Skyrim talk:Merchants

2012-03-03T18:32:18Z

109.155.153.169: /* Shop Reset and Cached Data */

== Listing by Hold ==

Why are these listed by hold, with the city as subcategory? I can't think of a single store that is '''not''' in a city, unless you count inns. -- [[User:Hargrimm|Hargrimm]] | [[User_talk:Hargrimm|Θ]] 00:38, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

:I think you are right, but inns should be added, and they need a place to go.[[User:Ninti|Ninti]] 22:30, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

::I think we should put all the merchants in a single table and add the hold as a column--this would allow us to quickly find all blacksmiths in Skyrim, for example. --[[User:Evil4Zerggin|Evil4Zerggin]] 18:07, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

:::I'd be in favour of combining everything into a single page to make it easier to sort information. However, I didn't do it as part of my recent revamps because doing it properly isn't easy. Columns need to be added for both city and hold. More difficult is that I think the page still needs a table of contents, allowing readers to jump directly to the stores for a given city. That means setting up a manually-created table of contents, and having anchors within the table so that Merchants#Riften still takes you to the start of the list of Riften stores. --[[User:Nephele|Nephele]][[User_talk:Nephele|Talk]] 17:48, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

== General tips ==

Is there a page listing information about trading in the game? Well anyway, it's worth mentioning hints somewhere. I wanted to add that quitting the game resets the merchants' inventory and money, which is imo a very useful tip ~ [[User:Dwarfmp|Dwarfmp]] 20:24, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

== Table for Gold ==

I know that no one will really read this or tell me theyre opinion but i personally think (seeing that in skyrim, merchants only have so much gold to buy/trade with) that this section should also include the base amount of gold that the merchant has every 2 days, what do you guys think?
:Agreed I'll start adding amounts if anyone has objections tell me. [[User:Babytoke|Babytoke]] 23:29, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

::How do you plan on going about this? Are you going to add another column to the tables specific to this? Personally, I think that would be best. [[User:Tyler.e|Tyler .e]] 19:44, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I feel that this page could be made better if the tables for each merchant also included a row with their max available gold with and without the Investor/Master Trader perks. [[Special:Contributions/67.187.133.160|67.187.133.160]] 22:56, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

== Merchant Services ==

The "Services" category for merchants is kind of confusing. The current categories, such as "apparel" or "misc" are not a very good picture of what they buy and sell. There actually seems to be several categories of merchants:

*Weapons/Armor - They sell and buy melee and archery weapons (but not staves), armor (but not robes or clothes), and misc stuff related to smithing, e.g. leather and ore.
*Potions - They buy and sell potions, ingredients, and a few books (will they buy any book?)
*Magic - Will buy and sell staves, some(all?) magic and mundane clothes and robes and some(all?) magic and mundane jewelry, as well as books, scrolls, and soul gems
*Food/Drink - Will buy any food or drink, and sometimes sell salt as well
*Innkeeper - Same as Food/Drink, but will also rent you a room
*Apparel - Will buy and sell some(all?) magic and mundane apparel and some(all?) magic and mundane jewelry
*General Store - Will buy or sell anything

Did I miss anything or get anything wrong. If not, the services should be changed accordingly
[[User:Ninti|Ninti]] 22:15, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
:In revamping the tables just now, I switched all merchants to use the one-word identifier used in the game data. I was then thinking of adding some information in the introduction summarizing what each of those identifiers mean. At this point, however, the only info I can get out of the game data is what each merchant sells -- the flags saying what a merchant buys are stored differently than they were in Oblivion or Morrowind. So most of the the buying info is going to have to be based on gameplay experience. --[[User:Nephele|Nephele]][[User_talk:Nephele|Talk]] 06:28, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

== Anoriath ==

Someone keeps deleting the fact that you can invest with Anoriath but it doesn't do anything beyond giving him the initial 500g.

Why? Both facts are pertinent.
:Sorry, I'm the one who has been doing it. It's mainly been happening because I've completely replaced the page contents about three times over the last couple days with updated information automatically generated from the game data -- where I'm determining who is available for investing based on who has the extra 500 gold available to be unlocked in their merchant chest.
:However, I'm not sure the information really belongs on this page, because as a summary page it should just help readers figure out how much gold each merchant can have, and Anoriath does not have the extra gold. Instead, I believe the information belongs on Anoriath's individual page -- i.e., at [[Skyrim:Anoriath|Anoriath]]. I've now also added a note to the page introduction explicitly stating that bugged investees aren't listed on the page. --[[User:Nephele|Nephele]][[User_talk:Nephele|Talk]] 17:41, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

== Shop Reset and Cached Data ==
I had a weird experience with shop inventory reset and loading. I plan to investigate more, but want to note this here in case anyone has further information/experience.

Background: PC Version. I returned to Whiterun after being gone for about a week. I did a bunch of smithing (without interacting with the vendor in any way), and stored a bunch of stuff in Breezehome. I then made a save. Then I went to see what was on sale at Warmaiden's (was looking for a fortify 1-handed item for disenchant purposes).
*Initial Attempt: It had a set of inventory that didn't include any item I was interested. Call this inventory set NI1.
*Reload 1: Without quitting the game, I reloaded the save I made prior to checking the inventory. The shop had a DIFFERENT set of inventory that didn't include any item I was intereseted in. Call this inventory set SS.
*Reload 2: Without quitting the game, I reloaded again and got inventory set SS again.
*Reload 3: Without quitting the game, I reloaded again and got inventory set SS again.
*Next Attempt: I quit the game, restarted, and loaded the save I made before checking the inventory. Now, I got a different inventory set from either NI1 or SS. Call this NI2. It still didn't have what I wanted.
*Reload 1: Without quitting the game, I reloaded the save again. I got inventory set SS again.
*Reload 2: Same behaviour.
*Next Attempt: I quit the game, restarted, and loaded the save I made before checking the inventory. This time, I got a different set of inventory NI3 that included an item I wanted, so I stopped at that point and bought it.

Theory: SS looked awfully close to what was in Warmaiden's before I left Whiterun the week prior (I did not think to write it down, so going from memory on that). It looks like something about the shop reset is messed up by reloading within the same session. There are several possible explanations: it could only do shop resets on the first load of a new session, or the flag that says the shop needs to be reset could be left untouched by loading within the same session (even if it's set in the savefile). I hope to investigate further this evening.

This is not the only place I have discovered odd behavior with same session reloading (see the [[Skyrim talk: Enchanting Effects|Enchanting Effects Discussion]] page).
[[User:Aetryn|Aetryn]] 19:48, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

:I retested this with the blacksmith in Solitude and got the same behavior. This time I was definitely able to see that the "reload" inventory is the before-reset inventory (it had some items I had improved via Smithing and then sold). Also, loading a save for the first time in a session, then NOT checking his inventory before loading the save again still resulted in new inventory the first time I checked the merchant, but not any future times.

:Conclusion: The "shop needs to be reset" flag (or "shop was last reset time" or however it's stored) is stored in the save file. However, any value existing in a play session (i.e. between quitting completely out) will not be overwritten by a new game load unless you quit out of the game completely. This sounds like a bug to me. [[User:Aetryn|Aetryn]] 02:00, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

::this seems similar to what i have experienced on Xbox, if you save it and return to the xbox dashboard, when you return to the game, the shopkeepers inventory, and money will have reset, this defiantly works on Xbox--i have used it to sell my loot and obtain ingots and soul gems multiple times. ([[user:Eddie the head|Eddie The Head]] 09:21, 21 December 2011 (UTC))

If you save after trading, kill the merchant and reload, they will be reset with (usually) different stock and base gold

== Army surplus ==

It seems that the [[Skyrim:Military Camps|military camp]] quartermasters restock far more often than 48 hours. Possibly on every cell reload. [[Special:Contributions/212.95.56.51|212.95.56.51]] 13:54, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

== Raising magic skills via console affects spell merchants ==

Through some fiddling with the console, I suspect that editing your character's spell skills will alter how spell merchants manage their wares. When I set a magic skill (Destruction, Alteration, etc.) to 100, they never seemed to offer anything over Apprentice level for sale, regardless of restarting the game or how many days pass. However, when I used the console to set the skill level to 99 and got the final point the normal way, their inventories updated to higher skill level spells as you'd expect.
I believe that it's the act of ''gaining'' the skill point that triggers the game to update the spell merchants' stock; just ''having'' the skill isn't enough.
It may be a good idea to put up a warning somewhere that the use of the console can lock you out of many spells if you're not careful.

== Odds of a merchant having specific items ==

Does anyone have a link or know the % chances a merchant will have an item? Specifically, i'm trying to locate Enchanter's Elixirs and either merchants have an extremely low chance to have them or they only show up in boss chests. Thanks! --[[Special:Contributions/76.95.151.123|76.95.151.123]] 00:09, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
:All apothecary merchants have a 5% chance of carrying 1-3 Enchanter's Elixirs, but only once you reach level 33. The general level requirement for that elixir is level 33, but it appears that dungeons tweak leveled lists up and down, meaning you probably can find it in dungeons before reaching level 33.
:As for general information about obtaining items, I'm slowly adding details to pages about chances of merchants selling items and level requirements ([[Skyrim:Gems]] and all the individual ingredient pages being examples). But it takes some work to condense thousands of possible sources down to a useful summary. --[[User:Nephele|Nephele]][[User_talk:Nephele|Talk]] 00:20, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

== Displayed wares in Merchant buildings ==

I'm curious what causes the displayed wares in a store to become white rather than being red with respect to it being a crime to pick them up. One would suspect that they should always be red for the purposes of theft. Do the shopkeepers grow fond of the player based on interactions/speech skill and simply provide freebies?

For example, in a blacksmith store which I frequent I notice that the iron wares are not "owned" whereas the steel items are "owned". Taking the iron items causes no crime points but taking steel items does. Same situation in Apothecaries. I havn't yet gone and done any rigerous experiments with this but maybe other people have noticed it.
:If the NPC likes you enough you can take certain items from him/her without a bounty.[[User:RIM|RIM]] 23:29, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

== Replacement Merchants ==

Is there somewhere I can find a listing of all the 'replacement merchants' in the game? It seems to me that some are listed on this page, but not all (is it just the ones that share inventory from the beginning?). I'm not sure if it's true for all original merchants, but I know that many will be replaced by another merchant when they die so that the player can still do business in their shop. Is there somewhere on the site that I can find the information about these replacements? I haven't been able to find the information on many of the individual merchant pages, the shop pages, or on this page (with a few exceptions). [[User:Alphabetface|Alphabetface]] 02:39, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

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Skyrim talk:Merchants