In Gold Road, Elder Scrolls Online introduces some noteworthy changes, mostly related to items acquired through Trader System and listing and expiration timers for gold. In this guide, we’ll summarize these changes and share some thoughts on how they impact traders and the in-game economy.

Changes To Guild Trader System

If you are a new or just returning ESO player and are not aware of the changes regarding Update 42 Gold Road that have been tested on Public Test Server, and you also enjoy participating in ESO trading scene in any capacity, then you will definitely want to know the following Change.

When you previously listed an item in Guild Stores, the item would remain in the store for up to 30 days. During these 30 days, players who visit Guild Stores have the opportunity to purchase your items.

If 30 days have passed since you originally listed the item and no one has purchased your item, the item will be removed from Guild Stores and returned to you via mail. You will then have 30 days to retrieve the item from the mail or it will be gone forever.

The same goes for buying and selling items. If you bought or sold items through Guild Trader System, you have 30 days to claim ESO Gold you bought or sold the items for, or they are gone forever.

However, the developers made some major tweaks in Update 42, changing the process I just summarized. In Gold Road update, the active period of Guild Trader listings will be reduced from 30 days to 14 days. This means your items will remain in Guild Store for up to 14 days. Later, if you fail to sell it, it will be returned to you via the in-game mail system.

Additionally, it will also return your items to you if your listing expires. Alternatively, if you successfully sell or buy an item, the coins or item will only remain in your mailbox for 14 days instead of the original 30 days before disappearing completely and no longer being claimable.

The developers said in PTS patch notes that changes to Mail expiration timers and Guild Trader listings timers were made purely to improve server performance by reducing the pressure on the database in the forum post.

Community Manager Kevin elaborated on this further, stating that their data shows that the vast majority of items listed on Guild Trader tend to sell within a week. If an item doesn’t sell within that time period, it rarely sells at all. Because most items that haven’t been purchased by anyone after 14 days tend to not be purchased by anyone after 30 days.

The developers feel that the 30-day listing period is a bit unnecessarily long. So they might argue that the items aren’t going to sell anyway, so why bother making the listing period so long, especially if it puts an unnecessary strain on the database? Therefore, they will reduce the listing timer from 30 days to 14 days.

Impact Of Changes

So what impact will these changes have? Why should traders care about these new changes?

Players Need To Consider Offline Time

The most obvious thing to note is that players must consider these changes if they plan to be absent from the game for an extended period. If you list an item and then are away from the game for more than 28 days and the item does not sell. It will permanently disappear from Guild Stores after 14 days and then expire in your mailbox another 14 days later.

Or, if you cancel the listing of an item without claiming it, and then it is removed from the shelves for more than 14 days, the item will also disappear.

If you successfully sell an item but cannot claim the gold earned from the sale because you were out of the game for more than 14 days since the sale, the gold will also be gone forever.

Now you know what I mean, traders have to pay more attention to the time they spend away from the game to make sure they don’t lose any items or gold. This change may also encourage players to think more about their item lists.

Keep in mind that every time you list an item on Guild Trader, you have to pay a small fee. Therefore, it is in your best interest to be able to sell the item during a designated period of time so that you do not have to sell the same item at another time and pay another fee.

Expensive Items Are Difficult To Sell Quickly

While the developers say their data supports the idea that most items sell within seven days, it’s important to consider the fact that many rarer or more expensive items often take longer than seven or even 14 days to sell.

Expensive Furniture plans or rare Outfit Style Pages, for example, don’t come on sale very often, and they won’t always be in high demand, but when they do, they usually sell for an impressive gold price.

This trading strategy of selling high-value, low-quantity items resonates with the play style or trading preferences of quite a few players. If these players wish to sell such items in a shorter period of time, they must pay more attention to their listing prices to avoid paying large relisting fees.

Perhaps we might even see traders listing their valuable items at lower prices than they would normally list. This way, they can better guarantee sales in a shorter period of time (14 days) instead of the 30 days they are used to.

There are also some players who may give up using Guild Trader System entirely. Because for some big-ticket items, it usually takes more than 14 days to sell. And these players often choose to advertise their items in regional chat to avoid exorbitant relisting fees.

Some players may also decide to remove all item listings from Guild Stores. Because they know they will be gone for a while and there is no guarantee they will claim any gold from the sales they make before the 14 day expiration timer expires.

Decreased Quality Of Life

So will these expiration timer changes have any significant or lasting impact on the in-game economy, especially for high-value items that often take a while to sell? It’s actually hard to say.

But one thing is for sure, for those players who like to sell, these changes will definitely reduce their quality of life. Since these rarer and more expensive items won’t be snapped up like materials, players will also be affected if they prefer to dump items into Guild Stores and then forget about them for a while or take a break from the game.

Given the shorter validity period, all traders must be more diligent and proactive in retrieving items or gold before it disappears.

Outro

Kevin said the developer remains open to feedback on the changes. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the proposed expiration timer changes are finally finalized and made it to the live server in the next update.

So be prepared and consider how they impact how you trade in the future, and hopefully the performance trade-off is worth the quality-of-life downgrade these changes will cause some players.

Overall, I want to make sure these new changes are well known so that when someone loses gold or items in the void, they aren’t left in the dark and get an unpleasant. What do you think of this change? What impact will it have on you? See you next time!