Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Feedback: Selling prices

I feel that the selling prices for the items you find is way too low.. you barely get anything for the weapons.. armors.. other items.

While everything is also so expensive to buy. Was barely able to afford 2-4 skillbooks after 14 hours of playing. That was way nicer balances in the first part of original sin.

So really hope you will finetune the sell and buy prices till the final release.

Getting money was maybe too easy in original sin, but now it is ridiculously hard. Have been playing with my friend, so if you have to split that little you earn between you for skillbooks and items, there is not much left. So please reconsider the sell prices of items, or maybe the buy prices so the little you earn is enough.

I totally agree. Okay it's a prison and we shouldn't be swimming in loot and especially magic items. Okay some of the stuff is low quality and shouldn't sell for much. But right now equipment overall sells for far too little. Even magic items and unique items sell for very little.

I think that The prison economy needs to be rebalanced. Right now the most valuable things you can sell in the prison are the gigantic, heavy paintings, and those are exactly the sort of things which no one on the island should be interested in buying.

What should be in demand and worth lots are food, water, medicine, weapons, equipment. Maybe some small valuables. But not paintings.

What's worse is that the few times I have found skillbooks in random loot they've all been duplicates.

I'm not exactly "asking" for it. However, per-merchant scaling prices based on their individual interests would be amazing, just saying.

To begin with I'd like to remind you that what we are playing now is just the first act. Having money being very tight at the beginning of the game makes it all the more enjoyable when you actually start earning some cash.
Also, it is very thematically fitting for a prison island.

Seccondly we do not have the crating system implemented yet. Crafting is a very good way to get some early game money and will be available in the full game.

Also you are playing the game way to honorably if you cannot afford any skillbooks. There are several steps you can take if you really want more gold.
To begin with avoid paying merchants with gold. Pay with items. The reason for this is that when you kill a merchant they only drop a small part of their inventory, but they drop every item (excluding gold) that you ever traded to them.
So here is how to get rich in this alpha build of the game.
Select one vendor is the least usefull, sell everything you don't want to that vendor. When you have bought everything that vendor has for sale and dont "need" him/her anymore you can kill the vendor and get all the items back.
Now you can take all those items, plus what the vendor had and sell to another vendor. With this method you can buy every skillbook from every vendor on the island without even stealing any paintings.

If you do not want end up killing all vendors, go rob the keep. Get the teleport gloves and TP up by the raised ladder. Now you can sneak thoguh the keep and steal a boatload of paintings worth thousands.

Something worth noting is that the vendors seem to restock each time you level up. You can use this fact to your advantage once you have acumulated more valuable items than a vendor has goods for. Trade them for everything they have, level up, and then trade them some more stuff.

The method of "recycling" loot by killing vendors becomes much easier if you make "goodie bags" with a suitable amount of worth in them. Makes it much easier to only haveto deal with a few goodie bags in your inventory rather than sort a hundred items every time you kill a vendor.

Yeah, I get that it's a prison and we're supposed to feel broke and poorly equipped, but it is a fact that right now weapons and armor sell for ridiculously small amounts.

It's a bit funny how you say "money being tight is fitting for a prison island" and then "go sell some paintings". Paintings should be the things selling for 2-6 gold, not weapons. No one on the island in a position to buy paintings should be interested in paying for them.

Being unable to really afford skill books leads to repetitive combat because we're stuck with the same moves for a very long time.

As for crafting, not a bad idea, but there's also not a great deal of crafting ingredients around to perform crafting with.

And as for murdering your way to profit, perhaps, just perhaps, since this is a role-playing game, we might want to occasionally roleplay people who do not steal from those prisoners who are "innocent" and who have pretty much no possessions anyway, or murder merchants for their items. Just a thought.

I'd be fine with them increasing the resell prices of equipment we find if they also remove the value of things I probably shouldn't be picking up and selling, like crates, chests, barrels, and candles. They only sell for 1 gold each, but it adds up. Although, I do like taking containers so that I don't keep re-checking them to see if there's anything in them (can't re-check 'em if they're not there anymore). Not every container's tooltip says "Empty" when it is.

Otherwise, I like the struggle. Honestly, I felt too powerful through most of the prison campaign. If a fight was too hard, I'd just do something else and come back to it later, at which time I'd be godlike in comparison (I think leveling up has too much impact). I'm currently rerunning the campaign with only one character, and I'm not running into much in the way of adversity. If I have more gold to spare, I could just buy everything and what little challenge there is would be gone.

Maybe paintings are worth more because the people you sell them to have connections that would allow them to leverage the paintings worth outside the prison, making them more valuable than improvised weapons from sticks and stones and banged up armor.
At some point you need to allow digital RPGs some leeway. Creating a different value system for items inside the prison just because you feel its immersion breaking for paintings to be worth more is just as wonky and simply replaces a very minor "not really a problem" with something similar.

Also why do you care about roleplaying if you dont want your moral decisions to have any impact on your income?
If you want to play the roleplaying card, then it makes even more sense that a ruthless character in a law of the jungle type prison would end up way more wealthy than some compassionate good guy. In an enviorment where people are poor you don't get a golden trophy for being a pleasant guy.

And finally, as I pointed out you can just go rob the keep. No moral issues with sticking it to the magisters. All you need to do is overcome your "problem" with paintings being valuable, which you can just as easily argue works with the lore as agfainst it. The only reason to complain about it is if you really really want to complain about something.

Skallewag, this is Early Access. This is Day 7 of the Alpha. Larian can do whatever they want and decide what is worth changing and what isn't.

You might think "everything is fine and nothing needs changing". That's your right. But I have the right to say "hey this looks like an area which you should consider looking at". That's kinda why we're here, what Early Access is for. It's for users to give feedback to Larian on bugs and things they might want to consider changing or improving.

Do I think Larian will actually expand the prison and add another floor to Fort Joy? No, I don't. But if they think it's not possible or not worth doing, it will cost nothing to reject the suggestion.

What Larian does with the info we give them is up to them.

Where did you gather the idea that I oppose any changes? Feel free to quote me on any such supposed remark.
Im saying the things you think are problems are imaginary problems you chose to invent.
Money is not stringent if you just put your mind to it, not even if you want to maintain a role playing focused playstyle.

Everyone knows this is early alpha, but I hope Larian studios will use this time to fix actual balancing issues with the game and not your imaginary problems because you do not get exactly as wealthy as you would prefer without having to put some effort into it.

Wow.

Who fuckin' made YOU the sole arbiter of what is and what isn't an "imaginary" problem? Nobody, you arrogant tool. that's who.

I didnt say I was, Im simply stating that I think your whining about money is an imaginary problem.
I have extensively described how you can go about not having any issues with money even in this alpha version of the game that doesn't support income from crafting yet, but instead of taking some advice from someone who has obviously done a better job than you at figuring out how to get money you insist that money is still a problem and how very dare I ridicule your attitude when you are so determined to be broke.

But dont worry, I have yet another solution for how you can gain the exact amount of gold you feel is appropriate. Wait for the game to be released, learn to use some simple modding tools and create a quest where a gentle forest spirit tells you about a secret treassure he will give you in exchange for a hug.
That way you can have the specific amount you feel entitled to, do not haveto kill anyone for it and you get to have some RP involving hugs. Would that make you happy enough? ^^

I'm fairly certain that Stabbey's issue is not that money is not necessarily available. It is that to get it, including with all of your suggestions, you have to exploit the game in some way. Roam around collecting overpriced paintings, kill merchants and exploit that they keep your traded gear, mod the game, whatever.

Personally I don't have a huge issue with the money. But that is with the expectation that Act 2 will be a bit more financially rewarding. I did feel like I couldn't buy hardly anything until about level 4 which DID, as was mentioned, make the combat dull because I couldn't get new abilities for so long. I think by level 6 I had accumulated about 2000 gold and bought like 12 skillbooks. That is with 1 point in bartering and I did do the trade->kill exploit a couple of times which probably netted me like 600 gold.

However I actually would prefer they did not make items differently priced by different vendors. Sure there would be a bit more immersion. But got damn would that be tedious. I already hated managing that inventory.

I really like it that money is scarce in the beginning and it feels right, because it is a prison. What I really do not like is the paintings that I 'have to' take and sell, didn't like that in dos 1 too. That is because I think that is what is expected of you, and that I am holding myself back when I do not do it. I did notice there were some paintings (too big?) that I could not take - nice

Exploiting selling to vendors and killing them is something I don't like and therefore not do, but I still want that to be in the game. One should be able to do that if one wants to. I don't feel I am holding myself beck when not doing that, because I think they do not balance around it. i.e., I would make it easier for myself, but I don't have to do it. Would like it if it had more repercussions or consequences in some way...

No, Mr. Trump, you have declared yourself the sole arbiter of the proper way to earn money in this game, the sole arbiter of "proper immersion", and the sole arbiter of what things are important enough for Larian to consider things worth working on. You vomit out ridiculous strawman arguments to try and support your arrogant position.

One of two right ways to earn money in your mind is to murder your way through the merchants and selling all their belongings to the next merchant just long enough to buy all their stuff. Then murdering them too. Repeat.

You have a puddle-deep view of immersion. “We’re in prison = we must be criminals = no one should have any morals”. That’s as far as your “immersion” takes you. Except that this isn’t a prison for people convicted of committing crimes, it’s a concentration camp for people born with the ability to use Source. Also, of course, from a purely practical perspective, murdering all the vendors has the slight drawback that you can’t go back later after level-up to see if they have better stock.

Your immersion of “we’re in a hellhole prison” does not extend to include thoughts like “so what things should be of value in the prison economy?” Apparently despite the fact that this is a hellhole prison, weapons and armor are not in demand. That Level 3 Felling Axe (36-43 damage) sells for the same 1 gold as the level 1 Sharp Stone on a Stick (11-15 damage). Nor is food in demand, despite the fact that the kitchen is run by a thug extorting people. Food is all 1 gold too. All are worth the same as a shell you can pick up on the beach.

Your immersion is apparently totally okay, though, with paintings being the most valuable things to get. Paintings which no prisoner could use and CERTAINLY could not sell outside the island because of “connections” (LOL), no Seeker could use and can’t sell off the island because they can’t get off themselves, and which no guard should accept because they’re clearly stolen from the magisters fort.

You have declared that the in-game pricing system is fine, completely perfect and needs no changes at all, it’s only the attitude of people “determined to be poor” which is the problem. You apparently do not know this, but "balancing the in-game economy" is an actual, real thing which is part of game development and part of the job of the developers. Suggesting to the developers that perhaps their first attempt could use some tweaking is not an outrageous demand. It is not an “imaginary problem”, and pointing it out is not “whining”.

I think the total amount of money you get is OK.
I took anythink I could find including the containers themselves, but I did not steal, pickpocket or exploit the killing merchant bug and I could afford some, but not all items or skills I wanted to have.
The big problem is not the total amount of gold but the distribution. I think it will be OK if the selling prize for equipment goes up, the prized for paintings drop a lot and other items (buckets, plates, candles, barrels, wood branches, . . . ) continue to give 1 gold.

I think they should stop the exploit that merchants drop everything you sold them. It was already there in D:OS1. I think the main reason was that you should not be able to lose importent quest items. The solution would be:
- add a key ring so your inventory is not full of keys anymore (but you cannot sell them)
- Quest items that are important to the main quest (for example Leandras blood in D:OS1) are marked as quest items and cannot be sold.
- If a player sells an item that is needed for a side quest and he sells it and the merchant is gone (by killing him or because he leaves for other reasons) its a problem for the player, not for the programmer. If somebody wants you to find an item and you sell the item, its your choice. If you find an item, sell it and later you find out that somebody else wanted it and would have given you a reward, its bad luck. In the real world this happens all the time.

Why should paintings be expensive anyway?

Sure, paintings can be very valuable when you find the right buyer, but generally paintings have very low black market value. It's not like you can just sell paintings to anybody, even outside the prison. You can only get a good price with the right buyer.

Though I'd like to see a film with a prison economy where instead of trading cigarettes, the prisoners are constantly trading antique paintings.

I can imagine having specific quests where you can sell stolen paintings for high value, but generally they should have a pretty crap sell price.

I feel that there is a need to introduce crafting to the prison to make up for the lack of decent loot, but this won't help when you need to buy a skill book.

I dont understand the constant flaming in this post. Play the game, give suggestions and let the developer to decide if they take your advise or not. This is the purpose of this alpha.

Obviously gold economy is very important aspect of every RPG. If player gets too much gold fast to afford everything its bad. If player cant get enough gold to buy even the basic spells and couple of gear upgrades without abusing certain game mechanics its bad.

Its up to Larian to find nice balance here and what i read so far, the current state is more on the low end right now. It should be possible to run some kind of simulations to calculate the gold available in the game and adjust the gold prices accordingly to find some good sweet spot. Additionally to that ofcourse its important to eliminate any possibilities to abuse the systems. Stealing/reselling items. Double profit by killing vendors etc. Massive profits from recrafting some items and so on. Stealing everything in sight and selling it to the vendors for huge profit is also pretty bad (first Divinity had this problem). I remember that old school RPGs like Baldurs Gate had limitation that you couldnt sell stolen items to any vendor, but only to certain thief vendors and this should be for a bit reduced price.

Also make sure there are enough gold sinks even in later stages of the game. Some games fail terribly in this aspect. In later stages the player has so much gold he doesnt know what to do with.