Renaissance Guide to Running Your Own Vendor The goal for this guide is to provide players with an understanding of how to set up and maintain a vendor. Running your own vendor can be very rewarding. It also serves as the perfect platform to provide players who prefer the crafting/merchant UO lifestyle with steady income as well as provide a fairly safe means of transaction. They can also be used to just sell off some junk laying around the house! I'm a firm believer that the more vendors we have out there, the shard will be better off economically which may attract new players. So here goes....... The first thing that needs to be done is to acquire a contract of employment which will cost you in the neighborhood of 1200 gold. These can be bought from bankers or minters at any bank. The next part of this process is having access to a qualifying vendor house. By qualifying I mean a) you MUST own or be friended to this house and b) the house MUST be a "Public" house. The owner of the house must set it to "Public". Naturally, higher traveled areas make far better vendor houses than ones out in the middle of nowhere. Once you have acquired your contract of employment and a have a place to put a vendor, you’re ready to go..... Once you have decided where you would like to place your vendor, you must be standing on that exact spot and then double click the contract of employment. Now that your vendor has been placed, double click on the vendor and you will have a menu pop up. Notice your vendor has 1000 gold in it's account initially and will work for you for 4 earth days. I'll remind you again in a bit, but the number of earth days is the single most important thing to keep up with while running a vendor. I'll first explain how to simply put an item on your vendor for sale and then I will explain how to set up containers (that will not be for sale) to hold goods that will be sold. Whatever item you would like to sell, simply drag the item and place it in the vendors backpack. You will then get a message on the bottom left of your screen asking you to enter a price and description of the item like so..... In this example, I will simply enter 10000 and then press the Enter key and the price will be set....... You can also put a description of the item if you wish. In this example, I will set the price at 250 and set a description "Amazing Deal!" This is simply done by placing the description AFTER the price. You will enter it in like this..... 250 Amazing Deal! Now, more than likely you will be selling multiple items on your vendor and hopefully you like to keep everything nice and organized! This next part of the guide will show you how to set up containers that will NOT be for sale and allow you to place goods inside of them FOR sale. It's pretty simple, just take your bag, pouch, crate or whatever type of container you would like to use and place it in your vendors pack. Hit the Escape key, and that's it. This will set the container "Not For Sale". If you wish to set a container "Not For Sale" and would like a description, simply put the container in the vendors backpack and enter in a description ONLY. Example, Supplies! Now that you have set up a container to sell goods out of, the process works the exact same as before...simply place the item into the container and you will be prompted to enter a price and description...... If you wish to sell a container with items in it, simply drop the container on your vendor and give the container itself a price and all of items inside the container will default to "Not For Sale". This way you can sell such things as sets of armor or a certain items in bulk packages. At this point you should be able to load your vendor up with goods to sell. One thing I want to point out is if for some reason you fail to set a price on an item, it will default to a price of 999. It is good practice to go back and click an item to verify that the price was set properly. If this happened accidentally with a valuable item, it could ruin your day. Vendor item weight and count capacity is addressed in the FAQ section at the end of this guide! Now, I would like to talk about paying your vendor and daily costs. To add gold into your vendors account, simply grab a stack of gold and drop it on to it. In this example, I will be adding 500 gold to it's account..... Notice that the account value went from 1000 gold to 1500 gold as well as the earth days went from 4 to 6. Once again, it is very important to keep an eye out your vendors account and the number of earth days it is still good for. Now, vendor costs. Every 2 hours in real life = 1 UO day. The vendor charges a base rate of 20 gold per day. i.e. 1500/75 = 20 gold per UO day. Also, notice 1500/240 = 6.25 which is the amount of real life days. The amount of earth days are rounded down, hence the 6 earth day status. For every 5000 gold worth of goods you add to the vendor, the cost goes up 1 gold per UO day. Therefore, if you have 100,000 gold worth of goods, your costs to run the vendor would be the base rate of 20 gold PLUS 100000/5000, which would be 40 gold per UO day or 480 per real life day. This has been confirmed by Telamon himself fyi. More simply put, the more stuff you sell value wise, the faster the vendor will run out of money. Overall though, the cost of running a vendor is pretty reasonable compared to what you can make if your selling the right goods. Let's talk about claiming your coin once you've made a sell. Once you make a sell, you can access your vendors information menu and you will see a value for "Gold Held For You" as shown..... To collect your money simply say "-Vendor Name- Collect". In this case, the vendor is named Adam, so I will collect by saying "Adam Collect". After this, the vendor will ask you how much of the money he is holding would you like to collect. I will then enter in 10000 although you can take out whatever amount you want up to the 10000 gold the vendor has. The vendor will place ALL of the gold into your bank. The vendor will never deposit gold straight into your backpack. If the amount you are collecting is 5,000 to 1,000,000 gold, it will be deposited in check form into your bank. If it is below 5,000 it will be deposited as cash. 1,000,000 is the maximum value that can be collected in 1 request. You will simply have to repeat the process in order to collect more. *NOTE* If your vendor's account reaches 0 but has money that it is holding for you from sales, it WILL draw this money out to pay itself for service fees. This is highly dangerous because if the account is already at 0 and you "Collect" your gold, the vendor will then automatically have 0 funds to pay itself! Customizing the Look of Your Vendor To put your personal touch on the vendor, you can completely customize the way it looks! Some people may find this entertaining and some may not give a poo....either way, we will cover the basics in this guide! You can access the customization menu through the main menu. From there you will be given a menu where you can select different types of clothing and different colors for those clothes. Here are some basic examples of what you can do with your vendor! A side note for this, whenever you close out the menu for customization, the vendor will automatically face the direction towards you. As I said before, if your into everything looking nice and being organized you want your vendor facing the correct way! This is what happens when you cancel the menu out.... To correct this, simply stand in the direction you want the vendor to face and re-open the customization menu, then close it out the same way as before...... The final step to completing the customization of your vendor is to give your shop a name! This feature is accessed through the " Shop Details" tab on the main menu. The purpose behind setting your shop's name and what type of goods it sells is tied into the Vendor Advertising system which can be accessed here. UO:R Vendor Advertising Information You will be given a menu that looks like this... Selling Bulk Order Deeds on Your Vendor Selling BODs on your vendor is a simple thing to set up as well as a very profitable one! The first thing you want to do is place your BODs into a BOD book. Once you open it, you will see a menu with a column for pricing. Click the blue icon for the BOD you wish to sell and you will be prompted to enter a price.... Enter in your price... Once the BOD price is set, the book is ready to be placed on the vendor. It is very important that you set your BOD book to "Not For Sale" by using the escape key or entering in only a description when prompted. This will allow players to browse through your book and purchase the BODs at the prices you have set. In this example, I have left a few BODs set at 0 for the price to show that they simply will not be for sale rather than be taken for free. So if you forget to set a price on a BOD, the only thing it's doing is prohibiting players from purchasing it. Another useful piece of information is that the prices you set in the book DO NOT accumulate and count towards the cash amount being sold on the vendor. For example, you can have 250,000 gold worth of BODs you are trying to sell but it will actually count as 0 gold because it only looks at the BOD book which is set to "Not For Sale". This is what the menu will look like once the book is on the vendor..... That pretty much covers the basics of running your own vendor. I will go through a list of FAQ's to hopefully tie up any loose ends I may have left. I hope someone finds this useful and I encourage players to participate in setting up and running your own vendor! FAQ's Regarding Player Ran Vendors Can items be stolen off of my vendor? No, they cannot. What happens if my vendor runs out of funds? The vendor will "Collapse" and drop a backpack containing your goods to the ground, free for the first person that notices it! I'll warn you once again, make sure the "Earth Days" column does not reach 0! It's a good habit to keep at least a weeks worth of pay on your vendor incase something happens and you can't manage it for a few days. Can I select a name for my vendor? No, you cannot. Names are generated randomly at the instant the vendor is placed. I don't want my vendor anymore, how do I get rid of it? Simply say the command "-Vendor Name- dismiss". A deed will then be placed in your backpack that will allow you to replace the vendor. The account balance of the vendor will also be maintained with this process. Can other characters on my account access my vendors management menu? No, only the character that placed the vendor has access to the vendor's menu. What are the weight and item count capacities of my vendor? Your vendors backpack has the same weight and item count restrictions as your bank. No weight limit with a 125 item maximum capacity. Once I place an item on my vendor, if a sneaky thug is hiding close by to use the "Vendor Buy" command hoping to purchase my item at the default 999 price BEFORE I set my desired price, will they succeed at doing this? No they will not. Once an item is placed on a vendor, one must wait 2 minutes before it can be purchased via the "Vendor Buy" command. This will give you plenty of time to set your desired price and double check it to make sure it is correct. I want to place my vendor in a different location, can I do this without losing the wages I have already paid the vendor? Yes, simply use the "-Vendor Name- Dismiss" command as discussed above and a deed will be placed in your backpack for the vendor with wages kept. You can then proceed to the new location and double click the deed to replace it.
Appreciate the positive feedback. This was my first guide to put together and was hoping it would turn out good! If anybody has suggestions or comments on something to add please, let me know. Thanks.
Excellent guide! I learned quite a few things. I don't think there is a weight restriction, is there? I've got a vendor right now selling at least 2000 stones worth of stuff.
You are correct sir, thanks for pointing that out. I was pulling some pretty dated information from stratics. The only thing that applies is the 125 item limit.
I do have a technical question relating to player vendors. I had a vendor that I wanted to turn back into a deed. I removed most of the gold from him, leaving only 40 gold coins in his account. Then I did vendor name dismiss, the 40 gold coins went into my bank and the vendor vanished. He did not turn into a contract deed. I am guessing there must be some minimum gold value that the vendor must have in his account in order for it to become a contract deed, but I do not know what this minimum value is.
I would have to look into that and talk to @Chris to find out for sure. I've never seen them not give you a deed back.
Sounds like the gold was being held for you, and not in the vendor's account. If you said '(vendor) collect' and left him with 40 for you and none for him, he will abandon you when replacing/dismissing. I do not think the gold in the vendor's account would go into your bank.
Under the Contract Of Employment is A 30 Day Vendor Adverising Contract. How does this advertising work?
I have a question from the housing compendium: What does this actually mean, in terms of the house being refreshed or the "active" status of the account? I was under the impression that if a house is not refreshed within a 14 day period, it collapses. Does this mean it doesnt even start the process of collapsing until after 14 days, and it doesnt collapse until the 90th day? Is the account considered "active" if you log in, or if you refresh the house, or if you play for a certain period of time each month? Is it considered "inactive" if I just login and refresh my house and nothing more?
