First off, can someone confirm for me that main shop prices don't change? I've never noticed them do so, but I've never really paid much attention.
I'm planning to set up a shop for main shop items at a 20% discount of original prices, so I just need to be 100% sure those are set in stone (I really want a low maintenance shop...)

Second, why DO user shop prices fluctuate so much? I understand of course some items may be rarer to restock, so demand goes up, but I feel like I've seen a lot of price differences that just don't make sense to me. Can someone explain to me how the user shop averages are determined? Also, I was under the impression that they change once a day, but I feel like I've seen prices change more often then that. Do the prices change throughout the day, or just once?

Thanks in advance.

- User shop prices fluctuate based on a lot of factors. Prices go up if the Recycle Beast asks for an item, or if the weekend quest asks for that type of item frequently. On the flip side, prices tend to drop for items given out by the Magic Box or if someone randomly decides to sell off their hoard of 5000 Blanoirs. There are a lot of factors at play, but it all boils down to supply and demand.

Setting your prices below NPC shop prices is a good way to lose money. You should really be pricing based on player shop prices, because if an item is sold out of an NPC shop then people will be forced to buy from you.

Oh I forgot to mention I don't buy/sell. I just sell items I receive from quests or where ever else so anything I sell for is some kind of profit. That way I can afford to set "discount" prices (which might actually be way higher than user prices) in one shop. My other shop is for "everything else" and thereby dependent on user prices. I just hate having to go through my shops each day and reprice everything! I miss the autopricer...

I want to be generous. If a store is sold out, you can get it from me for the same price, plus a 20% discount! Take advantage! <3

the prices in official Subeta shops are not fixed and go gradually up depending on demand and inflation. Least rare items are more likely to have their prices go up because it is based on actual total number of sales and the rare items aren't around enough and there are less of them for the algorithm to influence their price as much.

I am a buyer and seller and I will sharply discount stuff because the sP I get now is immediately useable to make more sP. Yeah, I could wait and price stuff "at the price it should be" spits but this is an sP-loser for my business model. There isn't anything nice about it.

People autoprice, and this can cause the price of something to settle quickly at a new lowest price if more than one discounter comes along or if someone mistypes their price, or if someone is playing price games with Subeta's transparent market.

What said only works if you don't have a discount card, don't have the 15% bonus going on top of that, and if you restock from NPC shops only.

So there's no easy way I guess.... oh well.

no easy way for what? Autopricing is pathetically easy, and stuff sells at a decent rate when you do it everyday.

Restocking here does take a bit of learning, but you were gonna just sell Quest prizes which you are getting thrown at you whether you want them or not, right?

The algorithm for figuring out average user price, this is something that we are deliberately not told, BTW. My best guess it that it changes over two weeks though, not hourly. If you see a sudden change like that IMO is that it reflects something that happened awhile ago.

like said, main shop prices change slowly over time, but not by much, and you can usually see the current official price by hovering over an item and checking where it says "official price: ____ sP"

the problem with your method is that other users will autoprice and if your price on an item is lower, theirs will drop to match, resulting in several items suddenly selling for cheaper, by a lot or a little; and if someone doesn't snap them up quickly, it will continue for a short time, and your 'generous' price will no longer stand out and will in fact have caused a loss for many other users, who will probably be annoyed to find that they've lost out on profit.

Darn. So I can have generous prices without disturbing the market? That's frustrating. I just want to make people happy. Oh well. I'll find a way to sell my stuff for a discount without using the shops!

You can advertise in the Advertising forum but most restockable items probably won't sell that way just because a lot of people just buy those items for quests most of the time. They're just going to buy the lowest in the shop search rather than checking the forums for them, unfortunately.

If you want to sell stuff for a much lower price, and be generous, I have a suggestion for you: Pawn them!

The pawn shop will pay you a small sum of sP for your items. Then, the items will go into the Pawn shop for a fraction of the official price. When somebody searches for the item, the Pawn shop will show up in shop search if it's still there. But the Pawn shop won't affect people autopricing, nor do people tend to compete with the pawn shop's prices.

It's a great feeling to snag a rare item from the pawn shop. So that would be a good way if you wanna be generous to other users, and would also be an extremely easy way for you to turn your items into sP, cuz you don't have to look at the prices at all, just pawn them.

You WILL lose a lot of potential sP if you pawn everything, but it sounds like you don't mind that anyway, so here you go.

Thanks . Ah that sounds much easier. Yeah, since everything I'm selling is from quests, I just want to get rid of it. I didn't know that's how the pawn shop worked. So I can just sell everything there, and the pawn shop resells it? That's so much easier for me. I have no patience. I just want quick sP. I think I'll just close all my shops then and just pawn everything from now on.

Thanks to all who replied. I understand the market much better now!

you are welcome. I am glad you have found a solution that works for you.