A Guide to Wentworth's
Ah, Wentworth's, the eBay of Paragon City. It can seem like a pretty straightforward place--you can list items that you want to sell, and sometimes you buy items that other players are selling. But there is a bit more to the process, especially if you're looking to make more influence.
The Basics of Wentworth's
The main Wentworth's screen allows you to buy and sell almost anything in the game, from Training Enhancements to wonderfully Rare salvage. Whether you're looking to sell or buy something, however, it is best to search for the item first. See the image below:
This screenshot shows what the Wentworth's console looks like. There's a search bar at the top, with an autocomplete feature that you can turn on and off, a way to narrow the level range, rarity, and origin of what you're looking for, and some expandable lists of various items if you just want to see Enhancements, Inspirations, etc. At the bottom is your Auction Inventory, where all the tabs are (ALL, STORED, SELLING, SOLD, BIDDING, BOUGHT).
Also in the above screenshot: you can see that I've typed in "tempo" (the letters in white) into the search bar, and the Autocomplete feature has filled in "ral" as the last three letters (in pale yellow). When it autocompletes, all you need to do is hit Search, just like the screenshot below:
In this image, you can see that the Wentworth's console has brought up all three items with the word "temporal" in their names. All I have to do now is click whichever item I'm looking to sell or buy, and I'm on my way!
I used "temporal" as an example earlier. Now I'm looking for Bleeding Stone, an Uncommon piece of salvage used in one of my Enhancement Set recipes. I type in "ble", and the Autocomplete feature fills in "eding," allowing me to hit Search much faster. The listing for Bleeding Stones being sold by players appears:
For example purposes, I've blown up the Bleeding Stone listing for viewing ease below:
At bottom left of this listing, you can see that there are 158 Bleeding Stones for sale, and 282 players currently bidding. With more buyers than sellers, Bleeding Stone is currently a very hot-ticket item. Look toward the right side, where prices from the last five sales appear; with so many more buyers, it's no wonder that somebody had to pay 100,000 and 100,001 for a Bleeding Stone!
The price listed at the top of the display is the most recent sale price; you can see in the last five sale prices that the amounts fluctuate wildly. This is a volatile item; at this point normally, I would probably turn away and wait until later when the bidding settles down. But, for illustration's sake, I'll show you how I would bid on a Bleeding Stone.
To bid on an item, you type in whatever amount you wish to bid into the form blank labeled "Bid," and then type in the quantity you're looking for into the form blank beside the X. Then you would click the blue button labeled "Make Offer." BE SURE of the number of zeroes you type in on the "Bid" blank! I've bought stuff for a million influence before when I meant to buy it for 100,000 influence. (That seller was probably very, very happy with me!)
Once you click "Make Offer," the listing for the item will appear in your "All" and "Bidding" tabs at the bottom of the Wentworth's interface, as shown below:
Notice that in the main listing, it now shows that there are 158 sellers and 283 buyers--I'm one of those 283 now, vying for a chance at getting a Bleeding Stone. (Who knew it was so important?) You can watch your bid from the "All" tab, or you can hit your "Bidding" tab (which now reads "Bidding (1)," indicating that there's one item you're currently bidding on. If you look at the Bidding tab, you will see a more complete listing, as seen below:
On the "Bidding" tab, you can continue to watch the bidding for one item while you search for other items, and the Wentworth's interface won't lose track. If you're done searching for other items and want to re-display one that you're bidding on, hit the gray "Find" button, and it'll pop up the listing in the main window again.
Since my bid in this example is 1,000 influence, and the last sale price of this item was 100,000 influence, I don't think I'm going to get the item any time soon. You can choose to cancel your bid at any time by clicking the blue "Cancel" button--in the below screenshot, I'm hovering my mouse cursor over the button, making it light up more brightly:
One more important note: When you have successfully gotten an item, the item's listing will disappear from your "Bidding" tab and reappear on your "Bought" tab, which will then read "Bought (1)". DO NOT make the assumption that your bid was lost and try to buy another one--I did that once with a Deific Weapon, with sad results. (A purchase that should have cost 2 million ended up costing me 4 million instead, because I thought the bid didn't go through. Learn from my fail.)