I know I got 2 threads rolling but this is my last one for a while:


Whenever my Barter is pathetic, I trade with merchants, buy stuff, sell stuff, move on. No biggy.

However, I made a character who is level 30, and is focused on Energy Weapons who has 100 Barter.

Most merchants can only handle 1 weapon, because the amount of caps they carry is small(Which makes sense, not every body is wealthy) So on my trips, I can only sell 2-3 things even though I picked up 15+ things during my excursions. My safehouse is piled with items I can only dream of selling. Not to mention my gold bars from Dead Money are just lying around LOL.


One thing I think would help, whenever NPCs re-supply, their caps shouldn't be capped. For example, if I constantly drain the Gunners of money, whenever they resupply, they get 8000 caps. On the flip side, if I NEVER visit the Gun Runners, they still have 8000 caps. Some caps should carry over, at the very least.



Or, at the very least, be able to do like we did in F3 and be able to help businesses out, send cash their way to allow an increased MAX amount of caps. So if Gun Runners can only have 8000 caps, if you support them and help them out, they can now carry 16,000 caps maximum. However, this would cost some caps and a barter skill of 100.



Anyone agree or am I just silly?

The best fellow to go to is the Gun Runners. They're pretty stocked on caps.

Gaming economies are usually kinda weird.

i agree they should be carried over, but I think that is the devs trying to control how rich you can become, similar to getting banned from casinos. I mean if you're patient, you're gonna be rich no matter what.

I think it would be cool if you could invest in the stores like @ canterburry commons in F03, or some perk based around the barter skill or merchant based quests, like conteras' side quest or something along those lines.

Do what I do- don't loot armor or weapons unless you want to keep it or use it. And the few weapons/armor you do pick up, "exchange" for caps, ammo, chems, mods, etc. Not everything needs to be picked up and sold, weather or not you're running the ever-popular "Sack of Holding" mod. Trust me, if you're clearing out merchant's stock of caps with one or two weapons, the remainder is simply excessive.

And if I recall, in FO3, only a handful of merchants broke 1,000 caps to barter with, even after investing. So far (from my limited experience with the game so far) I've seen most merchants carry between 300-800 caps, with one of the gunrunners in excess of 2,000 caps.

There's a reason this is called the Barter skill and not the Acquire all liquid capital in the wasteland skill... Try bartering more. Trade in junk you don't want for junk you do want. The game is much more enjoyable if you try to keep your transactions balanced and your caps low.

(Personally I consider it a failure in game design that you can't Barter for things like repair service or bribes.)

maybe there should be a barter system like in oblivion in the Fallout games, allowing you to haggle prices


and what i usually do is buy what i need then sell things to counter the cost, most of my transactions end up with me or them getting 100 caps at most

I rarely pick up anything that isn't either useful to me, or actually valuable. Most of the random junk in the game doesn't get bothered with. I also make a habit out of cleaning out merchants' ammo and chem stocks; I rarely need it, but you can never have too many bullets, and it lets me unload more stuff.


I think the more trades you make with them, the higher their caps will go. The GR Vendortron has about 15,000 caps after about six somewhat large sales there (Fiends tend to be well armed, but they don't stay that way with me around :whistling: ). Briscoe tends to average around 5,000-6,000.

That's a bug I think, it's linked to the restock glitch and I've found in general.
Either that or merchants randomly spawn with 800 + / - .

However, a more serious look at barter should be made, as well as speech.
As we're on barter here, this is some lazy ideas I've formed in three seconds.

At high barter and combined by high reputation you should be able to gain access to more more money.
As you're roleplaying a merchant or trader type build.
So you buy at one friendly town for cut price goods and then sell to another for a small percentage .2 / .5 cap hike.
Can this be exploited yes, however it is more real, and these games are already full of exploits.
Those how use them the most are those that will play the game least, So balance is not really needed tbh,

Those that don't just play the same thing all the time and enjoy all aspects, they won't FT, they won't go over certain weight limits.
They'll restrict themselves, with armour, weapons and skill sets.
They won't complain it's "too easy, I have to self nerf fix it for everyone cause this svcks I have sooo much caps and it's not like real life".

Two tie in Barter and speech with charisma, hell tie in all skills to stats.
I.e you have a charisma of 10 you can get 100 barter and speech, you dump charisma to one you get a max barter and speech of 10.
This way you can't just have a bunch of players constantly exploiting a stupid loop hole and being great at everything.
Just because they think it's intelligent to dump charisma and boost intelligence to get speech up.

Install a mod that raises shop prices x10. Problem solved.

That's what I do all the time. I'm not always loaded up on actual caps, but I sure find it easy to stay stocked up on ammo and mods after a while, especially with the latest patch increasing some of the ammo numbers on merchants.


Agreed. There's a point in the game where most ppl will find themselves with all these caps and little to spend it on...where you stop picking most things up at all...even if you like to collect stuff, like I do. Especially if you're gambling...which I don't.

It would've been cool to have more to spend your caps on...not more weapons necessarily but more "fun" accessories & whatnot perhaps.

yeah, I mean I've got the whole money cage down stairs at the 38 loaded with different weapons and equipment, mostly because I stopped caring about getting more money. And my gold bars are piled up on the pool table up stairs, sitting on a pile of money and caps... because I like to look at it. I tend to be a huge collector, and even for me, it gets to the point where I leave half the stuff in containers and never take stuff off of shelves because I just don't particularly need it.

I'd agree, game economies are always a bit wanting. But at least they seem to be trying, a lot just take off a cap and that's the end of it. But comming from FO3 they definitely increased the caps limit on all the merchants, and more importantly they seem to have made things more expensive and there by hard to get. Granted, that be me just not paying attention to the difference in quality: the gun runners selling 100% guns as opposed to merchants in FO3. Regardless, the barter skill is one that's gotten less attention compared to the others. lockpick is the same.

The dead money download definitely made it worse, since now I can go back to the BoS bunker every 3 days and pick up another free 1100 chips to use in the vending machine. That is crazy unbalancing.

If I find that I am accumulating too much wealth I start using automatic weapons for every encounter.... tends to eat up money pretty quick.

Due to a repair mod I made I end up with more stuff than I can sell, especially with some merchants not restocking regardless of how many game-days a session lasts. I also tend to max Barter on every character since I hate getting ripped off, which doesn't help in the long run. As such I have taken to purchasing every gun mod a vendor offers in addition to whatever ammo I am currently using; while the resultant weapon will earn back most of the mod cost(s), it's still a constant (albeit small) drain on my finances. I also do not sell for caps once I have all the implants I want, unless the item I am selling is valuable enough that there is a remainder even after I have selected everything I want from that vendor.

Even with all the money drains the mod adds, I still end up amassing huge amounts of caps because eventually there's nothing else to sell for once I have a decent stock of ammo for my chosen weapons.

What you do is not deal in caps, deal in trade. Trade that rifle in for ammo or healing items.

The main problem is that barter is too soft. And gaming economics are funky.
Why would the Gun Runners pay you big bucks for guns they already produce and have more than enough from.

The CC wandering traders had 2000+ caps after investing in them fully...Wolfgang sometimes has as many as 5000. I play on Normal, maybe thataffects thier funds, I dunno. The vendors in NV usually have 5000-8000 for me.

I went to crimson caravan and the trader and 13,000 and somthing caps,have you ever noticed that when you get a weapon they have like 50 of it in there all of a sudden,i just got a chain saw so i go to crimson caravan to sell other stuff and they have like 3 chainsaws and they never had .

This is a great point, and to add on to it, I really wish the value of items would differ from merchant to merchant. "One man's junk is another man's treasure". This would also help balance the economy in-game a little better, I believe.

It would also be pretty cool if you could invest caps into different factions (Great Khans, FotA, Kings, Powder Gangers, etc.) which would make the faction better in all avenues. They would be able to sell better inventory, they would have better guards/soldiers, and I'm sure there are other ways that could make investing your caps an interesting and fun avenue.

I just buy all the ammo and counter the cost with my sellable stock of weapons at my house..........so many
10 mm pistols.

That'd be neat; but I'd be content with a barter system like the one from Fallout put into Fallout 3 and NV.

I do that when I can, however not even Dr. Usanagi has enough medical gear to trade for a repaired Hunting Rifle, and the amount of ammo I could get for one would be more than I could carry (I always play in hardcoe mode). Full-CND weapon prices generally way outstrip the value of almost anything you can trade them for, but trading in ones in bad shape is a complete waste due to the massive drop-off in values below about 40-50% CND.

Hmmm, that gives me an idea. Maybe I should start trading in fully repaired higher-tier equipment for a bunch of partial-CND items in order to soak some of the value...