How to use the GTN Guide in SWTOR

The GTN, which is the Galactic Trade Network, is the player-run market or auction house in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Players can buy and sell items on the GTN for credits, the main currency in the game.

How to Find the GTN

All players can use the GTN to buy and sell items, even free-to-play players. The only restriction is your character’s ability to access a GTN terminal. If you are a brand new player, you will need to complete your first planet, so that you can get to the second area of the game, the Republic or Imperial Fleet, where you can find a GTN in the Galactic Trade Market section of the Fleet. The GTN is a big green box and you can right-click the kiosks at the bottom to access the market.

You can also get a GTN for your Stronghold, which is your player housing. Players often set up a small base of operations in their stronghold including a banks, a mailbox, and GTN decorations. Then, you can easily travel to your stronghold on all your characters, even your brand new level 1 ones, and use the GTN there. If you have an online friend who has a stronghold, or are in a guild with a stronghold or Flagship, you can also travel there as early as level 1 to use their GTN.

How to Use the GTN

The GTN allows you to buy items from other players, or list an item for sale for other players to buy. There is a Buy and Sell tab at the top.

How to Buy Items on the GTN

By default, the GTN opens up to the “buy” tab.

You can type in the name of the item you are looking for and then press the ENTER key on your keyboard or click the SEARCH button at the bottom. You have to spell the name correctly or nothing will come up. You don’t need to search the whole name, just any word that might be in the name of the item.

BUG: Sometimes nothing shows up even when there should be items showing up for sale. If this happens, press SEARCH again. But it’s impossible to know whether or not it’s the bug making nothing show up, or if there are no items listed for sale.

How to Search the GTN

Apart from just typing in the name, you can also search the GTN by category on the left-side.

When searching by category, you will often also need to search a sub-category before you can search – if you don’t, the search button will be greyed out.

Some fun things to search for to find some neat inexpensive items are:

• Armor -> Adaptive Armor
• Mount
• Melee Weapon / Ranged Weapon -> your weapon type
• Cartel Market Items -> Dyes
• Decorations -> any subcategory
• Crafting Schematic -> Armormech or Synthweaving

How to Purchase

When you find the item you want, click its name to open the purchase window.

You can see on the far right all the items of that type listed for sale and their prices, and if you buy it, you’ll automatically buy the cheapest one.

To buy an item, click the PURCHASE button.

How to Claim

Once you have purchased an item, it will go into your GTN Claims area. It will only stay here for up to 30 days, so make sure to claim it before then!

To claim item, click the small icon of an arrow pointing into a box on the far right to move it into your inventory.

Once it’s in your inventory, you’re good to go! If it’s an item like a pet or mount, you can then right-click the item to use it.

How to Buy Multiple Items

Most items only allow you to buy one at a time, including all armors, weapons, mounts, and pets. To buy more than one copy, purchase the first and then purchase the second afterwards.

There are some items you can buy many of at a time, including crafting materials, companion gifts, medpacs and decorations. You can easily see which types of items you can buy in bulk if there is a number bigger than 1 beside MAX STACK in the purchase window.

When you try and buy items in bulk, the GTN will attempt to buy the cheapest ones first and go down the list from there.

For example, in the crystal screenshot above, I can see there are:

• 421 crystals listed for 500 Credits each
• 8 crystals listed for 525 Credits each
• 23 crystals listed for 535 Credits each
• 4,464 crystals listed for 2,126 Credits each
• 4,504 crystals listed for 500 Credits each

If I needed only 10 crystals, and typed 10 in the Quantity box before clicking purchase, it would just buy the cheapest 10 at 500 credits each.

However, maybe I see that the ones around 500 credits are a good deal and I want to buy them all. I could see there’s 421+8+23 listed cheaply, so there’s 452 listed cheaply in general. You’ll notice the UNIT PRICE is 535 credits, showing that I’m only buying the items that are 535 credits or less.

If I typed in a quantity of more than what was listed cheaply, for example I want to buy 2,000 crystals to do a ton of crafting, it will dip into the more expensive pool of items lower down the list, and I see that my UNIT PRICE will be going up to a maximum of 2,126 credits each. This is important to watch for when buying many items, so you don’t accidentally buy some that are super overpriced.

Here’s a prime example of what to watch out for – most of these red crystals are under a thousand credits each… but some of the later ones in the list are listed for 84,000 Credits each!

Searching for Crafting Materials

If you are crafting, you’ll likely be searching for a lot of materials on the GTN. You can easily search for items on the GTN by SHIFT+LEFT CLICKING the item while the GTN is open. You can sHIFT+LEFT CLICK items from your inventory, your crafting window, or your materials bay. This will automatically put the name of the item into the search box so you don’t need to type it.

See Newest Listed Items

There’s also a fun button on the top left of the search that looks like a page with a plus sign – this will show you the items players have most recently listed on the GTN.

See Most Popular Items

You an also use the small button above the search bar which is an icon of a prize-winning ribbon to show the items that are most frequently being bought/sold. These will almost always be crafting materials, as crafting materials need to be purchased in large quantities for crafting.

How to Sell Items on the GTN

To sell an item on the GTN, use the SELL tab at the top.

You can drag the item from your inventory into the “Drag item here.” box on the sell tab.

Even quicker, you can simply right-click the item in your inventory while the GTN is open. I actually don’t recommend this though, because right-click is also the action to USE an item. If you aren’t carefully, you might accidentally use the item instead of selling it which can be really frustrating for things like cosmetic armors. If you happen to have other windows open, like the Materials Inventory or the Equipment panel, right-clicking the item might also accidentally put them in there instead of listing them on the GTN, even if the GTN is on the top of the pile of windows.

You can then click CREATE SALE to actually list the item for sale.

Pricing an Item

When you add an item to the sell tab, it will give you an automatic price to sell it for. This price is often very random – and not very useful. You’ll always want to manually check the price of your items and then price them manually – otherwise you might be underpricing your item and lose out on a lot of credits, or more likely, over price and the item will never sell.

The easiest way to find out how much something might sell for is to SHIFT + LEFT CLICK the item in your inventory while the GTN is open. This will automatically put the name of the item into the buy tab’s search bar so you don’t need to type it.

How to Price an Item

The easiest way to price an item is to search for it on the GTN, then list it for slightly less than the cheapest listing for that item. This may or may not be the best price you can get for the item, but if you’re just looking to sell your items make credits, this will give you a decent chance at selling your item.

In this example, when I looked up my item, the cheapest listing for it was 97,999 credits. I’m going to list mine for 95,000 credits so it is the lowest item, and therefore the one that will likely be purchased first if another player searches for it.

If you are trying to price something more carefully, you would open up the purchase window for the item, which will show all the items of that type for sale, their price points on the right, and the recent cost range and historic range.

In this example, I can see in my purchase window, that this item has been listed for up to 431,000 credits by other players. However, I see in the historic range, that the highest it’s ever actually sold for is 99,000 credits.

If I really wanted it to sell, it I might list it for 50,000 credits, and hope someone picks it up at half price, as that’s way lower than it’s ever been sold for before.

BUG/ISSUE: The Sales Data is not the mot useful – it only has data for your server, and only for that item since the sales data feature launched. In addition, when browsing it would often say the recent range was the same as the historic range, and since there’s no way to review or validate the info, I’m not entirely sure how accurate it is, especially with more expensive items.

Make sure to double-check your pricing – once someone buys your item, you can’t change the price or recover your item!

GTN Taxes and Fees

To keep the economy in balance, there are fees and taxes built in to the GTN.

Duration and Buyer’s Tax

Any time you list an item for sale on the GTN, you are charged a listing fee. The longer the duration you list the item for, the higher the listing fee is. The listing fee is also affected by how much you are pricing the item for.

As you can see above, selling this item for 250 million credits will cost me 250,000 credits, so I should be careful to price my item appropriately so it will sell within those seven days or I will waste my listing fee and have to re-list it.

Here is an example of the fee based on listing a million dollar item for different durations.

This fee is not refunded when you sell the item, and you don’t get it back even if you don’t manage to sell the item. or if you decide to take the item off the GTN. You also don’t get any type of refund if it sells within a day and you spent the credits to list it for seven.

Personally, unless it is a very high ticket valuable and popular item, I list my items for the full 7 days duration to “set it and forget it”.

These are the official numbers from the developers about how much the listing fee will be. As you can see, it is low for inexpensive items and high for expensive items.

Buyer’s Tax / GTN Tax

In addition, once you successfully sell an item, you are charged a larger GTN tax fee, which is labeled as the “Buyer’s Tax” when you are listing the item. For example, when I list this item for 1 million credits, if it sell, I’ll only get 943,000 of those credits from the sale, and the rest goes towards taxes.

The buyers when searching the GTN will see the price that you typed into the box – in this case 1 million credits, and your price is the smaller “Unit Price”.

It can be hard to figure out what this percentage or cost might be before you go to sell the item and price it – some lower cost items just have a very low flat fee, others have a flat percentage, and other expensive items have a high percentage.

These are the official percentage numbers from the developers about how much you are charged.

Maximum Sell Price

The most you can sell an item for, after the fees and taxes, is 3 billion credits in the Total Profit box, and if you are trying to sell a single item for more than that, the GTN will automatically adjust it down to the max price. There are currently no single items worth that many credits.

If you are listing thousands of materials though, it won’t allow you to create the sale until you have adjusted the Total Profit to below 3 billion by lowering the individual unit price per material.

How to Cancel a Sale

If you item has not already een purchased by another player, you can press the X symbol button on the far right of your sale listing to cancel it. You might want to cancel a sale if you priced the item wrong, or just changed your mind about selling it. Don’t forget you will be wasting your listing fee, even though it does not show you this anywhere when you go to cancel your listing.

This will allow you to reclaim the item from the CLAIM area, and you can getthe item back into your inventory with the button of an arrow pointing towards a box.

How to Claim Your Sold Item Credits

If someone buys your item, you will get a mail in your mailbox letting you know.

The mail sound is a little “swoosh” sound and the number of mails you have in your social bar will go up. You can check your mail, but it’s just a notification, your actual credits will be at the GTN to pick up.

Once you get that mail, you can go to the golden CLAIM tab on the top right of the GTN.

You will need to go to the SOLD tab at the top.

You will be able to see the items you sold, and claim the credits by press the small icon on the right of an arrow pointing towards a box to claim the credits.

If you are selling a bunch of materials and only some have sold so far, you will need to come back later and pick up the additional credits once the other materials actually sell.

If you are a free-to-play or preferred player, because you have a credit cap of one million, and credits you have earned beyond 1 million from the GTN will automatically go into your escrow, and be stashed away until the next time you subscribe.

After the duration of your listing is completed, if your item doesn’t sell, you’ll also be able to claim your leftover unsold items here in the SOLD part of the CLAIMS area.

Both your credits and your unsold items stay here for up to 30 days, so make sure to claim them in to your inventory before then!

How to Make Credits with the GTN

The most obvious way to make credits on the GTN is to sell items you’ve picked up around the world, like crafting materials, companion gifts, or unbound armors. How to Make Credits in SWTOR Guide

How to Make Credits in SWTOR

However, players that are billionaires most often do something known as “playing the GTN”. This is when players carefully watch the GTN and the market, and buy and sell items based on what they’ve seen, instead of earning credits directly through quests in the game.

A simple example of playing the GTN might include watching for players posting items at low prices, buying them, and reselling them at the normal price for a quick profit. These types of credit-making tactics require two things… Knowledge of the average prices of items, knowledge of what fees and taxes will be added when you go to resell an item, and the patience to make credits over time.

With the changes to the GTN including:

• Being able to see all the items of that type listed in one spot and at what price points
• The recent/historical price ranges being listed
• The removal of the super-low default prices,
• The newly listed tab becoming available
• Fees and pricing being more transparent and uniform

The ability to “play” the GTN has gone down somewhat, as the information needed to play it is more easily available to the average player, and prices of average items have flattened somewhat.

This doesn’t mean you still can’t play the GTN, it just means it’s not quite as easy to make credits from buying and reselling on the GTN. Players in the new economy tend to focus on buying and reselling rare items that do not have many copies for sale on the GTN, as their value is less set due to the lack of competition in pricing. For example, there is a low-level purple-bordered hat I’ve been looking for for a few months, but there is a player who has been buying them up when they get listed and trying to sell it for 299 million credits, and not allowing anyone to list it lower buy buying up to few copies that are listed. The downside to this is you need to keep re-listing your items, and re-paying the listing fee each time the item doesn’t sell… but when and if it does sell, they’ll make a lot of credits. This tactic can be applied to any items in the game that have any demand, even if it’s slow, and more importantly have a low supply.