Recettear - An Item Shop's Tale

Yeah, the tutorial says to haggle for the best possible price, even though it's way more beneficial to raise the price by only 3 or 5 percent.

It's a pretty nasty trap.

Only haggle if it's an emergency case. Doing that most of the time is a fast track to a game over.

I wish it were a fast track. The insidious part is that you can make it to almost near the end of the "debt" part of the game by haggling to the max, maing it difficult to see what you did wrong.

Quite insidious, if it were done on purpose. Now it's a bit of a nasty oversight.

Gah, once I realized that haggling breaks your Just Bonus, I started making sure I was, as often as possible, within their safe zone. Problem is, now that I'm getting new adventurers (like Griff) into the shop, mostly I have high-end stuff hanging around the shop that he can't even begin to afford, dangit.

Also, boss runs are a lot easier when you walk in with a full set of best equipment, unlike regular runs where I take nothing and rely on Louie's skill to run off with every piece of loot. Calliou can suck a dick, he's too damn slow, and his specials (while nifty) aren't enough to make up for the fact that virtually every enemy can hit me between the time I hit the attack button and when he actually swings. -_- Need to try Charme again and start leveling her up, and hopefully start unlocking other adventurers, now that Arma and Tielle are coming into the shop regularly.

You'll change your mind about Caillou when you start grinding boss rushes.

Calliou's problem is that he starts out slow and pretty weak. When he levels up a bit, he turns into a monster. He'll gain enough SP to spam Sparkburst, which is his best skill. Eventually he becomes a glass nuke, he can destroy enemies and bosses. And you can get rid of the glass part with medicines and give him an extra 200 HP, which really turns him from squishy to nearly unkillable.

@Blue Ninja: if you want your adventurer to buy a new gear and they can't really afford it at normal price, just give them discount...better have them with new gear rather than wasting loot space to carry a piece of gear for them to change.

^ He still have crap defense tho, so still a bit of glass.

edited 6th Jan '15 7:46:57 AM by onyhow

Yes, but I don't always know what their spending cap is without stopping to look it up. Also they have a bad habit of picking up something they can't use, like Charme asking to buy a treasure, or Calliou buying a sword.

They have a higher tendency to buy fused items instead of store bought stuff. Of course it's still a bit luck based, because you have to make sure no one else goes for them, and they could still decide not to buy it, even if they have the funds.

So when your adventurer buys something do they only equip the best item in stock, or the latest one? Like say Louie buys a longsword first then buys a worn sword later. Does he still keep the longsword or is he now running dungeons with the worn sword?

I've actually had to deliberately set the price of a piece of equipment to the max value to stop them from buying before. You can see any stat changes from their purchase when they come up to buy something.

Ugh, I gotta say, the generic young men are the most annoying customers for me. They always want the price to be such a small percentage of the base cost.

The little girl customers are far more unreasonable. As are some of the adventurers you unlock, who start off with very little money. Oh, and the Alouette's fairy partner isn't very fun to price for either.

The young men are nice in comparison.

edited 7th Jan '15 12:38:49 AM by burnpsy

The young men have a pin price around 108%, while the little girls are barely at 105% and the bitch fairy is 103% (and will often complain that 105% is too high).

Oh, and let's not forget that one woman who shows up to the store with the intention to sell you something at something like 300-500% value, refuses if you drop her to something reasonable (breaking your combo), and never buys anything. Good thing there's apparently a way to stop her from spawning.

At least I can understand little girls not having much pocket money. But when one of these relatively grown men haggles at 118% and then walks out at 100%, I fume.

And yeah, that fairy is never fun.

But I get dollar signs in my eyes whenever Alouette walks in.

...maybe that's why her fairy is such a cheapskate.

edited 7th Jan '15 1:00:19 PM by Enlong

...Were you trying to sell an expensive item on request early in the game or something? Because NPCs start out with very little in their wallets and slowly build up to be able to buy more things. As stated, you also want to aim at their ideal prices, not charging 118%. Very few characters will accept 118% until later on.

edited 7th Jan '15 1:01:21 PM by burnpsy

Ah so that's it.

The equip the best item, so no need to worry much about it.

Allouette is so terrible with money that her fairy needs to be really cheap to compensate.

edited 8th Jan '15 6:09:55 AM by Heatth

"Best" includes if a weapon has, say, 2 more points in defense but 30 less in attack, though. >____>;

Hmmm, I thought they prioritized attack for weapons. But, yeah, it can get weird if the item is best in one stat but not in other.

That said, if I remember correctly there is an indicator when they are buying, that says when they will equip the sold item. I you wouldn't like if they do that, just refuse selling.

Yeah, basically, what other people said — the tutorial lies, don't charge 130%, go for like 108% or so ideally. I usually go for like 102% to Prime up to 125% for the guild master. It varies by character. I'm not sure how their percentages rise with customer rep.

And haggling is bad. Building customer rep and merchant level together are key to one-looping this game.

Yep. It's okay to haggle if you're making a big sale or something (like someone asking for a treasure, and you have something that can handle a payment on its own), but it never hurts to build up customer support.

Yeah. Overtime you can raise the initial percentage a bit, but specially early one your goal is to build support to gain levels and increase your costumer's wallet limit.

What are the benefits to starting a New Game+ vs. Endless Mode?