I want to first say that I love Skyrim and it's an absolute joy to play and replay, even after 200+ hours, but does anyone else feel like there's an over-abundance of gold and unique items scattered around Skyrim? I understand that as your character levels up, so does the treasure you discover, but there's so much that what should be unique, rare items now become the norm. Around level 25, I was excited to find my first piece of glass armor, but in the very same cave, I found another piece of glass armor, and then a glass sword, two glass bows, countless flawless gems, amulets, etc. I had so much stuff I couldn't possibly sell it all, or carry it, and what used to be exciting to find now became annoying because you can only have so many flawless garnets. A few more levels after that, the game slipped wildly out of balance in terms of economics. I have tremendous wealth, but nothing to buy because I have what the vendors have and even if they had what I wanted, I could never purge myself of all the gold I have.

At higher levels, the game no longer becomes a challenge to upgrade your weapons and armor because one journey into a cave provides you with enough wealth to buy a house, the best armor or best weapon, provided you find enough vendors with enough gold. A smarter way to handle this issue would have been to keep the chance to find weapons, armor, rare gems, and other items static across all levels. While you reach higher levels, you would gain access to glass, ebony, and daedric items, but it should be enormously difficult to find them, especially those with magical qualities. This would place more emphasis on using enchanting and force the player to spend their surplus gold on rare items from vendors, if they have them, or continue taking chances scouring dungeons.

I'm sure this can be done with a mod in the future, I'll probably do it for myself when the toolkit is released, but what do you guys think? Agree? Disagree?

Try to remember that this game isn't about achieving vast riches. It uses gold as simply a means to an end, so you can buy a house or a horse or craft some. Eventually you will complete these tasks and continue on your adventure with the financial part being done. Skyrim is not an economy focused game.

Yes I do agree that a player can have enough gold to buy the Empire five times over and very little to spend it all on. It will reach a point where you don't even need to take anything at all as selling it will just add to your already overflowing pockets. Top that with a certain buff/perk you get from and you're practically swimming in gems.

I agree that it gets a little crazy to have all that wealth and nothing to buy, but I think like KENRICHAED said this is not a economics game, but what I think your point is that if there were better economics it would ramp up the difficulty a bit and help with the imersion into the game. I have seen where acouple of modders were working on this issue, and even talking about making it so you had to pay taxes on your houses or the doors would get locked until you did, even paying fees to the stables to have them keep your horse and such. I play on the XBOX so mods are not something I can use, so I really have no idea what they are called, but if this is a big issue for you, I would recomend searching them out.

is this a troll post? I thought you were going to talk about the fact that 99% of the lootable things in skyrim are worthless and stupid.. Unlike final fantasy where everything you pick up actually has a purpose and meaning...

Would you stop turning every topic on this board into a Final Fantasy Spam Board.... geeze go to your own forums and stick you head up Final Fantasy's [censored]. Not to mention I like finding and being able to take useless items.... it adds to what a lot of people consider realism into the game... always opeing a chest and finding what you need is unrealistic... I guess that is why the put Fantasy in the title of their games.

I dont get the reason for buying things like weapons at shops. I saw a weapon in a shop that I really liked but then thought to myself "wait im just gona find something better from exploring" and that I did. Whats the point of having shops that sell junk weapons when you can go out for 1 hour and come back with like 5 awesome weapons?

Yes I actually agree there is too much treasure in this game. I always think to myself "Am I really the first person to ever just stumble into this place and find the loot?"

I swear I collected 100k extremely fast.

If your suggestion were put into place, people would probably go " There's no reason to dungeon anymore, all i get is crap, might as well make iron daggers till my smithing's level 100"

just saw this... why dont you go play final fantasy then?? EVERY SINGLE other post I have seen you make was relating to FF. A game where almost every character you cant tell is a guy or a girl unless you get a REALLY good look at them...

No, I don't mind that aspect of Skyrim so much. I rather enjoy it because you need an element to make the worthwhile items blend in, otherwise you know to just grab every object in sight because it has purpose. That gets boring very quickly.

Buying stuff at a merchant for me has always been a matter of convenience, sure I'll probably get something similar out of the next dungeon I go into... but the merchant has it right there.

Especially useful when dis-echanting stuff, or smithing for that matter. Nice that they have random inventories, and I've seemed to notice a trend where they won't carry enchanted equipment that I already have in inventory.

Started noticing that after messing around with the invisible chest and Khajitt trader combo in Dawnstar.

I agree that equipment merchants are useless and that you make money way to quicky and easily. The first time I played the game, I had bought the house in whiterun and still had some coins to spare in only a few hours. Very different from trying to buy the imperial city shack in Oblivion quickly. You can carry more stuff and sell it for more profit than in any of the previous games.

I find it strange that I can have my pockets empty and still feel like I can buy a luxurious house whenever I want to.

Even potions. Even potions are overpriced. I have high level alchemy, and I don't even bother selling armor and weapons anymore. I can make 40-50 potions almost worth 1k each in no time. The only problem is the stores coffers getting empty too early.

The irony is, for as easy it is to get wealthy, if you need many healing/magicka (especialy magicka) potions at some point, vendors will only have 2-3 of em in stock. As if the economy was oriented into getting each and every one of us into wanting to become a Billionaire or something.

How much loot is dropped, 10 arrows and one healing potion?
Bosses drop an armor who is designed to be better than the one you have.

Loot in elder scroll is pretty realistic, bandits has armor, boots and an iron sword, no you don't have any use for it but the bandit had. He might have some gold or an potion who might be useful.

Most RPG have this but few other than elder scroll do it all the way, 99% of the loot in WOW is just useful for sale crafting or disenchanting, raid bosses are the only one who drop loot who probably is useful.

I would have liked gold and treasure to be something that took a bit more thought, things aren't really a struggle in that respect at all.

There was like a Diablo style clone on my laptop that I played for ages called 'Fate' (I dunno how well known that is, sorry if I'm stating the obvious here) and whilst obviously not being as uber-massive or awesome as TES, one of my favourite features in the game was the 'gambling' merchant, where you can see the basic item and a price and you take a gamble on it.. You get a complete dud every now and then, some with even negative effects toward the player, just average junk prob worth less than what you pay to the other merchants but you might fid it useful, might even be just what you were looking for, and rarely if you stick at it you get something awesome..

Would be good to include as a money waster in TES, Khajiit caravans seem like the kind of dudes that would like to do something like that.. Although it would have to have a more rotating inventory than the usual merchants. Could possibly be that there is some chance of getting every item in the game at the gamble merchant? so people might spend 1 000 000 trying to get back that Axe of Whiterun they sold on level 3?

at lv 48 i agree, i m earning gold too quickly and on average each dungeon gives me 1k to 2k gold. But the most annoying is that dragons spawn too much. And too much dragons = too many bones and scales, and since each scale and bone is worth quite a bit, you earn money fast.

Both Fallout 3 and Vegas had the same "problem".
What I did in those two games,when I started to find/have too much of everything,was collecting
something,-for me special,-items,and then just drop them in my house.
For example,in one of my playtrough in F3,I had hundres of Cigarrets Carton laying on the floor in my Megaton House .
You could do that,or simply just ignore what you find.

No. I am fine with the treasure. Two of my characters have passed level 40 and they still need more money.

Of course if you don't need it then simply don't take and sell all the loot. Saves you a lot of time.