Best Prices - stolen from other websites.

[JustinCredible]

(stolen from eqtraders)
Charisma and Faction

As far as vendor prices are concerned, factions can be broken up into three categories. Dubious or worse, apprehensive, and indifferent or better. If your faction with the merchant is dubious or worse, of course, the merchant simply won't sell to you (I have something here that %Rs use..let me see...it's the EXIT, now get LOST!), or will even try to kill you on sight. If you're at apprehensive, the merchant will sell to you, but is going to charge you an arm and a leg unless you can get your charisma WAY up there. Lastly, any faction indifferent or better will get exactly the same prices for the same charisma. Doesn't matter if you're ally or sneaking so as indifferent as can be, it's all the same to the merchants.
There are several crucial charisma numbers to shoot for. Key to this is that, whether your faction is apprehensive or indifferent or better, there's a stretch from 61 or 62 to 76 or 77 (I haven't been able to get a gear combination that gives any of my characters either 61 or 76 charisma yet, unfortunately) that gives exactly the same prices. So, if you can get your charisma up to 62, don't bother getting any more charisma boosters until you can get enough to get you to 76. However, when you do get to 76, the prices will suddenly drop by about 6%, instead of the 0.5% you get for most individual points of charisma.
Better known is the "magic number" of charisma, 104. This is the point at which indifferent or better merchants will give you the best price they're ever going to give you. This price seems to be based on 1.05 times a "actual value" that you will never see used, but is only directly known by the server. For instance, many gem and metal prices are clearly based on this. And, if you notice the prices at which the vendor will buy such things back from you, although it looks like a very irregular number, for instance 95pp 2gp 3sp 8cp for a bar of platinum or a sapphire, that just happens to be 100pp divided by 1.05.
The last and highest number to shoot for is 132. This is the charisma at which you can normally get the cheapest prices even with apprehensive faction.
For more involved details of the changes charisma and faction can make, see Details about Pricing.

"Greedy" Merchants


Naresa Sparkle—West Commonlands
Boomba the Big—West Freeport
Ping Fuzzlecutter—West Freeport
Tubal Weaver—North Qeynos
Everyone—The Overthere
The Pricing Roller Coaster

When many players have been buying from or selling to a merchant, he seems to get it into his head that "Hey, I'm so popular, I can charge better prices now!". Unfortunately, "better" in this context means "better for the vendor". I'm still carrying out research on this issue, but merchants that will normally give best prices at 104 charisma and indifferent faction can go at least as high as needing 134 charisma to get best prices, even with ally faction. It seems that, with less charisma than that needed for best prices, a set amount is added to the price you would normally get, i.e. whether your charisma is 120 or 50, a vendor might add 3sp to the price you would pay from a vendor who hasn't been getting so much action. The actual amount can vary widely.
This is particularly noticeable on merchants in very busy areas, for instance vendors located in or right at the entrance to newbie areas, or those in banks. In these cases, it's almost impossible to distinguish a "greedy" merchant from a merely "opportunistic" merchant.

Stacking and Prices

When buying or selling items by the stack, the cost can be a bit more precise than the single item cost times 20. This can go either way, making it more or less efficient to buy or sell by the stack. One classic example is water, and other common items that are bought for 1sp. Since the real cost is 1sp and 1/2cp, even though the per item cost is rounded off to 1sp, when you buy a whole stack at once you pay 2gp 1sp, a whole 1sp more than buying them one by one. On the other hand, with my Iksar's rather low charisma, he gets shuriken for 1sp 3cp each, but if he buys a stack, he only pays 2gp 5sp 9cp, and saves a whole copper!
In general, to the best of my knowledge, this can never make more of a difference than 1sp per stack. So I usually don't bother with it myself, and just buy my water etc. by the stack.

Every item has a "best price".

Q: How do I get a merchant to sell me an item at its best price?

For most merchants, you need indifferent faction and 104 charisma. This is to say that 1) at any given charisma, a merchant will give you the same price at indifferent, amiable, kind or warm faction (but worse at apprehensive), and 2) if your faction is at least indifferent, you will stop getting better prices beyond 104 charisma.

Now I said most merchants up there. The first statement is always true, but I've observed two exceptions to the second. First, the merchants in your guild in your hometown only require 93 charisma. Second, there are a handful of merchants who require MUCH higher than 104 charisma. These are usually the merchants near banks and at entrances to cities. Examples are: Tubal at the Qeynos gate, Boomba the Big at the WFP gate, Aimee at the NFP bank, Merchant U-something (the dufrenite merchant) outside the Kelethin bank. Don't buy or sell from them if you can avoid it. At 170+ charisma and indifferent-to-warm faction, I still can't get them to give me best prices.

Q: How can I tell if a merchant is buying or selling an item at its best price?

Check how much the merchant offers you for a peridot. (Everyone carries a stack of peridots for their clerics and chanters right? ) If you're offered 9.524pp price for it, you've succeeded. You won't be able to buy for less or sell for more. If you're offered less than 9.524pp, you can do better with higher charisma. (note: It seems that getting the best price for selling things to a merchant doesn't necessarily mean you get the best prices buying from the merchant. More here. -Ed.) Now it doesn't have to be a peridot. Any item will do as long as you know its best price. I happen to know what the best price is for a peridot.