411 in Bargaining...not enough... Dang!

[gogoblender 3,071]

I was telling Zinsho over the last few days over and over again, that the stuff I was seeing at the Traders was kind of crappy for the last few days.

 

Toon level 120 in Plat with 411 Bargaining.

 

Was Schot who just got back from holidays for 10 days who was over my shoulder and saw it before I even mentionned it.

 

White items, being picked up.

 

 

I looked, and then did a few runs back and forth... and then noticed that I was getting primarily blues with only about a third yellows...and even with whites getting through.

 

 

Schot's response... you may need about five times now...

 

If yer not sweating it... yer bargainer's not working.

 

oh man...

 

I feel like crying

 

 

gogo

[Silver-D 0]

I am level 123 with bargaining at 290 buffed. I'm seeing lots of yellows, + all skills, etc.

Might be a stroke of bad luck? Try creating a new server instance or joining another ones - who knows?

 

I can tell you though, it's perfectly fine at this level. Hehe, maybe you put too many points into it and a variable went into overflow? It seems this game likes overflows.

[gogoblender 3,071]

At that level yo'ure fine.

 

Three times is enough.

 

what I'm thinking is that there is diminishing now for yield.

 

I've hit it...and I'm gonna have to start working at getting my armor up properly.

 

I had gotten lazy about it for the last forty or fifty levels and was only working with the rings and ammies...

 

I'm going to have to work harder to get better armor with sockets and build in mods to mod the bargaining.

 

Ugh

 

this game's hard

 

 

gogo

[Viper007 0]

At that level yo'ure fine.

 

Three times is enough.

 

what I'm thinking is that there is diminishing now for yield.

 

I've hit it...and I'm gonna have to start working at getting my armor up properly.

 

I had gotten lazy about it for the last forty or fifty levels and was only working with the rings and ammies...

 

I'm going to have to work harder to get better armor with sockets and build in mods to mod the bargaining.

 

Ugh

 

this game's hard

 

 

gogo

 

Is there a level I should stop putting points into bargaining? I'm @209 now with level 91 inquisitor. I'd for this to not happen to me

[gogoblender 3,071]

Sorry, I missed on the post there Silver-D

 

What I meant to say is...I was using the rule of three times level to keep bargaining at.

 

Because I'm getting whites now breaking through with more than half of the times being offered as blues...

 

This means my bargaining is not strong enough anymore.

 

Viper007, the only way you "know" if you're doing well with bargaining or not, if you really want to get the absolute best from it is to just from the number of Yellows you are getting.

 

if everything you see is mostly yellows with maybe one or two blues...

 

you're okay.

 

 

gogo

[Silver-D 0]

Ah, I see what you mean. Your first post sounded like it's completely hopeless.

 

You're right, I'm only getting about half yellows out of all vendor loot. Seeing as how I hate switching toons to use different jobs, I have barg. on my main - and it suits me quite well. I recently upgraded all my rings and slots to +9 skills, so it's still working out pretty good.

 

I have, however, stopped seeing the 'double' +all skill amulets.. you know, the ones with only +all skills on them and that have double the value of rings? The last one I saw was a +14 amu when I could only get +7 skill rings. Could be related to my relatively low bargaining, or bad luck.

 

Anyway, yea, it seems true that for a hardcore shopper you need to keep scaling the skill to keep it at its maximum potential.

Sigh.

[Schot 407]

What I'm guessing is happening is that there is a required ratio of character level to Bargaining level. Looking at my level 2 HE with 11 Bargaining it seems as though 5:1 is the "perfect" ratio of Bargaining to Character level. This of course I can only apply to my level 2 HE at the moment but it does look as though it could apply to gogo's level 120 Dryad as well. Maintaining bargaining at 5 times the character may or may not be the optimum amount but for now it is only proven on a level 2 character. I did some quick testing of my HE's Bargaining starting at level 2 up on to level 10 Bargaining and here's what I found:

 

High Elf Character Level 2

• Level 2 Bargaining:
  Some decent stuff but you'll see a lot of white and blue items. About 1/3 of items will be Yellow.
  
• Level 4 Bargaining:
  A significant improvement in items offered. Whites are no longer to be found and Yellows are now the majority of items being offered. Bargaining is double character level. This sort of result does not apply to a high level character.
  (A 2:1 ratio seems to be acceptable during Silver difficulty)
  
• Level 6 Bargaining:
  With Bargaining at 3 times the character level Yellow items are definitely taking over the available items listing. Approximately 70% are Yellow with the rest being blue.
  (A 3:1 ratio seems to be acceptable during Gold difficulty)
  
• Level 8 Bargaining:
  With Bargaining at 4 times the character level Yellows are about 85%. The rest blues.
  (A 4:1 ratio "might" be an acceptable ratio during Platinum difficulty)
  
• Level 9 Bargaining:
  With Bargaining at 4.5 times the character level Yellows are about 95%. The rest blues.
  
• Level 10 Bargaining:
  With Bargaining at 5 times the character level Yellows are 100% of items offered.
  (A 5:1 ratio "might" be a necessary ratio during Niobium difficulty)
  

 

To be confirmed I guess.

[Putrescine 11]

Nice list there Schot

 

Tho... It would be insanely hard for a level 200 toon to get 1k bargaining

[Silver-D 0]

Thanks for that. Interesting, indeed.

 

I have a theory that the whole thing is tied to the level of the item being offered, and not the character level. Essentially, yes, vendor stock is near to your level. But not entirely. At level 2 you may see items of 1 - maybe 3 levels. At level 200 you can find 190-210, let's say.

 

A level 1 item will need a certain amount of points into bargaining to become yellow 100% of the time, but a level 3 item would need a percentage higher. Since the skill level requirement for that range is so low, the requirement doesn't grow that much.

 

But a 190 item vs a 210 item would probably require a higher % increase than 1 vs 3, and since we're dealing with bigger numbers here, the requirement will noticeably go up. This is just a theory, though.

 

Heh, essentially it does mean keeping the bargaining skill relative to your character level, but this may explain why double the points for a level 2 character does not yield the same result for a 100 level character.

[Viper007 0]

Is it possible you can put to many points into bargaining? I remember reading somewhere that after a certain amount of points the skill "starts over". Is this a possible bug or just someone being misinformed?

[Silver-D 0]

Actually once I think about it, it's doubtful. There are however things that actually don't play well with high values, but bargaining modifiers are too low to be of a concern. But, everything is possible in programming.

[gogoblender 3,071]

I don't think I"ve encountered that so far. So far every time I've increased Bargaining I can "perceive" that my shopping has improved. If there is a rollover it hasn't happened to me yet IMO.

 

I hope

 

 

gogo

 

p.s. one of my buddies up in plat, Pablo has 460 bargaining and he's still finding good stuff ^^

[Cthulhu 0]

Funny you all posted this - I found this in creatures.txt last week:

 

--always display item prices; offer better prices and rare levels at npc traders
--Advanced:
--better quest rewards +(1-2) rare levels

mgr.createSkill {
skill_name = "skill_trader",
advance_level = 75,
min_level = 1,
mean_value = 300,
advance_mean_value = 450,
skillgroup = "SKG_WORLD",
adv_skill_name = "skill_master_trader",
}

Edited February 12, 2009 by Cthulhu

[Silver-D 0]

Oh. my. god. I've edited that file so many times and have never noticed or even suspected that the skills would be in there.

 

Cthulhu, thank you. You just made my day.

 

Now to see if changing anything will actually work....

Edited February 12, 2009 by Silver-D

[Cthulhu 0]

Oh. my. god. I've edited that file so many times and have never noticed or even suspected that the skills would be in there.

 

Cthulhu, thank you. You just made my day.

 

Now to see if changing anything will actually work....

 

Haha, yeah. I hope this leads to finding some more stuff out.

 

P.S.

 

If it does work, you may be able to confirm/dis-confirm if spell resistance is actually working.

[plastique_exploda 0]

so according to that the best mean value = 450 that would possibly mean that anything over that would be a waste which would explain why pablo is finding good items still:)

[Cthulhu 0]

so according to that the best mean value = 450 that would possibly mean that anything over that would be a waste which would explain why pablo is finding good items still:)

 

Your guess is as good at any at this point. The only thing that makes me skeptical is that a lot of the stuff in the script files (like in balance.txt) are actually percentages and not integers. So it could instead be "45%"... which could mean, well, anything.

[Zinsho 0]

Or perhaps it's 3.0 and 4.5x your level. Which would sort of fit the idea that at 3x you get a very lovely number of rares.

[Llama8 8]

Just out of curiosity, Gogo, what armour are you using to socket +all skills (etc) in? Have you thought of using the Xmas set? IIRC, all of the items have 1 gold socket (nice boost to whatever's socketed) & 1 silver. You might be able to get the set items with a bonus to Bargaining as well (IIRC, the bonuses on the items are random).

[Zinsho 0]

Llama: If he's doing something akin to what I'm doing he'll be using some rare 2 gold socket armor, or better yet: Rare 2 socket (silver or gold) armor with +General/All/Bargain.

 

My Dryad at 72 had +7 from armor, and another +10-11 from sockets. And same thing on pretty much every piece.

[Llama8 8]

Yeah, that's what I thought. Before I posted I thought that the Xmas set gave 2 gold & 1 silver socket...

[Coruskane 0]

so according to that the best mean value = 450 that would possibly mean that anything over that would be a waste which would explain why pablo is finding good items still:)

well a mean is a mean, not a boundary. But the marginal benefit of more bargaining may start to decrease. That's what I think that implies.

 

Anyway, Scoobydouche from the main forum has some nice data which I will collate with another source, and fiddle around with it in a spreadsheet and see if I can get any kind of consistent formula to fit the data. What we really need is characters of other levels (his was 76) to do something similar with the same levels of bargaining to try and see how character level influences it.

Edited February 13, 2009 by Coruskane

[ScoobyDouche 0]

Hello all,

 

As per Gogo's and Schots request im posting here my testing results with my 76 shopper that I posted over at the Ascaron forums.

 

 

I just did some testing using my shopper, here are my results for each visit to the vendor using different levels of bargaining skill:(warning: wall of text inc!)

 

Charcter level 76

Dificulty: Niob

Mode: SP

 

 

R=Total Rare item count from all three windows (rings/armor/weapons)

W= Total white item count from three windows

T=Total item count (white+blue+rare)

in every line I show the sums for one visit to the vendor, divided to show the percent of rares from the total. (all of these visits were to the same vendor).

I have also noted when I got ammies with +all skills/general for reference.

 

@Bargaining 330 (a bit over x4):

57R/74T=0.77 (57 rares, 74 total items. Rares take up 77% of total, rest blues, no whites)

57R/75T=0.76

61R/74T=0.82 (1X All skill +7)

52R/73T=0.71 (1X All skill +6)

52R/71T=0.73

55R/76T=0.72

57R/74T=0.77 (1X All +7)

56R/76T=0.73 (1X All +6)

49R/73T=0.67

54R/78T=0.69

59R/76T=0.77 (1X All +7)

60R/75T=0.80 (1X All +7)

 

@Bargaining 229 (x3):

44R/77T=0.63 (1x General +5)

44R/76T=0.57 (1x Bargaining +6)

44R/74T=0.59

39R/75T=0.52

45R/75T=0.60

46R/70T=0.65

43R/69T=0.62

48R/73T=0.65

45R/75T=0.60 (1x All +7)

51R/76T=0.67

42R/76T=0.55 (1x All +7)

49R/75T=0.65

47R/72T=0.65

 

@Bargaining 191 (x2.5):

50R/77T=0.64

41R/69T=0.59

49R/77T=0.66

45R/73T=0.61

48R/73T=0.65 (1X All +7)

46R/74T=0.62

46R/75T=0.61

45R/72T=0.62

47R/70T=0.67

45R/77T=0.58 (1X General +5)

47R/76T=0.61

44R/73T=0.60

 

@Bargaining 153 (x2):

37R+8W/76T=0.48R /0.10W (48% Rares, 10% whites, rest blues)

31R+8W/72T=0.43R /0.11W

39R+1W/74T=0.52R /0.01W

42R+5W/74T=0.56R /0.06W

42R+4W/75T=0.56R /0.05W

37R+4W/75T=0.49R /0.05W

42R+3W/74T=0.56R /0.04W

32R+13W/74T=0.43R /0.17W

38R+5W/73T=0.52R /0.06W

31R+5W/74T=0.41R /0.06W

43R+7W/75T=0.57R /0.09W

37R+10W/75T=0.49R /0.13W

 

 

Now I went back to 330 just to check again, notice the 5th and 6th entries:

@330 (x4):

56R/75T=0.74 (1x All+7, 1x All CA +6, on separate rings)

55R/74T=0.74

53R/79T=0.67

57R/75T=0.76

53R+6W/77T= 0.68R /0.07W (WHITES!!)

42R+27W/75T= 0.56R /0.36W ( a TON of whites, 27 out of 75 total!)

54R/70T=0.77 (back to normal...)

51R/65T=0.78

 

after this I just checked a few more times quickly to see if I got any more whites at this level, I didn't write the results down but I didn't find any whites in about 10 more trips until I stopped.

 

conclusion:

first thing I noticed is that the total of items offered is fairly consistent and usually totals about 74-75 items. sometimes a bit more or less but not by much.

second its clear that moving down from x4 to x3 to 2.5 and x2 your level in bargaining skill will have an impact on the ratio between yellow/blue and white items. the smaller the ratio the less rares you will get.

so this confirms what Schot saw with his HE shopper.

 

third: white items get flushed out as more yellows are offered, at my level (76) I stopped seeing whites at x2.5 skill and above, EXCEPT for the two times I got offered whites with x4 skill in the last entries. to be honest im not sure how to take those into account since it looked more like a bug then anything (36% whites in the second entry..doesn't fit with anything :scratch: ). still it shows that it can happen.

what is important to notice is that rares makes for less whites, NOT less blue items. and vice versa. this is important to consider because if your bargaining isnt strong enough to push out all (or most) of the whites, your not going to get offered as many rares, and rares are basically the main reason we take bargaining in the first place, yes?

 

 

fourth: perhaps its too small of a basis to know but it looks like the better your skill to level ratio is, you get offered better quality and more +skills rings. but really hard to say with such a small base.

 

fifth: after completing the test I took my shopper to silver to see what hes offered with 330 bargain (had to run back from the great machine dang!).

I just scanned a few vendors, but it looked pretty much the same with about 70ish% rares rest blues. I didnt see any whites. but not all yellow either.

so im not sure if difficulty has anything to do with it. I think char level more then anything probably.

 

phew...my hands hurt.. im gonna whack some goblins now

Edited February 13, 2009 by ScoobyDouche

[FrostElfGuard 9]

Funny you all posted this - I found this in creatures.txt last week:

 

--always display item prices; offer better prices and rare levels at npc traders
--Advanced:
--better quest rewards +(1-2) rare levels

mgr.createSkill {
skill_name = "skill_trader",
advance_level = 75,
min_level = 1,
mean_value = 300,
advance_mean_value = 450,
skillgroup = "SKG_WORLD",
adv_skill_name = "skill_master_trader",
}

 

I'm brainstorming here (so please forgive if the ideas are just off the wall!)

 

Advance_mean_value:) Does this mean that once you hit 450 Bargaining you've hit a ceiling? That at that point you can no longer validly push the Bargaining level up... and thus the ratio from Bargaing level to character level will steadily decline?

 

Which then makes Bargaining less important in the "end game" (levels > 100)?

 

 

 

Also: I seem to recall people posting about hard and soft skills. Hard skills are points taken as the character levels. Soft skills are points generated from items. Are all the characters posting here who are at least level 75 having at least 75 hard points in Trade (where they unlock the master trader skill?))

[gogoblender 3,071]

Good question about the Hard v.s. Soft, Frosty. Ayup I've got mastery of Bargaining... 75 hard points in the skill.

And very very excellent findings, Scooby.

 

And welcome to the forum!

 

 

gogo