So you want to be a trader?
When Adopt Me first launched it was a role playing game only; you could choose to be either a parent or a baby. There were no pets and simply trading didn't exist. Then pets were introduced and with that came trading. Almost overnight Adopt Me was transformed from a simple role play game into a rich world of collecting and trading that has continued to grow and develop to this day.
Nowadays Adopt Me is almost entirely a trading, collecting and leveling game. The role play still exists in the game but is massively over-shadowed by the real soul of the game; trading and collecting pets
This guide teach you the combined
Golden Rules
These are the things you absolutely MUST learn if you want to be successful at trading in Adopt Me. No questions, no discussion, these are set in stone and can never be changed, if you disagree you are wrong and you need to re-learn, NO DISCUSSION!
NEVER EVER EVER Trust Trade. We cannot say this enough. ALL TRUST TRADES ARE SCAMS, got it? If you see someone trust trading report them immediately. It's amazing how many people still fall for this old trick.
Never buy pets online! Adopt Me pets are advertised on various sites on the internet for money. NEVER buy pets this way as you have a very high chance of getting permanently banned. These sites do play a role that we will explain in-depth later.
Never trade for non-Adopt Me items! This includes Robux, items from other games or anything that cant be put in a trade window. These is really the same as rule 1 as all these trades are a type of trust trade and the chances of being ripped off or banned are very high.
KNOW YOUR VALUES!! Is a Parrot more or less than an Owl? What about an Arctic Reindeer vs a Crow? Many people have no idea what their pets are really worth. This is especially important when trading for multiple pets.
Terminology
Uptrade / Trade-up - Trading multiple lower value pets for a higher value pet.
Downtrade / Trade-down - Trading a higher level pet for multiple lower level pets.
Pet Types
Understanding the different types of pet:
Store pet (permanently in-game)
Event pet (currently in-game for a few weeks)
Out-of-game (a previous event or type of pet than can no longer be obtained new)
Reward Pets - Ginger Cat, Star Fish, Golden/Diamond
Pet Market Economics
Types of Pet --> Supply/Demand
If a pet has a high demand but there are still plenty available to buy its price will usually not go up.
As the number of available pets to buy starts to go down (people are running out) the prices will start to go up.
Some traders will stock up large amounts of pets they think will go up in value. They will keep these pets until their is a shortage and the prices start to go up and up. When the pet has increased significantly in value they can start
Pets losing value Normal->Neon->Mega
Neon ~ 3 x Normal (lose 1 x Normal value)
Mega ~ 3 x Neon or 9 x Normal (lose 7 x Normal value)
For this reason it rare to trade a Mega pet simply because they talk a LOT of work to make and will never give you back your value. For the majority of trading you will therefore want to focus on Normal and Neon pets to make up most of your trades.
Getting sorted
Sort and divide your pets into "Pets to Trade" and "Pets to Keep". Never trade your Keep pets. Tag your Trade pets to find them quick.
At the end of a days trading take some time to fix the names on your newly acquired pets.
When you are trading and someone asks you to make an offer you need to be able
to go into your bag and pull out a bunch
Actually understanding values:
Before you start trading you need to know exactly what every item you have marked for trade is worth. (If you have not marked items for trade go back and read Getting Sorted).
The value of pets is constantly changing. Like any real world market the price of the pet depends on the demand (how much people want it) and the supply (how many are available to purchase right now). We go into this more in the next section.
The problem is Adopt Me (at this time) has no value system that we can use. It actually does have a value system, we just cant use it or see it. The only time we see any sign of this is when both people click accept on a trade and you either get a warning or not. (Not real helpful, especially as it is often wrong!)
So how do we get the value of our pets??
To solve this we need to look outside of Roblox and to the internet to get this information. Earlier we talks about the dangers of websites that sell Adopt Me pets and items for money. Once again we must remind you NEVER purchase Adopt Me pets or items from one of these sites. However, you MAY look at these site to gather pricing information that you can use to value your pets.
For this guide we are going to use eBay.com since it is a well known and trusted site. It is not the only site, the important thing is you can only compare values from one site with other values from that same site. You cannot compare values of an item from Site A to the value of an item on Site B, this does not work. So pick one site for your pricing information and stick to it.
FINAL DISCLAIMER: If we were not clear enough about this....LOOK BUT NEVER BUY! Seeing a pet sitting there just a click away can feel very tempting. DO NOT DO IT!
Insert Token to Begin
The first few moments of a trade are often the most frantic. People expect quick offers and quick answers.
i.e. Someone approaches you and asks "What is your offer for this?" and then trades you
Now you need to make up an offer on the spot and quickly!
The way we do this is to decide upon some "trading tokens". These are pets that you deliberately stock up on more than others. Its good to have 3 or 4 pets of different values.
Owl - 26
Parrot - 23
Crow - 19
Unicorn - 6
You should aim to keep 5-10 of each of these pets in you bag at all times.
When someone asks you to offer you should look to these pets to make up the bulk of the offer.
For example lets say someone offers you a Bat Dragon, checking eBay.com we see it selling for around $46.
Now you need to do some quick mat using the 4 pet values above to try get as close to the value of the persons offer. Some quick ideas would be:
Owl + Crow = 45 (1 under)
2 x Parrot = 46 (0 under)
Parrot + Crow + Unicorn = 48 (2 over)
Having well chosen trading tokens and being able to make a quick offer will make your trading a lot smoother and successful.
Balancing a trade
It is very rare that a trade is perfectly balanced so in this part of the trade you need to determine who will be over/under. Then you must over how much.
Determining who will be over / under usually follows who is uptrading / downtrading.
Uptrading - Expect to pay over
Downtrading - Expect them to be over
Next you must determine what to add/remove to balance the deal. Usually (not always) the person going over is the one who looks through their bag for some ads. This is as much art as it is science, its a measure of your skill at judging what a person wants and negotiating with them.
This is the time to look through the larger selection in your bag. When uptrading your goal is to offer as little as possible over to get them to the point that they will accept so start small and work up.
TIP: Try keep uptrades to no more than 4 pets. If you are offering 7 or 8 mediocre / low level legendary pets for a bat dragon expect to overpay quite a lot to secure the trade. The more pets in your trade window the more you need to overpay.
Try find out if they have any particular pet they are looking for, if its low value enough and you have one perhaps you can sub it in.
That's it! If you can get to a point you both agree on hit accept and win!
General Tips
Never do a trade that you wouldn't do to yourself. Offer a return/refund on your trades and honor it if someone changes their mind. If you accept trades you would not accept back in return you are basically a scammer.
Trading Token selection is one of the most import deciders, pick pets that are always in high demand and are still commonly enough found that you can stock up on them.
A good practice is to trade UP to acquire your trading tokens, if you have chosen your trading tokens wisely enough people should be willing to accept uptrades. Most of the pets you use here will come from eggs or as balance pets in a trade.