Selling Items in NWN

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This topic is general for all the Bioware RPG's. You'll note than when you sell an item, it's generally sold for about 10-15% of the actual sell price. This bugs the heck out of me, a 17k armor selling for 2.7k. I've decided that I wanted to change this. I don't know if there's a mod for it or not, but what I do now, is I calc the total amount of gold I get for selling a lot of items and either double or triple what I get back with dm_givegold.

What do you guys think? Is it fair to be dirt poor because the Merchants rip you off? or should you take action to get that lost revenue back?

 

I don't understand the question. Isn't that just the merchant's profit margin?

In any case, I've not known a situation where I've been short of cash anyway so I don't see how it is a problem.

 

It's something that is set in a module. You could open up the module in question (the OC Chapter #, e.g.) and change the value that they pay, but it would be a lot of work.

It's never been an issue for me. I remember being filthy rich by the end of the OC. SoU they were a bit tighter with the gold -- god forbid that should add to the challenge. HOTU, too, I remember having insane amounts of gold. More than I could ever dream of spending... so what's the problem?

 

Well, a limited amount of gold adds to the challenge. Otherwise, as soon as you get in a new town, you can buy the most uber weapon and you are done. This way you have to work somewhat for it.

It makes sense that the merchants pay you less than what they charge for the same item (after all, presumably what you pick in a dungeon is not in top shape; they have to refurbish it before reselling ).You can also address this using in-game means; just put some skill points in appraise. With enough of these, there are some merchants in the HotU which will give you pretty close to the nominal value of the weapon (not taking into account that the max ammount you get for an item is capped).

 

The only games where I found this to be a problem were Icewind Dale and NWN: HotU. The reasoning is the items would be priced so insanely high that by the time I could afford them, not only had I found better stuff anyway, but the items weren't very good against the monsters I was fighting by then. It was only in these cases where I wished I could sell things for at least HALF the sticker price to build up a ton of cash. Especially in the case of Baldur's Gate 2, I was finding myself buying goofy items I didn't totally need just for one obscure ability so I would have it on the off-chance I much need it (like that dancing sword "Ras") because I had accumulated such a mountain of money.

This is by-and-large a game balance issue put in by the developers. Even if your character is powerful and you have earned it, something having more money than God half-way through a game and being able to buy whatever you want kind of takes the fun out of it. It takes the coolness out of the items too, because if they aren't hard to aquire, they don't seem worth having. Case in point: Staff of the Magi, or Celestial Fury.

It's because of this that I don't really mind the low re-sale values. I just look at it as if every store you go into is essentially a pawn shop. Have you ever sold anything at a pawn shop? They don't give you DICK, no matter how good a condition the item is in. Ever tried to buy anything at a pawn shop? They rob you blind, selling things as if they were brand spankin' new. Same thing in these games - it's the nature of the beast.

 

Actually, I don't think I ever bought a weapon in HotU. The items you find are much better; and they don't fit your class/build, you can upgrade your weapon anyhow.

Items for protection/stat enhancing are other matter. A cloack which gives +5 to both AC and saves comes in pretty handy (and it's not cheap, either).

 

What I'm sayin' to clear it up, is instead of selling an item for 1/4 the sell price, I like selling them for about 1/2 the sell price. It makes far more sense, and profit margins don't need to be so outrageous... I mean if I had an option to, I'd sit in town for a few months fencing off the item for 17k instead of 2.7k ya know?

I have problems with money because I don't play the, "scan the area touch everything" game. I do my job, sometimes I don't get to everything, because I play the game different everytime. (IE: I don't loot homes when I'm lawful good). Likewise some of the items I want or need cost 60k in chapter two. Quite a sum. I was barely able to afford that sword after I did the north and south road quests and double profit from selling loot as well as mutmins challenge and selling my current sword.

It might make a difference that I play by core rules as well, not the normal difficulty, it seems to offer me less treasure everywhere I go, (or maybe that's the order I traversethe game in isn't optimal to how the game adjusts for difficulty?).

Either way just clearin' stuff up . The game isn't easy still, I go through most of a chapter to still beable to afford the uber sword.

 

Does anyone know to which extent the "Appraise" skill affect the buying/selling price of an item? Any percentages?

 

omnigodly, what did you buy, the Dagger of Chaos? That's quite an overpowered weapon, and well worth the high price. Put it otherwise, if you'd be able to buy that at the start of chapter II, there won't be any challenge left in that chapter (IMHO).

Actually, with good charisma and points in the appraise skill, you can get some merchants to sell you at 50%. You have to look for them, though. What I do is carry a copper necklace with me, and look how much gold each merchant would give me for it. 50 gold is a reasonable price (that's about 30% from what I'd have to spend to buy it, I think) anything more is good. If you pay attention, you'll see that some merchants will offer more, some less; just sell your loot to those who pay better.

(if you sold to Mutamin, I think you got shafted; IIRC, he offers much less than the merchants in town).

About how exactly appraise affects prices, I do not know. What I figured out: the first time you meet a merchant, you roll dice for merchant reaction; your appraise points are added to your dice roll (charisma might come into it, too); that sets the price you'll pay to that merchant. That price stays unchanged on subsequent dealings, until your appraise skill (or charisma modifier) changes. Then, on your next interaction with the merchant, you roll again.

So you see that besides the appraise skill there is an element of luck involved. If you get a good roll, you are set. This is why the price varies from merchant to merchant. One thing you can do, save your game before meeting a merchant for the first time, and reload till you get a good price.

 

Appraise and such defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to do. Well, doesn't defeat it, but it has nothing to do with it really. I'm lookin' to get decent pricing from all the merchants instead of being ripped off hands down. Appraise would make the calcs harder since there's a lot I'd have to take into consideration.

I didn't get the dagger of chaos 'til I was basically done with Port Llast, (I found 2 clues to Luskan before Neverwinter Wood), but went to Neverwinter woods anyways just to tie up loose ends, (I made a promise as a paladin, I need to follow through).

What I'm focusing on with this idea is how 1/4 price for items you sell to an NPC is not good and that I think 1/2 would be more fair. I don't much care if one NPC is better or worse than others since the average NPC buys at 1/4 price.

Lost my train of thought - occupied but yea.

 

I don't see how you can say you're being ripped off when you will always end up with loads of cash anyway. If they gave you more money, you'd end up with silly amounts of cash.

 

Quantity of items makes you wealthy, if you don't play the game Meta - (outside thought - loot everything - do every subquest - etc.) - you don't make loads of cash.

Likewise, being ripped off is being ripped off no matter how many loads of money you make. Let's say I just want to accumulate as much as possible, just because. Getting 1/4 price doesn't seem fair to me then. 1/4 price for an item is a rip off when the item is good enough to get the job done.

Don't get into this debate about "you end up with loads of cash anyway". That isn't the point here.

 

The NWN Toolset allows developers to set the percentage of buy/sell price. I've never looked too closely at how they're set in the OC, but I'm sure there's some variation.

Again, if you really wanted to go through the trouble, you could open up the module in question, edit it in the Tool Set to adjust the buy rate at 50% or whatever you think is fair, save the module, and restart the game.

Considering all the merchants you'd have to edit, this would be so much work it would be silly. Better to just cheat yourself in more gold, e.g. "givegold ###" or whatever the code is. Think you're doing that now, so keep at it. It's your game: whatever works for you and makes the game more fun.

I'd agree with everyone else though, there's more than enough gold to go around, and if you prefer to play Lawful Good and not "meta" game, then that's the price (yuck yuck!) you pay (har har!) for being a good little role player. Not like you don't find better stuff in the wild anyway. Most I've ever bought was scrolls and potions.

 

I find potions plenty often, and the best items I've found were dwarfed by NPC's

 

I always seem to play characters with very low charisma, so the beginning of the game is really tough. Once I have the skills to start pillaging with impunity money ceases to be a issue. It wouldn't be as challenging if I could outfit with all the top stuff right away anyway. You know how everybody hates the wealthy noob with all the latest gear that they don't really know how to use. I figure the same goes for adventuring.

 

Like I said plenty of times before - the money flows better but it's not unlimited. I'm also not looting and pillaging every chest and body - thusly, money is nowhere near as good. making it 1/2 sell price instead of 1/4 makes it so I can buy the high end items towards the end of the chapters, usually only a few of them, not all. I think I had a godly sword in chapter 2, godly armor with it in chapter 3, where I upgraded the sword, and the ring of power by chapter 4. everything else was pretty junky.


When Ifinished the game, I finished it with 250k gold I believe, but there was almost nothing to buy in Neverwinter during Chapter 4. Unless I just didn't look hard enough.