Why undercut by a 1,000+??

[SolArisa]

It will sell if you price it same or a cent less, why gouge it by so much? I don't understand

Well, I will make you understand.

Undercutting by 1 gil is nothing else than childish behaviour. A mature approach to staying competitive would be offering your product to the lowest existing price, not undercutting it.
Of course, since the market system in ARR is broken by design (e.g. by allowing to enlist an item and even adjusting prices without a fee), this 1-gil-undercutting behaviour is hard to avoid. Whatever you do, someone will undercut you by 1 gil just to be listed ahead of you in the item overview. And that's highly annoying, because it simply leads into an endless undercut-each-other-by-1-gil downward spiral. Undercut more, turn off childish mode and offer a real bargain, and the spiral will end earlier.


As a "senior crafter" who capped all crafting classes when each one took about a month of dedication, I lost my patience at some point. I am able to create any item basically form scratch without buying any ingredient from the market. So, at this point, I told myself: "You want to undercut me? Well, no problem, I can show you what undercutting really means".

And since then, I put my goods up for sale for the current price, without undercutting. Exactly the same price. Let's say "68'731 gil", and I make a note of the retainer's name who offered this price. when I come back a few hours later and see that this person has undercut me, although I offered to be 100% fair, then I undercut. And I undercut in a manner which may make him or her think twice next time: I undercut down to the next 10k gil mark, in the example it would be 60'000. If he/she undercuts again, I go down to 50'000. Until he/she gives up, then I adjust my price back up to the identical value. And if this still happens, well, I can go down all the way, because the only investment I need to cover is the time I need to farm/gather/craft the ingredients.

It also often happens that there's more than one undercutter. This is when the real fun starts. Undercut them down by maybe 50%, wait a few hours, and both of them will surely follow. They will start to undercut each other. Then I adjust the price back above original value, in this example it would probably be around 70'000 gil, and enjoy watching the undercutters undercutting each other at the 30'000 gil mark, with a gap 40'000 gil between them and me on 3rd place of the list. That's the fun part! I can always pull out and adjust the price to its real value, but they won't. Heck, sometimes I even consider buying the stuff from them and offering it to my price, knowing that they will make a loss and be extremely pissed off, and me making additional profit.

Oh, this works even better with multiple identical items. Undercut only with one of them, keep the others on the "real" price. You may be surprised, but most undercutters really still undercut you, although it is obvious that you're driving them out of the market this way. With multiple items, you can even go down to 1 gil if necessary, because the profit from the "real price" items will cover the expenses for the bargain one.

You think you can undercut me? Then I'll show you what "undercut" really means. That's how economy works. Nobody said it has to be idiot-proof and everybody gets what he deserves. And there is a simple way to avoid running into this economical trap: stop undercutting.

[Zipdar]

Sometimes, I am too lazy to check the price for things. If they were obtained from quests/treasure maps/made extras for a leve then keeping them is just dead weight. Sometimes I am just cleaning out those stupid retainers (they are always full!!!) and don't want to exit the retainer screen, check price, and go back. Either way, there is no loss involved since my main goal is to get rid of the item. Heck, I've even been too lazy to sell it on the AH and just dropped things on the generic merchants for nearly nothing.

Becoming virtual rich with gil doesn't mean anything to me.

[BowlOfNoodles]

Took me about 2 months on and off to cap all my crafts. Every time someones under cuts me by 1 gil, I go down 250 gil to 1000 gil depending on the item. If my item didn't sell, then it probably won't sell at 1 gil lower. Also it saves up space on your retainers. The faster you get rid of things, the more you can sell. Currently you can only sell up to 40 items, 20 on each retainer, not good when you item doesn't sell for days just because you are greedy and won't lower your selling price.

[HoroBoro]

I'm no great crafter. I do have a surplus of goods sometimes and just need to see it move. I won't undercut 1k but I'll always go in increments of 500 every 2-3 days just so I can put more stuff on the market.

It's never a "loss" for me because I always gather my own materials. I'm not making gil hording tons of items in my bank.

I don't have the patience to analyze an inherently irrational system. It's why I didn't go into economics.

[NPenfold]

I always look at past history for how much the item has been selling for. If it has been selling for 2k all the time and there is someone selling the cheapest at 5k I am still going to put it up at 2k since if I do it just below 5k the item is much less likely to shift. Also I am likely to make more money since the likelihood is I will be able to sell 3-4 at 2k in the same time as I would have been able to sell one at 5k. This example was more in respect of the lower end goods but it applies across the board.

The other point is by putting items up at 2k I am more likely to discourage crafters in crafting the item since they can get a better profit elsewhere hence cutting down the number of undercutting I have to deal with.

[Shirai]

As I gather nearly all materials myself most of it is pure profit for me anyway. But if it comes down too low for my tastes I'll just hold on to the items until the market recovers a bit.

As for the opportunity market, sure you can make a quick buck if you gamble and get lucky.
But you need to be prepared that people will undercut you to even less than half your price quick and there is nothing you can do.

Me, I am not a gambler.

[HEC]

... and don't want to exit the retainer screen, check price, and go back.

Why would you do that? You can see current and past prices directly in the retainer's price set screen ...

[Asteldian]

Because if I sell my item for 1 less gil and my retainer is in ul'dah but yours is in limsa, then the potential buyer if in limsa will buy your item rather than spend 100+ gil travelling to ul'day and avoid the tax just to save 1 gil as overall it men's he lost.
If I am undercutting, I want to be the cheapest option no matter where the player is buying from.
If I am making 30k+ profit on an item, reducing that by 1k to ensure I am cheapest is no big issue to me.

[FritoBandito]

Perhaps the vendor had a sale that day?

[HEC]

Because if I sell my item for 1 less gil and my retainer is in ul'dah but yours is in limsa, then the potential buyer if in limsa will buy your item rather than spend 100+ gil travelling to ul'day and avoid the tax just to save 1 gil as overall it men's he lost.

For that I have alts "parked" in each city by the Market boards / FC chest and if there anything I want / need quickly and it's worth purchasing it "localy" I'll quickly login to the respective alt to purchase it and then transfer it to my main character via FC chest ... saves money on travelling as well as paying taxes for cross state purchases plus it's almost as fast as travelling there with the main character.