So the card game Caravan and the ability to play merchants have cheapened this game a little bit for me. Right from the beginning (after getting your caravan deck from Ringo) you can make unlimited caps and never have to worry about money the rest of the game. If you play caravan correctly it is super easy to win 99% of the time. If you are having problems just follow this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AorCJkgie_s
Once you get the hang of how to win by basically using just 8 cards (three 7's, three 9's, and two 10's), you can take extreme advantage of any Merchant that plays Caravan.

Here is basically what I did:

I realized that most merchants start out with a relatively low amount of caps so you had to find some way to increase their caps so that you could take them from them in caravan.

So the obvious solution is to just sell a couple of your guns to the merchant and then buy them back. Do this as repeatedly as you can until you get low on caps yourself. Every time you sell an item to a merchant he will sell it back to you at a higher price. This is how you can actually "create" caps. Once you do this several times, challenge them to a game of caravan and win back all the caps you just created.

Rinse and Repeat. Profit.

I stumbled across this when I went to the NCR Camp Mojave and started playing Lucy. After about an hour I had over 100,000 caps and an ungodly amount of NCR cash.
There appears to be a bug with the NCR cash. Each time you sell it to Lucy and then challenge her to a game of caravan, she doubles the amount of NCR cash that she has and uses that to pay (she uses all NCR cash before using her caps) you when you win in Caravan.

I think I will replay the game without using this tactic to get infinite caps as this made the game seem really easy. Talk about never having to worry about repairs or managing your caps.

Nice! I've been playing caravan with the merchants, after selling my loot, until they're broke. But I didn't think to boost there money by selling at a loss. I'll have to try it out.

I believe you, but I don't understand how the game creates caps out of nowhere.

Say the merchant has 100 caps and I have 100 caps. I sell my guns to him for a loss, then buy them back, he should have more caps than I do, but only the difference of the barter between selling them and buying them back. I don't see how he has new caps that didn't already exist. I play caravan and win his 100 caps... so i sell him my guns t a loss nd buy them back with the caps I won in caravan... I still don't see where new caps are created out of thin air.

Again, it's not that I don't believe you, it's that I don't understand where the imaginary caps are coming from. You said the ldy at the outpost has them come out of thin air by challenging her, so okay, that makes sense and is bug... but buying and selling weapons doesn't work for me?

Eh, normally video games with any gambling can be exploited someway. like I mean look at Liar's Dice for Rdr. The AI was so frigging bad at it you could just sit and creat piles and piles of cash. ide prefer not to...

OK, I'm also having an issue with the math...

1. You: 1000, Merch: 1000
Play caravan
you: 2000, merch: 0

2. buy guns: 10 x100
you: 1000, merch 1000
sell guns: 10x50
you: 1500, merch: 500

3. play caravan
you: 2000, merch: 0

I think I'm missing something here :banghead:

I agree something should be changed about merchants that play caravan. Maybe give them a limit on how much money they can gamble with in a given amount of time. As it is now, you can simply buy the merchants entire stock of items and then take back all of your caps playing caravan.

And a Merchant (or anyone else for that matter) gambling away all their money is unrealistic how exactly? Point is that it happens every day somewhere.

Oh, to the OP, when I find something that I feel takes away from my experience that I and I alone control, I usually STOP doing it so it don't ruin my game. For example, the other night I wanted to do something I haven't done yet and played some Blackjack at The Ultra Luxe. I've got 8 luck (I think) so within a short period of time I had made several thousand caps. I got comped, and not wanting to get kicked out (I'm a goody two shoes) I cashed in and left. But, it was extremely easy to make caps, and I don't think I'll be doing a lot of gambling as it's too unrealistically easy.

Yes, Caravan is a broken game once you find the 10, 9, 7 trick. It does cheapen the game because between that and gambling you have nearly unlimited caps. I just started a new character and I'm only level 6 but I have around 7k caps and haven't even gotten past NOVAC.

Why did they go to the trouble of making a whole new (and broken) card game when they could've just had some poker table dens around the mojave and in new vegas?

I couldn't figure out how to play so after my first attempt against Ringo I gave up completely.

Me too. The game rules are poorly explained.
If you want to learn to play, watch this video. It makes it too easy lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AorCJkgie_s

The math on this doesn't work out.

M = 200, P = 200
Sell gun to M for 20.
M = 180, P = 220
Buy gun back for 30.
M = 210, P = 190

The balance stays the same. You're not creating anything, you're just tossing more of your money into his balance. For him to "create" caps, you must lose the exact same amount of caps. There is no net gain.

You can gamble to get his inventory and his caps, but no extra caps are introduced by this method.

The place where caps are "Magically Created" is the Caravan game. Lets look at an example:

Starting Values (leaving NCR cash out of the picture for now):
You = 6000 caps
Merchant = 1000
Total caps = 7000


Play a hand of Caravan with 500 cap ante TOTAL POT = 1000 (500 from you 500 from merchant)
**This is where the bug happens** The 500 Ante is not subtracted from your total unless you lose. The Caravan game never subtracts your original ante, but it gives you the total Pot amount. When in reality you should only be winning/gaining 1/2 of the pot because the other 1/2 was yours to start with.

When you win you are given 1000 caps, however the original 500 caps was never subtracted for your ante.
So now:
You = 7000 caps
Merchant = 500 caps
Total caps = 7500 (an increase in caps by 500)

Uh-oh, now the Merchant only has 500 caps, how can we get them more?

Well lets say you own a Cowboy Repeater which you can sell to Merchant for 500 caps.
So you sell the CR to Merchant and now:

You: 7500 caps
Merchant: 0 caps
Total caps = 7500 caps (no change)

Now when you go to buy that same Cowboy Repeater back, notice how the vendor is selling it for an increased price of 2000 caps.

So you buy the Cowboy Repeater back (yes the one you just sold him) for 2000 caps and now:

You: 5500 caps
Merchant: 2000 caps
Total = 7500 caps

Sell CR to merchant for 500 again
Buy it back again for 2000

You = 4000
Merchant = 3500
Total = 7500

Now lets play Caravan some more caravan.

This time the merchant has more caps, so they will ante up more caps so...

Caravan hand Ante is 2000, for a total pot of 4000 caps.

You win and get 4000 caps and totals now look like:

You = 8000
Merchant = 1500
Total = 9500 (increase of 2000 caps)

And you can continue doing this until you are playing for large sums of money (20k - 40k per hand) The higher you can get the merchant to ante up the more caps that will be magically created by caravan.
The duplication of Caps also works with NCR cash, so the increase can be compounded even further. Just make sure to sell 1/2 your NCR cash to the merchant before you play.

Well I never said it was unrealistic, simply unbalanced. It just seems silly being able to clean out a merchants entire inventory without it costing you a single cap.

Thanks! :thumbsup:

I read the rules that Ringo gave me at the beginning and did just fine. No need to ask around.

Perhaps some people just don't want to take the time to read the rules.



As for the game's flaw in terms of being open for exploitation, I'm more in the camp of Balok. If it makes the game less fun for me, then I don't do it. My first time through the game I discovered that you could break the bank at the casino by saving before I place the bet, placing the bet on a number, then reloading if I lose on the roulette tables. After two times of doing that I had more money than I could hope to spend and that was just about 14,000 caps... So why would someone spend an hour trying to get to 100,000?

I don't know, I figured out that the gambling could be rigged in my favor with high luck or cheap tricks, but that ruins it for me, so I don't do it.

Ignoring the possible bug in winnings payout, the unrealistic part, to me, is that an individual (especially someone trying to run a business) would CONTINUALLY give me all their money. The casinos on the strip are at least programmed to acknowledge that you're bleeding them dry. It's a real AI failing that someone I've bilked out of thousands of caps greets me with the same "howdy!" kind of message and then is willing to lose their entire inventory to me... again. It's just more evidence that Caravan was tacked on.

I think it's funny how Caravan is such an all-or-nothing effect on the game. My take on the players who've commented on these boards is that they fall into one of two buckets: 1) people that don't play at all because they don't understand the rules or don't care or 2) people who continue to play and take the AI's money. I don't see any evidence of a middle ground: people that play some, win some and lose some. Anyone reading this fall into that middle ground? I guess the real question is: any of you that have played more than, say, 3 games ever lose after game 3?

Also:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ayb48b-4L5g

1. You 1000 Them 1000
2. Buy 500 worth of goods from them, You 500 Them 1500
3. Play caravan a few times, win 80% of their money, You 1750 Them 250
4. Take the 500 caps worth of goods (worth only 300 due to Barter), sell them to another vendor that doesn't play Caravan
5. You 2150 Them 250

Obviously, the more inventory that the caravan-playing merchant has, the better. Especially if you have an excess of caps that lets you raise their bid to the maximum on the very first game. There are basically (4) merchants that play Caravan where you can use this tactic.



There are also other NPCs around that will play a hand or two, but you can't win as much per game by buying out their inventory first.

(I lose about 1 in 10 games, if my cards don't come up right. But I'm using a completely random deck and have not stacked the deck, other then buying up the more useful cards like Kings, 10s, 9s, 8s, 7s, 6s and Jacks. I generally randomize my deck at the start of each hand.)

I wouldn't say it was Obsidian's intention to have players of the game they developed exploit the game. It doesn't seem to me that they tacked Caravan on; it just seems like they didn't think of players spending hours cheating the system to become filthy rich. However I will agree that it'd be a good addition to make it so that Caravan players would stop playing with the player's character if they lose too much money. Perhaps the merchants who play would charge more for their goods out of spite. Maybe even have one that attacks the player out of anger for taking too much of his money.



I'd say you missed a third bucket. 3) people who understand the game but don't use it as a way to become filthy rich. I just play for fun sometimes because I like the game.

I don't know the 7, 9, 10 trick.. The one i use is the 6, 8, 10 trick, with a few kings, a smattering of each of the face cards. I don't remember the last time I lost with this deck.
6 + 10&K 26
8&K + 10 - 26.

But yes, looking at the cards, only 7's 9's and 10's would work very well.

EDIT - Sorry I didn't read all of the posts before replying scratch my comments.

A true gambler can't resist the lure....and there's plenty of people out there who have lost everything in the real world.

I don't mind the caravan caps glitch, it compensates for the casino bans.

Ok, so instead of giving you only what the other player used to bet, the game gives you your bet also, without taking anything from you, in effect creating caps out of thin air. That's what you normally call a BUG. Yeah the 7,9, 10 works great for winning (not always but most times) and taking the traders money, which would normally get you a few hundred caps, or a couple of thousands depending on the trader you play with. So you can get some nice caps by playing the right way but not hundreds of thousands.

What some folks here I see doing is taking advantage of a bug, defect, exploit (call it what you want it's clearly not intended) and then complaining about it. Really now? It's like using a god mode cheat and then complaining enemies are too easy. Report the defect and move on.

I personally play fairly, I only take out the 2-10 diamonds from a regular deck and base my strategy around that. I have about 50/5 win/loss ratio. I personally like it simply because it's not so much based on luck and winning is a reward for "out-smarting" your opponent. They only need to teach the AI to play face cards on your deck and fix this BUG you folks found, and it will be a nice experience.

I cannot play caravan at all, it's not because I svck but because of a glitch, I think, you see everything goes fine at first. I bet, choose my deck, and choose the cards to start my caravan, but after that I cannot place any cards on top of the beginning ones unless its a queen. I have no idea what is going on, I tried placing cards of the same suit, different suit, higher number, lower number, and every other type of card but only queen can go on top of any cards. Any other card I try to put on top just won't go on it no matter what I do, it's just a red rectangle when I try to put it on. I really need help because I think caravan could be a really fun game but I think my game is glitched and/or I am a huge noob at this. Sorry to sorta hi-jack this thread but I see no reason to create a new one for this if this one is kind of similar.

Interesting although as some others said I cant see how the math works out with this but if it works then I am not really surprised. lol what a shock

As explained, it's not the math, it's the bug. For example, we both bet 50 bucks so the pool is 100 bucks. I win and I get the entire pool. But instead of getting 50 bucks "profit" I get 100 because the game didn't subtract the 50 that I put into the pool. And even without the bug, the game is ridiculously easy to win once you understand the rules. And yes, it's funny that the same traders will continually play against me even though they've already lost thousands of caps to me before.

So yes, it really is unlimited caps. But I didn't bother restocking their caps by selling and buying from them, they eventually will restock their caps on their own over time.