I am struggling to sell the loot I bring back and would like to know how you people manage it.

On my first play through I joined and completed the Thieves Guild early on so I always had a fence on hand with 4K to buy whatever I had to sell. This time I am playing an honest warrior so I am reliant on regular merchants. Up until recently this hasn't been a major problem - though I have had to restrict what I pick up so I am not getting rich. However, I have now reached a level where I starting to find reasonable quantities of decent loot, decent enough that buyers such as Belenthor doesn't have enough money to buy more than one item. My last two expeditions in the, Falkreath area, have ended up with me coming back more goodies than the Windrun traders could buy (jewellery, staves and enchanted robes cause the biggest headache).

I have tried the Dynamic Merchants mod, but that doesn't solve the problem (not least because traders reset to their default cash amounts every ten days or so).

So, please, how do you girls and guys deal with this problem?

Use some of the Speech Perks to invest in shops, then merchant money is not an issue.

Money is not an issue even without those, but it helps. It also helps to just accept that you are not going to get all the stated value for an item, even if the merchant has enough (buy at wholesale, sell at retail)

CCNA, I never expect to get much more than a third of the stated value of any item (well maybe 50% in the later game). The problem I have comes when I bring back something with a paper value of around 2.5k and some other stiff of the same class. If I am lucky Belenthor might be able to afford the biggie but then I am stuck with the rest. The problem is not with the price I get but the ability to sell the stuff.

With regard to speech perks, it would take six perks, I think, to solve my problem, a problem I have hit at level 32. That's a big chunk of effort not devoted to combat related skills (to say nothing of actually getting speech up to 70). However, if speech perks is the way to go, so be it.

Any other solutions out there? I'd be really keen to hear from any of the "no fast travel" players on how they manage this one.

The best way to use the least amount of Perks is to get the one that lets the shopkeepers buy everything, then use a place like Riften or Solitude where there are a number of merchants to spread the stuff around to.

I can't think of any vanilla solution that does not need a few perks in Speech to get around this situation.

Now, since you can use Mods, there are other solutions.

I did use the Dohvakin Hideout Mod (the one that is a basemant connected to all the homes) and with it, all my Merchants had 5,000 gold, still had the same item class restrictions, but they could buy a bunch from me. I am sure it is that mod as when I removed it, the gold levels went back to normal.

It seems to me that money is rather useless after the early game. I've had 4 characters so far. All struggled to buy "bits and pieces" of stuff in their early going, but after a while, there was no need for money at all, there was nothing worthwhile to buy at any price, and enough money was gained in dungeons and quests that I was always flush. All houses are full of stuff, heaps of (found not crafted,plain ones self-enchanted) daggers with Banish, Ebony swords and axes, glass items of all kinds, and it would be torture to go through the tedium of selling this stuff off, when there is virtually nothing of use to spend this on. The game needs some kind of economic balancing, IMO, although trainers could fill this role I suppose, though I seldom use them , I level as fast as I want without exploiting. There's no money sink like many games, no awesome merchant items to save money for, no economic penalties to the player such as having to pay for weapon or armor repairs. Maybe someone could make a mod where if you don't take a side in the Civil War, large patrols could shake you down for "taxes" and cheese you off enough to have a good old fashioned rebellion against one side or the other. No Maven, I'm not going to spring for 1,000 gold a week for Riften "property taxes".

That looks like the best vanilla solution to me as well. Of course it does have its drawbacks, especially if one is dungeoneering in the Markath region. Its a damn long walk to Solitude or Riften when loaded to the weight limit with loot. Which is why I would be really interested to hear from some of the "no fast travel" players - at least some of them must have hit this problem so I suspect that some of them have creative solutions.

Also, I have to say I like the restriction on what Traders will buy, not least because it keeps a reason for having multiple traders. I suppose we could have a big Wal-Mart (Tesco's for English readers) in every city but it would detract from the game.

Other than fast travelling round the cities and towns desperately trying to find someone with some money to buy stuff, nor can I - short of joining the TG, of course. However, I struggle to believe that many other players haven't hit the same problem and there are lots of people who have posted that money isn't an issue in the game. So I am hopeful that there are people out there who have found a way to get rich honestly.

I can but lots of others can't. So It would be good to find a good way around the problem that all can use.

This is in Whiterun, It's not foolproof of course but stop at the smith 1st and sell what I can to them, both inside and outside. they both have their own money for me.

The Inn strait from the gate, he buy's.

Then I go to Belethor and sell to him next ( no food, ingredients, jewlery or potions)

Hit up the Alchemy shop if you have anything for her. Then the little outdoor vendor's,

The Greymane lady won't sell to me as I haven't gone looking for her son.

Then go up to Dragonsreach and the wizard, he buy's robe's, staff's, jewlery, scroll's, any books, soul gem's etc.

Edit: I alway's sell heaviest item's first! that way IF I have to carry them back out, they are at least light item's.

IF I still have stuff left I often just stick around town til the merchant's reset. And don't forget to look and see if the Caravan is their!!!!!!

Without Fences and Speech perks all you can do is run around dinking off 1000-1100 at a time. There's that glitch with the Riverwood Traders wherein they supposedly have 11K, but that requires the Speech perks up to the investment one.

I'm actually considering doing just enough of the TG questline on my 'good' guy to get Tonilia opened because I have numerous ebony items worth more than 1K...even with the wholesale-retail disparity.

If you don't mind exploiting a glitch, here's what I used to do - after exhausting the merchant's gold supply, I quick save, kill the merchant then quick load. This resets his inventory and he has his normal complement of gold.
Now, with over 200k in gold & nothing to spend it on, I don't bother picking up loot anymore unless it has an interesting enchantment or it's a consumable like potions & lockpicks.
I also peruse what is being sold - sometimes I find an item I want and I buy it. Then I sell whatever stuff I have to him and most times, I still earn a profit from the transaction overall.

I've found myself on more than one occasion buying a Master level robe just so the vendor will have more gold to buy stuff from me. That's also why I have about 10k lbs worth of crafting materials.

I've proposed it in a suggestion thread to have a traveling merchant from Cyrodil with 100k or so worth of gold plus some vanity type items as a place to sell the high dollar stuff and have a gold sink.

Unless you're on pc (where there are a couple of mods which let you up the amount of gold each merchant has - one of which I use.... and STILL have to hit 3 or 4 town markets sometimes!) I'm not sure there's a really good solution. On a console game, I'm just not sure there's a good way. One not really good way on console would be to drop stuff at your base (house, whatever), carry up to limit to nearest merchant and sell; return to house, reload rinse repeat. Annoying. And probably unnecessary - honestly, once you get enough gold together to buy and upgrade Breezehome, you really don't NEED gobs of gold again - in fact, there's nothing to spend it on....

My thanks to all who responded to my question. I am disappointed but not surprised that no one has come up with a cunning wheeze to get round the problem in the vanilla game.

I take Serethil's point that after a while there is no, practical, use for money. However, I would contend that it still has a value in the game if only in role-play and keeping score terms. If I don't loot a dungeon why would my character bother to go and find it and clear it without a specific quest? The desire for loot surely underpins a game like Skyrim and the dosh provides a way of measuring success. Take that away and the only motivation is the quests and once you get to that point a linear game can do a better job.

Moreover, the point at which money no longer has practical value is, I think, quite high. With my warrior I am at Level 32 and, though I have the house in Whiterun, there are still things I need to spend money on (health potions and Soul Gems to name two). When money stops being an issue obviously depends on one's style of play, e.g. with an alchemist character my expenses would be a lot lower, but the game should, surely, be doable regardless of style, without exploits or mods and without spending n game days traipsing around the cities trying to flog off the loot from one day's dungeoneering.

I suspect that the fact that I can't sell the stuff, will finally be, what causes me to give up on the game. Follower, "Look a cave, I wonder what's in there"; character, "If I remember rightly, a bunch of necromancers and some sweet enchanted items, but I wouldn't be able to flog them and they won't be any better than the stuff we are carrying. So what's the point? Fancy a pint, instead?"

Don't forget the Orc strongholds; once you're kin, you can sell to them...other services are there too. I also use the caravans a lot. I haven't invested in the Speech perk tree yet though. I'll have to make a future build that does that and check it out.

Best advice is don't pick anything unless it's extremely valuable and weights almost nothing. Another way to slowly get rid of loot is Marty a person who can buy and sell an everytime you go home put all your loot in a chest and sell it one by one. I got rid of most my loot that way.

I find money very useful even to mid levels, especially as a mage. Spells, Robes, Gems cost alot of money. As a warrior, its not as useful, but i still like to shop for a food enchanted ring or armor sometimes, being that i dont enchant.

My advice is if youre a Mage or belong to College, sell your magical items to other members, and the stuff you cant to other traders. In Solitude you can sell clothing, jewelry to Radiant Raiment, then pawnbroker for practically any item you have, then the smith near castle dour. And finally, if your items are too expensive, just sell them for whatever they have. Youll have so much stuff and money eventually anyway, it wont mean much if you lose 300 gold in a transaction

I time my trips so that I can return when the shops are open. I then use all shops in a town. If a shopkeeper runs out of gold do I look at his or her offers and take some of their items instead of gold. One can buy rare ingredients from alchemists, rare enchantments and soul gems from the misc. shops and rare metal ingots from the smiths.

Whiterun has got 4 smithing shops and one can get quite a lot of weapons and armor sold there. There is the Drunken Huntsman, Arianne, her husband and the smith at the Sky Forge. Know that when Arianne is outside will her husband inside the house buy your loot, too, and will have his own gold.

Windhelm has with 3 the most misc. shops if I am not mistaken. There are two at the market place (near the smith and the alchemist). One looks like he is only selling meat and stands in front of the alchemist's shop, but he actually trades in everything. The third is in the East of Windhelm and is called Sardi's Used Wares.

I'll have to check out some of these street merchants. I usually walk right past them because I'm not in the market for a leg of goat to take home, cook and get 5 points of stamina from it, lol. Whoop de do! I will of course enjoy selling my loot to them.

With Warmaiden's are you sure they don't share the same gold? The reason I ask is I think they share the same inventory. I recall buying some charcoal from Adrianne leaving her with 1 remaining, checking her husband because she had no corundum and seeing that 1 charcoal Then after smithing a bit I went and bought the remaining charcoal from Adrianne, and went inside to buy the last one from her husband, only to see that I had already just bought it from his wife. To be clear, this was all within an hour game-time.

Maybe they shre the inventory but have separate gold supplies?

They share it when both are inside the house, usually in the evenings. Arianne starts early and can be found outside often before 8am. During the day, and when Arianna does not take a break, and trades stuff outside and her husband is found inside behind the counter do both have their own pot of gold.

I can be wrong of course, but I think I have used it many times to get rid of the tons of loot that I keep picking up. I am pretty sure of it.

I bother to go into dungeons to explore. There's always the chance of something unique to see, do or loot. Plus there's often some story related elements in dungeons. I also have this criticism in MMOs *cue almost unrelated rant* where if you want to be a better raider you need better gear which you get raiding... but being better at raiding should be the point, no? The objective is not to simply raid to get the gear. If it was then what is the gear for? Anyway...

My suggestion is to reassess why you are looting. If you really need 10K or so for expenses, then you can get it fairly quickly - even with just accumulating 500 gold at every vendor in a town and making a few runs of it. I have often found myself getting habitual with "tidying up" the game world by looting and selling everything lying around, but found it takes a lot of time and can sometimes just plain get in the way of the fun. My Morrowind character has over 200 million gold which is kinda silly, so in Skyrim I tried to stay unencumbered by stuff I wasn't going to use myself and I still managed to probably be the wealthiest person in the province just from getting paid to adventure, and looting gold. If you gauge that it's a big deal when the DB get paid 20K for a contract, then my 175K is pretty prestigious. (All without any perks in Speech).

Other than that go for items that have good weight/value ratios. Lockpicks and arrows are weightless, so you can carry them around indefinitely to sell in multiple towns without having to think about it. However selling expensive items will increase your Speech skill quicker, so if you want levels, sell one expensive item and wipe out the cash of vendors in one hit. And never stop sneaking up to mudcrabs and clicking them to see if they'll speak..

I've noticed this, too.

Ah, yes, the MMO End-Game Loop: "I have to Raid to get better gear so I can Raid better so I can get better gear so I can Raid better so I can..."

Abrinth,

Thanks for your advice. There is much in what you say, however I think my point that you quoted stands. Once one has played through once then the exploration for the sake of finding something unique to see or discover about the story line really no longer applies - save for the odd place (less than fifteen in my case) that one didn't find first time around. As for finding unique items, well random loot might throw up something new but it is most unlikely to be better than what I have got so I'll want to sell it which brings me back to where I began.

Your solution seems to be take the best value loot and accept whatever price you can get for it because at the end of the day you'll have more money than you need anyway. If I have got that right, I'd say you ave a fair point but where does that leave the role-play element of the game? Doesn't that take us back to the game is about the quests?

As a cash making mechanic, its hard to beat the Merchant perk (which lets you sell anything to any vendor, and also buy anything they have, even the clothes off their backs and the lunch they brought to work).
Reason being, it lets you simply focus on picking up the loot with the highest $/lb ratio, instead of thinking about things like "hmm, I've got $1000 worth of potions, but only one person in the next town buys those, so I'll ignore those 30 septim potions that weigh .5 lb and pick up this 400 septim armor that weighs 15 lbs."
So yeah, that greatly simplifies your life, reduces encumbrance, AND increases profits.

It might seem worth less in the late game, but given that both are in the thief family, you can level them pretty fast with the thief stone, making lots of money safely at low levels without resorting to stealth / pick pocketing. Getting all that money early on makes to reaching that late game easier and (arguably) more enjoyable, plus you end up with a nice alchemy skill for powr-crafting (or just making potions and poisons to use; I'm considering making my next character a no-smithing, no-enchanting alchemist).

I sell my stuff to my 'wife' in the game... But even she gives me a crap deal lol

When Adrianne is outside her inventory & gold are separate from her husband's.

After one day of playing this game I went and installed http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=769