Item pricing and supply/demand
Buying and selling prices stack several verified inputs: a person's own base markup and buying demand, per-category supply/demand values, settlement trade favorability, and in some people, personal quest price modifiers. This page explains the composition and the bucket accounting; use the trading tool to compare final prices.
Contents
What prices are made of
Verified price inputs include the merchant's base selling markup and buying-demand correction, such as 1.1x and -5%; supply, demand and base multipliers for each commodity, such as ale at 1.05x and additives at 0.3x; settlement reputation's trade favorability; and personal price modifiers that some people receive after quests. See the reputation article for tiers and person articles for service changes after quests.
Buying is also bounded by rules: whether stolen goods are accepted, durability thresholds and buying tier, confirmed per person profile.
Why prices differ
The table contrasts two verified merchants: for the same commodity, or even the same item, different people use different base markups and demand corrections; personal modifiers and settlement favorability stack on top.
| Person | Selling markup | Buying demand | Price scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bert | 1.1x | -5% | Osbrook |
| Dietrich | 1.15x | +0% | Mannshire |
Bucket accounting
Price aggregation is bucketed by item and category/material combination (currently 1214 items across 62 combinations). The compendium and trading tool show in-bucket results, not the final transaction price of every item.
Restock and supply cadence
Supply and demand are not fixed values: settlements and individual merchants bring in goods on their own restock cycles (the game checks hourly), and the affected goods' supply and demand are rolled again when a restock happens. Between restocks they drift toward neutral hour by hour, always inside an upper and lower bound. Merchant Stock and Repairs covers the cycles, restock modes and repair service.
Unverified details
Some intermediate values in the price chain are not yet closed in the same-release data and are not asserted here (documented gap); a final transaction price still depends on several conditions, so use the trading tool to compare.