In this guide you'll find information about the Free Market and how everything in it works in 2026: 1. The Free Market 2. Store Types 3. Spot & Setting up a Shop 4. Spot Numerology 5. Albert the Item Seller 6. Owls & Item Prices 7. Chalkboards --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Free Market: The Free Market is the hub of maplestory trade, where players buy and sell items of all kinds via various methods. FMs are readily accessible in almost every town and city throughout the Maple world. Kerning city: ''what's an fm??'' --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Store Types: The Regular Store Permit allows you to trade indefinitely for 90 days, and only costs 2k NX. However, using a regular store permit requires the player to be present in the shop. The Hired Merchants allow you to trade indefinitely for 1, 7 or 14 days and cost 2, 7 and 12k NX. Hired Merchants do not require the player's presence thus making sales offline for the player. All store types require a Spot and a Reset every 24 hours. All stores close automatically upon server reset. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FM Spot & setting up a Shop: To set up a shop it is required to have a tiny bit of space between neighboring shops which is called a ''Spot''. Once you find a suitable Spot: Double clicking the Merchant/permit icon will pop up a little UI where you can type the title of your store. Another large tab will pop up where you can click and drag the items you want to sell, followed by the prices you want to sell them for. Spot Selling: Spot Selling is made possible via the Regular Store Permit due to a mechanic unique to it known as ''Out Buying''. Once all items within a regular store permit shop have been bought, the shop then automatically closes, making that spot available to the buyer right away. Hired Merchants can't be bought out. Spot Competition: The Free Market is a free space for all players, making some spots more sought-after than others. All 20 channels have 22 FM rooms with over 25 spots available in each one of them. This makes fair competition, and whoever finds a spot available is in right to take it. Resetting and Keeping Up with your spot: Every 24 hours, your Hired Merchant will automatically close shop. To prevent this, you can Reset your shop before 24 hours and keep your spot. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Spot Numerology: Numbers displayed in front of a shop are used to pinpoint a shop's location, which makes it much easier for shoppers as well as Owl users to write down or memorize your shop's address and find it at any given time. I.E: 1-7 means Channel 1 FM 7, but you can also use arrows <> or Bot Mid Top to pinpoint it ever further. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Albert the Item Seller: Albert is an NPC exclusive to the FM. He sells Fast Travel Tickets, Teleport rocks, Megaphones, Owls and more for a small amount of mesos. There is no limit to the amount of items you can buy from Albert. (These items are also purchaseable within the cash shop (vote nx shop). --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Owls and Item Prices: The FM is a competitive marketplace that allows players to set any price to any item they own. To find the current prices of any item in the FM, you can use an Owl and it will show you results of all the items set for sale between channels and rooms with shops in the entire FM. A total of 8 owls can be acquired for free each day via voting. Street FM Prices(Players buying and selling in FM Entrance) will normally be lower than the prices inside of shops, making Street FM trades interesting for merchants and players alike. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chalkboards: The Chalkboard is a static green balloon that will hover over the character's head indefinitely until its expiration or when entering instances in which they're not allowed such as inside of FM rooms. These Chalkboards are commonly used by players to promote their shops and selling of items. Chalkboards are purchaseable for 1, 6k NX within the cash shop and last for 1 and 7 days. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for reading this guide! Enjoy maple's hot markeplace: The FM!! Disclaimer: I wrote this guide as a newbie-friendly option as to how the FM works. Written for Educational purposes only.
