Pricing and bargaining: how a price is built, and how far you can push

The three-stage price formula, what actually sits in the market stage, acceptance and walk-out odds, and three things you can use right away. Every number comes from the game data.

Quick card

• Price = base × item condition × market, plus extras, then × the bargaining multiplier. Three stages, settled in that order.
• Selling your own stock adds a markup automatically. On Normal it is +15% for customers who accept it, +20% on Cozy, nothing on Hard and Challenge.
• Contraband is marked up by level: +35%, +70%, +100% and +150% for levels one to four.
• Stolen goods are discounted by heat: 10% off at heat 25 (“Five-Finger I”), rising a step per heat level to 25% at heat 100.
• Acceptance when you raise the price = 100 − 2 × the amount + faction reputation ÷ 6. One step (10%) lands about four times in five; two steps (25%) is a coin flip. Negative reputation counts double.
• Walking out is a separate line: 100 − 1.2 × the amount. Roughly three in ten leave at two steps, six in ten at three (50%).
• A concession is always accepted and raises the customer’s budget by 2 times the amount you gave.
• A successful markup cuts their budget: 10%, 15%, 20% or 25% by step.

To price a specific item, use the pricing calculator and the bargain odds.

1. Three stages

Everything that moves a price falls into one of three buckets. Each bucket is summed on its own, then they multiply in a fixed order:

1. Innate: rust, dents, expiry, opened packaging, freshness, metal purity, water quality, chemical purity. Each is a percentage; they add up and apply to the base price. Every condition has a “what the customer sees” value and a true value, and the true one only counts once it is exposed.
2. Market: the day’s events, the retail markup, contraband and restricted-goods markups, the stolen discount, tourist tax, new-customer discount, supplier markups, tips. All percentages, summed, then multiplied in. This stage can push a price down to zero but never below it.
3. Final: the bargaining multipliers. Raising the price, asking for a discount, blackmail and threats all live here and multiply together.

As one line:

price = round( ( base × (1 + innate%) + water container value ) × max(0, 1 + market%) + extras ) × ∏(1 + final%)

The base price is fixed per item and listed in the item table; goods sold by weight use grams × price per kilogram. A container with things inside gets each content priced by the same formula and added as extras.

One rule that is easy to miss: what you earn from a customer is capped at their budget. If the budget is short you get only that much, but reputation is paid on the full price, and a capped sale gets an extra point of reputation multiplier.

2. What is in the market stage

Retail markup

Selling stock you own to a customer who “accepts retail markup” adds one step automatically. It is set by the difficulty, not by you:

Each customer’s page says whether they accept it (the Merchant, for one, does not).

Contraband markup

Four levels; the higher the level the bigger the markup, and the more Security cares:

Stolen-goods discount

Stolen items carry a heat value. The hotter the item, the bigger the cut when you buy it; heat decays every night:

Market events

Newspaper events add or subtract a percentage on a few categories for one to three days. A power shortage puts energy cells at +66%; a water treatment breakdown puts water at +50%. Every item page lists the events that touch it.

3. Bargaining: six moves, two lines

There are six moves: when selling you can raise the price or give a discount; when buying you can ask for a discount or pay more; wanted customers can be blackmailed and augmented ones threatened. The amount is one of four steps: 10%, 25%, 50% or 75%.

Concessions (a discount, paying more) are always accepted. Asks in your favour roll a die, and the percentage the interface shows is exactly:

accept = 100 − 2 × amount + faction reputation ÷ 6 (× 2 when negative) + 15 for an event customer + deal-maker bonus

A refusal is not a walk-out. Leaving has its own threshold:

tolerance = 100 − 1.2 × amount + the same reputation and event bonuses walk out = 100 − max(accept, tolerance)

The two lines differ only in their slope (2 against 1.2), so the bigger the ask, the thinner the “refuses but stays” band.

Blackmail is its own case: it starts at 60, divides reputation by 4 instead of 6, and takes the event and deal-maker bonuses; against someone who is not a criminal, half the time they simply leave and you lose reputation. Threats always work on augmented customers. Augmented customers never bargain at all, and a few customers flagged as never accepting a bad deal sit at zero.

4. What bargaining changes

• Concession: the customer’s budget grows by the amount × 2. One step of discount buys two steps of budget.
• Successful markup: the budget is cut by 10% / 15% / 20% / 25% by step, so they can buy less afterwards.
• Reputation: the harder you push, the worse this trade’s reputation multiplier; concessions improve it; blackmail has the worst multiplier and threats leave it alone.
• Getting caught: push an item with a faked condition on a customer who checks for it (rust, dents, water tests, strips; each customer type has its own checks) and they call it out on the spot, the condition is exposed for good and the faction docks a little reputation.

5. Three things to use right away

1. One step up on an ordinary Lower Levels customer is nearly free money. At zero reputation a 10% ask lands about four times in five and loses the customer about one time in ten; factions that like you accept even more often.
2. Never raise the price on a faction that dislikes you. Negative reputation counts double and drives acceptance to zero while the walk-out odds keep climbing.
3. When the budget falls short, concede a step. Their budget rises by two steps, which usually pays more than holding your price.

Updated 2026-11-03