Oblivion talk:Mercantile

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Archive 1: July 2006 - February 2010

Incorrect use of bartering

Bartering means exchanging goods for something of equal value... this should really say bargaining, or haggling over a price. It is described as such using the Haggle button. — Unsigned comment by 90.198.216.65 (talk) on 29 June 2010

Indeed, thanks for pointing it out. --SerCenKing ^Talk 18:37, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Arrow Bug

I moved this from the main article:

Unpatched

Go to the Slash 'N Smash he will be selling iron arrows buy one at a time and he will never run out works for the xbox 360 that I know of.

It needs confirmation, and to be rewritten. --Arch-Mage Matt ^{Did I Do That?} 17:13, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

It's not a bug as such - his vendor chests are set to have 20 respawning arrows each. It's similar with other vendor and, for instance, bear pelts. rpeh •T•C•E• 17:40, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Master of mercantile does NOT allow "best" deals for buying spells

One would assume that since buying/selling items can be done at a 100/100 ratio, one could also buy spells at the best rate. However, unlike bartering for items (where once you hit master, all prices are the best possible no matter what your disposition/haggle slider is) spells can still be bought under the best rate, and often can't even if you wasn't to, even with a disposition of 100 and mercantile of 100. Shall I add this? I didn't see it anywhere on the main page. dtm 12:04, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Tip Question

This tip is written for PC users. Can it be done for console users? It needs to be written to say if your are on pc if it only works on pc. I will write 'if you are playing on pc' for now until it is confirmed. Instead of selling, for example, one arrow at a time, you can do this to get a lot of one item transactions faster:

• Empty all items that you are carrying in a crate or your personal storage chest.
• Go to a store with a lot of item types (better if they are cheap, like food/ingredient store)
• Buy everything from the seller
• Drop all the items that are worth more than 10 coins
• Also drop all the items that have a quatity of 3 or more, until they are at 2 at most.
• Now go to the npc and sell everything hitting the 'Up arrow' key followed by the 'Enter' key very fast.
• Keep buying/selling everything from/to the npc.
• Sure you lose some coins every time you do it, but it's a LOT faster than other legal methods.

--Manic 16:25, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I've removed this from the article entirely. For a start, the intro now reads "If you are playing on PC (if you are not, this also works)" - which is utterly revolting wording - but it even admits "Sure you lose some coins every time you do it". The other tips are much better because they don't assume you've got enough money to throw away. On balance, this isn't a very good tip. rpeh •T•C•E• 06:16, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

RE: --Dandjh August 2 2011

Ok, I know it can be written in a better way. But this is the fastest legal way to raise the skill, it costs some money, but it is a LOT faster. Watch this vid and probe me wrong: http://bit.ly/qTnFfj

Thanks for this excellent tip 80.56.63.45 19:05, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

You can go and adventure through the mines and such. You can take almost everything from there & repair them, then sell them. Improves Armorer and Mercantile. Obvious, yes, but it let me get a lot of houses and a horse from each of the available stables. And I got a bunch of dough, and 2226 steel arrows. Dragonman0007

The key point is using the keyboard for quick selling items. I collect cloth and clothing from crates and guilds and other stuff worth ≥ 1 gold. Also having a container to store your exploration equipment in is useful, more items to carry and less likely selling some important/unique equipment. Upon entering a city I switch to "civilian" mode, having always a set of appropriate clothing in said chest. Up/down arrow keys to navigate on top of list, enter for selling one or two items, if more I use left twice, then down for OK, enter (so I sell n-2 items), then enter again. Thus you have 1 - 3 sales per item stack while the whole buisiness being not so tedious. Worth mentioning that with alchemy at hand money should not be an issue midgame and later. Buy and resell is a waste of money and should be avoided early game but is a good idea later on. 31.18.83.140 08:42, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Skill over 100

What if your mercantile skill is greater than 100 (e.g., 103) -- will that allow for better buy-and-sell prices than when the player character was at 100?

Similar question regarding personality attribute -- if the player character has a persoality greater than 100, will that affect the merchantile (dependent skill)?— Unsigned comment by 76.226.40.39 (talk) at 18:06 on 13th August 2011

No, once your mercantile level reaches 100 and you receive the Master level perk you are able to buy and sell items at their full value (up to the amount of gold the vendor has available). This is done automatically and does not require bartering. Any further increase will give no advantage to the player, similarly any personality increase will have no effect on the mercantile skill and will not give you the perk any sooner.-Masterlocksmith 18:57, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Disposition can go over 100 and it would affect haggling. First permanently increase disposition by giving yourself 100 Speechcraft and doing disposition mini-game, then Charm the person by 100 pts which will add up, giving you a nice bonus to haggling percentiles.
Slider2k 20:56, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Testing this a bit. Only at a base value of 100 mercantile do you get the perk, and not by Fortifying. If you get to this point no factors will get you a better, because you are at max. If you do not have the perk, than all those other affects will change how hard you can barter. As for Fortifying over 100, most skills do not continue to increase anything if fortified over 100. --DKong27 ^{Tk Ctr Em} 22:51, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Points

Is there a specific amount of points for Mercantile? One amount of points for all or it changes per level? (I think it's the latter) What I'm trying to say: Does anyone know the amount of points per mercantile level? Dragonman0007

From 83 to 84 in Mercantile is 88.4 points total. And I used just arrows. Dragonman0007

Lockpicks

There appears to be no increase in Mercantile skill for the purchasing of lockpicks. (Verification needed)--Lmstearn (talk) 06:36, 30 May 2014 (GMT)

Mercantile Skill Appears Frozen

The Skillbar (minor 52.7) has not changed for a large number of transactions for this player at L38. Long time since the Hackdirt boost and not using any levelling mods or 000 etc. But if this "ties in" with SpeechCraft, does this imply that SpeechCraft (major 65) games should be played in the same levelling interval? Haven't taken a level up in Personality (major 93) for a while either. Some other skills have already maxed: Sneak, Destruction, Light Armor. Are these likely to impact? Edit: Or have I missed the point entirely in that the skills boosts are capped for each round of player levelling?--Lmstearn (talk) 14:02, 12 July 2014 (GMT)

The skill 'breaks' for a while after the Hackdirt quest, the official patch should have fixed it though. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 14:19, 12 July 2014 (GMT)

With the above stats, buying heaps of items didn't help at all. Looking back at some of the archived discussions here, someone made the comment that the mercantile skill doesn't really move until you sell stuff. This worked. Buying 100 iron arrows in bulk & selling them separately got a good increase.--Lmstearn (talk) 05:25, 28 July 2014 (GMT)

0.4 Experience per sell is wrong

I have leveled my mercantile manually to 100, and I got really suspicious by the end about the experience you get. Above 90 skill levels, it actually needs ~500 items to sell to get 1 single skill point. I am not sure if the experience you get for selling decreases or the correct amount is 0.2 experience per sell, but 0.4 at all levels is definitely wrong. — Unsigned comment by 46.139.200.177 (talk) at 19:39 on 20 May 2018

The amount is correct. By the numbers on the Increasing Skills page I can guess that Mercantile is one of your minor skills and one of your specialisations. This is because it takes 192 experience points to level from from 99-100, which is 480 items (400 items for level 88-89). If your 0.2 was correct, your Mercantile would be a specialisation and a major skill, and it would take roughly 500 items to level the skill from 90-91, but it would increase to 570 for level 99-100. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 19:12, 20 May 2018 (UTC)