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BUYING

Buying something in Arena can only be done at the mages guild and at the shops. You can bargain for the item that you want to buy. If you have a high PERsonality rating, than you can counter the price down to about 70- 75% of the asking price. If your offer is too low, the seller will tell you something like to come up with a real offer. The number of counter offers usually is 5, although you can also get 8 tries if you offer a price that is not acceptable for some time. The trick is to find out what about the minimum is you can get the item for. Offer about 6 times an offer that is refused and then make the minimum offer that is (normally) accepted. Then there is a big chance that the seller will accept that offer straight away, without first offering other prices somewhere in between. Caution: this does not always work, so you have to be careful. At least it worked well with me.

MAGES GUILD

In the mages guild you can buy potions, magical items and spells. I will discuss them in this order. For potions it is rather easy. It is all described above. The potion cost is just for one use only. You can, however, buy more potions at a time (there seems to be an endless number of one potion).

For magical items, the story is completely different. There are 3 types of magical items: 1. Those that lower your AR, 2. Those that boost your attributes and 3. Those that cast spells from the known spell book. I will discuss each of these separately.

For items that lower your AR (these are Bracelets, Belts, Torcs and Amulets), the cost is as follows:

These can then be negotiated upon.

Items that boost your attributes are very similar. Here's a list of the items and what they do:

Magical items that cast spells are different again. These are: Marks, Crystals, Bracers and Rings. Their cost is based upon three factors, namely:

1. The item type base cost,
2. The spell/ effect is casts and
3. The number of charges.

           X = B + N*Y      where X = Price            
                                  N = Number of charges
                                  B = Base cost and    
                                  Y = Cost per charge

N = (X - B)/Y

The cost per charge, Y, is:

The story for buying spells is very easy. You click the spell, you see the chart and you know the cost and casting cost. In the manual it said that the casting cost proportional was with the price. This is true, but the pity is that the casting cost does not drop even if you bargain the price down to 70%. For the rest it works as potions and as in the introduction.

SHOPS

Buying at shops is pretty much the same as described above. The weapons and armour that boost your skills give you a +10 boost. The items that can cast spells have their price based upon the spell it casts but NOT on the number of charges. Of course the price is based upon which metal the item is made of and the base price of the ordinary weapon. It is not so hard to guess, though, that Adamantium items will have more charges than a Silver one eg and Adamantium Flail of Life Steal has more charges than a Silver one. The number of charges given when you right-click the item is (often) not the real number of charges (see for yourself). Here is a list of extra cost if the weapon/ armour has a spell.

The price is also dependent on the metal. Here they are:

And the base costs for each of the weapons are:

As an example, if you want to know the price of an Ebony Dai-Katana of Firestorm, it is easy to compute, namely:

 
50 * 500 + 25000 = 50,000 gp (quite expensive <g<)

So, as en example, you want to know what an Elven Kite Shield of Levitation costs, it's

30 * 10 + 200 = 500 gp

SELLING

Selling can only be done at the equipment stores (a pity you can't sell at the mages guild). ARENA has a real buyers market when it comes to selling. If you sell weapons and armour, you can get at 99% of the asking price (if your PER is 100 and the condition of the weapon is NEW, see below). The first offer the keeper gives is 75% of the original value (if the weapon is NEW), and then you can negotiate. Sometimes you can get lucky and you can sell the weapon for more than the shopkeeper can sell it for. This is a bug in the game, but who cares?

If, however, you are selling magical items of any kind, you really get taken. The offers for magical items is about 18- 19% of the value at the mages guild and you can haggle that up to 25% if you're lucky and have a high PER rating. Potions are different. No matter what the price of the potion, he'll always offer 25 gp for it. Now, for cheap potions this is no problem, but for eg a potion of purification this is not a good deal. You can haggle the price for a potion up to about 33 or so, but again you need a high PER to do this.

A good rule to know what offer to counter with is the following:

add 1/3 of the offer to the offer made

2240/3 + 2240 = 2987 gp (you can use 3000 there I think)

Most items that you want to sell probably come from treasures in one or other dungeon or whatever dirty place. The problem is to know what things to sell and what things to keep. If you want to know what the item is, you could go to the mages guild and have it identified. However, it's going to cost you. A better way for weapons is the following: if you get a weapon and the name appears in tan in the inventory slot, equip it to look at it. Every metal has its own colour. Here they are:

This should give you a reasonable estimate of the weapons cost using the list above. If the item appears in red, then I suggest you right-click it and look at the damage it does. Then get your manual, and see what it is. A san example: a Long Bow normally has a damage of 2-12. If the Long Bow in red has a damage of 4-14, you know that it is a Dwarven Long Bow.

And if the item appears in cyan, try it on. If you can't, look at the damage. If there's no modification either, then you can either have it identified or sell it blindly. The lists above may then help you to identify the item. If, however, you can equip it, Use the item to see what it does. If it fires a targeted spell, it can be a Firestorm weapon. If it appears not to have done anything, check your Status by clicking the snake-staff icon. It may tell you more. Note: for such weapons, the number of charges is not shown. If it's an item that boosts one of the stats, you won't know unless you try. I do recommend dropping any weapons that have no modification or are not shown in cyan. They are ususally hardly worth anything.

If you encounter a magical item like a Bracelet, Belt, Torc or Amulet, then it might be a good idea to right-click it. They will either lower your AR or boost an attribute. Here are the lists for the items and selling prices:

Those items above are Bracelets, Belts, Torcs and Amulets. If you get one that boosts your attributes, here they are (for the boosts, see above):

If, however, the itm is a Mark, Crystal, Bracers or Ring, then only the number of charges is shown when you right-click. You can either: 1. Use the item as described above to see what it does, 2. Have it ID'd an then sell it or 3. Sell it blindly.

Some people drop the items that are -3 to AR and below. If you're hard pressed for gold, don't. If you have enough, it's up to you. And if you ever get angry with the shopkeeper and you are a high level character, you can always steal something...

If we have omitted anything or there is something not correct or you don't agree or any other comments, please let us know. We ain't perfect and we would like to help you and we are always open for suggestions!

Enjoy the game and may you all have full purses.

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