15 Auctions
Once in a while, special, rare and/or very powerful items will be available for purchase. These items probably won't be available in other circumstances so you might want to keep an eye on them for when they do pop up! How can you obtain them?
First, look at the auctions currently available with AUCTIONS;
Second, decide on one that looks interesting;
Third, make sure you have the bound credits, or the marks in your account;
and
Fourth, make a bid!
How to Look at Auctions
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AUCTIONS lists all auctions you can bid on.
AUCTION INFO auctionnumber (say, AUCTION INFO 3) will tell you more about that one auction.
Places You Can Bid
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You may place bids on auctions from anywhere in the world. This is the digital era, after all!
How You Can Bid
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BID howmany ON auctionnumber. It's quite simple really. For example:
BID 10000 ON 1
You'll be told what happened, such as:
- Your bid is rejected for being too low. You're not winning yet.
- Your bid pushed up the current maximum. You're not winning yet.
- Your bid was high enough. You're winning!
Your Bid Is a Limit, Which Ain't Exactly a Bid
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Let's say the previous high bid was 1000, and you bid 10000. When you bid 10000 you are saying "I'll bid the minimum needed to beat whatever the other guy's bid is, and no more than 10000). Say that the person who was winning had bid 5000 as the highest he'd go, but nobody else pushed him up beyond 1000, so the 'high bid' that you see is 1000, even though his limit is 5000. So now you bid 10000, and you will definitely get the winning bid. Here's what happens:
- The 'high bid' on the item becomes the next bid beyond whatever the last person's limit was. His limit was 5000, and you have to beat that, so your bid to beat that is 5500. The visible 'high bid' is now 5500.
- 10000 disappears from your account. It's safe. Don't worry!
- But you bid 10000! Right. That's your limit. You'll go up to 10000 if you have to. But you don't have to, so you'll stay at 5500.
- What if someone else bids, say, 6000? Great, now the high bid is 6500, and you're still ahead, because your limit was higher still.
- What if someone else bids 11000? The 'high bid' that everybody sees will be 10500. The other person will be ahead. And your marks will be back in your account (or your credits will be back to you, if the auction is in credits).
Increasing Your Bid
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If you have the winning bid at the moment, you can increase your limit this way:
BID INCREASE <amount> on <auction>
If your bid had been 10000 marks, and you BID INCREASE 1000 on 1, then your bid is now 11000 marks. You can't decrease or withdraw your bid. Pay careful attention so that you don't accidentally bid more than you wished to bid! We will not change your bid for you if this happens. The amount you are increasing is ADDED to your previous bid; it does not replace it. Thus, if you have a bid of 100, and you BID INCREASE by 150, your new bid is 250, NOT 150.
Escrow
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The idea here is that in credit auctions (only), you may not want to buy the credits just to be able to bid on something you aren't sure of winning. OK, we can work with that. We will let you count the trade-in value of your current artifacts as 'escrow credits' which you can also use to bid with. Just
AUCTION ESCROW BUILD
and your escrow limit will be set up. To check credits for bidding:
AUCTION CREDITS
which will report on bound credits, and escrow credits.
Note: Escrow credits aren't real credits! They just help you bid on things without having all the bound credits on hand ahead of time. If you win the auction, you will be expected to buy credits, or trade in artifacts, or do something to raise your bound credits level to high enough to resolve the auction. In fact, that's what you do:
AUCTION auctionnumber RESOLVE
And if you have enough bound credits, then the auction ends, you pay your credits, and you get the prize. Done!
What Happens at the End of the Auction
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Somebody wins. Hopefully you! Either the credits or marks will be taken away, and the item/artifact/special-prize will be awarded. If you need to get more credits, then it'll all wait till you RESOLVE the auction (see above).
Then if there were any unused bid monies, you'll get 'em back then too. That's for when, say, you bid 10000 marks, 10000 marks are removed from your possession, and then when all is over, you won with a winning bid of 6000 gold. You'll win all right, and you'll get back the leftover 4000 marks.
General Notes
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Bids CANNOT be retracted. You bid, you're stuck. If you're outbid, then and only then do you get your marks/credits/whatever back. PAY CAREFUL ATTENTION TO YOUR BID SYNTAX. If you enter the wrong amount, you are still responsible for that.
When an auction appears, everyone in the game is notified.
Items won in credit auctions are NOT transferrable to anyone else. Bound credits are used for credit auctions, so whatever you win is bound to your character forever. Artifacts won in marks auctions are similarly non-transferrable. Any other items won in marks auctions where you would need staff intervention to transfer it to someone else should be assumed as non-transferrable unless otherwise noted in the auction description. Items that could be freely transferrable on the promo market may still be considered free to transfer via the promo market.
