I'm trying to make a trader with merchanise out on display, but I can't stop him from selling the displayed merchanise I left out as eye candy. How can I ensure he sells only whats either in his inventory or in nearby containers? Any advice is appricated.

Don't mark his things he is displaying as his. Other wise he may very well sell it. Just mark it as owned by someone else there who doesn't sell anything (if such a person exits) or, if he is a loner, just don't mark it as owned at all. That is how I have done it anyway....

I had thought about that, but other merchants have their produce marked as theirs and if its marked as someone elses that would mean I could sell his own stuff back to him and he wouldn't notice, right?

If the merchant has high enough alert rating, he will react to you stealing any owned items not just his own. So you can solve this by marking the items' ownership to any NPC, I usually use an Imperial Guard or Ordinator. That way the merchant won't sell them but still report you stealing them.

So if I set his rating alarm at 100 he will not by the stolen goods? Or at least be alarmed when I try to?

If you set his alarm to 100 he will attack you if he detects you stealing any owned item. In addition he will also report your crime, resulting in a bounty on your head.

If you'd like to avoid him attacking you when you steal, you could set his fight rating to 0. I believe that will cause him to report your crime but not attack. I might be wrong though.

The merchant will buy any stolen items from you except items that he had been selling before you stole them.

Right, but then again there are a lot of glitches with that sort of thing as well, like if you steal the grand soul gem from that wood elf in the Balmora Mages Guild, then you can never use her enchanting services again because all grand soul gems are marked as stolen. So it is possible that you can actually sell someones stuff back to them. I believe there is a glitch that if you drop what you stole, it loses it's ownership or something, so either way you could still do it. But like Adul said, give ownership to someone else, or make another person with the same name, and a slightly different id and give him the ownership, and then place him underground standing on a patch of something or another, if you don't want him really in game, but still want the ownership under the same name. Either way, that is how I have done it, give someone (normally a guard in the room) the ownership, and the items stay on display. A more difficult, and yet somewhat useful, way to do it is to make each display item a unique display item, with no real value or use, just as it sounds, only for display, and then give no one ownership of it, and you won't have any real reason to steal it. Like the Oblivion displays, a sword that does no damage, and has no value, a worthless book with nothing in it, a potion with no potency.

That is the only way I could see to do it, unless..... I wonder if you added the no pickup script to those items, if he could own them, but still not be able to sell them.... hm..... now I want to test that! You know, like the Vivec ash mask has a nopickup script so you can't take it.... unless you want to be able to steal it, then it would be a problem....... Well I tried, lol. Hope I was of some help!

No. The only time Ownership can be removed is if you enchant an un-enchanted item.


Ownership is set with the ID, not the name of the NPC.


The NPC could still sell the item, but if you ever dropped it after buying it you could never pick it up again.

Basically, the best way to do it is have the Merchant own the items... because what's so bad about him selling the items he has on display?
Or, give the Ownership to a guard in the same room. (as Adul has said)

Or.... you could always use a http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=8323 (without a script to open it) and place the items within it, so that they couldn't be touched but only seen.

edit: another http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=3320 option.