FO2-Barter skill question

F

farmore

First time out of the vault
Hey, guys! I need some help for Fallout 2.
I've been having trouble with the Barter skill. Since I've never put points into it, I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or if this is a bug.
I currently have 14 points in barter skill. I try to buy any item, a power armor in San Francisco, for example, and I see it costs $27,447. I close the vendor window, put 38 more points into Barter and open it again. The item still costs $27,447. It happens with every item in any city.
Am I missing something?

Thanks,
 
It might be that barter skill doesn't affect prices linearly, but that the skill of the vendor and yours are compared, and you have to "beat" him to get a lower price, or something along those lines. Not sure if anyone knows the exact maths behind it all.

So it could be that you'd need 100ish barter to see an effect. Or it could mean your charsima is terrible, charisma is more impotrant for bartering than the barter skill itself.
 
My character has 6 charisma, should be reasonable I think.

Your post makes sense, I will try your suggestion and save up some skill points to see if works better.
I'm going to post here if I find out what's happening!
:)
 
If you went back to some low level traders in say Klamath or The Den you should be able to test it there with your 38 points, if you already did that with no effect it seems pretty weird.
 
Are you sure it was the exact price and not just similar? The vendors in San Francisco have really high barter skill. And the formula to calculated prices is really weighted against the player in Fallout 2.
 
I tried putting 48 points into barter and went do the Den. Stimpaks cost 275 before and after putting the skill points.
Anyway, I don't have much free time to play lately so I'll just give up on it and move on. Thanks for helping, guys!
 
It's not a bug, as such, but rather a major design flaw. Adding NPCs to the Chosen One's party gives the Chosen One certain abilities. For example, adding Vic will allow the Chosen One to use Vic for repairs with Vic's comparatively high repair skill. The same is true with the barter skill. The game identifies the party member with the highest barter skill and uses that as the barter skill figure. The barter skill for Sulik, (the 1st NPC you'll recruit), is 50. It's also 50 for Myron, Vic and the Modoc NPCs have barter skills of 40 or lower, but Cassidy is 80! Thus if Sulik is with you your barter skill will be at least 50, even if your real barter skill is -6. If your real barter skill is-6 you'll have to add 57 points into barter skill before you'll see a tiny change.

It's stupid and it's lazy programming, but there it is. If you want barter skill to be relevant you'll have to either:
1) Play the game as a solo character.
2) Force the NPCs to leave the party when you're going to trade.
3) Bump the barter skill up to at least 50 to compensate for most of the NPC's barter skills.
4) Modify the skills of every NPC in the game files.
5) Use an add-on that gives you the option to ignore NPC's barter skill. As far as I know there is no such add-on at this time. @phobos2077 wrote an add-on that adjusts the game to compensate for economical issues but it's pretty much unplayable with a wide range of initial skill settings. He was planning to alter his add-on to allow for the ignore NPC barter skill option but I don't know if he has done so yet. If he has I have a better skill .ini file that will work with a much wider range of settings. ECCO mod thread

Most people just play the game in abuse mode and take the free points in barter skill.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
lostabroad2 said:
5) Use an add-on that gives you the option to ignore NPC's barter skill. As far as I know there is no such add-on at this time. @phobos2077 wrote an add-on that adjusts the game to compensate for economical issues but it's pretty much unplayable with a wide range of initial skill settings. He was planning to alter his add-on to allow for the ignore NPC barter skill option but I don't know if he has done so yet. If he has I have a better skill .ini file that will work with a much wider range of settings. ECCO mod thread
Click to expand...

Can you elaborate more on that "unplayable" claim? The barter.ini file included with the mod allows to alter the prices formula in many different ways. If you want to ignore NPC barter skill, you could try commenting out all variables in [NPC] section of barter.ini file, that should prevent the script from checking NPC skill levels. Or you can use sfall script editor and adjust the script any way you want :)
 
Here's my general rules of thumb for money acquirement:


  • No perks - go along with the game's pace, get things as you work for them
  • Barter - get anything you want at essentially any point in the game
  • Steal+Sneak - thief characers whose gains are ill gotten
  • Gambling - a perk perfect for pacifist characters who don't get any cash besides what they find or are awarded'
  • Or perhaps any combination of the above


It all depends what you want for the character. I'd strongly advise against metagaming to the point where you are picking perks for maximizing efficiency, rather than just creating a fun, unique character. That's why I dislike Per's guides so much, he is all about optimization at the cost of having fun and trying weird stuff. If you are good enough at the game and understand ways a certain role can solve a situation, you can make any weird character work.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top