The Market &the Market Bot
Your host can enable Duke, an automated trader for the in-game Exchange. Learn how his listing and buying rules work before relying on them — and how to preview changes before they touch the economy.
The Exchange
The in-game market where players buy and sell items for Solari. On a busy server it grows into thousands of listings. For each item you see the lowest price, available stock, and recent sales.
Duke sells
When the host enables him, Duke can stock the Exchange on a timer using configured pricing rules. Available stock depends on the catalogue, settings, and successful listing rounds.
Duke buys
Duke can also buy player listings. Purchases depend on configured timers, buying rules, available funds, and a random roll; a listing is not guaranteed to sell.
Fair pricing, your choice
Choose Sane formula pricing, Upstream formula pricing, or Market-follow pricing based on other players' listings. Internal item_price and displayed Solari are different units: use the separate displayed-price cap when you want a player-facing ceiling. Review the preview before applying a pricing change.
Duke trades on purpose, not greedily
For each item Duke considers buying, he "rolls a die" and only buys on a winning roll. The host controls how frequently those rounds happen. With the optional over-market guard on, a winning roll is checked against Duke's configured reference price. Balance maintenance can replenish his funds, but neither feature guarantees a particular market price or a successful purchase.
Getting the most out of it
Selling loot?
List at or just below Duke's price and items move quickly — Duke or another player tends to pick up fairly-priced listings.
Shopping?
Sort by lowest price. Duke's listings give you a reliable floor, but players will sometimes undercut it for a bargain.
Pricing your stock?
Use Duke's listing for the same item as your reference, then decide whether to match it or undercut.
Play the long game.
Configured price limits and Duke’s dice-roll buys shape the market. Ask your host which pricing mode is active; even fairly priced items are not guaranteed an immediate buyer.
Running the bot from DST
In Command Deck, open Economy → Market or Market Bot tabs. Buy, list, and pricing controls sit alongside Seed market. Review its dry-run preview before populating the Exchange.
Starting fresh
Seed the market once to stock it instantly, then enable the bot to keep it alive on its timers.
Switching from an older bot?
DST’s Clear listings wipes Duke and any leftover "Revy" rows from the old external Go market-bot in one sweep, so there’s nothing to clean up by hand before Duke takes over. Player listings are never touched.
Tuning
Lower the die size or shorten the buy interval to make Duke buy more aggressively; raise listings-per-grade for variety; set per-item price overrides for full control. Turn on the over-market guard to stop winning rolls from overpaying for padded listings, and switch to Market-follow pricing if you'd rather Duke track live player prices than the built-in formula.
Previewing
Use the dry-run option to see what a buy round would do, and the vendor-snapshot preview to sanity-check pricing before going live.
Setting up the Market & pricing tool
A clean, end-to-end walkthrough for getting Duke live on a fresh server — or switching to him from an older external bot. Everything below happens in DST under Economy → Market Bot(or the Classic Gameplay Admin route); no SSH, no config files.
- 1
Open the Market Bot tab
In Command Deck, open Economy → Market Bot. The Classic Gameplay Admin route remains available. Use the Buy side, List side, and Pricing rules tabs; check status and active pricing before changing anything.
- 2
Wipe any leftover bot listings
Click Clear listings to remove anything Duke (or the old external Revy bot) has on the Exchange. It runs both wipes in a single sweep, so there’s no separate “legacy” step to remember. Player listings are never affected.
- 3
Top up Duke’s Solari balance
On the Buy side sub-tab, set Target balance (default ~450 billion) and turn on Auto-maintain so Duke refills himself at tick start whenever he drops below half. Click Set to target to push the balance up to the target immediately.
- 4
Set the pricing rules (or accept defaults)
Switch to Pricing rules. The shipped defaults already give a sensible economy: a 100,000 item_price hard cap, tier base prices, rarity / grade / vendor multipliers, and a 95 % vendor floor. If you want a true Solari-side ceiling (the in-game number is item_price × 10), enable Cap displayed price (Solari) and set the limit there. Use Per-template price overrides to pin specific items to manual prices. Prefer to follow the live market instead of the formula? Turn on Market-follow pricing (top of the Pricing rules tab) to list every item at the median of other players’ sell orders plus a markup you set (default +10 %), with a per-item rule for things nobody else is selling — price by formula, skip it, or use a baseline you enter. It’s all-or-nothing: flipping it on or off wipes and rebuilds Duke’s listings at the new prices on the next list tick.
- 5
Tune the listing rate
On List side, set List tick (s) for how often Duke tops up his sell orders, and Listings / grade for how many copies of each (item, grade) he keeps on the shelves. Toggle Stackables only on if you want Duke to skip non-stackable gear.
- 6
Seed the market (instant stock)
Still on List side, click Seed market. This skips the live vendor snapshot and bulk-inserts up to Listings / grade NPC orders per catalogued template (~1000–1400 templates) in one batched run, so the in-game Exchange has stock immediately. A progress bar appears at the top of the tab and survives page navigation; the button re-enables when it finishes. Recommended for a fresh server or after a database restore.
- 7
Tune the buy rate (the dice roll)
Back on Buy side, set Buy tick (s), Max buys / tick, and the Die size / Winning number. Each candidate listing rolls 1–die size and only buys on a winning number, so a smaller die or shorter interval = a more aggressive buyer. Turn on the Over-market guard to make a winning roll buy only when the seller’s price is within a set percentage (default 5 %) of Duke’s reference price — rolls that win but are over the window are skipped and the reason is logged to the console. Add any template IDs you want Duke to ignore entirely under Disabled items.
- 8
Dry-run before going live
Click Dry run on the Buy side to roll the dice and see which player listings Duke would buy without touching the database. On List side, Refresh snapshot shows the eligible vendor items with their computed target prices — a quick sanity check that your pricing rules behave the way you expect before any writes happen.
- 9
Save the config
Any change above leaves an Unsaved changes note on the sticky save bar at the bottom. Hit Save config to persist. Reset reverts the draft to whatever was last saved.
- 10
Enable Duke
Flip Bot enabled on (Buy side, top of the config card). The status banner turns green (Running), and Duke starts buying and listing on his configured timers. Want a different price curve? Click the Switch button on the Pricing mode tile to flip between Sane and Upstream — or turn on Market-follow from the Pricing rules tab. Any of these changes wipes Duke’s listings (with a confirm) so the next tick repopulates them at the new prices.
- 11
Verify and monitor
Watch the status cards: Bot state should show Running, Duke listings climbs as list ticks fire, Balance drains and tops back up around the target, and Pricing mode shows whichever formula you picked. The Last buy tick / Last list tick timestamps confirm the loops are alive. Hop in-game and search the Exchange — you should see Duke’s listings within a tick or two.