Freeborn Press

« Reaching a Goal | Main | Client Patch 2.0.9 »

March 17, 2001

Vendor Changes Observations

The following two observations on Vendor changes were posted to UOSS

Vendor Owners Pay Attention Please

This was posted on our Trade Forum by dasmart:

An issue with vendors has come to light that can be absolutely devastating.

The recent patch rollouts have changed the way in which gold is retrieved from a vendor. Basically, you now get a check for all the gold the vendor is carrying rather than just the max amount of gold you can carry at the time.

That's the problem: you get ALL the gold the vendor has, including the gold it needs for its own support! This means you get a check, dump it in the bank, log out, and the next day you find the vendor gone and all the items you placed on it for sale looted by other players when the vendor decayed minutes or hours after you left.

This may or may not be a bug but the way to handle it, I believe, is to carry some gold coin with you when you go to check your vendors. Retrieve your vendor's gold (automatically in check form..you can't change this), drop the gold coin on your vendor to maintain it, THEN restock your vendor with goods and use the Status command to confirm how long the vendor has before decaying (based on the prices of the goods you just restocked it with).

Thanks for the warning. I sure hope all vendor owners will take heed and pay their vendor with gold coins after retrieving the check for all gold from it. Here is how vendors deal with giving their owner money.

Player-owned vendors will be able to give the gold they are holding to their owners in bank check form if the amount is between 4999 gold and 1 million gold. If the gold amount being held for the player by the vendor is between 4999 and 1 million gold, the vendor will hand this to the owner in the form of a bank check (as long as the vendor is actually carrying this amount). If the amount is less equal to or less then 4999 gold then the vendor will hand the owner the amount in gold form. If the gold held by the vendor is more than 1 million gold, the vendor will retain the amount over 1 million gold until the next request for gold is made by the player.

More Detailed information on Vendors and Gold

James Wife of Napa Valley sent me this regarding the previous news post on vendors

Dear Xena

Thanks for the vendor post, but there was a mis-statement in the post about Player-operated vendors...It is true that when you say vendor gold now to collect your profits, the vendor places a check for all the money he can give you in your main backpack. If you have not personally dropped gold coins on his head recently, he will be UNPAID and will decay in his next refresh period (every 5 minutes the vendors take a portion of the money in reserve and send it home to their families in the country to support them)

Here is the new change: When a vendor runs out of support money now, they dissapear--vanish, with no body, no backpack containing your wares, and most importantly, no death scream. They just dissapear. This has been confirmed and replicated by me and one other friend of mine on a different account. I lost over a million in goods in the time it takes to recall to a bank and back. Therefore, I would advise-Do not wait to hand your vendor gold until after he has given you the check. Give him gold BEFORE you say "William Gold please" and then then retrieve your own pay. Just like in real life, employees should be paid before the owner sees any of the profits. Also, If any of you are missing the old statement our vendors used to give us about how many days they would serve you (I hate doing the math myself,) open your journal before you request information. Apparently, They still report this precious tidbit of info, but they report it first and since one can only say 3 lines at a time, the # of days worth of reserve pay that the vendors have on them gets pushed off your screen by the other 3 statements-- Gold available, gold in reserve (salary) and cost per UO day (which by the way lasts 2 real life hours.)

Various other readers also informed me of the fact that a Vendor has in fact two wallets, one that holds the money you pay him and one that holds the money from sold goods to other players. If there is money in the first wallet then the vendor will use that to maintain itself. As long as you keep the first wallet filled you are not in any danger, and you can collect money from the "sold goods" wallet without having to fear he will be gone some day.

Some believe that once the first wallet is empty, the vendor will instantly disappear, others believe that the vendor will start taking money from the "sold goods" wallet like they used to do long before bank checks even existed. In any case, if the vendor's first wallet is empty, chances of his sudden departure have increased dramatically. As James suggests, it's safest to pay him first and collect the gold later. And of course check your vendor's status frequently by asking...

I hope this clears up some of the confusion about vendors and their gold.

Posted by Keith at March 17, 2001 3:07 PM