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THINGS I WISH I'D KNOWN EARLIER - NPCs, Brokers, and Merchants

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* Use the Brokers or Black Market Fences to see what people have for sale. There is a broker in each major city zone and in each of the wholesaler tradeskill instances (near the entrance in Qeynos, at the base of the stairs in Freeport).  Fences are usually in more obscure areas, have the same fees as Brokers, and aren't so picky about selling to people of a different alignment  Check with your local guard for the nearest one!

* If you want to sell things on the broker, open the store, click on the sell tab, and put a box or bag in the vendor container slot. You can then put things in the container to sell. The default price listed is the most you could expect to get from an NPC merchant for the item - generally you want to sell for higher than this. Use the "Search the Broker" button to see what the going market value is for the item, then you can set your price accordingly.

* You can have as many characters as you like selling on the Broker at one time, but you must log in with at least one character at least once a week, or they will all have their stores removed until you do log on.

* Specialty vendor boxes can be made by Carpenters out of rare woods (except bone or alder). These have MANY more slots than regular boxes. Once in a vendor slot, these boxes can also be placed in your home, allowing people to buy directly from your house without paying a broker fee.

* Some merchants are greedier than others and will pay you less for things that you sell to them. Check with a few merchants and you will generally be able to tell which ones are greedy and which ones aren't. Merchants in "convenient" locations (such as out in the middle of popular hunting areas) are generally more greedy - except for a "Gratified Merchant," who will give you the best price possible every time. These are spawned from a "Distressed Merchant." See the "Out and About In the World" section for more information.

* You can mark items in your inventory as not for sale to merchants by highlighting them and clicking the check box at the bottom of the merchant window.  Also, bags can be flagged so none of their contents will be listed for sale to a merchant by right-clicking, selecting Bag Options, and marking the check box.

* If you should accidentally sell your brand new Fabled weapon to an NPC merchant, you do have a chance to get it back!  The Buy Back tab will list the last 10 items you sold at the same price as you sold it at.  Only your ten most recent sales will be available, but they will remain available indefinitely (or until you sell more stuff to the merchant).

* Brokers and Black Market Fences take a commission based on where they are vs where the item you purchase comes from.  If the seller is in a city with the same faction as the Broker, the fee is 20%, if on opposite faction the fee is 40%.  All brokers and fences now sell items from all cities.

* If you try to access your bank or a merchant and get the message "you are too busy", there are generally three possible reasons why. Either you have your attack mode on, you have a trade window up, or you are currently interacting with an NPC. Hit escape a bunch of times, make sure you are not in combat mode, and then try again.

* If an NPC speaks to you, or waves at you as you get near, they may have a quest that they want you to do. Note that they may continue to wave at you even if you already have their quest. Also, some NPCs will try to hail you for quests that are no longer in the game, particularly in the starting hamlets.

* If you need help finding a particular NPC (perhaps to finish off a quest) but have forgotten where they are, click on a guard, type in the name of the NPC and you will be given a waypoint path to that NPC. Note: you often do not have to type in the full name. This is particularily helpful when you want to find and NPC with a crazy unpronouncable name. Job titles, such as mender or broker will also work. If there is more than one NPC in the area who matches the partial-name or title you type, the waypoint path will guide you to the closest one.

* If an NPC speaks to you in gibberish (with a symbolic font), you do not understand the language this NPC is trying to speak. In the various starting hamlets of Freeport and Qeynos, scribes sell language primers for the races in that hamlet for 12s each.  The Linguist in Neriak and one of the Scribes in Kelethin sell the language primers for all PC languages.  As soon as you purchase the primer, you automatically learn the language, and you can only buy primers for languages you do not already know. In the hamlets, most (all?) of the NPCs who require you to know their native tongue give quests. There are quests to learn languages for some mob races (like Gnoll).

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