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Thread: 'Lexy's Meso Guide Supplement

  1. #1
    Phantom Watch
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    Default 'Lexy's Meso Guide Supplement

    Foreword

    After reading my meso guide (for the second time ever), I decided to make a new guide. That didn't turn out so well. In fact, it was a complete failure because my new Beran character got banned for advertising my blog in a shop title. Unfortunately, that was also my main Scania account, so bye bye Dark Knight!

    If you want, you can still check out what I managed to finish before I got banned here (and on the page after that). It's obviously not complete and obviously looks a lot more visually pleasing than my first meso guide.

    Now I decided to make another character, but GameGuard apparently thought I was a hacker, so I can no longer access the game. But I can't leave a job unfinished. Thus I'm back, even if you don't like it, to make a supplement to my original meso guide (or any meso guide, for that matter). This supplement will focus on specific aspects of merchanting and give some otherwise untold tips on getting rich, miscellaneous things that you probably won't see in other meso guides. Note that you'll probably need to either read my original guide/some other guide or be somewhat good at merchanting to put these tactics into use.

    And thus, without further ado, here is the guide. I hope you'll benefit from it.



    Table of Contents
    • Foreword
    • Camping
    • Merchant-merchant relations
    • Super megaphones
    • More than you ever needed to know about spots
    • The details of setting up a shop
    • The golden rule
    • More to come: a half-assed conclusion


    Camping


    'Camping' means 'waiting on _____.' The term is usually used to refer to mules in populated FM rooms who AC/keep trying to set up shop very fast in order to take a spot. However, in the context of this guide, "camping" means "waiting on a person to open up shop."

    Camping is one of the best, if not the best, way to earn a ton of money very, very fast (well, if you're browsing the FM for deals, anyway). The concept behind camping is that you'll get to a cheap shop before all of the profitable things get sold. In other words, you might be able to find entire shops full of underpriced merchandise.

    But I'm not that good at expressing things in words, so here's a visual to help:



    What I'm saying here is for you to keep an eye on this "...rnore" guy and buy all the cheap stuff in his shop once it opens.

    The best way to camp is to note unopened shops while you browse other FM rooms and come back to check if the shop is open a few minutes later. Although this allows rival merchants/FM browsers a chance to get to the shop before you do, it also gives you a chance to find and keep track of more unopened shops in various FM rooms.

    Since the chance of you finding a cheap shop is small, hike up your chances by camping as many unopened shops at once. Jumping around in a single FM room while you're waiting on a single shop is definitely not the brightest of ideas.

    Special case: Cheap shops in highly populated FM rooms

    Now there is ONE case which you'd never want to get away from. Although I said that camping a single shop isn't wise, that's false when you get to the more popular FM rooms (like channel one, rooms 1 - 7). If you find an unopened shop here, the shopkeeper is one of two kinds of people:
    1. Somebody resetting a hired merchant
    2. A noob

    This is true 99% of the time. The most popular FM rooms are almost always filled with hired merchants rather than AFK people. This is because it's more profitable setting up a shop in one of these FM rooms.

    Since hired merchants disappear after one day, people have to reset them. In other words, they have to take down the merchant and put it up again. If they fail to do this within a day of their last reset, or if the Hired Merchant expires (as in "a 7-day hired merchant hits that 7 day mark"), then the hired merchant will disappear and leave an empty spot.

    This is where the unopened shops come into play. Merchants don't usually browse these FM rooms because there aren't that many good deals here. However, less price-knowledgable people can be commonly found here. Once a hired merchant expires, these "noobs" run and grab the spot, only to set up cheap shops.

    I've seen mispriced and underpriced items in these FM rooms far too much to let this tip go under the radar here. My only other suggestion would be for you to rarely browse these FM rooms. Go in and check if there are any red dots on the minimap without looking for nonexistent deals in the overpriced hired merchants.

    Merchant-merchant relations


    One of the smartest ways to merchant is to not merchant alone. Make merchant friends, and don't be afraid to give up a potential profit in doing so. If you make some good, trustworthy merchant friends, you're going to not only have more fun while amassing a crapload of virtual money, but you're also going to get more mesos.

    I met my best merchant friend while ripping her off. I returned the 5m-profit cape at its original price, and got at least 200m worth in tips and pointers from her. Thank god I met her right before dark scrolls came out. By the way, she thought up hoarding maple shields years before anybody else did. What a merchant. (insert more of my reminiscing junk here)

    But one thing you shouldn't do is join a merchanting guild.

    Unless it's a branch of your old guild or you know everybody in the guild personally, you're much better off having a lot of merchant buddies. Of course, I've been biased as hell against merchant guilds for over two years, so it's pretty much up to you.

    Also (this may not go under merchant-merchant relations, but whatever), try not to make your name known, especially if you do FM entrance merchanting, gachapon merchanting, or any kind of merchanting that requires you speaking to people. Now, what I'm saying is pretty hard to put into practice, but if you build up a bad reputation as somebody who's trigger happy at ripping people off, you ain't gonna have clients coming back to you for more.

    Super Megaphones


    are your friends. Whenever you're in the FM or close to the FM and see a megaphone saying something outrageous like "FREE STUFF CH __ FM __," GO TO THE FM ROOM. (Note that this does not include smega that advertise things like "S>Stonetooth offer" since those smegas never attract people anyway.)

    Now I'm not saying that you're going to get the aforementioned "free stuff," but these smega rooms are breeding grounds for cheap items. Here's the evolution of a smega room in visual form:



    Note the actual smega at the bottom. And the fact that I actually got into the shop.



    Note that this is in no way a good symbol of what a smega room can turn into. As you may have noticed, the smega was pretty lackluster. It wasn't anything along the lines of "ILBIS 1 MESO CLICK FAST CH 19 FM 19!!!!"

    Some of the more wild smegas can make smega rooms without a single open spot in the room and a good chance at a high number of underpriced stuff in shops.

    However, you also have to realize that sometimes "restocked ch10 fm7 all scrolls 1234567 or offfer come plz" actually has things like Helmet DEX 60% for 1234567. You definitely can't afford to miss either chance.

    ...which is exactly the same thing that the sellers are thinking. If you've got a 30% glove for attack that you can't seem to sell at a somewhat normal price in the FM entrance or in a shop, you're going to come to a smega room and sell it off quickly. If you can't sell it off at a normal price, then you're going to lower it to just get it off your hands. (Note that I'm talking from the seller's POV here)

    When you see somebody going through this, don't buy the item ASAP. Ask for a lowered price, and they'll probably go through with it, knowing full well what it's actually worth.

    More than you ever needed to know about spots


    Good spots

    In an FM room, where do you think the best spot is?
    Obviously, that would be the door/very-close-to-door spot(s).

    Where next?
    Well, that would depend on your FM room. However, one thing is the same with every FM room: Spots in the middle of platforms suck.

    If you're going to get a spot, try to find one at the edges of the platforms. Often, a buyer will get desperate when he/she reaches the last shop in the room and just buy whatever he needs if it's in the shop.

    The same goes for the entrance of an FM room. If it's the first one a buyer sees in an FM, he/she might just think that it's better to buy the slightly overpriced item rather than waste more time trying to find a cheaper one.

    Spots that are hard to reach (the top left platform in ludibrium FMs [7 - 12], for example) are really good. If somebody's going to spend that much time getting to that place to click on a shop there, he/she is going to spend more time looking at it rather than quickly scrolling through like he/she would do with a shop in the middle.

    Oh, and another thing about "door spots:" They're the same as any spot you can get to without moving from the portal. Often times, it's worse to have a door spot than to have a spot at the very right edge of the middle platform in a henesys FM room (1 - 6). And when have you ever even clicked on a door spot first? People naturally tend to go for the farthest shop from the portal (still without moving, mind you) first, so that shop usually gets more desperate sales.

    Getting spots

    In the picture below: if the crazy haired guy in the guild UndiePatrol were to be setting up shop, would you go elsewhere to look for a spot?


    If you said "yes," shame on you. I sure as hell would go to the right of him and take that open spot. If you're accustomed to seeing shops and setting up shops, then this question should've been a breeze for you.

    Often times, people ignore spots that look like a squeeze. Sometimes, they're right in that you can't fit a shop there. But a lot of the time, they're wrong. It's pretty easy to tell when you can fit a shop between two people, but when it comes to edge/wall spots, you need a merchant's eye.

    The rule of thumb is to never pass up a spot as impossible. If it looks like you might not be able to fit a shop into a spot, go ahead and try it before you give up.

    When your maybe-spot is located at the edge of a platform, all the better. These spots are the most overlooked and most under-taken spots. First, get as close to the edge of the platform as you can. Then, don't just press your arrow key. Jump and press your arrow key once while in midair, and repeat as many times as you can. This will ensure that you'll get onto the farthest pixel of the platform.

    A lot of people try edge spots and fail, but if you use the jump + arrow technique, you'll definitely get a lot more spots than your competition.

    The details of setting up a shop


    Now once you've got your stuff and know where to set up a shop, do you really know how to set up a shop? Do you know how to most effectively name your shop? Do you know how to arrange your items? Do you know how to make the item prices look more appealing? Well if you didn't, you soon will.

    Naming your shop

    There are a few rules to follow when you're naming your shop. Now keep in mind that these rules are geared toward selling fast, not selling high (the details of why selling high sucks will be discussed in the next section). Also keep in mind that your shop name does not aid in attracting more customers. It, if done right, helps make customers browse with more concentration, and therefore you'll get more sales. It's really easy to miss something when you're halfheartedly scrolling through a shop, you know.

    Rule #1: Don't put your guild name in the shop title

    This is a very stupid thing to do if you're in a bossing, high-leveled, famous, or merchant guild. It immediately says to the buyer "look at me, I'm a merchant" and turns the warning sign on. Even if you suck at merchanting, if somebody in your guild is known for being rich, tough luck.

    Rule #2: Think of the shop title space as advertising space

    Obviously, you shouldn't advertise things like wordpress.com blogs, because those things always give keyloggers to everybody who visits them. However, you should advertise the fact that you're...
    • Buying a hard-to-find item*
    • Selling something**

    * Note: If you can find this item in the FM easily, there's honestly no point to putting a message about it on your shop title. It'd just be a waste of space.
    ** Note: You have to have it in your shop, unless it's in the MTS or above max mesos. Not having the item makes the buyer ask about it and then come back to see it when you're not AFK... needless to say, that is one huge pain in the ass that nobody really wants to go through.

    What you shouldn't advertise is that you're a merchant. And this is definitely not limited to "I AM A MERCHANT." If you have "B>60% Glove attack scrolls" as your shop title, you might as well have "I AM A MERCHANT" as your title.

    Rule #3: If all else fails, think like a merchant

    What kind of shop title are you attracted to? Personally, I always pay more attention to the shops whose titles say something like "scrolls," "cheap scrolls," etc. These simple shop titles say "there might be a cheap item here" to potential buyers.

    Arranging your items

    Now in my first guide, I had a section about the most efficient way to arrange your shop. Ignore that. I pulled most of that out of my ass, and it's in no way based on my actual experiences.

    The rule here is to group the same stuff together and to loosely follow this order:
    1. Most expensive (usually scrolled) equips at the front
    2. Scrolls
    3. Less expensive items
    4. Expensive items at the end, especially stackable items

    The things people pay most attention to are the first few items, the last few items, and whatever can net them a profit. Obviously, you should put your most expensive items at the beginning and end of your store to attract attention. Less obvious is the reason why scrolls are put in the middle. Scrolls are the most merchanted items in the game, no doubt about it. Merchants like myself and yourself look at scrolls for profit opportunities, so what better place to put them in the middle of a shop? If you were to put them at the beginning or end, you'd be wasting precious room that could be used to display scrolled items instead!

    Here's how a well-organized shop would go:
    Code:
    Scrolled Fairfrozen
    60% Glove for attack
    60% Spear for attack
    70% Helmet for Int
    70% Topwear for Str
    70% Shield for attack
    30% 2h Sword for attack
    30% Bottomwear for Dex
    Clean work gloves
    Clean work gloves
    Clean work gloves
    Clean Blue Sauna Robe
    Clean Blue Sauna Robe
    Clean Blue Sauna Robe
    Refined diamonds
    Chaos scroll
    As you can see, I clearly want to sell the spear and chaos scroll, since they're the big money makers. The scrolls catch the attention of scroll merchants, and the multi-clean equips catch the attention of scrollers, who might pass over a single clean equip as a scrolled one (you notice how clean work gloves are rarely sold one-by-one, right?).

    How to make prices look appealing

    I'm going to say it right here and now: Adding all those 9s at the end works.

    What doesn't work, however, is just about everything else.

    A very famous Basil merchant in Scania used to (and may still) put everything in his shop as ___5555555 (ending in fives). Even though his merchandise was almost always below the average prices, I never saw his shop sell fast. Of course, he was incredibly rich and always had a hired merchant up, so selling fast didn't really matter. However, it most likely does matter for you.

    Another bad way to price an item is to make the price something like 1234567. This is just irritating to a buyer's eyes, and a huge turn-off for sales. Of course, this includes putting random numbers at the end, like 12604395 or 5340759.

    A final mistake for pricing is to price items at whole numbers. That entire "99,999 mesos is more than 100,000 mesos due to tax" thing doesn't really matter, to be honest (and it doesn't matter at all to buyers, who aren't the ones losing money due to tax!). However, it's so ingrained in people's minds that you're a lot better trying to sell something at 1,299,999 instead of 1,300,000, even if there is no tax difference.

    So in a nutshell, price items ending in 9s.

    The golden rule


    is not "buy low, sell high." That's a one-way ticket to epic failure.

    The golden rule of merchanting is to "buy low, sell medium." I could have phrased that 300% better, but you get the point. Don't sell high. Unless you're dying to sell a 60% Gloves for attack scroll for 200k more than the average price or you're already dominating Channel 1 FM 1 with fifty hired merchants, sell lower.

    In fact, I'd even advise you to sell lower than the average price for the item.

    One obvious benefit to this is the time that it takes to sell off an item. If a normal price for a 30% shoe for jump scroll were 5 mil, a 5.2 mil-priced one would probably take a few hours to a few days longer to sell than a 4.8 mil-priced one.

    Clearly, if you've only got a single scroll to sell, you should sell it fast to get more money to buy more scrolls. Even if you have a crapload of money, you shouldn't sell that 30% shoe jump at any higher than 5.5 mil. Why? Because your shop will become too full.

    There are two dangers to selling high: not having enough money to buy more scrolls or buying too many scrolls when you can't sell that first one off yet. In both cases, your flow of mesos is going to stop until you finally decide to wise up and price the item(s) lower or if a miracle happens and some desperate buyer buys your overpriced stock.

    If you're intent on selling high, here's a tip: don't stack items. Or at least, don't go beyond three of the same scroll in your shop. If a desperate person sees that you have like 20 30% shoe for jump scrolls at 5.2 mil, he/she's not going to buy it. That count of 20 is a lot more daunting than you might expect. To you, it looks like an easy 104 mil. But to your customers, it looks like a death trap, as if you're flaunting the fact that your scrolls are overpriced and saying "don't buy my stuff! I have so many scrolls here because nobody else is buying!"

    This is precisely the reason why a lot of those meso farmers (you know who they are... those characters who all have the same shop title and either chinese-sounding or random IGNs) who have 100 of each scroll priced at low prices don't sell out for a long time, or at least until a "pro" merchant comes along with enough money to buy a hundred of a given underpriced scroll.

    More to come: a half-assed conclusion


    Now it's pretty obvious that these tricks aren't the only ones up my sleeve.

    However, they're the only ones I can think of right now. If more pop out while I'm trying to sleep, then I'll definitely put them down here.

    This guide has been in no way plagiarized. It has been posted on Southperry and Hidden-Street, so unless you see this in either of those two places, call the Maple guide police.

    This guide has been made possible by...
    • iDagger/Brendanz, for being an incredible friend and teaching me a lot about merchanting.
    • Myrih, for being an incredible friend and total merchanting noob.
    • My friends at Hidden-Street, for supporting my guides and putting up with my trolling.
    • All of my friends on MapleStory, past and... well, past, for supporting me.
    • Everybody else I forgot to mention, but are still awesome.


    And until I get more ideas into my head, enjoy some more pictures from my maple past:
    Spoiler!

  2. #2
    DivinePingas
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    Nice guide but it seems that it's based almost entierly on NX items. Also, they banned you for THAT? It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum...

  3. #3
    Jr. Necki mar1ne's Avatar
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    you're not going to earn mesos without a permit.
    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixRider View Post
    wow, your an idiot
    Spoiler!

  4. #4
    Too cool for bot zapping Clockwork's Avatar
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    Since this seems to be primarily about shops you should include things like "naming shops" and "times to set up shops." Also, with your "buy for cheap then sell back for more" thing you should mention that ch2 fm usually has things for a lot cheaper. Good guide, nonetheless. I'll definitely keep these things in mind.






    .......

  5. #5
    Phantom Watch
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    Quote Originally Posted by Clockwork View Post
    Since this seems to be primarily about shops you should include things like "naming shops" and "times to set up shops." Also, with your "buy for cheap then sell back for more" thing you should mention that ch2 fm usually has things for a lot cheaper. Good guide, nonetheless. I'll definitely keep these things in mind.






    .......
    Those are definitely some points that are often overlooked by merchants. I'll try and write something about what I know in those areas soon.

    Though "ch2 fm usually has things for a lot cheaper" isn't necessarily true.
    I've found that from world to world, just about everybody's perception of the FM changes.

    In Scania, the perion FM rooms are cheap. In Bera, the Ludibrium FM rooms are cheap.

    And only Scania has the first FM room of each channel populated. In no other world will you find a shop, much less an actual deal, in channel 13 fm 1.

  6. #6
    Jr. Necki Slimi's Avatar
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    This is helpful.
    nothing.
    Spoiler!

  7. #7
    Too cool for bot zapping Clockwork's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by NegiWarrior View Post
    Though "ch2 fm usually has things for a lot cheaper" isn't necessarily true.
    I've found that from world to world, just about everybody's perception of the FM changes.

    In Scania, the perion FM rooms are cheap. In Bera, the Ludibrium FM rooms are cheap.

    And only Scania has the first FM room of each channel populated. In no other world will you find a shop, much less an actual deal, in channel 13 fm 1.
    True, true. Might want mention that ch1 isn't the only place to find shops or deals then.






    .......

  8. #8

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    ooo! cool guide. 2 bad i dont have a shop permit though. :(

  9. #9
    Jr. Necki
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    The truth is that there are many supplements on the market right now from different brands but now my question is how to consume all of that without problems because I began to review the ingredients such is the case of those of the Dermal Repair Complex ingredients to know how good It was the composition and the formula of the product that I am consuming right now.

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