The Market

Taro Bay has a real, player-driven economy. There are two ways to turn goods into coin (mon, the game's only currency): the village trader, who buys and sells at fixed prices, and the player market, an order book where players trade with each other.

The player market needs a confirmed email address — the trader does not. If the banner at the top of the game is still counting down, follow the link in your mail first; see Getting Started.

The village trader — your price floor and ceiling

The trader is always open and always simple:

• Selling to the trader pays a fixed price per item — the item's NPC buy price. It's instant, guaranteed, and tax-free. This is your reliable early income and the reason no item is ever truly worthless.
• Buying from the trader costs a fixed price too, for the items the trader stocks (some items the trader simply doesn't sell). At the stall the wares sit on labelled shelves — raw goods, gear & vessels, provisions — so the staples, your first tools and a bite for the road are easy to find.

Because the trader always buys at that fixed price, it acts as a floor under the player market — and not just in theory: the market rejects sell orders priced below the trader's buy price outright, since the trader already pays that much, any time and tax-free. And because the trader sells staples at a fixed price, that acts as a ceiling — nobody will pay another player more than the trader charges. The player market lives in the space between those two bounds.

The daily shipment — a standing order

On top of everyday buying and selling, the trader posts one standing order just for you each day: bring a set quantity of a named item and collect a flat mon bounty. It's a steady second income, and a nudge to dip into corners of the game you might not visit otherwise.

• One order a day. A fresh shipment rolls over at 00:00 UTC. There's no rush to beat a clock, but the order doesn't carry over: leave one unfilled and at 00:00 UTC it's gone, replaced by a brand-new order. The card shows a countdown to the next reset so you always know how long the current one has.
• What it asks for. The wanted item is drawn from a curated list of ingredients, raw goods and simple intermediate products — think bars, yarn and planks. It never asks for equipment, treasures, or the finished wares the trader already stocks. The list is capped to your progress: your highest skill sets the ceiling, unlocking richer requests as you cross level 25, 40, 60 and 85.
• Sometimes it's not your trade. A shipment can name a good from a craft you don't practise. That's deliberate — when it happens, the player market is the intended way to source it: buy it there, then hand it in.
• The reward. The target quantity is random, and the bounty pays 3–5× the trader's base buy price for every unit you deliver — always in mon, never XP. Handing over a big stack of a modestly priced good can easily out-earn selling it outright.

Delivering and rerolling

• All at once. You hand a shipment over in a single delivery — the full quantity has to be sitting in your inventory when you do. There are no partial drop-offs, so gather the whole amount first, then complete it in one go.
• Don't like the order? You can reroll it. The first reroll each day is free; after that you can reroll twice more for 40 and then 120 mon, three rerolls a day at most. A reroll re-draws within the same value tier — you get a different item (it can, by chance, land on the same one again) with a fresh quantity and bounty, but of comparable worth. It's there to swap an order you can't easily fill, not to fish a poor day's order up into a richer one. Spend the free one freely and think twice before you pay.

The player market — an order book

The market matches buy orders against sell orders, one item at a time. An order is just two numbers: how many units and the price per unit you want.

• Post a sell order to offer goods; post a buy order to request them.
• A sell order must ask for at least the trader's buy price of the item — the trader pays that much anyway, so the market turns anything lower away. Buy orders may sit at any price; a lowball bid simply never fills.
• If your new order overlaps an existing one on the other side, they match and a trade happens immediately. Otherwise your order rests in the book, waiting for someone to trade against it.

Which orders match first

The book follows price-then-time priority:

1. Best price first. A buyer matches the cheapest sell order available; a seller matches the highest-paying buy order.
2. Oldest first among equal prices — the order that's been waiting longer gets filled first.

A trade always executes at the price of the older order already in the book, not the newcomer's price. So if you post a buy order for more than the cheapest sell, you pay only that seller's lower price — the difference comes straight back to your wallet.

Orders can fill partially (a big order can be satisfied by several smaller ones), and orders never expire — they rest until filled or cancelled.

Escrow: your order is always covered

When you place an order, its cost is set aside so a trade can never fail:

• A sell order locks away the items you're offering.
• A buy order locks away the mon it would cost (quantity × your price).

Cancel an order and the locked items or mon come straight back to you.

The 5% market tax

Every player-to-player trade pays a 5% market tax, taken from the seller's proceeds (rounded up). Sell 100 mon of goods and you receive 95. This tax is the game's main coin sink — it quietly keeps the economy healthy. Note that selling to the trader is tax-free; the tax only applies to the player market.

Order limits

You can have up to 5 open orders at once. Choose them well — or cancel an old one to free a slot.

There is also a pace limit: roughly 40 placements or cancellations every five minutes. That is far more than trading by hand ever needs — it exists so nobody can flood the book with orders they never mean to keep. If you do run into it, the market simply asks you to wait a minute; nothing is lost, and no order is affected.

Quick tips

• New to trading? Sell to the trader for guaranteed coin; graduate to the market once you know what things are worth.
• Undercut the lowest sell price by a little to sell quickly; overbid the highest buy price to buy quickly.
• Craft materials like pearls and silk cocoons are where the real player-to-player money is.

See also: Equipment & Slots (all gear is tradeable here) and Guilds & Daily Quests.