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This thread was made as a guide for people who wish to develop communication skills with regards to haggling. First thing to expect is to give up your hopes that after reading this thread you’re going to be good at it. Haggling is an art, a sales talk type of art. It is practiced and if you’re not the type that would spend time typing a message and asking someone for a decent deal then expect nothing is going to happen after you read this.

First thing to keep in mind when you want to buy an item from a person is that they are in control of the trade. They have something you want. Things that give them more control is that when the item is sought by many, its supply is low and it’s inherently expensive.

How to shift some of that control to you? The obvious answer is that you also have what the seller wants, currency. Offer big but don’t offer you’re entire intended lot. Your leverage is your gold and a few items you could throw in for a bribe, if you play your cards well then it would be a smooth deal.

Person A for example is the vendor. Person A prices the item for 5 gold (just an example), but you intend to buy the item at 4.5 gold. You sent a private message to them to initiate a negotiation. How much would you offer? Tell them you want to buy it for 4 gold. Why? Don’t give out everything you have on hand, play it. Person A thinks and says to you that they want your offer a little higher. Offer 4.25 gold and wait. Most of the time they would accept this offer already but there are cases when you got greed into play so they go asking further for 4.5 gold which is your intended price from the start. There was an opportunity where you have saved a greater amount of gold if they have accepted it at 4.25 but you wouldn’t have had that opportunity if you went straight to a 4.5 gold offer immediately.

That type of tactic works for applying a job. Let’s say you want a salary that says 28-30k (just a hypothetical example), your employer asks you how much would they pay you for your services by giving them a range you were hoping for. You told them you’d accept a salary of 30k-35k range. Obviously your employer would like to save some money for the company they’re running so they’d tell you for a counter offer “How about 30k?” or it could be lower like, 29k or 28k because you have someone that wants to pay you cheap. Would you accept? Definitely! He’s still offering you your intended price and you gave the employer the satisfaction of thinking they got a good deal from you well in fact you did get more out of it.
By this time I think you get the essence of the thought I would like to impart. That type of tactic is common but works magic on gaia. Remember that the people who are into this site aren’t business minded, kids and teenagers or even adults who have fewer clues about business are easy to be swayed.

Only a handful of people who know, apply and live with these kind of tactics on gaia and usually they’re the ones who succeed well in business.

Another method to haggle is employing the use of items that have inherent expensive value but are obtainable if time is invested wisely. A solid solution is the components used in alchemy. Caches can be bought from bi-frost and the components they contain can be generated. Because inflation helped increased their value people who are new or not familiar to how alchemy works or have not dwelled much into research of the craft fail to appraise items like these.

Gold caches aren’t worth more than a million gold each. They have an estimated ratio of getting 1 out of 20 caches or 4-6 common per 100 caches and a range possible recorded range of 1-11 per 100 unopened philosopher caches. But their current market price with respect to the time this was written runs two million gold.

Yes, you can use the item as leverage to increase your bargaining power. Haggling isn’t just about getting the item you want lower, it’s also competing to be the best buyer the seller has on the list. You’re not the only one bidding for the item so do some sweet talking while you’re at it.
Another thing to keep in mind about haggling is that you don’t know fully what runs into the mind of the person you’re buying from. They might have agreed to your proposed price because they need the gold quick, charitable enough to cut it low, or already have profited greater even at your proposed priced.

Even with these mentioned guides on getting the best deal there’s a chance that you’re dealing with a witty vendor who might also do sweet talking to you. What are the common tactics that sometime people overlook?

If you can’t buy it then don’t beg for it. There’s a slight chance that you’re going to strive grind some gold to get the item and if you bought it from the vendor that gave you that remark, you’re fueling his attitude. They’re going to do it again and again as long as there are people buying from them and know that they are indispensable. See sand and slate market for a concrete example. There’s less chance on negotiating to someone who trades these kind of items for a low or true value price. Even if you explain statistics to them, it would be like telling a goldfish how to do poetry.

Is it an absolute less chance? No. Try spending time with them if you got the opportunity. Fish on Durem even if you fail at it, you can meet some people good at it there and perhaps score a good trade if they feel a liking for you. Works for me anyway. You increase your leverage when you get some connection/rapport on your buyer.

Another way to get around the boldur market somehow is to set up a contract with them without being overtly desperate. How about a trade? You get me those (insert number of boldurs) and I’ll pay you (insert gold amount) each and some MC items. Make the offer seemingly big, if you get a chance to grab an MC item hold onto it and wait for it to inflate. I experienced this when I bought alruna’s rose and enchanted book for less than two million, now it’s inflating big time. If I used those items on a bargain, an unsuspecting vendor unfamiliar would just look at the market price and say yes immediately.

But that latest method mentioned above costs much than what I’m trying to buy? Yes it’s true. What costs today now will costs greater tomorrow judging from where the gaai economy is heading. On the long run of things, you have saved some gold because you kept those MC items on inventory. To your buyer’s eyes, you just offered them bigger but on the long run, the amount of boldurs they sold to you might be inflated on the future and compared to the present circumstances, your current bargaining price is relatively cheap. It’s all about timely investment.

The success of haggling is mostly situational and how you deal with your seller. If you don’t have the patience to talk then deal with the price. Don’t expect that every haggle will get you what you want, on most cases it’s a 50-50 win, you both lose half yet gain half as some sort of compensation.
That’s about it I could share in making the best out of haggling. Good luck on practicing the art of doing sales talk. Not everyone who knows it can do it.