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well yeah it was an exploit, but with most vendors having 500-1500 and most loot being 5k+ all the way to 80k, you have to use such an exploit with every vendor if you want to sell anything except the worst trash you come across.

Things were also very expensive, I remember a crafted amulet costing me well over a million. The developers designed prices for a player who activly recieves money from good loot, yet made stores such that your unable to sell any good loot without exploits.

Edit: A good solution would have been a trading system. Say you select an option that you want to give a merchant something worth 50k as down payment for that 1 million gold amulet, and that would reduce the amulets price by the corresponding amount. It balances user-friendliness with realism. Naturally you couldn't say sell jewlery to a blacksmith as downpayment (realism) this would make a good system

Such a barter system exists in Fallout series, and I don't think it's a good one. If you happen to stumble across some well-equipped bandits, you get a decent loot, worth much money. But people never have that much money (we all agree that's good and realistic), so, you have to get something else from them instead. Because they seldom have more than two interesting things, you end up having backpacks full of useless items, which you cannot sell, and you can only exchange them for other useless items...

Jedi_Sauraus wrote: Edit: A good solution would have been a trading system. Say you select an option that you want to give a merchant something worth 50k as down payment for that 1 million gold amulet, and that would reduce the amulets price by the corresponding amount.

Just like in Morrowind you mean?

I've played through that whole game (without the expansions/mods) and have not noticed such a system, unless you mean a barter system is included in the expansions or one of the many mods ?? Or maybe dependent on that
(??mercantile ?? spelling) skill ??

IIRC the merchant system in morrowind is just like baldurs gate, or most other rpg's for that matter: Limited to selling t and buy the things you need, the problem is that most loot is more than most merchants can buy. For example I remember going out into the wilderness and killing an orc, each piece of his armour was worth approx. 1500-3000 and I could not find a merchant in any nearby towns who could actually buy this. I read a guide and there are 2 merchants in the game capable, an Imp in Caldera (spelling) and a crab merchant in the southern islands. Both of these are pretty much easter eggs and even then the maximum for selling is 10k where I can remember loot worth 80k

In Morrowind (I guess we're getting OT, hopefully the mods wont mind), you have always been able to buy and sell at the same time. Select the item you want to buy, select an item you want to sell, and the price is changed. That's how you get best value for high priced items. Take the dude in the Craftsmen's Hall in Mournhold. You offer him you Daedric Katana, then keep adding high priced items in his inventory until the price goes below his availble cash (8000?) then sell (after increasin the price to max of course). You then sell him back all the stuff you bought in exchange, it works the other way round too.

Sorry for posting Morrowind stuff in the BG forum, but difficult to continue the discussion in the right place.

Then let's get back on track.

economics is rarely modelled well in FRPG - in BG even modest merchants can buy your expensive kit and in Morrowind, despite the limitations on shop-keepers' gold, there are workarounds.
FWIW my last MW character had over 2 million gp stacked up in his haven and carried a few hundred K around as loose change. the ninja type guys with black armour and weapons would fall top my extreme power -weapons using magic jewels - and I had a zap to point fixed at a merchant. I think I had tribunal installed, so I was zapping back to the armourer in the city - who also has 10k available. it was a boring cycle of jump, sell, rest sell, move until all the looted kit was sold. I found that enchanting a maxed out gem & daedric item allowed uber-weapons and powers. being able to fly at speed with zapping rings made the character far different from what the developers anticipated. still, the game has such good atmos that I oculd still enjoy it. limited gold merchants just require patience and workarounds.

in BG - the cost of magic items can be disproportionately high for their availability. OK so a +2 longsword doesn't start out common, but +1 daggers and shields seem plentiful enough - yet the price to buy is high - same with quality armour - there is lots of it about, yet it costs a great deal of money.
then - you start being able to sell looted stuff and the economy reverses - you complete a modest quest and you have a lot of money. you want an armourer to make you some armour -you pay ridiculous amounts.
I always liked ankheg plate - you can find some - or have it made.
by the time you get to ToB, one battle netted me 400k in weapons and armour sold - only the good stuff - (leaving the rest behind). the economics of almost all FRPG is skewed. in MW they tried to limit the money through shops' budgets -which doesn't work and in BG they use 'reputation' as a slight regulator.

it all comes back to the point that the level of magic/items in a game can be unrealistic. in the BG3 forum, we discussed whether we should go back to a world where the magic was much more limited - for good RPG experience. it is all a game, but in a human regulated PnP, the DM would decide whether the party could find any merchant to buy the treasure or whether the party would have to keep some of it because nobody could afford it. if the low-level party have sold a mace +3 - there is a chance that in a PnP game, an enemy has bought it - in CRPG, none of the bad guys buys the kit that the party sells...
we used to have strongholds or safe havens to store some of the booty for that reason. alternatively, we would prevail upon lawful religious establishments to hold our surplus and protect it for a 'donation'. in PnP the party were often an important part of the economy and it would not be too difficult to do that in a CRPG - if it were well-written.

how can a character have 400k gp with them? they cannot without a 'bag of holding' - I reckon that the characters in BG use debit cards.

I wonder if there's any mod that changes the economy in BG(2) adding an extra 0 to every price in the game would make money a precious resource. The prices for selling your junk should remain the same however

Jedi_Sauraus wrote:I wonder if there's any mod that changes the economy in BG(2) adding an extra 0 to every price in the game would make money a precious resource. The prices for selling your junk should remain the same however

In a word, no. I don't know how much of the economy can be modded, but I know none of the mods on the big sites (PPG, CoM, G3, etc) has anything like that.