Playing the Market: a
Quick Guide to Brokers

by Darelas

QUESTION

Where can I find exchange brokers in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes? How do
they work?

ANSWER

In each capital city in Vanguard you’ll find exchange
brokers. These brokers are an important element to the game. Players
use brokers to trade goods with other players. They are usually near
the bank in any major city and can be found by hailing a guard and
asking for directions. The brokers allow you to have items for sale
while you are playing or offline, alleviating the tedium of standing
around trying to sell them to passersby.



Most items can be sold via the brokers, including crafted items,
harvested materials, and loot drops. Items not allowed on brokers
include no-drop items such as those that are part of a quest, or soul
bound items.

Buying From a Broker

Once you find the exchange broker for your area hail him or right click
to begin a transaction.  Select the "I would like to browse
the local market." conversation point, and you're in. If you know the
name of a specific item you are searching for, you may enter it and
search. Or if you know the name of a seller whose wares you’d
like to browse you can search that way.



If you’re not looking for a specific item or seller, you have
many options to find what we desire. First, select the sphere related
to the item you want.  This is important to limit the number
of items your search returns. There are other drop-down menus that
allow you to set search parameters. The main ones I use are: Sphere,
Class, Slot and Rarity. If you want to see everything adventure related
for your class, then you would leave out slot and rarity. Also, if I
find an Item that I like, for example: Murk Leather Leggings, I will
restart my search by placing "Murk Leather" in the Item name field and
see if there are more pieces to that set. You can also narrow down a
search to a specific item to easily compare prices from different
vendors.

Selling Via a Broker

Now you know the basics of finding items on the Broker. What about
selling them?  For that you will need to use the "Your Market
Items" tab. Here you can add items you would like to sell on the open
market.



There are many philosophies on "playing the market." Before you sell an
item, you’ll want to do a search to see how others have
priced the item you want to sell. If you cannot find that item, you may
try looking for an item around the same level/quality, or from the same
armor set (like my “Murk Leather” example above.)
If you can find that item, then you have a few options: 1.) sell around
the same price as the majority; 2.) sell below everyone else to get a
quicker sale; or 3.) take some average in between the low-balls and the
greed-mongers.



The key to playing the broker market well is to watch the market daily
and see what is selling, and then use that as a basis to decide where
you should place your price. If an item is selling well, then
it’s worth your time to price it a bit higher and wait for it
to sell. Otherwise, it's better to just low-ball. (*Wink, wink! Nudge,
nudge!*) If you really feel you want to get involved in playing the
market, you may even purchase the low-ballers, and then sell higher.
There is much more risk involved in this method, but if done well it is
one way to gain wealth.



The one caveat is that you can only list 10 items on any given broker
at one time. If you want to hop from city to city, you can list 10
items on each broker in the game, but that involves a good bit of
travel. You can also use alt characters to mule items.



So, now you know where to find a broker, and how to use them. It's time
to go play the market and earn your fortune. See you on
Woefeather. Perhaps you can buy me a horse!

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