Skyrim talk:Merchants

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. -- 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.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. --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. --Nephele^Talk 17:48, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Merchants not in cities? Well, there are the ones in orc strongholds, the khajiit caravans, the ones in Riverwood, Shor's Stone, Ivarstead, Morthal, Falkreath, Winterhold, Dawnstar, the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, the College of Winterhold, plus the scattered inns in the wilderness on top. And then there are the extra merchants in the DLCs, who are all located outside cities. So yeah there are a few. --Morrolan (talk) 04:43, 2 April 2013 (GMT)

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 ~ 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? — Unsigned comment by 69.127.58.56 (talk) at 19:03 on 23 November 2011 (GMT)

Agreed I'll start adding amounts if anyone has objections tell me. 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. 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. 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 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. --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.— Unsigned comment by Themendios (talk • contribs) on 9 December 2011

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 Anoriath. I've now also added a note to the page introduction explicitly stating that bugged investees aren't listed on the page. --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 Enchanting Effects Discussion page). 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. 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. (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 — Unsigned comment by 109.155.153.169 (talk) on 3 March 2012

Army surplus

It seems that the military camp quartermasters restock far more often than 48 hours. Possibly on every cell reload. 212.95.56.51 13:54, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

This has been marked as a question that needs to be answered.

Can someone test this please.Thank you for bringing this up.Good day.--Skyrimplayer 21:15, 15 July 2012 (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. — Unsigned comment by Cloudchaser (talk • contribs) on December 28, 2011

I have tested and can confirm this statement.

Simply using "setav" will not get merchants to upgrade stock.

One work around would be to "setav" to close to where you want, then use "Aadvskill" to finish, which will then cause an update next time the merchant resets.

24.246.152.183 04:16, 20 March 2013 (GMT)

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! --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. --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. — Unsigned comment by 97.90.225.171 (talk) on 7 January 2012

If the NPC likes you enough you can take certain items from him/her without a bounty.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). Alphabetface 02:39, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Bugs

The part in the 'Bugs' section about saving, restarting and reloading, should be removed, because it is a convuluted way of forcing a restock, when there is a much simpler way listed above i.e. save, kill and reload--The Silencer 03:32, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm moving bugs here because they are forced bugs not normally encountered. They are more like notes to quickly stock up on alchemy or find a specific item. I am reducing it to one easy confirmed way to restock a merchant quickly. If you have any thoughts on this or want to move them back please leave a reason why here.

The semi-persistent state of merchants can also be used to either load a save from 48+ hours earlier (48 hours is standard restock) or simply kill them and then reload (forcing essential traders into the recovery postition also works). Any of these will cause a vendor to restock even if the game loaded shouldn't have had one.

Exiting and restarting the game then re-loading an earlier savegame also restores the merchants gold, but not necessarily the same inventory. (verified that restarting Skyrim will also work with the latest save game which is usually the autosave when you walked into that merchant.)

— Unsigned comment by The Silencer (talk • contribs) at 03:26 on 11 March 2012

I thought i hadnt signed and tried to do same time as someone corrected for me--The Silencer 03:35, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Merchant Bug

After I buy from a merchant all other speech options with that npc disappear. any interaction with them will take you strait into the shop's inventory and exiting out of that you get the speech option to ask them what they have for sale. also if I pass buy them when they'd normally have something to say I get taken into their shop inventory and my companion/wife becomes almost useless if I choose the wrong option with her so Im stuck trying to find a temporary companion(any suggestion) 50.81.154.95 05:15, 9 March 2012 (UTC)CaptainCacti

It seems to happen to some merchants who I haven't interacted with since it started but it is quite annoying 50.81.154.95 05:21, 9 March 2012 (UTC)CaptainCacti

new boss

This has been marked as a question that needs to be answered.

If i invest a merchant and than kill him, will i be able to invest the one who take over the shop, or does the investment automaticly transfer into the new merchant(Vvardfell 10:46, 29 April 2012 (UTC))

Merchants that cannot be invested in

The Khajiit, Ahkari, Ma'dran, and Ri'saad are all identified as being investable, but they are not. Additionally, Moth gro-Bagol and Reyvn Sadri did not offer investment options despite what this page indicates. Grey 20:25, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

As of the latest Unofficial Skyrim Patches (Legendary or Special Edition): The Khajiit are not investable, apparently intentionally. But Moth and Revyn are investable, apparently it was a bug that they were not. JLE (talk) 23:46, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Falion as a merchant

The article states that Falion should have only g500 but in my case he has g2000 (without Master Trader perk). Can someone check this up or comment on this? Also, he is a master level conjuration trainer, which makes possible to buy training services from him and them get the money back by selling him items. Maybe this should be mentioned as a note on this page and as a service on his own one? Elevens 21:48, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

The Notes section on this page and the Trainers page says that "Merchants who are also Trainers add the gold you pay them for training to the gold they use to barter with." This would imply that Falion has 2000 gold for you because of money you gave him for training services. His page already lists him as a merchant and a trainer, and the note is listed on both pages already. ABCface^◥ 21:57, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I'd got confused. Elevens 21:21, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Merchant Restock Bug

In my game simply attacking the merchant (i.e. First Word Unrelenting Force) And then loading a previous save forces a restock - i don't have to kill them. — Unsigned comment by 37.157.172.203 (talk) at 01:34 on 5 December 2012 (GMT)

some problems about merchants

1. If you sell some specific items(such as a silver sword or a skill book) to a merchant, they may never disappear, never. 2. Sometimes, some merchants may have some goods in abnormal large amount, for example, 100+ potions of cure disease or 1000+ iron arrows. What's more, this may prevent other items of same kind from respawning, for 1000+ iron arrows, other high-quality arrows may always be unavailable. Sometimes,that's quite annoying. Any ideas? Thanks Dreamshadow (talk) 14:43, 9 March 2013 (GMT)

What platform are you playing? Do you have any mods installed that can affect the merchants? —MortenOSlash (talk) 15:50, 9 March 2013 (GMT)

PC, besides DLCs(DG & HF), unofficial skyrim/DG/HF patch, no other mods...This abnormal amount isn't formed in a short perid of time. It seems that every 24 hours, the amount adds.If you buy all of them,then everything will return to normal. — Unsigned comment by Dreamshadow (talk • contribs) at 16:21 on 9 March 2013 (GMT)

The unofficial patches are as good as mods here. It can well be they have made the problem. —MortenOSlash (talk) 18:51, 9 March 2013 (GMT)

I'm afraid this answer may not convince me completely. I have done some simple tests without any mods added. You are right, many problems disappeared this time. Some other results may be intersting. I sold 100 alto wines to Elrindir(The Drunken Huntsman) and 120 potions of minor healing to Arcadia(Arcadia's Cauldron). Then, I waited in Breezehome for 50 hours. These items didn't disappear. Elrindir had 100 alto wines for sale and Arcadia had 121 potions of minor healing for sale......Dreamshadow (talk) 00:14, 10 March 2013 (GMT)

Confirmed. This time with 1300+ steel arrows and 30 silver swords sold to Uthgerd the Unbroken. The inventory was reset after buying all the items in all categories (i.e. until she didn't have any stock of any item). MadGizmo (talk) 02:07, 16 April 2013 (GMT)

To clarify: It looks like the entire inventory does not restock when a large number of a single item is being sold to a merchant. The items sold later will be added to the stock. Once it starts the other items will not be restocked as well. New items (different from the items in the stuck inventory) added later will disappear after a while or when reloading the game. MadGizmo (talk) 02:20, 16 April 2013 (GMT)

Bug edit

Is the segment of the bugs section "Restoring from a savegame does not restore a merchant's gold or inventory. If you initiate trading with the merchant's gold at 750, trade him/her down to 20 gold, then load a saved game, the merchant's gold will be at 20. Any items you bought before reloading will also be gone from his/her inventory." really necessary? Not to hate on the person who added this, but to me it doesn't seem necessary to have this included, as it doesn't occur to me as a bug, just good developing on the developers part. Because you would expect reloading a savegame to restore all of the games data at the point of saving, including all merchants current money at the point of saving. Does anyone agree with me? Nighthunter987 (talk) 08:09, 26 March 2013 (GMT)

Except it does not restore the data. The merchants' money is not restored to the point of the save. Or at least that is what the contributor of this bug thinks she or he has experienced. —MortenOSlash (talk) 08:40, 26 March 2013 (GMT)

Proposal: add hours open and gender to tables

Merchant gender can be important; if your PC has the Allure perk, then opposite gender merchants will give better prices. It would also be useful to know which merchants are available 24 hours in particular. --Morrolan (talk) 04:32, 2 April 2013 (GMT)

Ghorza gra-Bagol (Tacitus Sallustius) investment bug

When Ghorza gra-Bagol was killed Tacitus Sallustius (her apprentice) took over the smith. I was then able to invest in the smith and activate the master perk. Thought this was an interesting fact. Deanmakoma (talk) 09:34, 24 April 2013 (GMT)

Ghorza's dialogue tree is bugged, Tacitus's isn't. Both of the Orc smiths in Markath (Ghorza and Moth gro-Bagol) have been fixed o be investable by the latest Unofficial Skyrim Patch, since there was apparently enough evidence to suggest that it was a bug that they weren't investable. JLE (talk) 23:49, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Move Skooma Dealers to Merchants page?

I was checking out the page on Skooma Dealers, since I found a new way to pacify them when they turn hostile, and I noticed that the Dealer page appears to be linked with the 'Skyrim:People' page, judging by the small purple link under the page title, but the Skooma Dealers, which are generic and don't have individual names, are nowhere on the People page. The Dealer page states that they are a randomly encountered merchant, but they are not listed on the Merchants page. I can't even find a link to them on the NPC page - I had to do a search to find the Skooma Dealer page. It seems to be an isolated page. I'm not certain how to move pages yet, so if my reasoning is sound I'll leave it to a more experienced user to add the Skooma Dealers to the Merchants page and change the link. Any thoughts? Chocoholic (talk) 06:33, 21 November 2014 (GMT)

Added a link here. -- SarthesArai ^Talk 13:51, 21 November 2014 (GMT)

Bug: Merchant Locks Store Early

If you leave the store while the merchant is talking to you, and they follow you outside, they'll lock the store behind them, and then forget to unlock it when they go back inside. I've noticed this specifically with Sadri in Windhelm, and Angeline in Solitude, but it might also be the general bug that causes Belethor to lock up after being visited (as described on his page). Can I get an independent verification on this? Earthfiredrake (talk) 23:30, 17 May 2015 (GMT)

Yep, happened to me a bunch of times. It's not the Belethor bug though, he locks up without going outside sometimes. --Morrolan (talk) 12:08, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

I've encountered a similar bug in Dawnstar with The Mortar and Pestle being locked during the day, and when I picked the lock and went inside Frida is standing behind the counter but gives the warning dialogue to get out when you trespass. However, this bug did seem to fix itself since in the same game file that it appeared, it randomly disappeared some time later. This type of bug I've only encountered in one of my several game files, and only at this one location. Anyone else encounter this? Chocoholic (talk) 07:20, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

There are a few merchants which do this occasionally. Picking the lock to enter and then waiting a day normally fixes them; I think it's something to do with the merchant unlocking the store script going buggy for some reason. (I can't remember all of them, I've seen it at Warmaiden's as well definitely though.) --Morrolan (talk) 12:59, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Falion's Merchant Inventory

In one of my game files I checked what Falion had in stock, and he had 2 Black Soul gems, not just 1 Black Soul gem. At the time my character was lvl 30, Merchant perk, playing on PS3 with the Skyrim Legendary Edition. Has anyone else noticed that Falion sometimes has more than 1 Black Soul gem in his merchant inventory? If this is consistent, then perhaps we should change the note on him to allow for the variable in quantity.Chocoholic (talk) 04:38, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

As far as I know, Falion has no black soul gems at all in his merchant chest. They always appear in his personal inventory, which can be bought via his store since they qualify as items a mage store will carry. (They can also be pickpocketed.) --Morrolan (talk) 13:01, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

His merchant chest has one black soul gem. None of his or the chests random lists of items appear to include black soul gems. As far as I remember he can have more than one on him for sale, but it is not consistent, and I always put the extra one down to the level gems list having no reason to look further, though that list doesn't appear to include them now that I look. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 17:51, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, I have seen him with a black soul gem in his personal inventory. Maybe it's connected to a quest? Perhaps Rising at Dawn adds one, possibly? Just about impossible to track every quest in the game to figure it out. --Morrolan (talk) 23:10, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Merchants that CAN be invested in

This has been marked as a question that needs to be answered.

I've found that I could invest in all 4 marketplace stalls in Riften; i.e., Grelka, Brand-Shei, Madesi, and even Marise Aravel gave me an option to invest and I was able to do so successfully. Also, Lod and Zaria in Falkreath are investable as well.

Could someone confirm this in vanilla or were these investing options added by an unofficial patch? Eienshi09 (talk) 06:25, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

I could invest in both Lod and Zaria (in vanilla Special Edition on PC) in Falkreath. In Riften, I could invest in Brand-Shei, but none of the other three you mentioned. For now, at least, I edited the page when the three who work for both of us. --DekuSamurai (talk) 15:36, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

I cannot invest in any of these on the 360 (DG, DB, & HF installed).--149.160.118.171 23:51, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

I've just gone through Deku's edits and every addition cannot be invested in properly without the USKP (or other mods) being installed. None of them are available in the base game. I've simply undone them as even the confirmed X's are unreliable due to possible mod interference. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 00:25, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Merchant restock duration handling

Disassembly of the executable indicates that merchant restocking works as follows:

• For each merchant faction, the game stores the in-game date that the faction last restocked its wares (in days passed since the start of the playthrough, not the calendar date).
• If you speak to a merchant belonging to a faction that has no stored date, then a restock occurs immediately (the game calls ResetInventory on the merchant container) and the current date is stored.
• If you speak to a merchant belonging to a faction that has a stored date, then the game checks if more than iDaysToRespawnVendor have passed. If so, then a restock occurs immediately and the current date is stored. Otherwise, no action is taken, and the stored date is not updated.
• The "sell, save, punch, and load" exploit stems entirely from the fact that the game either doesn't ever actually write these stored dates to the save file, or doesn't read them from the save file properly.

I can't take full credit for these findings; I was pointed to the game setting and the subroutine that reads it by someone else. DavidJCobb (talk) 19:38, 2 August 2019 (UTC)

Eorlund gold amount

Eorlund Gray-Mane is listed as carrying "1000-2500" gold. Besides fences (who are all listed as carrying 1000-4000 gold, as their available gold is dependent on Thieves' Guild upgrades) and some generic merchants (hunters, etc.), no other merchant is listed with a variable amount of gold. There is no note to explain this, nor does Eorlund's dedicated page have an explanation. Can anyone confirm whether this variance actually exists, and if so, confirm what causes it? I suspect this is an error of some kind. — Unsigned comment by 104.11.125.97 (talk) at 21:06 on 19 May 2024 (UTC)