the 4 hours you are talking about will be in game hours not Real Life Hours
Understanding Core Mechanics
Understanding the system’s core mechanics is essential to determine how to take advantage of it. At its heart, the Dynamic Vendoring Pricing System averages purchasing trends to decide how to price items on the following “tick.” The absolutely easiest way to explain such a system is to just put it all out in the open for clarity:
The system operates on ‘ticks,’ or interval hours, set to 1 by default. This is in-game time hours, not real-world hours. 24 ticks should occur in a day.
Unless otherwise changed, the Dynamic Vendor Pricing System will engage every hour, and the pricing of all NPC-owned vending machines will recalculate and post anew.
Items historically in high demand (most bought by players) will increase in price by 10%, while those underperforming as an average could go down 5%.
The cap for price increase is set to 200% by default.
The cap price for a decrease, or discount, is set to 50% by default.
The minimum price possible for any item is 1 Scrap. Sorry, pickle lovers.