The Mall of Loathing

The Mall of Loathing is where items may be be sold for meat in player-owned stores. It can be found in Bordertown. Waukeen watches over the mall and notifies the /dev team when a new item has been added to the mall for the first time.

Entering the Mall

A player may enter the Mall to search for items once he or she ever reaches Level 5. When entering the Mall for the first time, the list of stores displayed is merely the list of stores with the highest advertising budgets (see below.) As a player becomes more familiar with the Mall, or gains more friends in the Kingdom, that player can then add specific stores to a list of favorites. Any favorites that are defined will then appear at the top of the list when entering the Mall (again, in order of advertising budgets).

Attempting to enter the Mall before having ever attained Level 5 will result in the following :

You approach the Mall, but are stopped at the entrance by a big burly guard.

"Sorry, kid," he says, "but you gotta be at least level 5 to shop at the Mall of Loathing. Come back when you've got some more hair on your chest."

You can access the mall after Ascending before reaching Level 5 (see below).

Finding Items in the Mall

The stores are searchable by clicking the "Search the Mall" link at the top of the page. It is possible for a player to search for a particular store within the Mall, or for prices of a particular item. When searching for an item, the player may also choose to see only the lowest N prices of each matching item rather than the entire listing.

Searches in the Mall of Loathing return a list of stores with the cheapest price listed first. If multiple stores have the same price for a given item, the stores will be listed in order of their advertising budgets.

To search exactly for an item, rather than any item containing the term you're searching for, put the search term in double quotes ('"'). For instance, simply searching for

lime

will return results like tiny plastic sabre-toothed lime, while searching for

"lime"

will only return lime, the fruit.

If the search query brings up nothing the following message will be displayed:

No such item was found in the Mall.

Searching is done by string fragment, not words, and whitespace is significant. So searching for

lime␠

where "␠" is a space character, will return results like "slime stack" but not "lime" the fruit.

Mall Prices

The Mall has a minimum price for items - 100 meat or twice the autosell value, whichever is higher. (Previously, the minimum price allowed on an item was ten meat.) The current maximum price limit is 999,999,999,999 meat. Items priced at 999,999,999,999 meat will not show up in mall searches. Additionally, store owners may choose to place limits on the quantities that can be purchased by each player daily. An individual's limit for a particular item in a particular store is 2,147,483,647. That limit resets at rollover.

For more information on Mall pricing and how to sell items, see the Shopkeeper's Guide.

If you try to sell an item that is far cheaper than the lowest price:

Are you sure you want to sell this item for that little Meat? (The cheapest in the mall is currently X meat.)

Yes, I'm sure

No! Thank you for saving me from myself!

[checkbox] never ask me this again.

Choosing No! Thank you from saving me from myself! cancels the placing. Choosing Yes, I'm sure continues with the placing.

Purchasing and Selling a Store

Players may purchase their own store once they have reached Level 9. Stores cost 50,000 meat and can be sold back for 30,000 meat. When purchasing a store, store owners can choose between several different shopkeeper avatars, and choose what their avatar says to their customers. The store owner may also choose an image to represent their storefront, ranging anywhere from a bar to a frat house. Stores cannot be purchased while in Ronin or Hardcore.

After purchasing a store, the new store owner will have access to a Mall Management page. This page contains the following items:

• Drop down menu to Put Stuff in Your Store.
• Link to Manage Prices for All Items (option to change prices of items in your current inventory, giving the autosell value, minimum Mall sale price and cheapest Mall price as comparators).
• Link to View Recent Store Activity (shows every item sold in the past two weeks, the price paid, and the player who bought it).
• Display of your current inventory, with option to remove them from your store to place in your inventory.
• Your current rank with regards to advertising budget, and an option to add to your budget.
• Button to Refuse Purchases by Ignored Players.
• Option to change the store text (what your shopkeeper says to your customers).
• Button to sell the store for 30,000 meat.
• Option to change the shopkeeper and its name.

Stores cannot be sold while in Hardcore, nor can a store with items in stock be sold.

Advertising

Every store has an advertising budget which determines the visibility of the store and its stock. Meat spent on advertising will move the store's name nearer to the top of the listing of stores in the Mall. When searching for items, stores which sell the item at the same price are listed together, and advertising expenditure determines the rank of stores in such a list. The store's current budget and rank appear in the Store Management Page (see above).

All budgets are updated at the beginning of every Sunday. If a store's budget is 1 meat, it is set to 0; otherwise, it is set to the integer part of its square root. Meat may be added to a store's budget at any time.

Effects of Ronin and Hardcore

If a player is in Ronin or Hardcore, they will be able to purchase items using meat from Hagnk's (and only meat from Hagnk's). These items will also be added to Hagnk's. The Mall is still searchable, and players may add stock and increase advertising to their own stores from their inventory as well as from Hagnk's, and added stock may be taken out and placed in Hagnk's. Meat earned while in Ronin or Hardcore goes to Hagnk's Ancestral Mini-Storage. "Hagnk's" is fun to say.

A player may not sell their store while in Hardcore, nor may they buy a new one.

Technically, a player is allowed to purchase items from the Mall even if they are under level 5 if they have ascended at least once and with chat commands, they do not even need access to Desert Beach. This mode of purchasing is typically only relevant for Normal or casual ascensions (in Normal, items may be immediately pulled).

Mall Scams

The Mall is home to many shopkeepers, however there are often scammers on the loose. Techniques include:

• Price-Switching
• Holding a raffle for an item the store owner does not have
• continually adding tickets to raffles
• making obscene profits from raffles (though technically not a scam, it is largely frowned upon)
• "fixed" raffles, where the store-owner awards the prize to one of his or her multis.

Also keep a lookout for mallbots, who like to take your antiraffle items. One solution is to set your Mall store to not allow purchases to ignored players.

Notes

• The Game Messages page lists various error messages you can get at the Mall.
• The Mall used to be in Seaside Town and was moved in October 2010.