EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi!

I'm new to EVE and I find this game quite difficult.

I had some problems with using the market. I went mining and made a lot of ISK so i wanted to buy a new ship. I made a buy order on a Merlin type ship. My wallet says that I payed 370000 ISK for the order. But after two days I still don't have the new ship. I wanted to recall the order, but my wallet "says" i dont have any active buy orders. I remember setting the duration of the buy order to 3 days and to the whole region.

So did my money just dissapeared? what could have happened?

Also, is there any way to buy something imidiately or i always have to make a buy order and wait. Is there a shop where they have things to sell, or i have to buy everything from other players?

thanks for the answer.

When you open the market, the top right area called Sellers shows everyone who is selling Merlins, and the bottom right area called Buyers shows everyone who is trying to buy Merlins.

You should sort the Sellers area by price, just click on the price column like in Excel and it will sort; make sure the lowest price is shown at the top.

You should also sort the Buyers area by price, but with the highest price at the top.

Now, one of the first columns in both windows is Distance, how many star systems away from you the sellers and buyers are. When you buy something you have to go there to get it. When you sell something, other people have to come to where it is, to get it. Ideally you want to buy stuff from a distance of "Station", meaning it's in the same station as you. You can scroll down the Sellers area and you'll see that prices increase, but the Merlins may be sold closer to you, maybe even in station.

So, to buy a Merlin, you right-click the one you want (based on price and distance) from the Sellers, and you choose "buy this". You have to pay the listed price, and once you click OK, the ship will be deposited in your personal inventory at the station where it was being sold, so you may have to go get it.

A Merlin is typically 400k or so, it requires that many materials to manufacture.

Now if you don't like the price, when you click "buy this" you can put your own price in, but the window will turn red and you must switch it from Immediate to 1 Month or 3 Months. What you're doing now is you're adding yourself to the Buyers list in the bottom, offering to buy a Merlin from someone at the price that you want. Once you click OK, the money to pay for it is removed from your wallet, and the offer to buy will be listed. If it's not towards the top of the list in the Buyers window (if you're not offering a good price), people will ignore it, and after 1 month or 3 your money (minus taxes and fees) will be returned to you. Otherwise if people like your price, they will click the listing and agree to it, taking the money and giving you the ship.

You see offers to buy Merlins for 200k because when you reprocess something back to its original materials required for production, you only get about half of what's required to build the ship. So that's the reason for the price difference.

Or, people are trying to trick you and are offering low prices and high sell prices, to make a profit either way. There is some of that, but you can see the prices in many locations for many players, so you can tell whether the prices at your station are way too high/low, or if they're in the ballpark.

So, to recap:
For ships and gear, the sellers and buyers are players, NPC's only sell skill books. Sort your Sellers and Buyers by price. Right-click the seller that you want (based on distance and price) and buy; if you want the ship immediately you have to pay the price listed. If you don't like the price, you can specify your own price and be added to the list of Buyers below, with an offer to buy that can last 1 week, 1 month, etc.

All of your orders / offers are listed in the Wallet app ( Z on the bar), in the Orders tab. You can right-click the orders there and cancel them if you want.

Thank you guys, you helped me a lot!

If I may ask something on the subject :)
I've looked at the market, trying to sell.
Now if my item i want to sell says 200isk for example when i hover over it, why when I try to sell said item can I not sell it for 200isk?
Sometimes it can be a lot lower, is that because the station where I am trying to sell it is selling it for less than what I want?
I hope you understand my question :D

The estimated 200 ISK that you see when hovering over it is calculated by the game based on last month's average prices. It's an estimate, given for convenience; the game can't afford to check the market for every item that you have, to see the real prices, it would be too much load on the servers.

When you access the market interface, however, you see the prices that other players are offering for that item. May or may not be 200 ISK. May be 150 ISK in your region and 250 ISK in a different region, where they really want that item.

People have to take the risk to fill up a whole ship of those items and transport them past the pirates that are waiting between the regions, to sell them, and they can make a profit between 150 ISK and 250 ISK.

Anyway, the mouseover price is just an estimate based on last month's averages, and when you try to sell you are seeing the actual prices that other players offer. The economy goes up and down and is affected by supply and demand.

You can certainly hold on to your 200 ISK item and wait a few months to see if its price will go up, sell it then. You can switch the market to the HISTORY view, so you can see a graph of how the price went up and down in the past, much like stock trading, so you can make an informed guess about the future.

You can also try to reprocess your 200 ISK item and calculate how many minerals you would get out of it, and then look up the price of those minerals. This way you're turning an unwanted item into very desirable minerals that can be used to manufacture something else. You may even be able to sell the minerals for more than 200 ISK, it depends on what they are, and how much demand the manufacturer players have at that point in time.

It's a player economy. Players drive everything, prices, options, location location location, etc.

I'm not 100% sure how exactly the estiamated price is figured but I thought that the value of the minerals that it would reporcess into somehow figured into the price. Maybe a like a bottom limit or something.

Regardless of how it is figured I think more to the point is that there are no NPC buy orders up for your stuff. If another player does not put up an order to buy something then there is no order to buy it. Due to the player driven economy the Eve market very much acts like real life. You could look on kbb.com and find out that your car is worth $5000 but if you can't find someone willing to pay you that much for your car then is it really worth that or not? Maybe the best offer that you get on your car is $4200. Doesn't really matter if you live in a ****** area to sell that type of car or if you don't know how to sell a car well or what ever.

The real point is that the kbb.com value is just a theoretical number. Similarly so is the estimated value of stuff in Eve. It is a player driven economy. At the end of the day real people determine prices in this game and you have to find a buyer for everything that you want to sell.

Best way for a newbie to get a Merlin is to do the military career tutorial.

No. The estimate is just that - an estimate. What you actually get is going to be what someone else is actually willing to pay for it.

If you sell to an outstanding buy order, that's the price you get. If you set up your own sell order at your own arbitrary price, that's how much you get, when and IF someone else fulfills your order. It's entirely a transaction between players, and there is very, very little market activity that involves any sort of trade with NPCs.

Understand that most trade is done in "trade hub" systems - mostly Jita and Amarr, and to a lesser degree, Dodixie, Rens, and Hek. Traveling to one of those systems (especially Jita) will generally give the most "average" results. Relative to the trade hubs, market activity elsewhere is comparatively limited.