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Making money inThe Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivionand its Remaster starts a bit rough, with bad prices, low availability of high-value items, and minimal ability to haul loot. Even so, if you know the right merchants to sell to, you can start building a bank account early. Luckily, you don’t have to look far or do much.
A lot of the best merchants are exactly where you think they’d be: at the heart of Cyrodiil’s commerce lines. However, there are a few particularities we’ll cover here to give you the best set of merchants to offload your goods with.
The Best Merchants To Sell Loot To
There are dozens of merchants in Oblivion, and all of them are more than happy to buy items you don’t need. And in most cases,the best place to do that is in the Imperial City Market District. However, you’ll encounter two limitations. The first is thetypeof merchant you’re talking to.
For the first hours of an Oblivion playthrough, you’ll need to pick and choose where you sell your goods. Vendors typicallyonly buy and sell items related to their trade. Alchemist shops, for instance, only deal in alchemy items.
General Stores, like the Copious Coinpurse, will buy just about anything that isn’t stolen. When shopping there, you’ll encounter the second limitation: the gold limit. That limit isthe absolute maximum they will pay for any one item, regardless of its actual value.
Every vendor in Oblivion has an upper limit to the prices they’ll pay for your loot items. That value can vary wildly depending on the type of vendor, what they sell, and where. An innkeeper, for instance, usually has a meager 50 gold limit, whereasa city merchant might have a limit as high as 800-1,000.
Thebestmerchants to sell to have a limit of 1,200-2,000 gold, and they’re few and far between. Here’s a list of all of them:
Do they buy stolen goods (Fence)?
1,200
Any
Yes, only after completing the Thieves' Guild quest, Taking Care of Lex.
Weapons and armor
Chorrol (Fire and Steel)
Weapons and Armor
Non-armor clothing and robes
2,000
Magic and Alchemy supplies
Alchemy ingredients, supplies, and potions
Skingrad (Hammer and Tongs)
No
Fathis Ules
Imperial City Elven Gardens District or Chorrol (The Oak and Crosier)
1,500
Yes, only after completing the Thieves' Guild quest.
One additional note: when you reach level 50 in the Mercantile Skill,you can sell any item to any merchant,regardless of their stock type. Their prices don’t get better, but the only limitation to selling is their gold cap.
How To Haggle
While all merchants have a gold cap, there’s no limit to thenumberof items they can buy. Better yet, you’re able to Haggle to get better prices up to the cap.
Haggling compares the merchant’s current Disposition with the Sell Value percentage they use to price what they buy from you. The higher their Disposition,the better their purchase price.
For instance, if you have100 Dispositionwith a merchant, you’ll almost always be able tosell loot to them between 73-77 percent of an item’s total value.
You can extend that ratio to other merchants at other Dispositions. On average,a merchant will always buy items from you for around 25 percent lessthan their base value.
Take time to adjust the Haggle slider up as high as you think you can push it. If the merchant accepts the selling price, you can go to town. The instant they refuse,start reducing the bar by one percent at a timeuntil they start buying again.
How To Increase Merchant’s Gold Limit
While it’s impossible to completely remove a merchant’s gold limit,you’re able to increase it significantly. The catch is, you’ll need to invest a lot of time in leveling the Mercantile Skill.
When you reach Mercantile level 75, Expert, you’re able to invest your own gold in their inventory topermanently increase their gold limit by 500. At Master Mercantile, level 100, every vendor will immediately andpermanently have another 500 addedto their gold limit.
These increases arebased on the merchant’s default gold cap, so if they could only buy up to 800 gold, you can increase that value to 1,800, and so on.
Lastly, increasing Mercantile is a laborious process, but also very straightforward:the more items you sell, the more the skill levels. Note that you don’t gain any additional skill experience for selling stacks of items. It’s best practice to sell items individually for optimal progress.
