Stores Tweak

[SixOfSpades]

Three things.

 

1. Stores "should" be willing to purchase only those goods that are in their line of work. (Some of this has already been done in BG1--Taerom Fuiruim will buy your gems but not your jewelry, since he can just as easily use your gems to make his own jewlery, to sell at a greater profit.) Merchants traditionally only buy items that they're familiar with, to accurately assess their worth and locate the best markets for. Galoomp the Bookkeeper has no need to buy your Splint Mail, nor would the Drow Potion-merchant be interested in anything but Potions. The majority of the outdoor Athkatla Cutpurses probably wouldn't be interested in buying anything at all--they're in the market to sell, not buy, they have less expensive ways of restocking their inventory. This tweak would block the existing explot of it being too easy to sell items at double their market value by simply selling them to a merchant who doesn't any in stock. Most importantly, Wands should only be salable at stores run by a person who could conceivably recharge them: Friendly Arm Inn (Bentley), High Hedge, Sorcerous Sundries, Adventurer's Mart (Ribald & Deidre), and the Arcana Archives....& possibly Galoomp the Bookkeeper and the Drow Scroll Merchant.

If only it were possible to put "price caps" on stores--how many times have you extracted hundreds of thousands of coins out of some random merchant like Jahaboam, simply by selling him all your excess gear? His inventory now totally eclipses that of the Adventurer's Mart, sure, but how's some street peddler with a sandwich board going to come up with the money to buy all that crap off you?

Related tweak: Everybody in Trademeet say that the Trademeet Djinni monopolized all commerce in the city by outbidding everyone else. They spent mountains of money to do it. So why do they pay you only regular price for what you might have to sell them? If anyone's going to offer the most exorbitant sums for your wares, it should be the Djinni, not the Sahuagin.

 

 

2. People who are willing to purchase stolen items are quite reasonable. Stores with security lax enough to permit goods to be shoplifted are also understandable. But due to the essentially game-overriding power of the so-called Gorch Exploit (especially in Chapters 2 & 3), I move that there should be no store that allows both shoplifting and the sale of fenced goods.

 

 

3. A further side-tweak would make the Shoplifting penalty to a character's Pick Pockets score be determined by three things: If the store is inside its own building (Bernard has his own building, Joluv does not), if the store's staff has only one pair of eyes (the Brynnlaw General Store does, the Adventurer's Mart does not), and if the storekeeper might be considered experienced and therefore more difficult to fool (Roger the Fence probably is, the "Nobleman" in Trademeet probably isn't). This tweak would probably dependent on the Potion Tweak, which would (most likely) both reduce the power of Potions of Perception and Mastery, and also make them much less numerous in the game. Right now, it's safe to assume that any worthwhile item in the game that can be shoplifted, will be, but if this Potion Tweak is implemented, the difficulty of shoplifting might actually have some meaning once again.

[Andyr]

1. This would make sense (though it could get fairly annoying), but as an option, yeah. I suspect it'd be a lot of work to go through all the stores and do, though (not necessarily hard but tedious).

 

And yeah, I don't think there is a way to put a price cap.

 

Trademeet Djinni being a good place to shop would be nice, too.

 

2. I don't have much of an opinion on that one.

 

3. Again, maybe.

[SixOfSpades]

1. This would make sense (though it could get fairly annoying), but as an option, yeah. I suspect it'd be a lot of work to go through all the stores and do, though (not necessarily hard but tedious).

Hmm....there aren't that many stores in the game, are there? Less than 40, I'd say. And since all one needs to do is adjust the flags on what they will and won't sell, it should be pretty simple. I'm not asking for anything major, just to make the average man-on-the-street types like Ikert or Mira not deal in things like wands & spell scrolls, or specialized types like Lady Yuth be willing to buy your Composite Longbows off of you.

Since there are no jewelers or gemcutter-type merchants in the game, those items should be salable pretty much everywhere; selling the random treasure to reclaim the space in your backpack is a pretty basic need.

 

Trademeet Djinni being a good place to shop would be nice, too.

They're already a half-way decent place--I think they've got a Necklace of Missiles and I know they have a couple of important spells--but they don't pay as much as they should when they buy your stuff. (They do charge above-market prices for what they sell, so at least that's accurate.) If regular stores pay you 75% of an item's actual price when you sell it, and charge you 125% when you buy it, the Djinni should essentially be localized inflation: They pay you 120% and charge you 170%.

 

2. I don't have much of an opinion on that one.

Level 8 Bard talks to Jasper St. Baird, walks out of Jon's dungeon. Watches Jon pulverize some SThieves and Cowls. Talks to Gaelan. Talks to Renal. Drinks the Potion of Master Thievery that Jasper gave him. Talks to Gorch. Steals another Potion of Master Thievery, drinks it, and then another and another. Spends the next 10 minutes stealing and reselling the same damn Rogue Stone from Gorch, again and again and again. Goes shopping, and in the space of an hour has all of Ribald's, Diedre's, and Joluv's best equipment under his belt, with nothing else in the entire game worth buying until Chapter 6.

 

I guess it's pretty obvious that I have an opinion.

[Borsook]

1. Really depends on a price. A shoe merchant may buy a horse off you if the price is right, then resell it. It's like selling to an individual but you choose a shop since they're bound to have money. If we go into realisms then some stores would not buy at all having their own source of goods.

[Kulyok]

The first two are quite annoying to me as a player. Even if the first one makes sense to me, I guess I'd not install it, even if it is implemented.

 

The third one makes very much sense, especially with the Potion Tweak. The rogues will be forced to invest in Pick Pocketing, and the skill will become valid once again. I'd say go for it.

[Domi]

But will the third one have audience? As in why would a person who'd use this er... shortcut install this component of tweaks?! Someone who has an uncontrolable urge to do because s/he knows s/he can?

[SixOfSpades]

But will the third one have audience? As in why would a person who'd use this er... shortcut install this component of tweaks?!

By "the third one," do you mean the tweak that makes it impossible to shoplift from a fence, or the tweak that makes shoplifting difficulty relative to the actual security measures that the shopkeeper has set up?

 

If the latter, I can see the desire for keeping [quality or expense of items for sale] as the determinant for shoplifting difficulty. as opposed to [security]. For example, Joluv has no security measures whatsoever: He's a Nobleman with incredibly expensive weapons (that he does not know how to use), just hanging out in the seediest bar/brothel in town. In the real world, I'd give him a life expectancy of seven minutes. Yet despite his obvious idiocy and utter inability to prevent anyone from taking his wares, it is completely impossible to steal from him. Now, this may be because Joluv has so few items for sale: He could conceivably keep them close about his person and only display them one at a time. But if that were the case, he should refuse to buy anything at all, except for things like gems and jewelry. Perhaps each merchant would need to be considered on an individual basis.

 

If you meant the former (you can't shoplift from a store that buys stolen goods), I see your point, and admit that you're right: Any player who installed this tweak is a player who wouldn't even abuse the reason for its existence in the first place--with the only exception being someone who wants to force somebody else (such as a little brother) using the same computer to play the game in a semi-honorable fashion. Not exactly a large slice of the BG population.

 

I amend my statement: Ideally, it should be possible to shoplift from ANY store, with the difficulty being determined by a combination of factors:

1. Whether or not the store is inside its own building,

2. How many people in the area have the store's best interests at heart,

3. How 'experienced' the shopkeeper appears to be,

4. The shopkeeper's INT score,

5. And the average price-per-item of the store's total inventory (at the start of the game).

Gorch could easily be made very difficult to steal from: He passes Condition 1, and since he deals with Thieves all the time, he's just going to be waiting for you to try to steal something--not a guy who can easily be taken off guard--so he would pass Condition 3 as well. Condition 2 would be perfectly complemented by adding a couple of Shadow Thieves in the store, who remain perfectly Stealthed unless they see you try to steal something.

[Idobek]

Why advocate that gems and jewellery should be bought be (almost) all shopkeepers, surely creating a few stores specifically for that purpose would be a better way to approach things.

[SixOfSpades]

Why advocate that gems and jewellery should be bought be (almost) all shopkeepers, surely creating a few stores specifically for that purpose would be a better way to approach things.

While that would indeed be very logical, there are so damn many gem & jewelry items that it would suck to have to make a run to the nearest jeweler every time your Inventory gets full. Because how many jewelers could there be? One each in Athkatla, Trademeet, Brynnlaw, and the Underdark? If any merchant is going to have heavy security for their wares, it'd be a jeweler, and I just don't see people like Hes or Ikert as being able to meet that need anytime soon.

 

Since gems & jewelry are treated more as an alternate form of currency than as items in themselves (by which I mean that their buy/sell prices never change, regardless of CHA/Reputation/store rates), and since you find so many of them, I'd prefer to keep them salable at almost all locations.