In Bethesda games, you usually amass lots of more loot than you'll ever need. I'd love it if we were able to actually use our stuff at high levels to do something.

For example, a DLC where you became a landowner would be cool. Quests that enabled you to spend you wealth would be things like:

* Give 100 gold ingots and mint coins/trade bars in your own image. (We'd need a separate item for each gender and race, or 20 total.)
* Give 8 ebony armor, boots, gauntlets, helmets, shields and swords to equip your guards.
* Give X number of Y potions (randomly selected, repeating quest) to stock your alchemical larder.

Would you want to spend your loot on vanity projects?

TES games have always had some issues with the player's wealth way outpacing the game's merchants and economy, so I'd support some ideas for 'money sinks' in addition to the stuff like housing that already exists. I think adding specialty vendors with larger amounts of money and interesting items would be a good start, and maybe significant investments that have a tangible meaning. Playing house can be fun, but how about buying yourself perks within certain holds, or even financing a coup that leads to a quest were you could become a Jarl?

I like to buy a big farm. Very expensive. Renovate and decorate, buy tools. Extend the fields. Hire workers. The workers need to be payed and the crops will not always bring sufficient money. Natural hazards can damage the crops, the fields, the barn. You'll need to pay to repair. Money sink.

I love the farm idea, and the guard idea and stuff. My "main" character ended up with a chest, FULL OF LOOT, so much that it'd lag an awful lot every time I tried to take/deposit something out/in of it and I had about 300,000 gold anyway. A nice money sink would be greatly appreciated.

I like the farm idea, and believe that gold comes way too easy in skyrim, especially after 10-15th level.

Well, if I looted a tomb infested with undead or worse I would expect a pretty penny.
And yes, I love the idea of having a farm/estate.

To expand on the buying a farm or estate, add this:

Buy out Bandit groups, pay them to run raids for you, or with you.

Purchase old Forts and make your own little territory of influence.

Invest in merchants to gain access to more stock.

Commission NPCs to make goods for you.

House of delights, if you want kinky it's going to be expensive.

This one is not going to be popular, but here goes: gold has weight and volume. When you buy your house you need a handcart or saddle bags. And, due to the fact that ALL the available coins are physically real objects in the game world, you will have to store them in places thieves can enter...

I'd definitely love an elder scrolls where money isn't strictly decorative after the first hour or two of play. I got Oblivion to do this with only two tweaks; the only reason Bethesda hasn't is because they don't care..

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s

I think its completely realistic to carry around 25,000 pieces of gold and be able to move. Seriously.

Arrows and lockpicks should have weight too.

Knowledge is power, so I would like to have unique, very high level trainers in the game world that will only sell you their unique combat tips (or perks) for insanely high prices. Another money sink that I find more than acceptable from a roleplaying perspective would be the option to start a new guild (or personal army, or religious cult) from zero. Buy the land, then build the house, then decorate, then recruit, buy clothes, armor, weapons, a carriage, a ship... then build a bigger stronghold and it virtually never ends. You could even recuperate some resources if you demolish the old building. You could hire a crew for your ship to sail to other provinces and bring exclusive exotic goods that will be sold only in your personal store.

i had an idea (expanded off of other peoples' idea, and the base of it has been repeated a few times but it is not as advanced as my idea) for an expansion:

something is happening in cyrodill (this will make use of that gate just sitin' there) and the jarl of whatever hold helgen is in wants to send people to investigate (under the order of ulfric/tullius, whoever rules that area when this takes place), but, helgen is infested with bandits and lies on the road he means to send his men to take. he offers helgen itself and a sum of gold to any who would clear out the fortress and acompany his band of people investigating cyrodill and you take up the call. the first part (and the part we're worried about here) is clearing and owing helgen, you can choose to leave it after you own it or you could use the gold he gave you to restore it (to your specifications, which could mean making it a rogues' den, an assassin sanctuary, a mage's dream, ect and decide it's layout from preset layouts [you get to decide what feels what lot though]) and after you restore it you can customise it and hire people to build other things there. you could also hire guards for x septims a day/week/month/whatever, tax people and other interactions that come with running a small whatever you decided to make it or just leave it at whatever you decided to make it and live there (or be done with it, or somethign else entirely). basicly it becomes your city to do with as you please (to an extent of course) and finsihing the expansion will provide potential upgrades if you want them (and other rewards, clearly)

My idea has always been this:

To buy old forts and rebuild them completely. Or rebuild helgen and become jarl.

If you rebuild a fort, you can use it to make your own small city, a vendor area, a place to rebuild your favorite guild(granted you like the two failing guilds), or train guards,etc.

I would love to be a vigilant of stendar and have a place for his shrine, and to raise up some more vigilants but unforetunatly you can't be one.

So yeah you basically would revamp the fort 100% and fix it, garrison it, put up barreirs, shrines, have archers, or alchemy tables, etc basically turn a fort into whatver you want. You could use it to store all your items, armor, etc and have tons of places to show off your wealth with mannequins display cases, etc.

I'm not sure this would work. Sometimes you get a sudden windfall of gold from certain quests, something ranging in the thousands. How would your character be able to handle that if they didn't have any carts or bags at the ready? Would you just have a notice pop up on your screen informing you that you'd have to come back later with the necessary equipment to claim your reward? It'd get awkward.
As for money sinks in general, though, I'd love me some of those. It's gotten to the point where I just rush through dungeons without so much as checking for loot because I already own every house and have all the armour and weaponry I need.

This could be solved so easily if the economy was tweaked a little to make things more difficult. When you're a nobody you get high prices at the vendors because they don't know you and much less money in the barrels that every shoeless level 1 can open, etc... so you won't get rich too fast unless you're deliberately grinding professions or seek for treasures/ break into rich houses. Then the money people pay for your loot and the money you pay for weapons and armor should be very small compared to the prices you need to pay for horses, houses or mansions. A house should cost 100x regular glass armor, not 3x.

Where's my statue? That should use up a few coins. Got one for free in Oblivion, but that wasn't made from pure gold, with flawless diamonds. I want it in the middle of my estate, next to the ebony summer house. And I want Elenwen's skull filled with rubies, just because I can afford them.

You couldn't be Jarl of Helgen, because Helgen is in Falkreath hold.

Maybe Solstheim will be added in a DLC, though. That would be a good choice for a PC becoming Jarl.

TES games have always had issues with money and how much the player has. They should add some DLC where you have to spend a lot of money to do up/complete the quest.

Not really. I'm usually baffled by the "I need more gold sinks to spend my money on!" threads.


One reason is that I see having a bunch of money as a sign of success.

Another reason is that I love looting stuff, especially in Bethesda games with the whole "enemies have all their gear on them" thing (rather than the "random drop 0-2 items" that many games have.)

And another big reason is that I tend to become self-sustaining in Beth games.... I don't actually spend much money on anything - if I want/need something, I tend to try to find, loot, or make it. (Oblivion, for example... beyond a few spells that I might need for enchantment effects, the only thing I ever spend money on is repair hammers.)


But I'm also aware that I'm somewhat in the minority.

(also, house-wise, all I really look for is a wide array of boxes to store & sort loot into. The smaller, the better - less distance to run between containers. Breezehome is perfect for me in Skyrim, and in Oblivion I just installed a mod that gave a reasonably straightforward home near the IC.)

Shadow of the colossus

Well maybe not jarl but you could help run the city or help rebuild it.

It would be nice if there were expenses.
A monthly payment required to keep your five homes (and five housecarls) operational...
Then, if you didn't continue to explore and loot treasure, you'd very slowly go broke.
For me, that would take quite a long time - since I carry some ~330,000 septims around with me, heheh...

There's nothing to spend money on.
And I can't even give it away (to beggars or whatever).
At least in Morrowind you had a choice; you could give 10/100/1000 gold.
In Skyrim, 1 gold. (1 gold!?)
Lord, where am I going to find 300,000 beggars...
And how long would that take?

I give any new followers 50,000 right away, just to spread it around a bit, y'know?
It's nutty that filled Grand Soul gems cost 1200 when you first start the game, but once you're wealthy they cost half that...
Should be the other way around.

Couldn't they make items (or magical items, at least) more expensive to begin with?

I remember playing Baldur's Gate for the first time back in the day, reaching Beregost, and find a shop that sold a stealth armor that cost like 40k gold or something crazy like that.

If items in Skyrim were as expensive, it might take a little longer to amass a huge fortune. I like the farm/keep ideas as well.

I would absolutely love having vanity projects to throw money at. It's much more rewarding than sitting on a pile of money that will just keep getting bigger and have no real purpose.