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Trader Question - EQ1

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Ben F.

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Dec 24, 2004, 7:05:48 AM12/24/04
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I have a ton of stuff that I bought, won, was given, etc for different toons
that are no more. If I go to an NPC even with cha over 150 I am offered
very little for it.
I know I need to make a trader in the Bazaar, but not sure of some things
there.
Do I need food and water on my trader when selling?
Do I have to buy and keep on me multiple trader packs or can they sit in my
bank?
I was told I could use my Bard and make him play an instriment before I go
into trader-mode and I would get skill-ups, is this true?
Any other tips would be handy.

Thanks for the help ... Ben


Lief

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Dec 24, 2004, 7:34:01 AM12/24/04
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"Ben F." <mr_ho...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:7pGdnYMca5q...@comcast.com...

> Do I need food and water on my trader when selling?

Generally no, you wont use food and water in trader mode. But if you are
selling stat food etc, its a good idea to keep some food / water on you to
stop from eating those on your bank trips.

> Do I have to buy and keep on me multiple trader packs or can they sit in
my
> bank?

Have to buy trading satchels (only bought in bazaar), and keep them on that
character.

> I was told I could use my Bard and make him play an instriment before I go
> into trader-mode and I would get skill-ups, is this true?

Yes, this is generally frowned upon due to the spam it causes, and I believe
that if somebody petitions you while you are AFK, you can get kicked. Thats
if they can find a GM.

Personally I would prefer bards to do this in an out of the way place so as
not to spam people, but tis up to you.

> Any other tips would be handy.

Just check the prices of stuff before you price it up (in the baz window),
and base your prices on that (undercutting is not always the best thing to
make pp btw).


Michael

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Dec 24, 2004, 11:00:21 AM12/24/04
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Lief answered your questions pretty well but I'll throw in a few other
tips and hope you find them useful.

First of all, welcome to the wonderful and profitable world of the
bazaar. I love this feature of the game myself and made a level 1
Barbarian Warrior I named Unclemichael just to be my trader mule. He
lives in the bazaar all the time and never leaves. I pass him loot I
want to sell via the shared bank slots. I keep a backpack in both of
them and whenever they fill up or whatever, I log in the trader, go to
the bank in the bazaar (there's two of them conveniently enough) and
stock up on new wares, price them with the help of the bazaar window's
search and on the block they go!

You will need trader satchels and they must be on your trader and the
things you want to sell must be in them. Fortunately they are very cheap
and easy to come by. When you walk into the bazaar, just keep going past
the first bank (the Nexus bank everyone calls it because it's near the
Nexus zone in) and you quickly will see a building on your left with an
open entryway. Walk in and the first NPC on your right in there sells
the trader satchels. And just a tip about trader satchels. Because they
are very cheap and can hold anything, I use them for all my toons bank
slots, not just my trader. But you never want to use them on your toon
unless you're quite the strong guy because they are very heavy.
Fortunately weight is not an issue in the bazaar. They made it so you
can be so encumbered you couldn't move in the outside world but in the
bazaar you can. So the weight of the trader satchels and large amounts
of plat doesn't matter in there.

And that reminds me of something else. When your trader is stocked up
with lots of stuff in trader satchels and is perhaps also carrying a lot
of plat so that's he's quite encumbered, make sure you never ever gate
out of there to go someplace in that state or try to zone out into the
nexus or shadowhaven. Because if you do, wherever you are you will be
frozen and unable to move. I learned this the hard way several times,
being a little slow... I also learned that even in that highly
encumbered state if you can get a sow, you can move (SLOWLY) and get
back to the bazaar to unload.

Because I tend to be a little absent minded I now always keep a sow
potion on my trader so if I ever do this again I won't be stuck.
Granted, he is a warrior and is not gating anywhere but I have done
stupid things like get suckered into the arena and killed, etc. which
transported me back to Everfrost where I was then stuck until some nice
druid came along and sowed me then ported me to the Nexus.

If you have a free character slot, making a trader mule is the way to
go. It's very convenient too when you want to go to bed for the night or
whatever to quickly switch to him and just leave him up all night. It is
fun to check in on him in the morning and see how much money you made.

There are only two commands you need to know in the bazaar:

/bazaar - which opens up the bazaar window itself for buying things and
checking prices in your case with a trader

/trader - which opens up the trader window that shows whatever is in
your trader satchels you have on you and allows you to set prices for
these things and also to change them whenever you want

I'm thinking now, maybe you know some of this just from buying stuff for
your toons. If so I apologize for statements of the obvious but not
knowing exactly what you know, I might as well cover it all.

The first thing you want to do with your trader if you are not already
aware of it, is to open the bazaar window, expand it to see all the
buttons on the bottom if its too small, and turn off viewing all
traders. This cures the terrible lag the bazaar was long famous for.

Pricing things: for the most part if you want to move your stuff quickly
you need your items to be at the lowest price in the bazaar. Otherwise
people are of course going to buy whatever is lowest and not your stuff.
Most of the time this isn't much problem with the greed at least on my
server. I typically undercut everyone on everything and my stuff is
quickly gone. However, you cannot always do this as sometimes people do
price items very low and in that case it's best to price a little more
and just let them get the first sale.

You may sometimes be disappointed when something you thought was worth a
lot is going for cheap in the bazaar but resist the temptation to price
it high and just let it go unless you are in no hurry to move it.

As someone new to the bazaar and prices on many things most likely, you
may run into a problem if you look up an item you want to sell and there
are none for sale to compare to. In this case what people do is to occ
something like this: "Price check on suchandsuch uberweapon and people
will give you a ballpark idea what it usually goes for many times.

If something stays on your trader for a long time, unless it is a
class/race specific thing with a small number of prospective buyers for
it, odds are you've priced it too high, even if it is the only one of
its kind in the bazaar, which doesn't happen too often.

When you have finished setting your prices and are ready to click the
button to begin your trader, who must be standing in one of the trader
stalls like all the other traders in the bazaar, it is good to ooc "New
Trader Up! BEST Prices in the bazaar on my awesome stuff!!" etc. I find.
Many people watch ooc's in the bazaar for deals and you'd be surprised
at how spending a little time hawking your wares via ooc with links and
your asking price can quickly move items.

If you have the time for it and feel so inclined, I'd encourage you to
spend a little time on your trader actively selling your stuff with
ooc's. I found that to be a lot of fun and this will often lead to
people making offers and haggling with you over prices, which again I
enjoyed myself. It is also a good way to move items quickly if you have
the time and want money now for some reason.

I found the bazaar to be a lot of fun and quite profitable after
spending some time there and getting a feel for the value of popular
items. Many times people want cash right now for some thing they just
cannot wait to buy. As a result they will ooc something they have to
sell at a very good price. The more you get to know the place and the
market, the more you become good at spotting such deals when they
present themselves and can jump on them for very good profit.

I remember early on catching things such as Charred Guardian shields and
whatnot being sold via ooc for half what they typically sold for by
people desperate for cash right now. So I'd send a quick tell before
somebody else would, stop my trader, meet them at the bank, buy them,
run back to my trading spot and mark them up for a profit but still at
best price in the bazaar and make a tidy little profit on them. That was
small potatoes with items like that of course but as a somebody pretty
new to the game with a low level main toon, the money sure was nice. In
the end before I got tired of it, I was buying and selling better stuff
and making 5 to 10k a pop on things and sometimes more. I think my best
deal was picking up a Zlandicar's Heart for 20k and turning it over for
40k one time.

And the more you do this the better it gets. There are people who have
made fortunes in the bazaar game by playing it just like this. It's fun
and the money is good but it does require sitting on your trader for
hours at a time in order to be there to catch the deals as they come up.

Sorry, that was probably a lot more than you were asking for but just in
case you might find it fun and want to try your hand at making some
money that way I thought I would share my experience with it. I don't do
it so much anymore as I'd rather be out playing my toons. But when I was
starting off and needed money to outfit them, especially my main it
really paid off and it sure beat farming stuff.


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Tracey

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Dec 24, 2004, 11:40:01 AM12/24/04
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Ben F. wrote:

> Do I have to buy and keep on me multiple trader packs or can they sit in my
> bank?

This has been answered, but I'm thinking you're asking something else
rather than what has been answered. To sell your items, the trader
satchels must be on your character when going in to trader mode. Any
trader satchels in your bank will not be put up for sale when you
do that. But, you can switch your trader satchels back into the
bank and get regular containers if you wish to go hunt with that
character. As has been mentioned, be careful about that. You can
die from zoning out of the bazaar when holding all your trader
satchels if you're encumbered enough.

Tracey

Don Woods

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Dec 24, 2004, 5:30:14 PM12/24/04
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Michael <NOSPAM_L...@comcast.net> writes:
> Pricing things: for the most part if you want to move your stuff quickly
> you need your items to be at the lowest price in the bazaar. Otherwise
> people are of course going to buy whatever is lowest and not your stuff.

A couple corrections to this. First, amazing though it sounds,
people may buy things from you even if your price isn't the lowest
available. Darned if I know why, but I've seen it happen many
times. Sometimes it's a volume thing: if you have 100 bone chips
at 1 plat each, and someone wants them all, they'll come to you
rather than go to the six other people who have 10-30 each at
3-8 gold apiece. But sometimes I sell a lore item even though
another trader has it up at a lower price. I think some buyers
just don't bother to sort by price, and the /bazaar window by
default comes up sorted by item name (including the quantity
part), with ties broken by listing first whoever most recently
went into trader mode. So they'll ask for "rallic pack" and then
go buy the first one listed.

The other correction is that there are two ways to make your stuff
be the lowest prices in the bazaar. You can check the other prices
and make yours lower, or (if not lore items) you can buy up all the
cheaper stock and add it to yours. Now, you have to be careful if
you do this, because other traders might keep showing up with more
of the same stuff priced lower than yours. But over time you can
learn what the "going rate" is on many items. E.g., for a while
the going rate for Blue Diamonds on my server was about 400pp, so
I sold mine at 390 and would buy up any I found at 370 or less.
(Making at least a 5% profit seems like a good rule of thumb.) I'd
also have my non-trader characters check NPC merchants, especially
at LDON camps and other popular spots, and buy BDs at 262pp; for
each three I found I'd sell two and keep one for my own use, so I
was sort of getting mine "for free". But you have to watch out,
because prices can change over time. Either the demand goes away
(due to server population dropping, or new recipes coming out so
the old ones aren't as interesting), or the supply goes up (SOE
increased the drop rate of Blue Diamonds some months ago, and the
typical bazaar price these days is much closer to the NPC price).

Probably the best situation is when you're willing to use something
yourself. Recently I've begun stockpiling ingredients to practice
high-level Tailoring. If I see Flawless Rockhopper Hides at 200 I
buy them, because I'm willing to pay that price to save myself the
trouble of hunting for them. But until I actually get around to
using them, I leave them on my trader priced in the 350-400 range,
because I'm happy to take the profit if they happen to sell (which
they sometimes do).

Note: Some traders deliberately put low prices on tradeskill items
because they want to encourage tradeskillers, believing tradeskillers
make the game better for everyone. They're probably right, so I too
try not to gouge the tradeskillers, and that's also why I prefer to
buy tradeskill items that I'd be willing to use myself if I got
"stuck" with them.

-- Don.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
-- See the a.g.e/EQ1 FAQ at http://www.iCynic.com/~don/EQ/age.faq.htm
--
-- Sukrasisx, Monk 51 on E. Marr Note: If you reply by mail,
-- Terrwini, Druid 40 on E. Marr I'll get to it sooner if you
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Vladesch

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Dec 24, 2004, 9:28:19 PM12/24/04
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"Lief" <ask.m...@it.com> wrote in message
news:Z0Uyd.203$LF5...@newsfe5-win.ntli.net...

>
> "Ben F." <mr_ho...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:7pGdnYMca5q...@comcast.com...
>
>> Do I need food and water on my trader when selling?
>
> Generally no, you wont use food and water in trader mode. But if you are
> selling stat food etc, its a good idea to keep some food / water on you to
> stop from eating those on your bank trips.
>

The bazaar has a bank, so you can stay in the bazaar. So long as you do this
you wont consume any food/water.


Tracey

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Dec 24, 2004, 9:54:43 PM12/24/04
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That's sorta kinda wrong. You don't consume food/water *when you're
in trader mode*. When out of it, you do. My trader hasn't left the
bazaar since the day she ran in there, the day she was created, and
I am usually only out of trader to run buy something I want to buy
or run to the bank and back to restock on merchandise and drop off
money and, in the past year and a half that she's been there, I've
had to buy probably four stacks of water and four stacks of food
because I *do* sell stat food. If you don't sell stat food, then
I guess you could put up with the 'You are out of food and water'
messages if you wanted to.

Tracey


Beal

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Dec 25, 2004, 4:20:14 AM12/25/04
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Michael wrote:
> Ben F. wrote:

> And just a tip about trader satchels. Because they
> are very cheap and can hold anything, I use them for all my toons
bank
> slots, not just my trader.

Don't forget that they are also nodrop, so you will want one or two
hand-made backpacks in the bank as well. (For entire-bag swapping in
the shared slots and to other players...it will come up)

> You may sometimes be disappointed when something you thought was
worth a
> lot is going for cheap in the bazaar but resist the temptation to
price
> it high and just let it go unless you are in no hurry to move it.

Price on items tend to drop. This is not always true, but in general,
prices drop as the number of people able to farm an item increases and
the percentage of them who don't need it also increase, yeilding
greater and greater supply. Meanwhile, expansions tend to make a lot
of stuff obsolete. Don't get caught holding on to an item because it
used to sell for more. Chances are, those glory days are gone.

> As someone new to the bazaar and prices on many things most likely,
you
> may run into a problem if you look up an item you want to sell and
there
> are none for sale to compare to. In this case what people do is to
occ
> something like this: "Price check on suchandsuch uberweapon and
people
> will give you a ballpark idea what it usually goes for many times.

Also try to determine which classes would be most likely to buy said
item, then look up similar items and see what they go for, for those
classes. Why would a Druid want your leather pants if someone else is
selling ones with a little more AC, the same HP, and more Wis for less
money?

Another tip, though, is to remember that things are just really friggen
complicated. You will often see an older item with much crappier stats
than comparable newer-expansion items, but the older item is priced
much higher. The reason? The older item, while inferior in all other
ways, is not level restricted. Or you will see an item with 21% haste
selling for double that of an item with 24% haste. Why? The 21% haste
item has a little bit of wisdom or intelligence on it and is wearable
by casters. It's a niche item: pure casters that wanna melee too. Or
perhaps the 21% haste item goes in an irregular spot, so it would be
great for that minority of people who have some really nice items for
the waist and back slots and wont want to take them up with their haste
item. I guess the take home point is to try to recognize why some
items are unique, try to look at it from all angles...

> When you have finished setting your prices and are ready to click the

> button to begin your trader, who must be standing in one of the
trader
> stalls like all the other traders in the bazaar, it is good to ooc
"New
> Trader Up! BEST Prices in the bazaar on my awesome stuff!!"

I find that so annoying. New traders go up *all the friggen time*. We
*don't* need to know that you just hit the "start trader" button.

With that off my chest, yes announcing your items and their prices is a
good idea. If for no other reason, it tells people that you are at the
keyboard and are capable of wheeling and dealing. They are free to
barter as well as (if you are interested) free to try to bring down
your prices. I also suggest you join your server's auctions channel.
Morell-Thule's is auctions:auctions. Yours might be similar. Announce
your items at the same time in both your server's auctions channel and
the /auc channel. This way you will be selling to people in the bazaar
as well as anyone in the server channel, which could be people raiding
PoTime.

Note that I wrote "/auc", not ooc. Some people, even in the bazaar,
get really annoyed when you use /ooc. The channels' intent should be
respected. Never sell anything in /ooc. Always buy or sell in /auc.
The reason is that people can mute out the auctions without muting out
the other zone-wide messages that they may prefer to see. This is not
as important to people as it used to be (when the "bazaar" was
typically a central area in the game and located in a regular exp
zone--MT's was in the East Commonlands). However many people still get
annoyed by misuse of the ooc channel. Also, if you stay in this habit,
you won't have to feel guilty about auctioning shit off while in exp
zones...at least not in my opinion. Auctions your crap everywhere, but
always use /auc.

Graeme Faelban

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Dec 27, 2004, 1:00:10 PM12/27/04
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Tracey <rbran...@aol.com> wrote in news:41CCD678...@aol.com:

I can confirm this as well, it is only while in trader mode that you
don't consume food and water. You do indeed consume them in the bazaar
while not in trader mode, unless they changed this quite recently.

--
On Erollisi Marr in <Sanctuary of Marr>
Ancient Graeme Faelban, Barbarian Prophet of 69 seasons

On Steamfont
Graeme, 18 Dwarven Shaman, 16 Scholar

hid...@hotmail.com

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Dec 27, 2004, 4:36:58 PM12/27/04
to

The other comments are basically good information. Here are some
thoughts to consider:

1. If you didn't know, you eat and drink whatever is in the left hand
column (top to bottom order) then the right hand column (top to bottom)
so if you do sell stat food be sure to have your eatable food and drink
above and/or left of the stat food.

2. When considering pricing, think about how you will running your
trader. Will it be up 24x7 or just from when you quit/go to bed and
will shut it down in the morning? How much space do you have available?

I have a whole pile of stuff but usually concentrate on trade skill
items, like leather padding. I use dialup so I don't want to try to
keep it online 24x7 so I price my padding to move. If the lowest price
happens to be 50 plat per, then I might go to 40 or 35 or even 30. If
someone else wants to get more profit buying my stuff, more power and
profit to them. I just want the stuff to move at a price I can live
with.

3. I happen to use 6 trader satchels on my trader, though I have more
in the bank. I keep a large sack for food and water (I have a Ranger
who foraged up tons of water and roots :)) and a empty slot for when I
send the trader (in non-trade mode) over to buy stuff for my other
characters. This way the other characters, who are not camped in the
bazaar, can get items that show up.
Good luck and may your trading be fruitful.
=30=

Jitar GrRahiir of Tarew Marr

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Dec 27, 2004, 7:58:20 PM12/27/04
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<hid...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1104183418.7...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

| 1. If you didn't know, you eat and drink whatever is in the left
hand
| column (top to bottom order) then the right hand column (top to
bottom)
| so if you do sell stat food be sure to have your eatable food and
drink
| above and/or left of the stat food.

My traders don't seem to eat or drink when in trader mode....

/eye hidone


Don Woods

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Dec 28, 2004, 6:01:53 PM12/28/04
to

Yes, that was stated earlier in this thread. But you're not always
in trader mode (if only for the moments when you first log in and
haven't brought up the trader window yet), so if you're trying to
sell food/drink you want to have some cheap food/drink for your
trader to consume. Hidone's point was that you also need to make
sure the eatable stuff is "in front of" the stuff you're selling.

-- Don.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
-- See the a.g.e/EQ1 FAQ at http://www.iCynic.com/~don/EQ/age.faq.htm
--
-- Sukrasisx, Monk 51 on E. Marr Note: If you reply by mail,

-- Terrwini, Druid 41 on E. Marr I'll get to it sooner if you

James Grahame

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Dec 29, 2004, 3:31:48 PM12/29/04
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"Don Woods" <don...@iCynic.com> wrote in message
news:7w8y7id...@ca.icynic.com...

> "Jitar GrRahiir of Tarew Marr" <roko42u...@rexx.us> writes:
>> <hid...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:1104183418.7...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>> | 1. If you didn't know, you eat and drink whatever is in the left hand
>> | column (top to bottom order) then the right hand column (top to bottom)
>> | so if you do sell stat food be sure to have your eatable food and drink
>> | above and/or left of the stat food.
>>
>> My traders don't seem to eat or drink when in trader mode....
>
> Yes, that was stated earlier in this thread. But you're not always
> in trader mode (if only for the moments when you first log in and
> haven't brought up the trader window yet), so if you're trying to
> sell food/drink you want to have some cheap food/drink for your
> trader to consume. Hidone's point was that you also need to make
> sure the eatable stuff is "in front of" the stuff you're selling.

There seems to be some sort of "catch up" code, too. I can have my
trader force feed until unable to do so any more, and within a few days the
trader will be hungry and thirsty when leaving trader. During those few days
I'll spend at most 90 minutes outside of trader logged in - too short a time
to go from "stuffed, can't eat any more" to "need food and water badly". My
sneaking suspicion is the code for not eating and drinking just disables the
auto-eat and messages function, but does not fully disable the "do you need
to eat" timer.

James


Dan Harmon

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Dec 31, 2004, 1:49:31 PM12/31/04
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"Lief" <ask.m...@it.com> wrote in message
news:Z0Uyd.203$LF5...@newsfe5-win.ntli.net...

>> I was told I could use my Bard and make him play an instriment before I

>> go
>> into trader-mode and I would get skill-ups, is this true?
>
> Yes, this is generally frowned upon due to the spam it causes, and I
> believe
> that if somebody petitions you while you are AFK, you can get kicked.
> Thats
> if they can find a GM.

I've petitioned a few before figuring out how to turn off the chat. It's
still a TOS violation but I tend not to care if I don't see it. :p

--
EQ: Binnen 65+ enc - Zeb
EQ2: Lahr 10+ enc - Kith


Firian

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Jan 20, 2005, 2:55:18 PM1/20/05
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"Graeme Faelban" <Richar...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:Xns95CC6FED9CA13ri...@130.133.1.4...

>
> I can confirm this as well, it is only while in trader mode that you
> don't consume food and water. You do indeed consume them in the bazaar
> while not in trader mode, unless they changed this quite recently.

Nope, they have not changed it; I forgot to take into account food/water
when I set up my recently-recreated character in the bazaar, and the
saltwater tuna he had on him started vanishing slowly....with only the 'You
are out of water' message coming up. So yes, while in the bazaar, you do
everything normally when NOT in trader, other than being encumbered (and
it's a damned good thing at times that encumberance is not an issue in the
bazaar, as everyone who's stepped OUT of the bazaar with a huge amount of
plat can testify lol).

--
############################
Firian
Dark Elf Necromancer of the 17th Circle, FV
Berdache
Troll Shaman of the 12th Stone, FV


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