Everyone knows that merchants have only three ways to make money: the first is production; the second is processing; the third is buying low and selling high.
1. Production
Production is producing items yourself to sell. It is a basic but stable way to make money. Specifically, it often involves farming certain items, such as farming equipment or accounts for resale. There's not much to explain here. Usually, ordinary people farm manually, while big merchants use programs like macro scripts to farm multiple accounts simultaneously. Generally, people farm Black Magic Rings or Black Magic Horses since these two items can be farmed infinitely, whereas others require tickets.
2. Processing
Processing means acquiring materials at a low cost, then processing them yourself before selling them at a higher price to those in need. For example: buying junk accounts, improving them, and selling at a higher price (very profitable but risky), equipment skill synthesis (an item usually has three skills, and merging any one is useful for merchants, while getting the required skill yourself is difficult), equipment appraisal (using bound appraisal scrolls for cash conversion, with Shushan appraisal being the best due to its different martial damage bonuses).
3. Buying Low and Selling High
Simply put, this is hoarding goods. But which items are worth hoarding and which ones will just sit in your hands is something most people find hard to understand.
To determine whether an item is worth hoarding, there are several key points:
First, whether the item has value. Only good equipment/pets will be bought. The value of an item corresponds to the affordability of its target tier. For example, the Cold Moon set is only used by regular players. How much are they willing to pay? That represents the maximum price the item should have. Only when the market price is significantly lower do we hoard it.
Second, the supply and demand of the item. When supply exceeds demand, its price drops significantly; conversely, when demand exceeds supply, its price rises sharply. For example, a recent event introduced the Rose Sword, which has excellent attributes and skills that enhance agile dual swords. Many inexperienced people trying to make money bought it in bulk, but the cost was too low and production too high. Plus, there are only a few agile dual sword users in the world who would buy your sword. So Rose Swords cannot be hoarded. Another example is the Masked item. When VIP eggs came out, a lot of Masked items flooded the market. People thought hoarding them could make money, but in reality, only legendary Masks had real use value. Epic Masks were almost useless due to low mastery, and with huge quantities, they couldn't be sold. Legendary Masks, however, have high demand but low quantity, so their price will definitely rise.
Third, an item's value changes with updates. Take Character Experience Scrolls as an example. They were originally extremely rare and could sell for 120. After the Valentine's dungeon event, given out daily, their price fell to 30. After the event, when level 56 was unlocked, the price rose to 70. During the next Valentine's event, the price dropped back to 30. The longer you hoard, the more unpredictable it becomes. After level 50 equipment was released, merchants hoarding Sea God items suffered huge losses. Regularly monitoring updates and cashing in at the right time is an essential quality for merchants.
