Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Spoiler ~ Merchants, Attitude, Charisma & Costs

I made this spreadsheet showing how charisma and vendor attitude affects the cost of buying items and the return you get for selling them. The lower your charisma and vendor attitude the less they'll pay for your stuff and the more items will cost. This attitude system is much like DOS2 in this regard. You can check your attitude with a vendor by right clicking them and selecting examine. Donating items by putting them in the barter window and selecting barter without hitting the scales so you get nothing back will raise your faction. When you leave the vendor screen it won't show you your new faction level until you select another char and then go back to that char. Faction is only increased on the donation char, not your whole party.

I wondered if CHA affected vendors. I never bothered to test it. Thanks for showing us that it does.

Personally, I’d like Larian to use the highest CHA in the party for transactions instead of who is selling and buying.

Wow I did the same tests over the holidays recording data at the 100G price after verifying at higher prices in order to read it as percent of base item value. All my numbers are exactly 1/10th of yours rounded.

Any toon of any charisma can buy attitude to max for 200G. The game does track this value over more than 1 transaction with the vendor changes appearing to scale up to max. You can do this directly by just giving the vendor 200G in one go or over time in the form of gold directly and/or items. The "value" of an item toward buying attitude is the amount shown in the vendor trade screen when you add it to a sell slot NOT the value listed on the item itself. As shown in the data above lower charisma toons will have to donate more in items to max attitude since the items "value" is less.

Oh that's excellent, thanks! So that makes sense why lower Charisma toons took more gold, because vendors offer less. I am going to update my OP with this info.

Love seeing little data like this. This explains why my main character had better bartering than a companion with higher charisma. The first time I encountered the Grove merchant, I had pressed barter without pressing the scales when learning how to sell. I was too lazy to reload the save - I usually over-loot anyway so it wasn't a big loss.

Also seems like a good opportunity to have Wyll chime in when you revist the Grove Merchant with him in your party - have a line of dialogue that hints at this system.

Since everyone has access to Wyll, even if just at the camp, using him with 16 Charisma means if any vendor has at least 400G+ in the form of 1 item or more the player wants you should just give that vendor 200G upfront first cause the discount will be equal to or more than 200G. On top of the fact items you sell as partial payment will be worth more toward the total.

Edit: Sorry just realized the donate/discount even point is the same at 400G total value regardless of the buyer's Charisma.

Thanks for putting this together.

Thank you

Casting guidance on your char improves prizes even further.
At least it did before patch3, I did not play since then.

My opinion:
They should remove this nonsense and use fixed prizes.
Moving items from one char to the other before shopping is just annoying.
Usually the char with highest cha is not the char with highest str who carries most of the stuff.

The information on this is great. Appreciate the effort.
That said, given the sheer amount of gold that can be had/obtained in just EA Act 1 alone, I can careless about my charisma and how it effects my buying or selling prices.
You can turn a trader/merchant green (friendly instead of neutral) though, but again, have not tested or cared enough to test what effect turning a trader/merchant friendly has on buying and selling prices, again, given the sheer amount of gold one can accumulate in just EA Act 1.

Thank you for making this, very cool.

Edited original chart to show 20 Charisma.

Adding my comment from reddit here as well.

If anyone wants to, you can drop the last digit from each(rounded up) and that is the merchant's buy/sell percent.

For example...at 8 CHA and 0 Attitude, the vendor will buy an item from you for 38% of the value listed on the item and charge you 260% to buy it from them. At 100 attitude that changes to a buy from price of 48% and sell price of 210%.

Edit: Spelling.

Any thoughts on this now that selling items increases Seller attitude wayyyyyyyy less?

Now it's only worth doing to traders you'll come back to, I suppose.

Does it indeed? That’s good. At least for verisimilitude, if not for those who want to cheese loadsamoney!

Yeah it is much more balanced now. You need 1000 gold and more to raise the attitude to 100.

Ok.. attitude should have nothing to do with giving merchants free gifts.

Attitude should have everything to do with quest outcomes and affiliations. Save the Tieflings > they give you discount. Join/support a faction > they give you better deals.

I really don't want a mini-game of "bribe merchant with X amount first to get Y prices". It doesn't make any sense and it won't be fun gameplay.

It makes sense in a way that you invest money in their business and get a discount for that. For example Arron in the grove can use that money to buy something from tieflings and then resell it for a higher price to Aradin. Use your imagination.

I do like the feeling of doing sub-quests to get hidden trade items. (e.g. protect the Thieves Guild's beholder chest from werewolves)

A transaction that simply increases favorability is a reasonable investment.

I think it would be better to add missions and plots. For example, when the favorability is reached, new missions will be triggered and special items will be sold.