The Bazaar
The Bazaar is the main trading zone in Everquest where you can sell your items. Read on to find out more about it!
The Bazaar can be found off the Plane of Knowledge and from Shadowhaven.
The Bazaar is divided into three sections. There is the central section which has spokes leading to various areas. If you zone in from the Plane of Knowledge (PoK), immediately to your right there is a room dedicated to tradeskill containers. The tradeskill room also has an Augment Pool where you can add your augments. There is also a Distiller NPC nearby so you can remove your augments safely. There are two other merchants in the room, the mage spell seller and a smithing vendor.
A little to the left is the zone to Shadowhaven.
Straight ahead is the central ring or merchant circle. If you go to the centre and turn back you will notice the way out to PoK slopes downward. There is another path out, that turns a corner and leads to the stables where you buy horses and can also turn in your used bridles (for about 1/3 less of your purchase price).
If you turn around and look up a bit you will notice banners on the wall, 2 blue banners on either side of a slope up to the blue (barter) zone, and 2 red banners on either side of a slope up to the red (trading zone).
If you go up the slopes to either the Red or Blue sections you will come to a large room with a teleporter pad in the center, stepping on the pad takes you instantly (not a zone) to the center of the respective section. Bankers are found at this location in both the Red and Blue sections, along with a teleporter back out to the the center section. The actual Traders are in rooms off this central section.
In the center of the circle there is a small ring of NPCs, most of these are quest related of some sort. Sateal is both a quest NPC and a vendor. Caerlyna, the fine upstanding barbarian female NPC that takes your bag tokens is also in the center. (Bags cannot be put in trader satchels, however you can take most bags and a few other containers to Caerlyna and give them to her to receive a bag Token which can be put in your trader satchel. To get a bag from a token, turn the token back into Caerlfyna and she gives you a nice fresh bag in return. Make sure you have an open inventory slot available for that bag, and double check that you are not buying a Lore token. Rallic Pack for example, if you have one on you, you can buy a token, but if you turn that token in, the Rallic pack will poof because it is a lore item.
On the outer ring are a variety of merchants, the discord merchant only matters if you are on Zek or are PvP enabled. In order to begin trading you need to buy a Trader Satchel from Merchant Tekrama. He is just outside the entrance to the red section. The bags cost about a Plat and are very heavy, so when you are done with trader mode, make sure you leave the pack in the bank. Important - Weight does not matter in the bazaar so you cannot become encumbered, but it does as soon as you step out. If you forget to remove your trader satchels and items you can find yourself pretty much unable to move on the other side of the zone line. Don't forget to leave your satchels behind before zoning out!
To Buy Things in the Bazaar:
When you enter the zone you will get a message that there are XX numbers of Buyers and XX numbers of Sellers, and to do a /bazaar to find out what is available. That is simply starting a new line of text and typing
/bazaar
To bring up the interface. The interface allows you to search by the name of the item (if you know what you want) or to browse by putting in various search options, like the race, class, slot, religion, and type of item. You can also set a price range,and recently level ranges were added. As mentioned earlier, bags are sold as Tokens, so do a search on Token to find them. Weapon classes (1hb, pierce, 1hs, etc), Food and Drink, Augments, and Focus Effects are among the options under Type, as are Scrolls (spells).
When you find something you want, click on the Trader's Name and a glowing yellow FIND trail will take you to the trader. The new design has greatly reduced lag. However, if it still seems to be an issue, open up your /bazaar interface and stretch it out until you see at the far bottom right the option to "Hide Traders" and click on that option. If you have Hide Traders on, clicking the Trader's name will let you see that trader only. Once you get next to the trader the trail will go off, or hit the END FIND on your Actions menu.
Click on the Trader, just like you would for an NPC, and find your item, and buy it.
To set up Trader Mode:
Trader mode is available to everyone. After you buy your satchel(s) from Tekrama, head up to the Red section, leave the bank area and go to any of the rooms. Stand on the wooden platforms around the outer edges of each room. Arrange your items to sell in the trader bag, once you have what you want to sell in your trader bags, type
/trader
to open the pricing interface. A nice list will come up that shows the items in your Trader Satchels only, not in your regular bags or in your bank inventory. Assign prices to each item on a per item basis, so if you have a stack of Spiderling Silks, you are pricing each Silk and not the stack. Remember to hit the "Set Price" button each time after setting or changing a price. When you have everything priced and are ready to go, hit the "Begin Trader" button. You have now turned into basically an NPC. You can leave your character and other people can come up to you, click you open and see what you have in your trader satchels. They cannot see what you have in any other bags, nor can they buy things that aren't priced. While you are in Trader Mode you do not consume food or drink, however, while you are in the Bazaar in regular mode you do, so if you will be selling food and drink items, you may want to have a regular pack with your consumable food and drink in it ABOVE your trader satchels so you don't eat any of your goods to sell. NOTE: You don't actually have to be on a platform to open Trader Mode to price your goods, you can do that anywhere in the Bazaar, but you must be on a platform in the Red area in order to sell.
You may want to do a /bazaar to see what the other sellers have their goods priced at. You can type in the name or partial name of your item to get a list back of everyone else selling it, the quantity, and the asking price.
Many people have a dedicated chater to being a "trader mule" or "bazaar bot". These often have "catchy" names and were created solely to be in the bazaar. Sometimes they are otherwise unused characters. The advantage of having a mule is that you don't tie up your own character's bank space, and you don't forget to put your Trader Satchels away before leaving the bazaar.
Barter Mode:
Barter is new with the Dragons of Norrath Expansion (DoN). Anyone can sell to the Barter buyers, but in order to set up in Barter Mode you must have DoN. Barter is a way to set your own prices of what you are willing to pay for items, and/or offer items in trade instead of plat for items. People in Barter mode are usually trying to find hard to get items, or are trying to buy at lower that "bazaar" price. A lot of people don't want to set up Traders, so instead of selling, say Jord Meat to a vendor for a few silver/gold, they are willing to sell it to a Barter Buyer for 5-10 plat each, instead of trying to sell it at plus 20 plat each.
The Barter area is the Blue area. It is set up identically to the red area. So it has its own bankers, etc.
To see what people want to buy, type /barter to bring up the interface. Leave the search field empty and just hit the search button. A list of the items and quantity wanted, the prices/items offered, and the buyers comes up. Just like with trader mode, you can click on the buyer's name to be led to them. Again, anyone can use /barter mode.
To become a buyer, the command is /buyer. You are able to chose from basically all droppable items (so no multi-quest type no drop items), for things you want to buy. Because of this, it can take a little time to set up /buyer mode unless you know specifically what you want to buy, how much you are willing to pay or what items you have to offer.
You set the items wanted, quantity wanted, make sure you have clear pack space and lots of cash on hand, and Start the buyer mode.
Bazaar/Barter Strategies:
Unless you like the Bazaar culture, I strongly advise you to get up, walk away from your system and go do other things while in Trader/Buyer modes. It can take only a few minutes to sell highly sought after commodities, it can take days. Depends on the basics of supply and demand and finding the person needing your items at that time. I usually don't even go into trader mode unless I am going to stay up for at least 2 and preferably 6 or more hours.
If you are trying to sell stuff quickly, you may just want to do a /auction WTS whatever in PoK and the Bazaar. There is nothing wrong with having a bit of a sales pitch while in the bazaar, but you will annoy people if you repeatedly spam your trader or your auctions.
It can be hard to price items in the Bazaar. You do want to price them for a reasonable amount of money. If you price too low, the resellers will buy your stock and mark up the price. If you don't care, fine, let them buy it quickly and try to sell it more slowly. If you price too high, no one will buy. So I want to be on the low end of reasonable.
When you are first setting up as a trader, it can take awhile to figure out what sells well for you. There are so many items, it helps to specialize. Keep in mind that while low end items from tradeskills do have a market (not as good as they once did), but there is not much of a market any more for low end gear. Mid-level gear, yes there is some turn over. Unfortunately, much of the loot you get under level 50 or so (especially of the gear or weapon type) is simply "vendor fodder" that is not worth selling in the bazaar. Still, you never know what someone is looking for. I usually give a certain time limit on items before I start reducing the price or just taking it out of inventory and selling to a vendor.
Something to be aware of, sometimes when people drop prices or price to sell, they are actually selling for less than an NPC will buy an item for. There are a couple of things I regularly look for where I can make a few plat from buying the item and then selling it right back to an NPC. Some of these are just a few plat, others are items I regularly get 50-100 plat from the vendors.