Sup everybody. I'm new here so I thought that I should try giving this idea for everybody to check out. Hopefully, everyone thinks this is awesome and with a bit of luck, maybe even the staff might like this idea.

Let me start by telling everyone where this idea came from: While playing through some of the quests in Oblivion (namely the Anvil Mages Guild quest and Two Sides of the Coin), I would hear the back stories involving traveling merchants moving from one city to the next. Of course, these back stories involved the merchants either being killed or robbed by some random moron and, much to my disappointment, that moron couldn't be me. At the same time, I could easily be the Grey Fox and steal an Elder Scroll. So I got to thinking. Since traveling merchant caravans can be found making routes from one settlement to the next in Fallout: New Vegas, how about using that mechanic in Skyrim, but drastically expanding upon it. Here's how it would work:

You would have a number of traveling merchants going from one town to the next with either a stock of goods or gold (randomly selected) in their possession. The amount of wealth their haul consists of will be determined by a mix of chance and player level. The merchants can be killed, and if this occurs, another will take their place on a normal respawn rate. Once the merchants arrive, they disappear into the town for 24 hours to get new stock and resupply, then they are off. (They won't literally disappear, they stay at a random hotel, but killing them will be completely worthless.) The merchants will be able to provide services coinciding to their trade. (Weapon and Armor traders will repair your gear, Magic traders can sell spells and charge your enchanted weapons, ect.) As the amount of wealth the merchant carries (either in various goods or sweet sweet money), their protection is proportional to their wealth. You can see where I'm getting to...

The player will have the option to raid the caravans. If the player has no regard for for the lives of the merchant and his armed guards then he can simply kill everybody and take all their loot. However, some player may not like killing the people they rob. For anybody that liked adhering to the Thieves Guild rules, than a new perk must be introduced.

If the player achieve a certain level of skill in speechcraft and/or a weapons skill (or possibly even having enough strength), then they can take a perk called Highwayman. (The perk system was announced for Skyrim, so this can be sweet) The Highwayman perk would allow the player to have a new dialog option with these caravan merchants that would allow them to try to scare the merchant into surrendering their stock to you, with him and his guards cowering in fear of you. The more loot the merchant has, the more protection they have and the more confident they will be. Therefore you will need to have a certain speechcraft level to successfully do this. (This could barrow off of the speech checks that you had do constantly do in Fallout 3.) Failing the check would propose a new choice for the player, they can try to take the caravan down or they can accept to be "held", where a bounty will be placed on your head and a guard is spawned to haul you away to the dungeon of the nearest town. You can, of course, resist arrest when the guard comes, but the caravan will join in on the fight.

Another part to this will be random tax shipments leaving each town for Skyrim's capital, with another, larger shipment heading south for Cyrodiil. These shipments will be filled to the brim with nothing but gold and random gems. With well trained guards escorting the tax shipment to their destination. These will always leave towns once per week and will only head to the capital city and one really big shipment leaving once per month to head to a border checkpoint into Cyrodiil. The guards here will be very tough to take down, and the Taxmaster (who would take the merchant's place in this case) would be extremely tough to scare. Of course, this would be a high-risk, high-reward situation. Tax shipments to the capital would contain possibly a thousand gold in early levels, and the shipment for Cyrodiil worth enough to buy a house. A mini-quest could be undertaken to find a contact with Skyrim's treasury that would allow you to buy a small map showing the route of all the next tax shipments to take place allowing the player to plan their route and not have to aimlessly chase the tax shipment all over Skyrim to find and ambush them.


When player loots either merchants with nothing but gold or tax shipments, they don't actually find a sum of gold on the body, but an item marked "Package of Gold" when opened (equipped), the package will add a random amount of gold to the player inventory, based on the players Luck. Different versions of these packages will be made and assigned to the various caravans regarding their level of protection.

Depending on the wealth, the merchant may have pack-horses and mercenaries traveling with them the pack horses will contain portions of the merchants loot, and the mercenaries will attack anyone that engages in combat with the caravan. Depending on the amount of loot the merchant has, he could be by himself, or have up to 3 pack-horses and 6 mercenaries with him, including up to 2 mercenary captains. The captains would be more seasoned fighters than the normal mercenary guards and put up a tougher fight. Of course, the mercs would have level offsets so the game stays completely leveled verses the player.

I hope you all think this is as awesome as I did, and I really hope the design team catches wiff of this and likes it. If it doesn't find it's way into Skyrim, than I'll probably do it with the Skyrim Construction Set when it comes out (hopefully).

Yeah merchants would be great! fallout had then so why not Skyrim

I like the idea of being able to rob people. You're already able to play the part of a thief, why not take it a step further and be a bandit?

Traveling merchants is one area where Bethesda improved on verisimilitude from Oblivion to Fallout 3. A real functioning believable world has to have some sort of trading network, even one that's had a bomb dropped on it. Even a war torn land like Skyrim will be still needs a functioning trade system (not to mention supply lines for any standing armies).

You could even use the traveling merchants as part of an immersive fast travel system (hitching a ride). There could even be a trading merchants guild (think joinable Empire Trading Company)

Your idea is golden also you should have to plan or even recruit some help for the MASSIVE OR really wealthy merchants.

great idea!i would also hope some moral options to go with this.and for people who dont want to be a bandit.there could be a merchants guild,that has missions to travel and explore to get a shipment somwhere.

I like this idea as well. Maybe an East Empire Company-like faction?

The supply lines and merchant guild ideas would be awesome too. The military supply caravans would have plus-grade armor and weapons to rob as well as military provisions for a hardcoe game. Those supply lines would have to be under military guard like the tax shipments as well.

I might work something out in terms of a merchants guild with a quest line and post in another thread later on.

Absolutely stupid I hate this idea go to hell...... Haha JK I ohnestly think this is the best idea that has been offered on the forum so far. That must of took hours to fill in all the little details! I love it though and would enjoy playing it out in the game good job

Great idea. I sorta skimmed through the second half of the OP but i love the idea.

expanding on the idea--> maybe you could tell them they need to pay a "toll" to get by you without any trouble. you could change the amount the toll is, and the merchant will be more likely to pay a lower toll than a larger one up to the amount of all their money. of course this all depends on you speechcraft, or maybe how intimidating you are or something.

Yes. I will make a Khajiit, equip them with fur armour and a warhammer, and greet every caravan with "Your money or your life."

It will be the best afternoon ever.

Yes YEs YES!

This is indeed a neat little idea. I would also like to see the inverse thing going on. The merchants can hire you to protect the caravan. You are a tough adventurer so it would be in their best interest to hire the best for protection

Fallout 3 and New Vegas had travelling merchants, they were basically just regular vendors that moved from place to place, but it did go a long way towards making the world feel more alive. Like it didn't revolve entirely around the player. Even if they just repeat the approach they took in Fallout 3 that would be a very nice addition to the game.

I am pretty sure that modders will at least put travelling merchants in. There's a mod for Oblivion that adds them. And it adds so much to the game.

Cool idea, but I don't think the inventory should be random. TES isn't about generic NPC's.

Also, if there are travelling merchants I surely hope there are realistic transportation as well

I like the idea a lot. It sounds awesome. Just one thing, I think it'd be better to see the merchants randomly generated and not have their merchandise and gold scaled to player level. I think at level one, you should come across that exquisite caravan and know better than to attack it. It gives us something to look forward to later in the game. I think we should see all manner of traveling merchants, high level and low level at all times in the game.

yeah but a high level caravan will be so well guarded with 5-6 well armed soldiers, and maybe a mage or two standing around it. A level 1-5 person should have 0% chance to take such a high level caravan.

That was my point -___-

Very good idea

Nothing wrong with this idea, but please no escort quests. If you have to keep a merchant caravan alive, stick to random encounters imho.

Well thought out idea, and one which I hope and believe will be in the game, at least in part. One of the most popular oblivion mods is Tamriel Travellers, which adds roaming NPC traders to the game. Beth take notice of mods, and they can't have failed to notice this one. Love the idea of the tax shipments as well.

I really hope that carts are in the game for the wealthier travelling merchants.

great idea! no time atm to read everything you wrote, so dunno if you said this but: how about also some merchants come from distant lands, like say morrowind, and bring wares that you wont find anywhere else in skyrim?

the idea is to have it rely on both a random generator and player level.

the basic idea to the script would be:

MerchantRoll = GetPlayerLevel * rand 0 5If MerchantRoll >=  94   SpawnPoint.placeatme ImperialTaxShipmentElseIf MerchantRoll >= 86 && MerchantRoll =< 94    SpawnPoint.placeatme SkyrimTaxShipmentElseIf MerchantRoll >= 74 && MerchantRoll =< 86    SpawnPoint.placeatme HeavilyArmedMerchantCaravanElseIf MerchantRoll >= 60 && MerchantRoll =< 74    SpawnPoint.placeatme ArmedMerchantCaravanElseIf MerchantRoll >= 33 && MerchantRoll =< 60    SpawnPoint.placeatme LightlyArmedMerchantCaravanElseIf MerchantRoll >= 20 && MerchantRoll 33    SpawnPoint.placeatme WellPackedUnarmedMerchantCaravanElseif MerchantRoll >= 12 && MerchantRoll 20    SpawnPoint.placeatme UnarmedMerchantCaravanElseIf MerchantRoll >= 3 && MerchantRoll 12    SpawnPoint.placeatme LoneMerchantElse    SpwanPoint.placeatme MiaqTheLiarENDIF

Obviously the bottom part is to be funny, but this is kinda what I had in mind. Each week a script runs that multiplies your level by a random number between 0 and 5 then it runs your lucky number against the If list I wrote down, what ever you get will determine what spawns at that spawn point. This block would be placed in a do counter or something to ensure that fresh numbers are picked for every spawn point. (if there are a bunch of mistakes here, forgive me. i woke up just 10 mins ago.)

but yeah, the idea is that your level gets multiplied by a random number and you get to see this thing appear and if your lucky, you roll a zero and get to see Miaq the Liar. You can add something funny in with Miaq, like if you strike him down, he will only become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

actually, the multiplier needs to be revamped a bit to ensure that you're guaranteed a chance to have everything happen, just that the lone merchants become less frequent and the tax shipments become more frequent as you level. damn...

no i didn't think of that, but i like the idea