Is the shop pointless?

[terminal_willness]

If you can just turn items found in dungeons instantly into gold, what's the point of running the shop at all? Am I missing something? Do you get MORE gold for selling things at prices you set?

[Shot_Trip]

Oh yes. Very yes. You can get upwards of double the earnings. This isn't really obvious early on when you're dealing with, say, iron bars, but around the time you're reliably hitting the third floor of the golem dungeon to when you're working on the second one, you'll notice a huge uptick in profit. The Mirror is most useful for getting a bit of value out of low-value items and clearing space. Never ever use it for higher-value things, even Golem Cores or Steel Bars. A few tips for people having trouble with the shop:

>Guess higher, then adjust down.
There's really no penalty that I can see from setting high prices, and it's better than getting ripped off, since you lose the item when you undersell versus keeping it to adjust the price when they back off the sale.

>Experiment with single items, sell with stacks
Never ever ever ever sell an item as more than a single to check the price. The number of times I've lost thousands to selling a new item for a fraction of its value. Augh. Use a single item to gauge the price and value and work from there.

>Upgrade the shop ASAP.
The first expansion gives you a load more inventory space for storage, gives you a decoration for a tip bonus, and lets you stock more stuff. The registers also increase your tip bonus. Beds make you more effective in dungeons. Bargain bins let you offload low-value things quickly and in a hurry.

>Avoid flooding the market.
Diversify your stock once in a while to avoid price decay. You don't need to do this very often, usually you won't notice it if you're moving through the dungeons at a good clip, but if you stay in one and grind long enough, it'll start to hurt.

[terminal_willness]

Great advice! Thanks! I'm actually right at the point in the game you mentioned so I'll try these tips out.

[Shot_Trip]

Originally posted by terminalwillness:

Great advice! Thanks! I'm actually right at the point in the game you mentioned so I'll try these tips out.

I'm coming to this game off of Recettear and oh man the shop is way easier in this to profit off of, let me tell you. The customers in this game actually have money to spend, for one. Ugh, grinding wallet size in that game was a chore and a half.

Keep an eye out for books or scrawlings - they're probably the biggest value add in any given dungeon. One thing the mirror can help with is determining the barest of bare minimum for sale - if you sell an item for less than the mirror's evaluation, you're making an enormous mistake. Shoot for at least half-again.

[terminal_willness]

It's a really fun game with a killer gameplay hook. But one thing I'm a little bummed out by is how simplistic the shop/economy mechanics seem to be. I was hoping they might be a little bit more complex than what they are. Maybe I just need to play more.

[Halfshell]

Originally posted by MrSparkle:

It's a really fun game with a killer gameplay hook. But one thing I'm a little bummed out by is how simplistic the shop/economy mechanics seem to be. I was hoping they might be a little bit more complex than what they are. Maybe I just need to play more.

Same.

[Sinsling]

Kind of a missed opportunity, but hopefully the devs are interested in the feed back and will consider adding some more shop mechanics.

[WabbaCat]

I have to slightly disagree with the "Guess higher, then adjust down" advice.... I been doing exactly that for awhile now and im switching over to guessing low and rolling prices upwards. But only when the backstock starts to build or if an item proves to be too annoying in guessing its price.

reason being, I really dont care to have a messy backstock of crap from overguessing and being stuck with items that I just want to keep moving... my time is better spent getting more items and losing out on the price of only a few as the price gets jacked up on the second or third sale of the same item.
its not like the difference is that much very often anyhow.
Another strat for difficulty in guessing prices would be to throw only a single item of something in the sale bin and do the calculation for what you should set the full price at.

You end up making so much money anyways, so cranking out the items and moving them fast is clearly the winning idea.

And besides... dont you just love that face of pure pleasure from seeing an extra happy customer?

[Sinsling]

Well, supposedly flooding the market with low value goods is suppose to drop prices faster. Can't even tell if that system is in place or working since it is so easy to rocket everything into high demand, with no apparent change in willing price range.

[WabbaCat]

tbh, I havent even been paying attention to the supply and demand and popularity things... doesnt seem to matter other than how often someone picks an item up... although I could have been imagining that.

I have been getting thru the dungeons rather quickly tho, so... I think that maybe I just moved from dungeon to dungeon too fast for all that stuff to matter.

[Armstrong]

Best way to determine price for items: just use Le Retailers price for item and divide it by 3.6 and you will get the best price. All customers will be happy.

[oooflascheooo]

In addition to all above you should always check your journal. For each dungeon you can see a max price and a min price on the top and bottom of the list, the items are ordered most from expensiv top to bottom. So once you found a few prices it gets easy to guess the rest.

[terminal_willness]

I was hoping you'd get to see the town around you thrive and grow as your shop prospered, does anything like that happen really? The town seems pretty static.