"Seeking Item" or "Want to Buy" function for retainersFollow

I propose we give the retainers (or even players) the ability to have a "Seeking item" flag that would allow us to buy certain items, or quantities of items in the same way that we can sell them. Similar to the current "Seeking item" system we have now, but we should be able to buy any item even if we do not have it, retainers should be allowed to do it, and we should have a search function for it in the wards like we currently have for selling.

This will help crafters know what to craft. Crafters can see what is offered and see if it is worth it to do it for profit or just to help the person out. As it stands, there is no way to know if making a bunch of hempen robes will be useful to anyone or if you'll just end up vendoring them all. It will be much easier to obtain certain crafted gear that you really want because people will be able to see that you want it before investing the time and materials in crafting it.

The search feature could be organized by crafting job and by skill level. That way, I, as a level 10 carpenter can search and see if there are any requests for something that is in my ability to make, see if the offered price is worth it to me, and then make and deliver the item to the requesting retainer.

I like this idea. It would be good for equipment... cause really who seeks a piece of gear they have already?

I think you are right about that. I've never used it so I forgot about it, but mostly what I wanted was the ability to buy items you don't already have, like an item you would only need one of. Gear for example.



They would need to have an accessible item database, sure. Everquest actually has a buyer system in place already. The way that it works there is that you set yourself up in buy mod in the bazaar (the equivalent of the market wards), you type a command to bring up the "searching for item" interface. In the UI you can view all the items you are currently seeking (a lot of people use it to buy a bunch of different crafting components) as well as make changes, change the amount of the item, add new items, etc. Once you have the UI open, there is a search bar that you can type in the name of the item you would like to buy. It brings up a list of items that contain the word. So for example if I searched for a "maple shortbow" it would show not only the "maple shortbow" but "maple shortbow +1" and "plumed maple shortbow".

I don't think a drop down is a good idea simply because the database would be so big, especially after a few expansions. It would be much easier to have a search function instead.



I think this is a good idea too, the only problem I see with it that there are a lot of people who put things up for sale for 999,999,999 for some reason. If you had to wait until there were 0 for sale, you might never be able to buy it. Even if there is one for sale and it's just more than you are willing to pay (maybe you are new and don't have a lot of money) then I think you should still be able to use the "Seeking Item" function.