- The Buyer Sends a Message via the Trade Site
- The Seller Invites the Buyer to a Party
- The Buyer and Seller meet up in the Seller’s Hideout. This is always the case unless otherwise agreed upon, no clue who made this rule but it is absolutely a thing.
- The Buyer brings the agreed-upon currency to the hideout and mostly just waits on the Waypoint pad.
- The Seller retrieves the item and opens a Trade Window with the Buyer.
- Both parties insert their items into the Trade Window.
- Both parties mouse over to verify the items. This is required to complete the trade and the accept dialog will not show up until you have moused over every item. If you are trading a lot of items or currency this can be a bit tedious.
- Both parties hit accept and the trade completes.
- The Seller generally either kicks the Buyer out of the party, or my personal style is to leave the party… effectively dissolving it.
- You have the option of exchanging pleasantries but it is absolutely not a requirement. Depending on how I am feeling I usually message the other party “Thx”.
- Both parties go about their business with either a brand-new item or a stack of new currency as a result.
Dissection of a Trade
Good Morning! I hope your week is going well and at a bare minimum tolerable. Yesterday I talked a bit about engaging with the trade economy in Path of Exile. This morning I am going to pick up where I left off a bit and include some of the things that I didn’t really talk about. Firstly the community has a sort of rhythm that trades follow and it is insane how smooth everything goes. First off say you are wanting to buy an item, then you will of course go out to the official Path of Exile Trade website and more specifically select the league you are currently playing in. I am in the Crucible Softcore League so for me I just select “Crucible” from the drop down. This will allow me to search for items that are currently available for sale by players who are online and playing in the same league I am in. The online part is important because all trades are made face-to-face, but the website smooths out this interaction quite a bit.
So say we are looking for a Tabula Rasa, the ultimate in twink leveling convenience as it gives you access to a six link for any socket color combination at level 1… with the trade-off being you have no defensive stats on the item. When you search for “Tabula Rasa” on the trade site you will see everyone selling the item and the price they have it listed for. When you find an item you want to attempt to buy if you are logged into your account you can click the “Direct Whisper” box that I have highlighted in green and blown up on the above screenshot. What this will do is cause your in-game character to send a specifically formatted private message to that player.
For example, the above item generates the following message. What this mechanically does in-game is tell the player that you are wanting to buy the item, what tab it is stored in, and what column and row it is located in. However, it actually goes one step further and will highlight in purple the item in that inventory slot once you have invited the player to your party. This makes it pretty easy to find what the intended target of the trade was and retrieve it to trade to the player. After a trade message has been sent a sequence of events plays out almost automatically as though everyone were reading from the same script.