So I'm about 140 hours into Skyrim, I have every house and have completed almost every quest...

...and I have ~$180,000 in the bank.

What's there to do with it?

Edit: the frustrating thing is I have nearly double that amount in storage - magical weapons and armor and potions and jewelry that I can't sell because vendors run out of money. I have another storage locker of all the things I've stolen that I can't sell because the fences run out of money.

I could go on a circuit of every vendor in every city, taking enough time that by the time I return to the first one, their wallet will have regenerated, but what would be the point of it?

This game really needs a gold dump, something to spend your money on. I don't know - maybe buying and repairing/refurnishing a castle somewhere. And then you can hire guards to patrol it and keep it safe. Or something.

Or something!

This is such a beautiful and well-thought out game, that if I were to sink in more time with it, I would like to personalize the world. It is not enough to just be able to play house - now I want to impact the map. But I can't even spend the fortune that the game gave to me over the course of playing it.

This just seems like such a hole in the gameplay - that the player has nothing to buy. And yet, I still compulsively loot each and every burial urn.

Money is somewhat worthless, nothing to spend it on. Houses and horses are the only two things to spend money on, everything else can be found in dungeons.

It's a bit unrealistic if you pick up every piece.

Donate it to beggars. Especially the one carrying 500 Gold and teaching the Pickpocketing skilll. She needs septims the most.

I never played a RPG in where i hadn't a huge amount of gold towards the end. I think this is just genre typical.

What are some ideas you players have in implementing a gold dump?

Does the idea of renovating castles appeal to you?

• From Jarls, you can hire guards to patrol and protect your castle.
  
• From your castle, you can solicit knights to appear and be sent out on missions. Become your own quest giver?
  
• The knights can go out and slay giants or dragons and bring you back proof of their deed, and you reward them.
  
• The "proof" could be crafting materials.
  
• You could hire your own court wizard or other persons. You could have all your Housecarls stay at your Keep.
  
• You could purchase building materials and have homes erected inside the grounds of your castle wall, creating a small city with it's own working economy.

Something like this would be really intriguing.

I have the idea but not the skill to implement something like this.

You clear a dungeon without looting everything? Weird.

Your mistake is thinking that this game is based on economics when its not. The money is only there to help you experience the world of Skyrim not to manipulate it with your riches. Simply get enough gold to purchase what you want then don't worry about it anymore. Or try playing the game with only earning money from quests and thats it. The game can be as hard or easy as you like it.

spend it on trainers and it will be gone like that

Yes. I often leave non magical armor, weapons and trash behind.

Once I realized all the cash I had was wasted, I decided to use it to level speech. First I'd make a ton of potions to raise alchemy. Then I'd find a vendor selling a few expensive things. I'd buy the pricey items and sell them back again and again. Once the vendor had a nice pile of my cash, I'd sell my potions.

the economy in game 5 of the series should have been better developed and implemented.

You think about the expenses of Maven Blackbriar or any Jarl - they collect tremendous incomes but apparently that money goes somewhere.

• Taxes on player housing (1,000 septims per in-game month)
  
• Food/Drink expenses if the player does not refill the pantry of a house that a Housecarl/Wife lives in (consumption)
  
• Costs to throw parties
  
• Gifts to the Jarl to show affection/loyalty
  
• Donations to worthy ventures - adopting a child after Grelod the Kind is killed or investing in the Dawnstar ship captain
  
• Repairing/Replacing broken weapons (if only durability existed)

There are a lot of potential wealth dumps that Bethesda did not implement that would not handicap a player in poverty, but would place some responsibilities on advanced players who quickly gather more wealth than they can handle.

Every game has that. You end up having more money that you can spend.

Except in skyrim I got that on the second hour of the first playthrough.

i absolutely expect to eventually have more money than i can spend. however, with this being the 5th game of the series and 2011 as the game date i expect increased development and implementation. to only need money to train and buy a few houses/upgrades is weak, and, regression, as i am becoming all too aware of in this game, is unacceptable.

We need some kind of upkeep costs. The castle idea is a great idea for sinking gold. If we had to pay wages each month for staff, gaurds and general upkeep it would be a reason to keep delving for more cash. They should never have broken the link between enchanting and gold. It was precisely because I needed a frikin boatload of gold for my enchantments that I kept delving in Oblivion. I dont remember, did spellcrafting also need gold too?

I do have the solution: DLC where you rise to become the first dragonborn emperor in 200 yrs. This reunifies the empire. What do you do with the gold? Build your army. Then your character is retired for (drumroll) TES VI: The Aldmeri Dominion Conflict.

Maybe you're, ya know, done.

Skill trainers are a good money sink, if you dont steal it back.

I wouldn't call it unrealistic, the question is unrealistic for who? An heroic archeologistic, well the archetype in movies only seem to be after one item, but if anything it's unrealistic for them to ignore everything they pass regardless of thier purpose, be it monetary gain or to give to a museum for history (theres an Idea rather then museums being reserved solely for the bizarre how about ancient items of history, even libraries where you actually fill the shelves not trade a book in to vanish).

What is unrealistic is how overloaded all the dungeons are with loot after hundred's of years, even with current occupants of researchers and treasure hunters. And every week bandits and necromancers are kind enough to refill the place with themselves, resurrected enemies and loot in all the containers. Sometimes they'll even do it the second you leave and but leave everyone still dead.

More careful and limited placement of items and ore points would aid the games feeling of how precious an item you find is and make it harder to come by gold. It would add so much "value" in the game in more ways then one. It would have meant less work for them placing all this stuff, just requiring a little (more) thought.

Still I would have loved to dump gold on Girder, the first settlement you enter, nice town, pretty river, some space for exspansion, lack of good walls, emotional attachment to the person that saved you from Helgen, so would be a nice cause to spend money and get you're own manor to live there.

Okay maybe unrealistic is the wrong word, but I remembered back in Oblvion I was picking EVERYTHING up.
I was checking every room for at aleast 15 times before I go on.
It's just not fun to do that.

It's that we're conditioned to check a room 15 times for stuff just in case there's something really important in it.

I trained often to keep my gold down. It worked! Also, don't fast travel sell everything you pick up. It's okay to leave that set of dwarven armor behind every once in awhile.

Buy/build a farm. Tend to the crops. Buy the animals.

Although that would probably end up making you more money than you spent on it if you went berserk with it.