DON’T MERCH SMALL POTS
I know the previous tip said not to merch things that are worth less than 1L, but I see this so often, that I thought I would make a specific tip warning not to do it.
I see this mistake all the time. When players start off merching, they will try and sell a defense for 3 small pots or maybe 8 small pots for a life. This works, but it is INSANELY slow. In my opinion, the best way to start merching is to go out and farm until you have 1L, either through dungeons or through godlands. From here, you can buy an item like a ggen for 1L that you can sell for 3L. That’s a 2L profit. Do you know how long it would take you to make a 2L profit merching small pots? AGES. It’s just not worth it. Just suck it up and go farm. Trade the small pots for a life pot without trying to merch or get a good deal, and THEN start your merching. You will save so much time.
8. USE MULES
Unless you have just tons of vaults unlocked, chances are, you’re going to need mules. For those of you that don’t know, mules are alternate accounts used specifically for creating more space to house your wears. Even if you have ALL of your vaults unlocked, if your empire gets big enough, you’re probably going to need mules at some point.
Just some quick recommendations. It can be tedious to keep track of the passwords for all of your mules. If you don’t use muledump, it can be nay impossible. My first recommendation for mule management is of course muledump. If you don’t do that, I recommend keeping inventory on an excel sheet of what you have in each mule. This will save you time. I also recommend putting like items on mules. For example, rather than just throwing gear onto a mule, use one mule just for ggens. This will save you time. Even if you use muledump, (although the search feature has greatly reduced the need for this), it can still be helpful visually to identify the mule that you need for a particular item.
As you see below, I will also highly recommend one-click login.
I also HIGHLY recommend keeping a master list of the login emails, names, and passwords for all of your accounts, so that if something should go wrong, you will not lose your items like I did.
Lastly, remember when creating mules to use the “gmail trick.” IAmShurima+1@gmail.com and IAmShurima+2@gmail.com are registered by RotMG as two DIFFERENT emails for verification purposes; however, the account verification emails will both go to IAmShurima@gmail.com. What this means is that you don’t have to create a new gmail account for each mule that you create. You can simply keep adding on numbers to create new accounts. It saves a lot of time.
9. USE MULEDUMP
If there is a single tool that could save you more time than anything else, it is muledump. For those of you not using it, GET IT. Even steam users can use it now apparently! What it does is give you a TON of features to help keep track of what is on your mules and show you your overall inventory. Just trust me on this one. Download it. You won’t regret it.
When set up, it will look something like this. As you can see, you can view all of my different mules in one place. You can see their inventories. At the top, there is a totals tab that allows you to see all the different items I own all in one place. You can search for accounts with items. You can check fame on characters. You can see how many pots you have to max. You can log into your daily login for all your accounts all at once so you don’t have to go in individually to each one to claim your rewards. The features are really incredible.
One bonus tip that I have with muledump is to use the “groups” feature. This allows you to set up groups of mules so that you don’t have to see all of them at the same time. For example, if some of your mules are deep storage for items that you will trade several months from now, you can hide them from your regular groups page.
The link for MULEDUMP: https://jakcodex.github.io/muledump/muledump.html
The link for STEAM muledump help: https://github.com/atomizer/muledump/wiki/Steam-Tutorial
10. USE ONE-CLICK LOGIN
For those of you that don’t know, one-click login is a function of muledump that allows you to directly click on a mule on your muledump and automatically log into it. For those of you that will use different passwords for all of your mules, this can save you a ton of time.
The link for ONE-CLICK LOGIN: https://github.com/jakcodex/muledump/wiki/One-Click-Login
11. USE THE TRADING DISCORD
The trading discord can be a suitable alternative to realmeye offers occasionally. In my opinion, most of the people on it are other merchers, so you can’t always get the best price, but occasionally you do find deals. I have found it most helpful for locating suppliers and purchasers of bulk offers. You will have to do a quick verification process, but it is worth it.
The link for the TRADING DISCORD: https://discord.gg/S5tM389
12. STAY ORGANIZED
When your empire starts getting bigger, organization becomes EVERYTHING. You need to know where your items are to find them at all times. Muledump helps with this, but this tip extends beyond mule management. It means using a certain part of your vault just for life pots. It means putting tradable items for sale in one part of your vault, and whites and items you use on a regular basis in another so that you don’t get them mixed up. It means having a master list of all the login information to all of your accounts. The more organized you are, the more time you can save while trading. When a grade offer comes in, you can know exactly where to look in your vault to find the item. This is priceless, because time is money.
13. BE PATIENT
Merching takes time. That’s the bottom line. Don’t get too anxious. If things are taking too long, like no one has bit on an offer in more than a day, perhaps it is time to adjust your price, but overall, there are only so many people on USW2 or on realmeye looking at offers. Go do something else if someone isn’t biting on your offers.
14. BE FRIENDLY
This may seem like something simple, but occasionally if you are nice to people, they will give you a better price, or better yet, want to trade with you multiple times. When people trade me, I try and say “Hey, thanks for messaging me. What can I do for you?” At the end of the trade, I always ask if they have or would like to purchase more of whatever item I am buying or selling. This is how you find out if someone is a bulk seller.
They can say yes, I have lots more, and before you know it, you are buying 20 pixies from them a week. It’s not about the trade. It’s about the experience they have when they trade you. This is how networks are formed.
At the end of a trade, or even if a trade pm doesn’t work out, I ALWAYS tell people to have a nice day and thank them for their time. If anything, you want trading to be a pleasant experience, not a hassle.
15. USE COMMON SENSE
I think this goes without saying. If an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is. Do some investigating and take precautions. Not everyone out there is your friend and wants the best for you.
THE GUIDE:
Chp. 1: What is Merching?
What is Merching?
“Merching” is the art of buying and selling items to make a profit. It can succinctly be generalized by the phrase “Buy Low. Sell High.”, in which people who merch, or “merchers,” will buy items for as cheap as possible with the intent of selling them for a higher price to make a profit.
Why Is It Called “Merching?”
“Merching” is the shortened form of the word “merchandise” (rhymes with eyes) in its verbal form. The verb merchandise means to promote the sale of goods, particularly in a retail setting. These goods are also called “merchandise” (rhymes with dice) and refer to wares being sold.
How Do You Merch?
Merching is done by selling an item for a higher price than it was bought or acquired for. For the purpose of this guide, we will assume that items will be sold in a manner that maximizes total profit. This means maximizing the sale price while minimizing the amount of time that it takes to sell an item. More specifics on this will be detailed in the “Economics” chapter.
What Items Do You Merch?
This question really depends entirely on how much life you have lying around that you can use for trading, how much inventory space you have, if you prefer to spend time trading versus running dungeons, etc. There are a ton of factors. A more comprehensive guide to what you should be merching depending on your circumstances will be added later.
The cop-out answer is that any item can be merched if you take the time to understand the target market and the price point.
A more useful answer is that specific items lend themselves to being better for merching. In general, the best items possess one or more of the following qualities:
Qualities of Good Merching Items
| Quality | Meaning | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Commodity | Something traded frequently | Simply put, items that are traded more often will sell faster. Imagine finding a buyer is like finding a needle in a haystack. If there is one needle in the haystack, it will take a long time to find. If there are a hundred buyers or a hundred needles in the haystack, it will take significantly less time to find. By having more buyers and sellers for an item, it will take less time for you to make trades. If you make a 1L profit for each trade and it takes you an hour to sell one item, you will make 1L. If trades take less time, and you can make 60 trades an hour, you can make 60L in that same hour. Faster trades = faster inventory turnover = more profit. |
| Common | Something there is lots of | In general, it is easier to merch items that there are lots of instead of those that are more rare. The reason for this is that suppose I am selling a particularly rare item like a valentine. If I have 100L and price Valentine at 10L to buy and 12L to sell, I can buy 10 Valentines. The problem is, there may only be 5 Valentines out there that are being sold, so I can only utilize 50 of my 100L to buy inventory to merch. Conversely, if I take a more common item, like a T6 GGen helm that you can buy for 1L and sell for 3L, there are thousands of these being sold. You can spend all 100L on buying inventory instead of just 50% of it in the case of Valentines. For commonly traded items, there is virtually an endless supply, so no matter how much you buy and sell, there will always be more for you to buy and more for you to sell. This means a continuous stream of merching, which is good for business. |
| Relatively Expensive | Valued at greater than one life | While it is possible to merch items worth less than one life, it is considerably easier to merch things that you can make a substantial profit on. If I buy something for 1 defense and sell for 2, yes, I made 1 defense of profit, but it took me one purchase and one sale to do that. With that same trade, I could have bought something for one life and sold it for two life. With the same two trades, I made one life instead of one defense. This is much more time efficient. |
Why Do Some People Not Like Merching?
Some people play the game simply to obtain white bags. They see merching as sort of a side-quest, finding it more useful to play the game rather than “farm” via merching to have the money to buy the items that you want.
As mentioned in the previous section, I find merching to be a tool that allows you to ensure that you always have the resources to 8/8 characters and thus play the way the game was meant to be played: recklessly by going deep for the luls and trying to have as much fun as possible by putting your high quality gear and characters on the line. Merchinging finances this style of play.
Chp. 2: Why Does Merching Matter?
Why Do You Merch?
Merching is a tool to make money.
Why does having money in the game matter? Well, if you have 100L to spare, you can die and remax multiple 8/8s without batting an eye, rather than spending time running mindless dungeons like abyss of demons for vit pots. Instead, you can use your life potions you have saved up to buy the pots you need to max instead. You can always have strong gear, and you can have the resources to get you to end-game status faster than by doing it through gameplay alone.
(Yes, some people will say that you can do both at the same time, by running things like lost halls to gain life pots and whites at the same time, but not everyone likes running LH all day. Plus, this requires access to LH groups and knowledge of how to do it. Merching offers an alternative that is safe, can be done while partially AFK, and can also be done in conjunction with running dungeons. Merching can be both a substitute and a supplement to regular gameplay. It all depends on how deep you want to go).
Does Merching Detract From Gameplay?
Well, it depends. If all you do is merch with Realmeye, then the short answer is no. You can merch without having to stop running dungeons at all. Sure, you might have to take a minute or two after each LH to sell something, but overall, it shouldn’t have a large impact on what you do. In my opinion, it is perfectly viable to run dungeons all day, while still merching.
However, if you want to do bulk trades or merch actively on USW2, that is a bit more time intensive. The short answer is still no. Unless you purposefully dedicate all of your time to merching, then there is no reason why you can’t continue to play the game while merching. In my opinion, merching is just an additional way to make money, not a substitute for playing.
Chp. 3: How Does The RotMG Economy Work? (WIP)
Why Are Prices The Way They Are?
Many players wonder why it is that something is priced the way it is. Why are ST items like pierce so expensive (8L+) when they are outclassed by cheaper T6 items like Elemental Detonation (1-2L) in many situations? Why are T6 abilities so much more expensive than T5 abilities, when they are very similar in terms of damage output? To answer this question, we are going to use logic and REAL economics principles that apply to the real world, something you might study in an economics class, to look at several relevant factors, including:
Supply
For those of you familiar with supply and demand principles, this will be a bit of a refresher. In general, the price of an item is largely dependant upon two factors: supply and demand. Let's take a look at why supply affects the price.TLDR:
- The more people that SELL an item, the lower the price
- The more people that SELL an item, the more transactions occur
- The higher the price, the more people will WANT to sell an item
More Supply = Lower Prices
Simply put, with no explanation of theory, a large supply decreases the price, and a small supply increases the price. If more people are selling an item, particularly if there are more sellers than buyers, they will compete with one another on the price. Competition decreases price, as sellers will try to undercut one another. For reference, look to the diagram below:
1. Initial Market Structure
The market consists of 2 buyers and 2 sellers. Each seller has a single item that they are selling. Each buyer is looking to buy a single item. This means that in the system, there are two items total. For this scenario, we will assume that the buyers will always purchase from the seller that offers them the lowest price. As you can see, the average price in the market is $5.
2. Initial Market Transactions
Since there are two buyers and two sellers, everyone gets to transact. Each buyer buys from one seller. Each buyer pays $5 and each seller makes $5 worth of income. The average price in the market is $5.
3. Increased Market Supply Structure
Now, we have added additional buyers C and D into the market. Each of these suppliers has a single item that they are selling. In effect, there are now 2 items looking to be bought, but 4 suppliers. Since there are only 2 buyers, only 2 of the suppliers will get to transact. In order to enter the market and transact, the two additional buyers will have to lower their prices. This means that they will enter the market at $4. The new average market is price drops from $5 to $4.50. As such, by increasing the amount of suppliers, the price has dropped. Increased supply = decreased price.
4. Lower Prices Cause Buyer Shift
As the buyers take the lowest price in the market, they shift from A and B to C and D. Where as previously A and B each had an income of $5, because they aren’t transacting, their incomes drop to $0. Furthermore, because C and D are transacting, they now have incomes. They have successfully entered the market by dropping their prices to steal away previous buyers.
5. Price Matching
Obviously, suppliers A and B and not happy that they suddenly have no income, so they are forced to do the only thing that could bring their buyers back: lowering their prices. In order to be competitive, they have to reduce their prices. They match sellers C and D at $4. This brings the average market price down to $4.
6. Conclusion:
What is the conclusion here? Increased suppliers creates supply-side competition. Competition causes sellers to lower their prices. The practical application is that if more people are selling a particular item, the price will be lower. If less people are selling an item, the price will be higher.
The Supply Curve
To better understand the way things are priced, we are going to use a standard economics model called the supply and demand curves. It’s pretty simple, but it is essentially the fundamental building block of modern economics. It will help us to understand prices as they are effected by quantity being sold.
1. The Supply Graph
Above, you can see the frame of the graph. On the vertical axis, you have the price. This is pretty straight forward. It is simply a measure of how much the item costs. As you go up, the price gets higher. As you go down, the price gets lower. On the horizontal axis, you have the quantity. This can be thought of as the number of goods that are being sold, but it can also be thought of as the numbers and buyers and sellers in the market. For example, we will assume that each buyer is looking to purchase 1 single item. Each seller is looking to sell 1 single item. Therefore, as we move toward the left of the graph, we get fewer and fewer items in the marketplace. If no one is selling or buying the item, the quantity will be 0. If everyone is supplying and buying an item, the quantity will be very far to the right.
2. The Supply Curve
As you can see, the supply curve looks something like this. It slopes upward, meaning that as the price gets higher, the quantity supplied will increase.
3. Why the Supply Curve Slopes Upward
To help explain the previous point, lets think about the curve not in terms of total suppliers, but items supplied. Say for example, that I am the only seller on a market; however, I happen to have a ton of ggens that I am selling, lets say 5. At a price of 2L each, I might be willing to sell all 5 of them; however, I actually have more ggens than 5. I actually have 10, but 5 of them are sitting on warrior characters, so I’m not really inclined to sell them. NOW. Let’s say that all of a sudden the price of ggen “magically” jumps up to 4L. Instead of selling them for 2L, I can now sell them for 4L. All of a sudden, I might decide that it is worth it to sell ALL of my ggens. Instead of 5, I’m now going to sell 10. As you can see, as the price that I can sell an item for increases, the quantity that I bring to the market increases. Therefore, As price increases, quantity also increases.
4. Graphing the “More Supply = Lower Prices” Scenario
But Shurima! You still haven’t explained to us how this graph explains the initial scenario. Well, let’s take a look at the graph above. As in the scenario above, we have our supply curve that we have already learned about. For simplicity’s sake, in our previous scenario, we said that no matter the supply, there will be 2 buyers. As such, 2 items will always be bought. Hence, the quantity being sold/bought (ie. the quantity of transactions) “Q” is 2. As you can see from the graph, price “P” is determined by the intersection of the demand and supply curves (SPOILER!!). At this quantity, with only 2 suppliers in the market, the price is $5.
5. Why Increasing Supply Lowers Prices
The thing is, moving up and down the supply graph is actually just signifying a change in quantity supplied, not a change in the number of suppliers. Changes in the number of suppliers are signified through a shift of the curve itself. As you can see on the graph above, we have added additional suppliers C and D, represented by an OUTWARD shift of the curve. With demand being kept constant, ie. there are 2 buyers and 2 items being bought still, demand doesn’t move, but supply does. This shifts the supply curve outward, thus altering the intersection of the demand and supply curves. This is responsible for the change in price of the item from $5 to $4 across the market.
- Demand
- Duping
- Perception
- 8-Slot Inventory
- Drop Rates
- Death Rates
- Use Rates
- Supply Shocks (Read: DECA Events)
UPDATES:
Most Recent Update:
Feb. 4, 2019
Updated “Supply” in “Chp. 3: How does the RotMG Economy Work? (WIP)”
Update Log
| Date | Update | |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 4, 2019 | Updated "Supply" in "Chp. 3: How does the RotMG Economy Work? (WIP)" | |
| Feb 2, 2019 | Converted to kbd boxed formatting for the whole post Added "TL;DR" with "Basic Tips" Added "Most Recent Update"Added "Chp. 3: How Does The RotMG Economy Work? (WIP)" | |
| Feb 1, 2019 | Initial Post Added "Intro" Added "Chp.1: What is Merching?" Added "Chp. 2: Why Does Merching Matter?" Added "Update Log" |
