Vendor inventory

[PD_Dingo]

Hey there,

since i started working on my trade skills, i have found out how much pain in the ass it is to find everything i need on the different vendors in the zone, so i've decided to write program that would have list of all known combinations for given tradeskills and it would show list of the ingredients, together with list of the vendors having those ingredients in specified zone or mobs that drop the specific things.

of course since i run seq, first thing that came across my mind was that there may be a way to collect the vendor inventory data using seq, i know it isn't perfect, but imho its better than 30 page list of unsorted stuff.

so my question is, is there a way to recognize that the following objects are in vendor inventory ,so the vendor name/loc can be dumped into some database together with the vnums of the objects ?

Dingo

[RSB]

Look at the console when you talk to a vendor, their whole shop is dumped. All you need to do is pump that to a file really. Thing is there is no way to tell where the perminate items end and the junk players sold them starts

[Mr. Suspicious]

Thing is there is no way to tell where the perminate items end and the junk players sold them starts

Can be done tho. If you parse the dumped file with itemnames into a database. Just assume the current lenght of "sold items" is the maximum number of items that can be sold by that specific merchant. The number of items in the Merchant inventory once set for a merchant can only go down and never up. Any items in inventory in database that when reparsed, that 1) are in the new inventory, but not in the old one OR 2) are in the old one but do not appear in the new, are deleted.

To get a near 100% "garbage clean" inventory on a merchant, you'd have to visit it 5 times to get it clean. Between the visits the servers _have_ to have gone down tho.

1st time parse, you have all crap items in it's inventory in the Database, 2nd time most of them will be gone, 3rd time parsing, 99% gone and unless Murphy plays a foul trick on you, the 5th time the inventory should be clean.

[fryfrog]

or when you goto a vendor you can note which 5 or 10 items are not crap. most of the time its pretty obvious... ie, an armour merchant with a couple gems :)

[Yueh]

Does the vendor list that dumps to the console contain ALL the vendor's loot, ie. stuff that isn't visible in the vendor's trade window? I was trying to figure this out in Steamfont, surprise surprise and couldn't find a vendor that hadn't been fully cleaned out.

[Mr. Suspicious]

It only shows everything that is send to the client, so no, non visible items in the vendors inventory aren't send: hence, not see-able.

[Yueh]

When you buy an item out another slides up to take its place so I was hoping that was stored client side. Anyone know this for sure?

[high_jeeves]

Actually, all items in the inventory are sent... I assume by "not-seen" you mean, "ones I havent scrolled to yet". The entire inventory is sent. If it had to send an item every time the user scrolled, this would generate 10s of MB of traffic constantly (For the # of people who are at vendors at any given time), plus breaking all the rules of a standard MVC architecture.

-Jeeves

[Mr. Suspicious]

Ehm... think we're talking the same language, just a different dialect

What I mean is that items that are not displayed in the inventory window (inventory window shows 20 items tops that the merchants has in his "permanent inventory" and about 12 more for "items sold to the merchant by players". Those (give or take) 32 items are send to the client and can be "dumped".

The other 458,890 items that the merchant holds and are sold to him by players however are not visible (you cannot scroll to them) and are not send to the client. Would be a darn waste of bandwidth if you would.

And yes Yeuh, the items take the place of the sold out items but only after you left the inventory screen and right click the vendor again *and by doing so, requesting and receiving the new inventory*

[Yueh]

Damn, that's too bad. Guess that angle for finding Iron Oxide is toast

[high_jeeves]

Sounds right.. if the merchant is not actively selling something at the moment (is sold out), it isnt sent. Only the items that are visible to the player (by scrolling or otherwise) are sent.

--Jeeves

[PainNSuffering]

any one know if the ammount of X item a vendor has is sent to the client? I would assume not. just an update sent when you buy him out of an item.
would help for vendor farming if you could see that jo blow has 577 fine steel long swords before you start.

[high_jeeves]

Nope, this information is not sent.

--Jeeves