FO: Jake's Outrageous Prices

S

Slowhand

First time out of the vault
I'm currently replaying Fallout and chose the classic Shady Sands > Vault 15 > Raiders > Junktown > Hub route.

I'd fulfilled all possible quests so far as well as collecting, trading and stealing everything I could get my hands on in the vaults, villes and a few special encounters. All told, I felt I'd stocked up a fairly tidy stash.

After arriving at the Hub I went to Jake, the heavy weapons merchant in the Old Town, for armor and weapons. Holy Moley! I nearly fell off my chair when I saw his prices: 40K caps for a suit of combat armor, 13K for a sniper rifle and 17K for a combat shotgun. To add insult to injury, he merely offered me a pittance for my items, even the ones I'd just bought from him.

Isn't that a bit steep? It's still a bit early in the game, after all. I can't remember his prices being so outrageous the last time I played Fallout years ago.

In any case, I was finally able to buy a suit of combat armor, 2 sniper rifles and a combat shotgun, but only after literally selling the shirt off my back, completing all Hub quests and pilfering the entire town.

Another problem I faced was filling my inventory with enough expensive items to meet his prices, given my weight limit. I'm sure I lost a fair amount of caps trading bulkier, cheaper items for higher-priced stuff such as rifles, ammo, chems, etc.

For the record, I've installed my Fallout v1.1 CD on a Windows XP SP2 system with the following patches/mods added:

Fallout v1.2 patch (semi-official)
Fallout v.1.3.3 patch (unofficial)
Nimrod's Dialog Fixes for FO Patch v1.3.3
Fallout NPC Mod v3.3
Nimrod's Dialog Fixes for FO NPC Mod v3.3
Timeslip's sfall1 v1.18e

I'm playing a male character with
ST 6, PE 9, EN 4, CH 3, IN 10, AG 10, LK 6,
Small Frame and Gifted traits,
Small Guns, Lockpick and Speech skills tagged.
No negative karma or reputation.
Haven't touched my Barter settings (16%).

Has anyone else experienced these outrageous prices? Perhaps there's some issue with the mods/patches I installed, or even my character specs?
 
To be honest I'd say thats about right.

You wouldn't let a high power sniper rifle or advanced polymer combat armour got for next to nothing would you.

Naturally your low barter and Charisma will make them cost slightly more than usual but I'd say that you're paying pretty much what I'd expect.

No point in having a too easy game eh?

I remember saving up so long in my first game to afford a set of combat armour!
 
You've got a point there, Hotel, considering you can acquire the high power sniper rifle earlier in the game than in FO2. The same probably applies to the combat armor and shotgun as well.

Warning: game exploit & partial spoiler
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Although, after all that hard work, I did feel a bit miffed when I went to loot the Glow afterwards and found a suit of combat armor free for the taking, among other things. Never mind all the enhanced combat and power armor I obtained for zip at the Brotherhood immediately following that.

Also, I'd forgotten that you could steal all of your bartered items back from Mrs. Stapleton, the librarian. Her infinite stock of books definitely would've made life much easier.
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True about the Librarian but that just feels like cheating ;)

Play it hard and fast. I always went to the glow with the absolute minimum of gear - Leather Jacket, 223. Pistol, ammo, chems, water bottle.
Stashed everything else somewhere and left all the NPCs I could. Even gave Dogmeat some chems for the poor little woofies sake! Nothing like actually roleplaying!

You know Slowhand - you're almost inspiring me to play FO1 again ... I might try some of those patches you've got...
 
Hotel California said:
Play it hard and fast.
Click to expand...
Definitely! That's what I like about the original Fallout, you can complete all of the quests and still finish the game in a weekend.

I can truly recommend the listed mods/patches. Fun as hell: no glitches yet and smooth as silk. And hey, with your NPC's now occasionally leveling up and the ability to make Dogmeat stay put, what more can you ask for?

Even old Ian seems better natured than usual. Believe it or not, he's not shot me in the back once so far, although he nearly wasted poor Tycho a few times. It's always a stirring experience to watch Tycho exclaiming 'Ouch' while reeling to Ian's bullets riddling his back ;-) Nevertheless, I took the Bonus Move perk as soon as it became available just to be able to stay well clear of Ian's way.

You can download the files from the Vault-Tec Labs Wiki and TeamX News websites @
http://www.teamx.ru/eng/files/f1mod.shtml
http://falloutmods.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_1_Mods

Also, I'm using the Fallout Screen Refresh available @ http://www.labo-asso.com/php/outils.php to circumvent the dreaded Black Screen bug sometimes encountered when running Fallout under WinXP. Works like a charm.

Go for it.
 
There was a bug with barter modifier in Jake's script. It was fixed. So yes, it is normal. And yes, your barter skill is too low.

PS F1 Update Mod is not compatible with any other mods and patches.
 
Wasteland Ghost said:
So yes, it is normal. And yes, your barter skill is too low.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the confirmation, Ghost. I'll raise my barter skill accordingly and see how it goes. Per's guide mentions that CH also affects bartering. Consequently, my low charisma may be part of the problem as well.
 
Also, the value of items you're selling is fixed ($250 for a 10mm pistol, $1000 for a 10mm SMG, etc.); only the prices of items you buy changes. With a sufficiently high Barter skill, you can buy items for less than you sell them for (e.g. $150 for the 10mm pistol). That can feel like cheating, though.
 
Yes, another bug. The only way to fix it I can think of is to raise barter skill in pro-files for all merchants. But this will make trading even more difficult for those PCs, who's barter skill is low.
 
Is it really a bug? With barter at 200+%, you could be a better salesman than the merchants are. I don't think it's worth changing anything, since most people will never get their skill that high.
 
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