NPC Vendors - Please consider a fix

Theo

NPC Vendors sell items two ways :  

Floating price - Start at quantity 500. When 500 are bought - the price goes up by 1gp.  When 500 are sold to the vendor price goes down by 1gp.

Fixed price - Start at quantity 20.  When you buy 20 they disappear for like an hour until they restock and will restock at 40, then 80, then 160 up to 999.  If no one buys any for an hour - they go back to 20.  Price is always the same regardless of quantity. 

On the fixed price ones - why do we have to wait an hour to restock and why do we have to spend 5 hours buying them up to 999?  Why can't you just sell 999?  Its only crafters that use this stuff anymore.  No one is carrying around bags of regs for fighting.  No one is making a living off selling regs on a vendor for a higher price.   You can kill fan dancers and make more money in 5 minutes than spending all day to buy up 10k of a reg.  

Please switch the fixed price items to 999 and auto stock. If I want to buy 100 blank scrolls why do I have to wait a couple hours?

TimSt

Not much of a consolutation but I have noticed that restock happens randomly between 30 and 45 minutes after I make my purchase. 

Petra_Fyde

Theo said:

 If I want to buy 100 blank scrolls why do I have to wait a couple hours?

You don't. You can buy 120 scrolls with a short walk around Skara Brae. The same can be done in several places.
Scrolls are sold not only by mage npcs but also real estate agents, scribes and some mapmakers. A trip to the Lyceum will get you 160.

You can also write your own, 1 x woodpulp = 5 x blank scrolls.  I did once research just how many scrolls you could get with a single trip around the whole game's npc population, but I don't remember where I posted it.

Cookie

Petra is completely correct in what she says of course, we've all gotten used to marking runes to every single scroll/magic/tailor/alchemy shop for example, and making the rounds.

But I also really like the way you present your arguments Theo, and think you have a point, you are seeing it afresh, something we've not questioned for years, maybe it could use an update/tweak to bring it more in line with current gameplay.

Theo

I was just using blank scrolls as an example.  Why do I have to go to 3 vendors to buy 200 blank runes if I want to make a bunch of Runic Atlas?  Why do I need to go and buy up a dozen mages if I want mage regs to craft with?  Why do I need to buy up the 3 bone vendors in the game to get bones for crafting?  If you are willing to sell 20 of an item at a fixed price - why not sell 100 or 300 or 999 and insta restock?  Why is there a limit?  It just frustrates players.   

I get it - 20 years ago people didn't have LRC and if the regs were out - well that might impact your play because you can't just unlimited buy and then go fight/cast spells.  But today - everyone runs with LRC.  The only thing the 20 limit does is make it a pain to stock up large quanties to craft, scribe or alchemy with.   Nothing else.  YOu will sell me 500 bolts of cloth and instant restock - why not 999 bones and insta restock?   Its a simple fix that should be fixed.  

Remove the grind. Its not fun to spend half a day buying up vendors so you can stock up on an NPC item.    If I want to buy 200 robes - let me buy 200 robes.  

Garth_Grey

I love that I can go to an npc and buy lesser cure potions by the 500s...but if I want to make some myself I can only buy 20 regs at a time....said no one ever.

Rock

I agree, and I'll slide in a vendor suggestion I made a while ago.  Some things, like horses, you only want to buy one at a time.  And that is all the vendor will sell to you.  After the purchase, he restores his inventory fairly quickly.  Good design.  But for some reason, the design was not carried forward.  If you want to purchase a 10,625gp stone crafting book, you can purchase 20 of them.  And I did, by mistake.  The books should be treated like horses.  Just as no one wants to buy 20 horses at once, no one wants to buy 20 expensive books at once.

Skett

This 

Drago

I agree with this.  Restock timers on some things are ridiculous. 1 hour is too long for regs and recall runes.  Recall runes should be no timer like ingots... ever since the store pen to copy runebooks came out.... its EXTREMELY annoying not being able to buy recall rune

Bilbo

Comm Deeds and Vendor Deeds from bankers are another one.

Arnold7

Be glad you are not learning mysticism.  Only two npcs, yea just two, sell two of the four special reagents you need and it takes them forever to restock just to 40.  I gave up on buying from them early on and just put together a 100% lrc suit (by the way no npc sells the other two. You have to harvest them.).  When I learned inscription and alchemy I just made a rune set so after buying all the reagents available from I one shop I could just recall to another one.  On my shard most of the time when I was learning these skills no one else was buying reagents so I know about the restock rates.  Have always wondered why the rate varied for npcs selling the same thing.  In some cases with two npcs standing next to each other one would restock in a reasonable amount of time and the other would not. I always wondered what kinds of problems this restock rate might cause on a shard that had completion for reagents.  Anyway, suspect restock rates have been like what all of you are talking about since day one and that it can’t be changed.  Coding for restocking may be have been lifted from the stand alone UO games from years ago, and that may be why we are stuck with it.

Arnold7

Most of what you are talking about stacks and does not cost that much.  Just keep monitoring a couple npcs and buy as much as you can carry every time they restock.  Did this when I was learning inscription.  It only takes a few nights to get a substantial inventory of most reagents and scrolls.  I have one chest that I only use for reagents, scrolls, bandages and other items I use that stack.  Don’t do much crafting anymore though.

McDougle

but if we stock we have no room for sweet quest items 

Arnold7

How true!

Elessar

I agree agree with OP 100%.  We all know there are ways to buy these items and eventually work the quantities up to actual useful amounts - but it takes hours to do so and serves no purpose.  

Maximus_Neximus

Co-sign. Please adjust this so vendors spawn with max inventory and a much quicker respawn time.

Seth

Agree with OP.

Please switch the fixed price items to 999 and auto stock.

Drago

@Devs - this needs a serious bump up the ladder.   Its ridiculous when you have items that are instantly restocked.  Regs (Mage & Necro) should fall into this category. 

Gwen

Drago said:

@ Devs - this needs a serious bump up the ladder.   Its ridiculous when you have items that are instantly restocked.  Regs (Mage & Necro) should fall into this category. 

There are lots of mobs dropping reagents. I prefer if reagents will be removed from vendors. Like dragon blood. People will loot them and trade. Or leave some for low - level spells on vendors. Like ingots. Iron you can buy on vendor. All other you neeed to mine. Same with leather/wood/stone and food.  Why inscription should be different? 

Drago

Gwen said:

Drago said:

@ Devs - this needs a serious bump up the ladder.   Its ridiculous when you have items that are instantly restocked.  Regs (Mage & Necro) should fall into this category. 

There are lots of mobs dropping reagents. I prefer if reagents will be removed from vendors. Like dragon blood. People will loot them and trade. Or leave some for low - level spells on vendors. Like ingots. Iron you can buy on vendor. All other you neeed to mine. Same with leather/wood/stone and food.  Why inscription should be different? 

leather/wood/stone are resources to craft items that have larger impact on the game
the world was built to have these resources harvested as part of the challenge
reagents aren't integrated into the game like this and with alchemy, you need tens of thousands in quantity to utilize that skill efficiently.

Arnold7

Learned inscription and alchemy early on.  Would take a long, long time to pick up from drops enough reagents to learn these skills.  Most things don’t drop that much and if you are dealing with a spawn that keeps respawning trying to loot the dead can be fatal when you are constantly being attacked.  Like others I just recalled from one sellers location to the next while learning these skills.

Gwen

Drago said:

leather/wood/stone are resources to craft items that have larger impact on the game
the world was built to have these resources harvested as part of the challenge
reagents aren't integrated into the game like this and with alchemy, you need tens of thousands in quantity to utilize that skill efficiently.

How many ingots you need to craft something good? How many pieces blacksmiths are crafting to reforge and to throw away just to get one masterpiece? 

Arnold7 said:

Learned inscription and alchemy early on.  Would take a long, long time to pick up from drops enough reagents to learn these skills.  Most things don’t drop that much and if you are dealing with a spawn that keeps respawning trying to loot the dead can be fatal when you are constantly being attacked.  Like others I just recalled from one sellers location to the next while learning these skills.

Thare are mobs who drop lots of reagents. Also scrolls will become more expensive and it will be reasonable to loot them too.  
You can loot with vacuum , while fighting. You just dont do it , because reagents are cheap.  Make them prices grow like wood or ingots on NPC vendor- you will loot them. Or buy from noobs who will loot and sell. If you die - try to choose easier spawn. 
NPC vendors have fixed prices for reagents, you should be happy with this. 

Bilbo

Gwen said:

Drago said:

leather/wood/stone are resources to craft items that have larger impact on the game
the world was built to have these resources harvested as part of the challenge
reagents aren't integrated into the game like this and with alchemy, you need tens of thousands in quantity to utilize that skill efficiently.

How many ingots you need to craft something good? How many pieces blacksmiths are crafting to reforge and to throw away just to get one masterpiece? 

Arnold7 said:

Learned inscription and alchemy early on.  Would take a long, long time to pick up from drops enough reagents to learn these skills.  Most things don’t drop that much and if you are dealing with a spawn that keeps respawning trying to loot the dead can be fatal when you are constantly being attacked.  Like others I just recalled from one sellers location to the next while learning these skills.

Thare are mobs who drop lots of reagents. Also scrolls will become more expensive and it will be reasonable to loot them too.  
You can loot with vacuum , while fighting. You just dont do it , because reagents are cheap.  Make them prices grow like wood or ingots on NPC vendor- you will loot them. Or buy from noobs who will loot and sell. If you die - try to choose easier spawn. 
NPC vendors have fixed prices for reagents, you should be happy with this. 

Forget crafting anything, how many resources did it take you to get 120 Smith, 120 Tailor, 100 Carp, 100 Fletcher 100 Carp and 100 Tink and then add Imbuing on top of all that.

LOL Guess you were not around before LRC Suits and you needed Regs to do a lot of different things like go places.  What MOBs drops L:OTS of regs?  What is "vacuum" is that an illegal 3rd party program that you are telling people to use?

dvvid

Vacuum is an EC action you can use in a macro. 

Drago

Gwen said:

Drago said:

leather/wood/stone are resources to craft items that have larger impact on the game
the world was built to have these resources harvested as part of the challenge
reagents aren't integrated into the game like this and with alchemy, you need tens of thousands in quantity to utilize that skill efficiently.

How many ingots you need to craft something good? How many pieces blacksmiths are crafting to reforge and to throw away just to get one masterpiece? 

Arnold7 said:

Learned inscription and alchemy early on.  Would take a long, long time to pick up from drops enough reagents to learn these skills.  Most things don’t drop that much and if you are dealing with a spawn that keeps respawning trying to loot the dead can be fatal when you are constantly being attacked.  Like others I just recalled from one sellers location to the next while learning these skills.

Thare are mobs who drop lots of reagents. Also scrolls will become more expensive and it will be reasonable to loot them too.  
You can loot with vacuum , while fighting. You just dont do it , because reagents are cheap.  Make them prices grow like wood or ingots on NPC vendor- you will loot them. Or buy from noobs who will loot and sell. If you die - try to choose easier spawn. 
NPC vendors have fixed prices for reagents, you should be happy with this. 

You're missing the point.   Mining/Lumberjacking are skills.  NPC vendors for gems are insta stocked at 500x (imbuing).  regs should fall under this same category since the game has evolved  and regs primary primary primary function is really a trade craft resource, not magic.  Yes , I said primary 3 times to emphasize its still not the only function.

Gwen

Bilbo said:

Forget crafting anything, how many resources did it take you to get 120 Smith, 120 Tailor, 100 Carp, 100 Fletcher 100 Carp and 100 Tink and then add Imbuing on top of all that.

LOL Guess you were not around before LRC Suits and you needed Regs to do a lot of different things like go places.  What MOBs drops L:OTS of regs?  What is "vacuum" is that an illegal 3rd party program that you are telling people to use?

belligerent ignorance. Vacuum as stated above is function in EC . 
Necro reagents: undeads in Tomb of King . Around 150-200 per mob. 
Jukas - for magery reagents. May be you also dont know mobs who drop scrolls?? 

Drago said:

You're missing the point.   Mining/Lumberjacking are skills.  NPC vendors for gems are insta stocked at 500x (imbuing).  regs should fall under this same category since the game has evolved  and regs primary primary primary function is really a trade craft resource, not magic.  Yes , I said primary 3 times to emphasize its still not the only function.

Nope. You are the one who missed point in my posts. 
I repeat it: 
NPC vendors have fixed prices for reagents. 
Go and check NPC vendor price for gems after you bought their stock. They restock at higher price. Same for ingots and wood/cloth. 

Bilbo

dvvid said:

Vacuum is an EC action you can use in a macro. 

TY

Drago

Gwen said:

Bilbo said:

Forget crafting anything, how many resources did it take you to get 120 Smith, 120 Tailor, 100 Carp, 100 Fletcher 100 Carp and 100 Tink and then add Imbuing on top of all that.

LOL Guess you were not around before LRC Suits and you needed Regs to do a lot of different things like go places.  What MOBs drops L:OTS of regs?  What is "vacuum" is that an illegal 3rd party program that you are telling people to use?

belligerent ignorance. Vacuum as stated above is function in EC . 
Necro reagents: undeads in Tomb of King . Around 150-200 per mob. 
Jukas - for magery reagents. May be you also dont know mobs who drop scrolls?? 

Drago said:

You're missing the point.   Mining/Lumberjacking are skills.  NPC vendors for gems are insta stocked at 500x (imbuing).  regs should fall under this same category since the game has evolved  and regs primary primary primary function is really a trade craft resource, not magic.  Yes , I said primary 3 times to emphasize its still not the only function.

Nope. You are the one who missed point in my posts. 
I repeat it: 
NPC vendors have fixed prices for reagents. 
Go and check NPC vendor price for gems after you bought their stock. They restock at higher price. Same for ingots and wood/cloth. 

So what your point?  thats a way to suck gold from the already inflated economy.

You can't remove regs from NPC vendors.  First and foremost,  they are still used for magic.

If you are a newbie mage, you need regs to hunt mobs.... but you need to kill a mob to get regs.... so how does that work out???