Immortal Realm Market Guide: Vendors, Item Search, Prices, and Buying Gear

The Immortal Realm market is a web-integrated player vendor system. Live in-game vendor inventories sync to the website, where you can search across every active listing without physically visiting houses. This page covers how to actually use it — finding gear, comparing prices, reading stats, and understanding what the market tells you.

The live tool is at /market. This guide assumes you're already on the shard or planning to be; if you're shard-shopping more broadly, Immortal Realm Economy covers the bigger picture of how the player economy is structured.

What the Market Shows

For each vendor on the shard, the market displays:

• The vendor name and owner. Who runs the stall, which player owns it.
• Location. The house, the city, and a map reference. You can travel there in-game without searching.
• Inventory. Every item the vendor currently has stocked, with quantities and prices.
• Item stats. For magic and crafted items, the full stat readout (damage, resists, modifiers, runic-tool sourcing where available).
• Listing freshness. When the vendor was last updated.

The data is live — the same data the in-game vendor displays, just searchable across the whole shard.

How Vendor Listings Work

The mechanics on the in-game side:

• A character with a house places a player vendor inside.
• The vendor accepts items + prices from the owner.
• Other players physically visit the house and buy from the vendor.
• The owner pays a daily vendor fee on held inventory.
• Sold items pay gold into the vendor; the owner collects accumulated gold periodically.

The web-side browser is a discovery layer on top of this. It lets buyers find what they need without doing the city-by-city physical tour.

How to Search for Gear

The market browser's verified search axes (per src/app/market/page.tsx:88-100) are deliberately simple — three URL params:

• Item name (q param). Substring match against item_name — type "longsword" and you'll see every listing with "longsword" in the name.
• Item type (type param). Substring match against item_type — "Sword", "PlateArms", "Bow", etc.
• Sort (sort param). Three options: price_asc (default), price_desc, or name_asc.

That's the full filter surface today. The browser does not currently support URL-driven filters for price ranges, stat-property thresholds, vendor/owner names, or specific cities — those are things you do by scanning the result list (each row shows price, vendor, owner, location, and the full item_properties stat readout, capped at 200 results per query).

The practical workflow:

1. Type the item name or pick the item type.
2. Sort price-ascending (the default).
3. Scroll the first page or two and read the price + property column for each result. The cheapest acceptable item is usually near the top.
4. Note the vendor's location_map / location_x / location_y for in-game pickup.

If a future release adds price-range or property-stat filtering, this section will need updating — for now, the in-page filtering is by your eyes.

How to Compare Two Similar Items

Two items with similar stats often have meaningfully different prices. Reasons:

• Material tier. A Verite-ingot weapon has higher base damage than a standard-iron equivalent, even at the same magic-property tier.
• Runic tool. Items crafted with high-tier runic tools have stat ceilings standard crafting can't reach. The tool itself doesn't show on the listing, but the stat range gives it away.
• Crafter signature. Some shards mark Grandmaster-signed items with bonus modifiers. Signed items often command a premium.
• Durability remaining. A weapon at 200/200 durability is worth more than the same weapon at 80/200.
• Location supply. Items in remote locations tend to be cheaper because fewer buyers are passing through. If you'll travel anyway, those listings are better deals.

When two listings look similar, compare them on these axes before buying.

How to Read Item Stats

Magic and crafted items have property lists that can be opaque if you're new. The basics:

• Damage Increase / Spell Damage Increase. Direct multipliers on output damage.
• Hit Chance Increase / Defense Chance Increase. Combat hit and avoid modifiers.
• Lower Reagent Cost / Lower Mana Cost. Mage-economy modifiers.
• Resist Physical / Fire / Cold / Poison / Energy. Damage taken modifiers; balanced spreads usually beat one-stat-maxed.
• Hit Spell modifiers (Hit Lower Attack, Hit Lower Defense, Hit Magic Arrow, etc.). Proc-on-hit effects.
• Mage Weapon -X. Lets a mage swing a melee weapon using Magery skill instead of the weapon skill. -0 is best.

For new players: don't optimize for max-stats. Optimize for good-enough stats at affordable price. A 70%-of-best item at 30% of the price is usually the right buy in your first month.

How New Players Gear Up

A practical workflow for a fresh character:

1. Identify your build's gear targets. Warriors need weapon, armor set, healing kit. Mages need spell channeling weapon, robes, regs.
2. Set a budget. As a new character, 5,000–15,000 gp covers a starting kit. Don't blow your first month's gold on top-tier items you'll outgrow.
3. Search the market for each slot by item name or type, sort by price ascending, and scan the property column for stat thresholds appropriate to your skill level. A 70-skill character doesn't need 100-skill gear; the marginal benefit is small and the cost is huge.
4. Look for crafters. Crafted items at sensible prices are usually better deals than randomly-rolled monster drops at the same price.
5. Check the location map. Pick listings in cities you'll be traveling through anyway.

Don't try to assemble a perfect kit on day one. Get functional, level your character, replace pieces as you outgrow them.

How Crafters Use the Market

Crafters use the market as demand research before crafting:

• Search for the items you craft. See what's currently listed and at what prices.
• Note what isn't listed — gaps are demand opportunities.
• Watch for price compression — if the market is flooded with a specific item type, prices drop and crafting that item is low-margin.
• Track competitor crafters. If one vendor is consistently priced 20% under everyone else, they're either undercutting deliberately or selling at material cost; either way you adjust.

Crafters who research demand before producing earn meaningfully more per hour than those who craft the same items every day regardless of market conditions.

How the Market Supports the Economy

The web-integrated market changes how the in-game economy works:

• Vendor location matters less. A well-priced vendor in a quiet city still gets discovered.
• Price competition is real. Buyers compare across the whole shard, not just their local cities.
• Demand becomes visible. Crafters see what's selling and what isn't.
• Trust scales. Vendor reputation and consistency become valuable — repeat buyers tend to return to known sellers.

This is the kind of infrastructure that takes a UO shard from "vague gold sloshing around" to "real player economy". For the bigger picture of how that economy works on Immortal Realm, see Immortal Realm Economy. For the crafter side specifically, see Immortal Realm Crafting. For high-value rare items that aren't on vendors, see Immortal Realm Auction House.

The live tool itself is at /market — open and searchable now. The download page is the on-ramp when you're ready to play.