Haggling is the main activity of the shop-keeping part of Recettear: An Item Store's Tale. After obtaining items and setting them out in the store Recettear to sell, Recette must haggle to be able to make a profit from the sales. There are two types of haggling: haggling to sell and haggling to buy. Both are based around the base prices of items.
How Recette haggles affects how quickly her Merchant Level grows.
For the exact mechanics of haggling, and optimal strategies, see Pricing Mechanics.
Haggling[]
Haggling to Sell[]
This is the first type of haggling introduced and the most common one in the game. In this type of haggling, Recette (controlled by the player) offers a customer a price on a certain item: if the customer accepts the price, the sale is made; if not, Recette has another chance or two to give alternate prices that may be more acceptable to the customer. Tear recommends that Recette sell items at 130% of their base price; however, it's more beneficial to sell items at 105-110% of their base price early on. This is because these prices will almost guarantee a Pin bonus, as well as make it extremely easy to build Just Combos (getting you to level up faster.) Selling items at these low prices will also have the additional benefit of swiftly increasing your customers' heart levels/budgets. Different customers often have different prices they're willing to pay, so sometimes 130% will be too high a price; that is when haggling is used. The point of haggling is usually to find the highest acceptable price for a customer, in order to obtain maximum profit.
Take note that there are two factors involved for a customer to accept the price. It has to fall within their currently accepted range and they have to have enough money to buy the item. The second part factors predominantly in instances where Recette offers up an expensive item to the customer.
Haggling to Buy[]
After achieving Merchant Level 2, customers will begin to occasionally offer to sell items to Recette. When this happens, there is a haggling process to determine the price of the sale. This process is similar to haggling to sell, except it has a different goal; the goal here is to buy an item at the lowest possible price. Tear recommends that Recette try to buy items at between 50% and 70% of their base price. Like with the 130% suggestion for selling items, this is not an absolute guarantee for every customer every time.
It can sometimes be difficult to tell from dialogue alone if Recette is buying. When haggling to buy, the text in the "What Price" window is yellow.
Suggestions to Customers[]
- see Main Article: Categories
After achieving Merchant Level 3, customers will begin to ask for a general category of item. Recette must then select an appropriate item (which may be either on the shelves or in storage, not in a Vending Machine) which she and the customer will then proceed to haggle over. Some categories match the headings on the item list (such as Food, Hats, Books, etc.), and others are a bit more vague (something sweet, something warm) but should not be too difficult to find a match. However, if Recette has no appropriate item to sell, the customer will walk away, breaking any Just Price chain (see below). Furthermore, players have to learn what each type of buyer can afford. For example, the little girl often asks for books and food, however she carries relatively little money on her. Thus if she asks for food and Recette offer a Melon, the girl may be unable to buy the item at or even below base price. Suggestions from adventurers provide a great opportunity to sell them equipment to use as long as players know approximately what they can afford, or are willing to sell under base price.
Advance Orders[]
- see Main Article: Categories
Similar to suggestions, customers will ask Recette to procure items which they will buy at a later date. Orders involve obtaining multiple items of a single category two or three days later. The items will be haggled over as a bundle, starting at the sum of the base price of the items. Recettear must be open at some point on the appointed day to fill the order, otherwise the customer will come in the next time Recette open shop, complain, and leave, breaking any Just Price chain (see below). As with suggestions, some customers may not be able to afford an expensive set of items.
The pricing status (Increased, Decreased, or Crashed) of the item placed in the first slot determines what percentage the customer expects to pay for a group of items. The status of all other items in the order are disregarded, and only their base prices will be used in calculating the customer's expected price. You can effectively use this to negate items that are down or crashed, or even make double off of items that aren't up.
"Actual number example (note that variations can occur): A man ordered two metal things. I placed a Price Up Rainbow Mail in the first slot, and a Price Crash SuperVend SDXK56 in the second. The base prices are 49,000 and 120,000 respectively, for a total of 169,000. The Just Bonus price ended up being 365,553 pix (216.304%), and the extreme willing to pay turned out to be 471,212 pix (278.824%). The same items with their locations swapped gave me a Just Bonus price of 65,145 pix (38.547%) and an extreme of 83,210 pix (49.237%)." ~Anonymous
As with any other sale, adventurers may equip items Recette sells as part of an Advance Order. If players wish to ensure that the adventurer equip a particular item, it is best make the other item(s) sold be a type that they can't equip or be of significantly lower quality. It is important to note however, that only ONE item sold to an adventurer will be equipped by them, so you cannot sell 5 'metal' things to fully equip Louie with all the best items at once.
The quantity of items requested is based on the reputation level of the customer, and maxes out at 5.
Elan's budget increases
Customer Reputation[]
If Recette tries to buy items too low or sell items too high, she will not get as much reputation with customers who frequent Recettear. As customer reputation increases, players will occasionally see hearts above the customer's head during a transaction. After this, they will have higher budgets and be able to purchase better items.
Recette must directly deal with customers in order to raise reputation; if customers buy an item from a Vender, no reputation is raised.
For detailed reputation mechanics, see Customer Reputation.
Notes[]
- Just (Price) Combo increases the amount of XP earned, and is caused by consecutive buying/selling without a customer wanting to change the price.
- Near Pin is when the price you have chosen is relatively close (within 5%) to the price the customer expects and nets 15 merchant exp.
- Just Pin is when the price you have chosen is almost exactly (within 0.5%) the price the customer expects and nets 30 merchant exp.
- Note that the price that a customer expects does not necessarily reflect the lowest price you can get from a customer.
- Attempting to haggle slightly past the acceptable range will generally cause customers to increase their buy/sell ranges. It's even possible to increase or lower the formerly offered price further in your favor and perform a successful transaction. (For example, someone wants to buy an item for 351 pix at most. You request 355 pix for the item. They decline and raise the limit to 370 pix. You then raise the requested price to 368 pix. The customer will purchase the item for 368 pix. These numbers are given only for an example, and weren't actually tested. However, the buy/sell limit appears to change a certain percentage, meaning a high priced item will make a larger jump when haggling.) See Pricing Mechanics#Haggling for the exact mechanics.
"There are different versions and sites to download the game from, so I don't know if this will help, but on English version 1.108 I've found the Just Bonus price to be found at the address 0730B588, and the buy/sell extreme to be found right next to it at 0730B574. The Just Bonus and extreme prices load when you're given the option to set the price. Unfortunately they do not factor in a customer's lack of money. If you want something to view those addresses, I'd recommend getting Cheat Engine. It's actually a game-hacking program, so it's possible anti-virus software will be against it due to its ability to affect processes. If the addresses provided don't work, you should be able to search for them on your own." ~Anonymous