I'm in a trading window. I look at an axe. It says 300 gold. I put it in the trade window. Now I need to pony up over 700!

Yeah, what's up with that?

I haven't found anyone to trade with yet, but I assume it has to do with Charisma or any other modifiers. The price when you hover over the item is probably the "fixed value" of the item, and there is a modified which sets at what markup you get an item for.

This is just my conjecture based on playing like many other CRPGs, and so I may be wrong, and it may be a bug.

Does everything go up by 133% like that or is it just that axe? Could it be that the initial price is the base value and the price you see next is after it's adjusted for CHA and/or NPC reaction or whatever they're doing in this game? Only just got to the druid place in my game and haven't sold anything yet.

My best guess is that the price seen while an item is still on the merchant's side of the screen is the base price. The modifiers for CHA, merchant attitude, and suchlike get factored in once an item is moved into the trade/barter section of the screen. I don't know that the 133% mentioned by Kingslayer is a constant or anything, but I definitely saw prices double, plus a bit, as soon as I pulled them out of the merchant's inventory.

It was everything for me. I didn't run numbers to get the markup.

There's a secret stat "approval" just like in the Divinity games. You can increase approval by giving people things like money or chests or bones or whatever.
First you barter -> give -> complete trade -> exit diologue then you get the approval +5 or whatever message.
In the divinity games the more someone approves of you the the closer you get to "true" buy and sell value. I haven't tested to be sure it works the same way here, but I assume that it does.

Look at it this way. It's basic capitalism. The shop has what you want. Supply, and demand. You might know it's worth 50 gold, but he's going to turn a profit. If I buy 3 longswords for 50 gold to sell them to others, I'm probably going to charge 150 gold each so I can get my money back, buy another sword to sell, and pocket 50 gold in profit.

I had this problem. I wanted to buy some armor that was a couple hundred gold, but when I selected it it cost over 1500 gold. The game needs to both be more clear about how barter and trade works and adjust stuff so that things don't get that wildly expenessive

I agree, this isn't very intuative.

I never got approval from vendor tested by giving 500 gold to that druid vendor.

A clearer indication of how much it'll cost before you put it up in the barter window should be implemented for sure.

I haven’t had a chance to play yet but iirc BG1&2 shop prices varied massively depending on which of your party’s characters did the shopping, I.e Charisma modified price.

Are we seeing a variation in price vs what a character in your party could purchase it for vs you doing the purchasing? I.e the shop shows the best price based on party and then the actual cost based on lead character doing purchasing?

Might be total bollocks, but thought I would take a stab at it 😁

Things were wildly overpriced compared to their listed price for my CHA 17 Warlock as well so I don't think the prices are based on CHA.
I'm assume what we're seeing is the baseline for some sort of approval/reputation/haggling price adjustment mechanic that hasn't been fully implemented yet. Or well, I hope

I don't play multiplayer, but it's like this in singleplayer. I notice that in their inventory the item price will say 700, but when I try to purchase it, it will charge me 1800. Actual merchant prices should appear in the bartering window, not their value prices.

I haven't seen any change in price depending on which character is interacting with the vendor.

You get 40% of the "true" value the game displays at a shop
But you pay 250% of the "true" value the game displays at the shop as well

So you can get 300gp for a 750gp item and then try to buy back the same item for 1875gp
- No difference in prices per character (16 CHA and 10 CHA)
- No difference in prices per vendor (only vendor's I've found are at druid camp, so haven't checked this anywhere else)

Yeah, what's up with that? Vendors who do not know me, should sell at base price (no increase or decrease). If I'm evil to their group, sure up the price by a lot. But 250% increase for a neutral? Come on. Also, the prices are too high to begin with, given how much gold we get.

How would they turn a profit, then?

Maybe it has something to do with the Reputation Point System?

CHA was giving Wyll better prices in my playthrough.

Also, you can raise the "attitude" of NPC's just like in Divinity. You can do this through various means, but the easiest is just gifting them some items. The investment will net you a vendor to dump all your goods too for better prices.

Not saying I am in love with this, just explaining the mechanics to you.

Sure, but we're not playing Merchant Simulator 2020. I don't want to be told how much the base price is, I want to know exactly how much I can actually sell or buy the item for. You know, like every other game in existence does? I don't go into a shop in Skyrim or The Witcher and go to buy something that says it costs 50 gold, only for the shopkeep to jack the price up to 300 gold at the last second. Doing this just makes me want to kill the trader, which looks more and more enticing considering that killing people is the only way to get XP anyway.

I also had different prices based on who I was using for my vendor interaction. Shadowheart had the highest Charisma out of all my toons, so I used her for the sales. In fact, I didn't sell anything for a long, long time. I figured I would gain favor with the vendors by completing some quests first, and they would potentially give me better prices. That didn't seem to have much effect, but using a toon with a better CHA sure did the trick. I would guess it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-25% savings.

Yeah that's about what I was getting.

You could swap Wyll in for 16 CHA just to trade.

Even if he is not in your group, if you right click items in your inventory you can "Send to Camp." This moves the items to the chest located in your camp. That way they don't clog up your inventory and such, weigh you down. Then when you're ready to sell fast travel to camp (you can fast travel there without having to rest during the daytime) and swap Wyll in real quick, open the chest hit "take all" and off to the vendor you go.

Good suggestion for how to get better gold from vendors. Still, the point is that the price shown should be the price paid. Not some random percentage higher than that amount that I am currently uncertain how charisma and other factors affect. I, for one, do not miss the usual US system of adding tax at the register (shown price: $19.99, price at register: $21.44) instead of like, say, Norway, where the price on the item is the price you pay.

Looks like I'm moving to Norway then, cause I hate the US system too.

When it feels like buying a product is Fake News

The item has a "Value" not a price. The value is the general value of the thing. Weapons are more valuable than a Skull.
But what a shop keeper is willing to pay for an item depends on how well he likes you.
As mentioned before, the game does have an "appreciation" score, if you hit an NPC with your weapon you can see this score drop.

Most vendors will like you more if you get them a good deal, and this give you good deals later on.

I would love for an option for the party to be able to negotiate for better prices though. Either before hand, or after the deal, using a charisma check