What is it, you may ask? At the Rat Market, you will be able to sell certain items and exchange them for rat-shillings, which can then be traded for other items – including certain rare economy items, as well as equippables. Some of the equippable items sold at the Rat Market are existing ones, though they are cheaper or easier to obtain than they were before. Some equippable items are entirely new.
The Rat Market changes week to week and season to season. What the ratty vendors are buying, and what they are selling, will vary over time. The market itself is also only available some of the time.
Find out all about the ratty goodness in this FL blog post!
UPDATE: the Rat-Market mechanics were adjusted in may 2024 to realign it with its original goals. Details were published here.
Well, that was a mildly amusing way to put the 5 Captivating Ballads I’ve been jealously hoarding for a while now to good use. Not truly profitable, but right now everything that goes towards the Hellworm grind can only be a good thing.
My first and most urgent feedback is that it would be really nice if we got a separate currency counter for rat-shillings the way we have one for echoes and scrip. As funny as it was to imagine an army of rats dogpiling my character as he flailed around on the floor in confusion for the high crime of not being able to tell how many rat-shilling he still had, it would probably be more convenient for everyone if there was a way to tell how many you had remaining after a certain threshold other than buying things with trial and error in the mini-Bazaar.
Edit: Oh, and my much more urgent advice for fellow players looking to buy a Location of a One-Time Prince of Hell of Hell is as follows: Do NOT buy any rat-shillings until you have taken a good, long look at what the prices for everything are. Remember, the rats will not let you go until you’ve spent every rat-shilling they’ve given you. edited by Captain Blood Storm on 9/24/2021
Exchanged 12 Unlawful Devices (obtained from the digging event, I had 22 in total) for 3k Rat-shillings, used 2.8k Rat-shillings to exchange for the Pair of Lenguals.
Remaining 200 Rat-shillings: Bazaar, Merry’s Gun Exchange, bought a Skyglass Knife (120 Rat-shillings) and spent the rest on Palimpsest Scraps and Amanita Sherry.
I desire the Venge-Rat Waders, but I have nowhere near the equivalent of 10k Rat-shillings to exchange for it… perhaps it’s about darn time I unlock the Railway area, I heard Unlawful Devices can be obtained there.
P.S: Captivating Ballads can be obtained from the Underclay area, however you need to grind 600 Convincing Falsehoods to exchange for one Captivating Ballad ( worth 250 Rat-shillings). It’ll take a bloody long time to grind. Next autumn it is then!
It will be great if more expendable items can be used to exchange for Rat-shillings. Or things you can do to earn Rat-shillings directly.
Worth noting that while the Rat Market leaves on Monday and comes back Friday with new stuff, the Waders will be there untill December, so you got time to get the boots. And that 4th city echoes will be tradable every week. (Though the dev in charge of balance thinks that might be too powerful as is.)
Everything else though? Changes each week. The tier 8 being sold will change. (So you may want to consdering holding items for one you want.) The items you can sell for change (outside of 4th city echoes) will change. The other items you can buy will change. It’s possible even the stuff in the ratty Bazzar tab will change.
Basicaly, as far as we’ve CURRENTLY worked out: Expect a Tier 8 item there each week that is different each week, expect 4th city echoes to be exchagable all the time (though they may or may not be nerfed in value due to this), expect the boots till be there till winter when they will be replaced till next Autum. Everyhing else can and will change. Oh, and expect parts of this to maybe be wrong as we understand more. edited by Kylestien on 9/24/2021
It would be interesting if the newspaper honchos of the Neath could wage media war, dispatching journalists and sales teams just like the Grand Clearing-out.
I am now in possession of a teeny tiny revolver that can apparently blow a hole through a train car. I can only assume the ratly gunsmiths are employing nuclear fusion to power such itty-bitty bullets with that amount of force.
The exchange rate of rat-shillings is curious. The cartographer Hoard is the worst deal at 7.8 pence/shilling (p/s). The unlawful device is the best at 5 p/s, the captivating ballad is 7.1 p/s and the fourth city echo has no nominal value but I’m guessing it’s supposed to be 12.5E and so it’s 5 p/s too.
On the buying side, the location of the hell prince is about 10 p/s. The pair of lenguals can be bought for 400E at the bazaar, taking that as the value yields a cool 14.2 p/s. So they’re an amazing deal if you don’t have one already. They only sell for 200E though, so if you buy to sell you’re only getting 7.1 p/s The pocket piece is harder to place since it doesn’t have any echo values. In the ratty Bazaar prices range from as high as 10 p/s to as low as 5 p/s. Generally the cheaper items are a better deal.
In principle, if you have a lot of unlawful devices, you could sell 62 of them and get enough shillings for a location of a prince of Hell, for a profit of about 800 echoes and an EPA of about 12.
Thing is, I did have that many devices, owing to discordant ripples, but I sold a bunch as part of cidergrind. I am currently beating myself up over it.
This lcoation can actually be very, very profitable, come to think of it. Selling unlawful devices and liquidating into 1-shilling items in the Bazaar tab yields 12.5EPA. Selling hoards and liquidating is 87.5EPA and selling ballads and liquidating is 24.5EPA. Of course those numbers are deceptive because it’s limited by how well you can source those items, but if you have a surplus, go for it.
As for me, I think I’ll go grind unlawful devices over the weekend. I want those boots.
You’re probably better off grinding 4th City Echoes from LB Industries. Expeditions have a lot of fixed overhead, and you only get 1 device per expedition regardless of length.
The economics of selling items for shillings are odd, I’m not sure what’s the right way to look at it. On the one hand, Devices or Khaganian Echoes get double-your-value while Hoards only get you a 28% bonus. Or a different way of looking at it, the action to sell a Device/Echo is worth a bonus 12 echoes, while the action to sell a hoard gives a bonus 85 echoes. Hard to tell what’s better unless you map out a full cycle of obtaining something.
The most interesting thing for me right now is what the Rat Market looks like. Especially in terms of size. Can I walk there freely? Should I watch my step to avoid stepping on some rat or another? Do I have to crawl? Or maybe lie down, like the Lost Girl near her door under the glass table? edited by Aronia on 9/24/2021
[quote=Tozh Taurog]It is also interesting if Sympathy to Ratty Concerns means anything here. And if no - why? edited by Tozh Taurog on 9/24/2021[/quote]
The Newspaper was interesting! I noticed my main had 3 stories - scandal,rat market, bone market - while my alt only had 2 (no bone market). Are there more to come?
The timing on this is awkward for me for grinding. For my ambition, I have to grind silk and finish a long lab grind (infernal rifle). I started that anticipating I would not get my parabola access sorted for a couple of weeks. And then I got lucky in an expedition and I’m now SOOO close! Parabola beckons! AND I am now on the railway board and need a Judgement’s Egg for a bribe.
I am trying to stay calm and assume that since this is weekly that good things will continue to happen. (But LENGUALS!)