Final Fantasy XIFinal Fantasy News

Feinam's Auction House Tutorial

The Ins and Outs of the FFXI AH

Monday, November 1, 2003

The Auction House is the wonderful system put in place in FFXI to easily sell and buy items. This is a great resource if you want to make good gil with the treasure you receive as opposed to wasting a LOT of money by selling it to merchants.

Basics:
You don't need to be online for your items to be up for sale, and the guy you're buying from doesn't need to be on for you to grab something off him. You can get into the auction menu by going to the auction house and double clicking on the auction window. When you sell something in an auction a small fee will be taken from you by the auction house, this is a tiny fee so don't worry! There are three options in the first screen (Buy, Sell, and Check Status). Buy allows you to look up items by category, sell allows you to post an item, and check status allows you to see what you have up for sale, for how much, and if it's been sold yet.

Buying:
Only items that have a number next to them in the buy lists are able to be bought! The game keeps a record of all items that are sold there and the history of their prices, but there is only stock available when there is a number next to it labeling how many are up for sale. If you're looking for items you can use it's easy just to scroll and look for yellow text items (meaning you can use them) with a number next to them. Next select the history of prices and do a rough estimate of what the average is. Then bid a bit below the average, if it fails move your bid up and continue until you have the item. No matter how many people are selling that particular item if you start low and work your way up you'll buy off of the seller with the lowest reserve price.

Selling:
You can have up to 7 items up for sale at a time. You can either sell 1 item or 12 in a stack and that only takes up one sale spot. First track down your item in the buy menu, check the history, and figure out the average. If you need quick money set it just a little lower than average, or if you want a good price and you're patient set it on the high side of the bids you see in the history. When you check your sales status if it is highlighted that means it's been sold, go ahead and go to it, read the message at the top and then hit enter. At this time the money you got for the sale goes to your mog house (residential area).

Remember, always check what the item is worth before you sell it on auction or even worse to a merchant. Perhaps that "useless" item is actually worth enough to get you a new weapon, spell, or piece of gear =).