Understanding pre-orders

Marketplace

Understanding how pre-orders works

Most item listed on the marketplace can be pre-ordered by players for the amount they’d like. When there are pre-order for an item, there’s a chance that this item will skip the bid phase and immediately go to the player with the highest pre-order. But the game barely tells you anything about how they work internally. In a recent patch, some changes have been made to that system, but it’s still confusing for most players because of how poorly the wording of that patch was.

When does an item gets pre-ordered?

At the time being there’s 2 possibilities :

  1. The listed item is a PEN item. If this is the case, there’s a 100% chance that the item will go to pre-order. Obviously it can still go to the bid phase if no-one has a pre-order on said item.
  2. The listed item is NOT a PEN item. There’s a 45 % chance than this item goes to pre-order. The initial chancee was 40%, but this got changed and increased by 12.5% : 0.4 * 1.125 = 0.45

The 40% has been datamined but I haven’t personnaly extensively tested it myself. Feel free to use your own values based on your own testing if you don’t trust that data.

How much money do I get when someone preorder my item?

This is where it gets tricky.

First of all, let’s define those variables :

  • price : It’s the price you register your item at.
  • preorder : It’s the price of the highest pre-order for this item.
  • tax : The marketplace tax, which is 0.845 with a value pack.

The formula has a condition which can be expressed using a very basic if/else block as :

IF (preorder < price * 3) THEN (0.2 * preorder + 0.8 * price) * tax ELSE (price * 1.4) * tax

That formula is all you need. But we’re gonna dig a bit deeper. Let’s imagine 2 scenarios, the first one where the condition is true, and the second one where the condition is false.

First Scenario

In this scenario the condition is true which means we have preorder < 3 * price.

You might be wondering how am I getting this condition by the way. Well, it’s just a simplification of the non-sense wording from the infamous patch note that I spoke about earlier where they said :

  • The amount of bonus Silver granted to the seller, when selling items via Pre-Order in the Marketplace, has been adjusted.
    • When you sell an item via Pre-Order, you will get a bonus of 20% of the difference between the the registered price and the price at which the item was sold.
    • The difference cannot be bigger than twice the registered price.

Which means : (preorder - price) < 2 * price, which gives our preorder < 3 * price, which is much simpler to grasp.

  • So we have ((preorder - price) * 0.2 + price) * tax
  • Let’s simplify … (0.2 * preorder - 0.2 * price + price ) * tax
  • Which give us (0.2preorder + 0.8price) * tax or if you want numbers with a value pack directly : 0.169 * preorder + 0.676 * price

Here’s a short example :

  • I’m listing my item for 100 millions.
  • The pre-order for it is 150 millions.
  • 150m - 100m is lower than 2 x 100m , so assuming a VP, we can safely use our formula : 0.169 * 150 + 0.676 * 100 = 92.95

We would get exactly 92.95 millions for this trade, which is quite nice :D

Second scenario

In this scenario the condition is false, which means that preorder >= 3 * price…

… Or with the patch note wording : (preorder - price) >= 2 * price.

“The difference cannot be bigger than twice the registered price.”

  • So : (price * 2 * 0.2 + price) * tax
  • Let’s simplify that to : price * 1.4 * tax
  • … and with a VP : price * 1.183

Which means that the maximum amount of silver you’ll get, no matter how high the pre-order is, will be price * 1.183.

Following on previous example, let’s assume than instead of 150m, the pre-order for it is 300m.

  • 300m - 100m is equal to 2 * 100m, so assuming a VP, we know that we’ll get this 100 * 1.183 = 118.9

We would get exactly 118.9 millions for this trade, which is very good ! Note that it doesn’t get higher than this, it’s the maximum.

Bonus scenarios

Now that we know how the formula works, let’s have a few quick practical scenarios.

I’m selling something I should probably keep…

Let’s assume you are selling a lot of something extremely valuable but very poorly priced by the game. The pre-order is ALWAYS going to use the second formula price * 1.4 * tax If you want to know on average how much you’ll get for your sales, we can get to this formula:

There’s a 45% chance your item will get pre-ordered, so :

  • ((0.55 * price) + (0.45 * price * 1.4)) * tax
  • Which we can simplify to price * 1.18 * tax
  • or assuming a VP : price * 0.9971.

So let’s assuming that for some reasons you are selling a lot of something like stonetail fodder (T9 horse attempt material), you will get on average fodder_price * 0.9971 because the demand for this item is super high since player wants their pegasus ! Always think twice before selling those valuable items, because you might regret that decision later.

I’m RNG carried and got a 40fs TET/PEN accessory/item

This one is super easy but I assume most players wants a quick reference to it. If you’re selling such an item it’s :

  • PEN item : price * 1.4 * tax and with a VP : price * 1.183.

    • Given the state of the economy and how rare this items are, there shall always be a pre-order, and it will be high enough. Make sure to post a server announcement before posting such an item and you should always find someone to pre-order it.

      • NB: On a newly released server, this might not be the case. Consider not selling.

      • This might not always be the case. Don’t blame if your PEN Reblath didn’t get pre-ordered, or if nobody has any money left for some reasons…

  • TET item or lower

    • 55 % chance to be price * tax or with a VP price * 0.845 and
    • If the pre-order is high enough : 45% chance to be price * 1.4 * tax and with a VP : price * 1.183.
    • If the pre-order isn’t high enough : 45% chance to be (0.2preorder + 0.8price) * tax and with a VP : 0.169 * preorder + 0.676 * price

Let’s imagine a scenario with a TET Ogre ring :

  • Base current price : 86 363 635
  • Base max-price : 94 999 999 (110% of current price)
  • TET base price : 6 909 090 816 (800% of base price)
  • TET max-price : 7 599 999 898 (110% of TET base price, this is the price you register your item at.)

If you’re unlucky you’ll only get 7 599 999 898 * tax, so 6 421 999 913 silver with a VP. You will be unlucky 55% of the time.

If you’re lucky, you’ll get more more. Use this formula to determine how much based on the estimated pre-orders (0.2preorder + 0.8price) * tax.

BUT if the preorder is equal or greater than 22 799 999 694 silver, you will get price * 1.4 * tax and with a VP : price * 1.183.

Which means that the best case scenario will yield you 8 990 799 879 silver which is signifcantly higher than the worse case scenario. If other players are wealthy, this should happens 45% of the case for ‘meta’ items.

So there’s a difference of 2 568 799 966 silver between the worse and the best case scenario, which is not negligible !

What Should I Take Away From This?

  • If there’s a pre-order set for your item, there’s a 45% chance it goes to pre-order, and a 100% chance if it’s a PEN item.
  • The maximum amount of silver you can get for a pre-ordered item is : price * 1.4 * tax.
  • You get the maximum amount of silver if the pre-order is at least 3 times higher than the price of your item.
  • If you don’t get the max, this is what you get : (0.2preorder + 0.8price) * tax