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The Elder Scrolls IV OBLIVION:

Living Economy: v3.63

by: creepyfellow & valdacil
Official Thread: Official Elder Scrolls Forums

Index:
1. Description 2. Customization 3. Installation / Updating 4. Uninstallation 5. Mechanics 6. Known Issues & Compatibility 7. Credits 8. Version Changes

1. Description
(BACK TO INDEX)

Living Economy is composed of 2 plug-ins. Living Economy Living Economy - Items Keep in mind that both plug-ins are independent from each other. So you may use either one of them to take advantage of their specific features. Also remember most features can be turned off/on at will and most things can be customized to fit your playing style.

Living Economy:
This plug-in creates more realistic bartering mechanics, a more interesting mercantile environment and harder "get rich quick" schemes. Dynamic Barter Gold: No more infinite gold. Makes ALL player transactions affect a merchant's barter gold. A la Morrowind. If you sell an item for 400 gold, the merchant's gold will go down by 400 gold and vice versa. Repairs, Recharges and Spell purchases also affect the merchant's barter gold.
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The NPC's Mercantile skill will be the main factor in determining their gold. Additional factors are the player's Mercantile skill and/or his level. Additionally, different merchant types will have different base gold values. Smiths will have more gold than a common merchant reflecting the often expensive prices of arms, while a pawnbroker will have less. This brings even more diversity to the mercantile environment. For even more details regarding the barter gold amounts refer to the Living Economy Mod spreadsheet included with the download. Merchant Skill Progression: Now a merchant's mercantile skill will no longer be static. It will dynamically change according to how often the player barters with them. The formulas used are in-par with the speed of the player's mercantile skill. This would make your most visited merchants have a higher Base Barter Gold and raise their prices according to their skills. Their skill will also decay back to their base skill with time to prevent all merchants reaching a master level. Barter Renewal: Different merchant types will reset their barter gold to base after different amount of days. A common trader will reset their gold every 3 days by default, while a smith resets it every 5 days. Random Transactions: Random merchant transactions are now reintegrated with Living Economy. This makes the merchant's gold fluctuate at the start of everyday according to their mercantile skill. This also provides an alternative to the forced gold resets. Expanded Investment System: Now there are more investment options available to the player. Additionally, the higher investments will now give a return of the store's profits to the player. New investment options are 500, 1000, 2500 and Full Partnership. Complementary Player Mercantile Progression: The player now has the facility to increase his Mercantile skill based NOT ONLY on the quantity of the transactions, but on the size of the transactions. The burden of needing to sell items individually to achieve significant progress is now lightened.

Living Economy - Items:

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This plug-in grants dynamic prices to all the items in game, simulating a supply & demand system. This gives the player incentives for visiting different shops and cities to get the best deals when selling loot or buying new supplies. Shop Based Prices: Smiths will offer more gold for arms and repair hammers while paying nothing for miscellaneous clutter. The mage's guild and other magic shops will pay handsomely for any soul gems, Aylied stones or staves you may find in your travels. Trader's will pay base price for everything. Quantity Based Prices: Prices will also adjust according to the amount of the item a merchant has. A smith that only has 1 hammer left will not let go of it so cheaply (or pay handsomely for another); however, if he had too many in stock, he let them go cheaper. Regional Prices: Different Cities will offer different prices for different types of items. Also introduces Global Economy and Local Economy factors that will modify prices of all items in their respective places (whole province or local city). You'll be able to sell weapons in Leyawiin for a higher price than you would on Skingrad, buy glass items cheaper on Cheydinhal, sell luxury items higher on Anvil, etc... Refer to the spreadsheet for more details, it's too much to put here.

I also recommend Piratelord's Balance Adjustments mod. More specifically his Trade Fix plug-in to add more realistic and dynamic merchant inventories.

2. Customization
(BACK TO INDEX)

For more insight into how most of the settings work refer to the Living Economy Spreadsheet.

Living Economy:
To start the customization menu. Open the console and type: "startquest cflemenu" (no quotes) Optionally you could type "startquest CFLEAddConfigToken" to add an item that when equipped would open the customization menu anytime you may need it. Notes:
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* If it is your first time using the customization menu this will take a couple of seconds to open up. * All Changes to settings will only take place after a NPC resets it's gold. Unless it is your first time talking to the NPC as of version 2.0. Alternatively, you could renew all merchant's gold and the changes will take effect instantly. * Most settings have pre-set minimum and maximum values to avoid messing things up too badly. Use the spreadsheet to know what effect your changes will have, but feel free to experiment all you want!

Living Economy Customization Menu:

Barter Gold Options: Global Barter Mod - (Default 1.00) - A multiplier for ALL the base barter gold values in the game. If you feel like the merchants don't have enough gold or that you are traveling too much, try increasing this. A value of 1.75 would give a merchant 75% more gold above his base value while a value of 0.75 would give him 75% less. Per-class Barter Mod: - Like the global mod, it is a multiplier to base barter gold values, but class specific. Trader (Default 1.00) Smith (Default 1.50) Alchemist (Default 1.00) Clothier (Default 0.75) Bookseller (Default 0.50) Pawnbroker (Default 0.75) Publican (Default 0.15) Fence (Default 1.00) Barter Scaling: NPC Mercantile Influence Mod (Default 1.00) - Affects how much the merchant's mercantile skill affect their gold. A value higher than 1 means more gold per skill point, and lower than 1 less. If you set the value to zero, the merchant's gold will not be affected by their own mercantile skill. Use this option carefully and refer to spreadsheet to consider the impact of your changes. PC Mercantile Influence Mod (Default 1.00) - Affects how much your mercantile skill affects a merchant's barter gold. A value higher than 1 means more gold per skill point, and lower than 1 less. If you set the value to zero, the merchant's gold will not be affected by the player's mercantile skill. PC Level Scaling - Affects a merchant's gold according to player's level. Merchants will have less gold at lower levels and a lot more at higher levels.
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Toggle PC Level Scaling Scale to Level: (Default 10) - This value determines what will be the level where the base gold values will be "normal". All base gold values will multiply to a factor of (currentlevel)/(scaletolevel). So whenever your level is lower than the set value all the base gold values will be lower and vice versa. You should REALLY see spreadsheet for using this option to be sure you understand it and want to use it. The default maximum value using this method will be 13500. It looks high, but the balance is in the fact that at low levels merchant's will have very little gold available to barter with you. Barter Renewal: - Determines how many days till the gold resets to base gold values for the different merchant types. Trader (Default 3) Smith (Default 5) Alchemist (Default 2) Clothier (Default 2) Bookseller (Default 2) Pawnbroker (Default 2) Publican (Default 1) Fence (Default 2) Max Barter Gold (Default 40000) - Determines the cap on a merchant's barter gold attainable by either base gold calculations or transactions. The merchant's gold will NOT pass this number under any situation. Services Toggle - Enables/Disables the influence of gold spent on repairing, spells purchases, and recharging has on a merchant's barter gold. Global Barter Renewal - Sets a global value to all the individual barter renewal options for the sake of simplicity. Merchant Skill Progression: Toggle Skill Progression Progression Speed (Default 1X) - Determines the speed at which a merchant will gain skills. Random Transactions: Toggle Random Tran. Change Tran. Range Mod (Default 1.00) - Modifies the size of the individual random transactions. Normally an individual transaction ranges from +10% to -10% of a merchant's base gold. This value works as a multiplier. So a value of 2.00 will make the transactions range from +20% to -20%. Investments
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Pay Day Delay (Default 7) - Determines how long you must wait till you can collect your share of a store's profits. Per Day Payout Mod (Default 1.00) - Similar to the Transaction Range Mod, but for payouts. NPC Mercantile Random Influence Mod (Default 0.01) - Affects what influence a merchant's mercantile has on the random factor of the payouts. By default only 1% of his mercantile skill is added to the random roll in order to avoid negative rolls while also increasing the possibility of higher payouts. PC Mercantile Skill Progression Toggle - Disables/Enables the influence of the size of transactions on skill increases. Global Gold-Skill Curve Mod (Default - 1.00) - Determines the increments of gold needed each skill level to increase the mercantile skill. Refer to the spreadsheet for more details. Buy Influence (Default - 0.80) - Affects how much of the buying transactions amount is granted to the accumulated gold for the skill up. Sell Influence (Default - 1.00) - Affects how much of the selling transactions amount is granted to the accumulated gold for the skill up. More Options Individual Renew - Adds a temporary spell to force the reset of a single merchant's gold. Meant as a debug option. Renew All Merchants' Gold - Resets the gold of all vanilla merchants (does not affect mod added merchants). Meant as a debug option. Enable Mod / Reset Defaults - Resets all options to default and enables the mod if previously disabled. Disable Mod - Disables the mod and all it's features.

Living Economy - Items:

To start this customization menu. Open the console and type: "startquest cflemenu2" (no quotes) Notes: * If it is your first time using the customization menu this will take a couple of seconds to open up. * Most changes here will only take place after you use the recalculate prices option. However, if you are using the regional pricing they will take effect each time you enter a different city. * Most settings have pre-set minimum and maximum values to avoid messing things up
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too badly. Use the spreadsheet to know what effect your changes will have, but feel free to experiment all you want! * If you set modifiers too low and the price for an item reaches zero, a merchant will no longer sell that item! The menu has these different options: (All the settings only have limited, pre-set options to reduce abuse, conflict and bugs.)

Living Economy - Items Customization Menu:

Shop Options: Price Modifiers - Select the multiplier to assign to the different price categories. Highest price - (Default 1.50) High price (Default 1.25) Lower price (Default 0.75) Lowest price (Default 0.50) Zero price (Default 0.00) Shop Price Category - Assigns the different price modifiers to all the different shop types for different types of items. Toggle Per-Shop Prices - Enables/Disables the effect of different shop types on prices. Toggle Qty. Based Prices - Enables/Disables the effect of the merchant's available stock on his prices. Regional Options: Region Mods - Chooses multipliers for the prices in a specific settlement. If you set Skingrad's region mod to 1.30, all prices in that region will increase by 30%. This can be used to better separate the "economic superiority" of a region. All values are set to 1.00 by default. Global Economy Mods - Multipliers that affect prices in all of Cyrodiil. Global Random Range (Default 1.00) - Affects where the global random multiplier numbers will roll. A higher value means higher rolls, while a lower value means lower rolls. Global Random Max (Default 120) - Determines what will be the maximum global random multiplier number obtainable. Note that 120 is actually 1.20. So under the best conditions prices across Cyrodiil will be 20% higher than normal. Global Random Min (Default 80) - Determines what will be the minimum global random multiplier number obtainable. Note that 80 is actually 0.80. So under the worst conditions prices all across Cyrodiil will be 20% lower than normal.
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Local Economy Mods - Multipliers that affect prices in a single town/city. Note that different values will be calculated for every item type. Global Random Range (Default 1.00) - Affects where the local random multiplier numbers will roll. A higher value means higher rolls, while a lower value means lower rolls. Global Random Max (Default 107) - Determines what will be the maximum local random multiplier number obtainable. Note that 107 is actually 1.07. So under the best conditions items of a certain type in a specific city will be 7% higher than normal. Global Random Min (Default 93) - Determines what will be the minimum local random multiplier number obtainable. Note that 93 is actually 0.93. So under the worst conditions items of a certain type in a specific city will be 7% lower than normal. Toggle Regional Pricing - Disables/Enables the effect of all regional pricing features. Alternate Prices * - Use different prices for items. Recalculate Prices - Recalculates prices with the changes made (if any).

* - Notes about Alternate prices:

Pricing Options: Use the prices from these different price-changing mods. Adventurer's AC's Realistic Clutter Gems by Dugray Tamriel's Glittering Geology Piratelord's Prices OOO Prices CF's Prices - my own changes to prices, catered to my own tastes Dreighton's Item Name and Price Revision Gem Prices by Galn Better and Realistic Prices Oblivion Enhanced's Prices
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Shadow's Merged Values Use Default Prices

Selecting an alternate price will take a couple of seconds for the menu to re-open.

When using multiple price-changing mods just choose them in the order they are loaded in your game. From oldest to newest. If wanted to undo some changes you would have to run the default prices and start the process again.

The prices included here were based on the latest versions available at the time of this mod's release. Once newer versions come out I may be inclined to include any changes here. Specially regarding OOO and Piratelord's prices.

In the case of some mods that only change prices using the original mod is NOT necessary to use the modified prices. This is specially useful to use a certain mod's pricing while keeping compatibility with other mod that alter those items.

3. Installation / Updating
(BACK TO INDEX)

First Time Usage: Simply decompress the contents into your Oblivion\Data directory. Then, from the Oblivion Launcher, select Data Files and check the box next to the "Living Economy.esp" file and/or the "Living Economy - Items.esp". Play!

Updating: - From 1.X: if you are updating from 1.X version please use a save clean of this mod. To clean your save from this mod: Uncheck the Living Economy.esp file from Data Files, open game, load your save, resave and exit. Then recheck the Living Economy.esp file and play. - From 2.0 & 2.1 (if you previously started 2.x or 2.1 with a clean save): To ensure all values are the correct ones use the menu and use "Renew Gold" option.
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- From 2.X previous to 3.1: Please make sure you use the Recalculate Prices Option so every change will correctly update! - If you are updating from 3.11, please clean your save from the Living Economy Items.esp. This is due to a bug that would otherwise break customization. - If you are updating from 3.12 Just plug and play! Please note that merchant's gold will be reset, this is due to the change of the placeholder items. From 3.5 onwards... just plug and play!

Additional Optional ESPs:

Living Economy (No Barter Chatter): This is a replacement for the main Living Economy.esp. It was named the same so people would not lose their customizations and other weird unexpected stuff... What this version does is get rid of all the Buy and Sell dialogue. So you won't hear things like "You've bought that for a sum." or "I let that go to cheap...". Cutthroat Merchants: This makes merchants a bit more "tight". It lowers the initial lowest sell haggle value by 15% . And increases the buy by around 100% . Also doubles the range of the haggle bar (from 40 to 60). So you can haggle from 30% to 90% instead of just to 70% . This will effectively slow down the initial gold influx of players and makes it worthwhile to increase your mercantile skill. I recommend using this with my "CF's prices" because they are a bit too high for the normal haggle values.

4. Uninstallation
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Living Economy:
As of version 2.15 disabling the mod via this method is not really needed to return merchant's gold to game default. But if you are updating from a version previous to 2.15 you should follow this method, at least only once. This mod changes the barter gold amount on EVERY NPC in the game. Even if you just disable the plugin, those changes will remain for any games that were saved with this plug-in active. To properly uninstall this mod open the customization menu by typing "startquest cflemenu" (no quotes) in the console and select "Disable Mod". You DON'T
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have to immediately stop playing. Everything should work as if the plugin was actually disabled. Once you actually disable the plugin there is a VERY SMALL possibility that any investments you made while using this mod will be forgotten (none after 3.0).

Living Economy - Items:

You should save the game outside any shop to ensure the prices are correct before uninstalling this mod.

5. Mechanics
(BACK TO INDEX)

To clarify some things...

Barter Renewal: The days it take for a merchant to renew his gold is kept individually. This means a single merchant will reset his gold after 3 days for common traders (default) after first talking to you and so on. Example: Day one: You talk to Bob and barter with him. Day two: Kill baddies get loot, sell loot to merchant Bob and to merchant Dan. Day three: Hang out with Dremoras in Oblivion Day four: Bob gold's resets when you go talk to him. Dan's gold is NOT reset because 3 days have not passed since you talked to Dan. Day five: Dan gold reset. Different types of merchants reset their gold after different amount of days. Smith - 5 Days, Common Trader - 3 Days , Publican & Fences - 1 Day, Everyone else - 2 Days

Random Transactions: These can be potentially be used to replace the forced barter gold resets. Just set the reset to a high number if you wish, that way the gold will flow naturally and increase/decrease progressively with time.
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Random Transactions make it so that gold fluctuates mostly between 50% and 200% of a merchant's base gold. Everyday a new day a number of randomly simulated purchases/sales are calculated which alter the net gold of the merchant. The merchant's skill determines the amount of transactions made. From 1 to 10. Example. You go to Thoronir. He has a default mercantile skill of 40. So he would make a maximum of 4 random transactions everyday. There is also a calculated chance for them to not to make an individual transaction. The maximum size of the transactions is 10% (transaction range) of the base gold. If a merchant has 1000 gold, a single transaction can be from -100 to 100.

Merchant Skill Progression: The formulas used for merchant skill progression are independent of the skill settings used in game. The formulas are based on Galerion's formulas, so they simulate the game's skill advancement marvelously. If you were to use mods that alter the speed of skill gains it would not affect the merchants. There are options in the menu to alter the merchant's speed of progression according to taste or if you would want his skill gain speed to match the player's. The range mod determines the range of the individual random transaction. By default it is -/+ 10% . If you chose 2, it would be (-/+) 20% .

Expanded Investment System: This is the new progressive* investment system available to the player. Player Requirement:
50 Mercantile

Investment Option: 1) Normal 500 gold investment. 2) 1000 gold investment + 40% of partnership investment returns. 3) 2500 gold investment + 60% of partnership investment returns 4) Full partnership with 100% return of a partner's share of the store's profits. A fee (not investment) based on the
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75 Mercantile

100 Mercantile and the NPC's disposition above

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90

merchant's skill is needed. Usually from 3500 to 6000 gold.

* - To make a higher investment you need to have made the previous investment. ********************************************** Taken from my post in the Elder Scrolls Forums: First things first. The investment system is progressive. So you HAVE to invest 500 gold, so you can invest 1000 gold. And you HAVE to invest 1000 gold so you can invest 2500 gold... etc... So the 500 gold investment is more like an introduction to the whole investment thing. To start making the merchant feel comfortable. The payouts are moderate. They get better the higher the merchant's mercantile is and how much you barter with a merchant has a very big impact on the payouts. I will now post some of my simulation results. Under all of these the player has 100 mercantile and all investments made. Run1 has zero player activity in shop, Run2 has moderate activity and Run3 high player activity. These are the average results after three different "4 game months" runs, so if you want a likely idea of the weekly average just divide the numbers by 16. Note the actual weekly results are actually random, not static. 100% Average 4 Months Results: NPC Mercantile / Run1 / Run2 / Run3 30 / 2106 / 4132 / 8642 50 / 3679 / 6668 / 10037 80 / 6796 / 9837 / 12965 100 / 8465 / 12209 / 14746 Get the 40% and 60% of the weekly results and you'll have your modified payouts. Should look something like this: 100% Average Weekly Results: 30 / 131 / 258 / 540 50 / 229 / 416 / 627 80 / 424 / 614 / 810 100 / 529 / 763 / 921 60% Average Weekly Results: 30 / 79 / 155 / 324 50 / 137 / 249 / 376
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80 / 254 / 368 / 486 100 / 317 / 457 / 552 40% Average Weekly Results: 30 / 52 / 62 / 216 50 / 91 / 166 / 250 80 / 169 / 245 / 324 100 / 211 / 305 / 368 ---Keep in mind that the payouts are still calculated on a per-day basis. So the actual % influence may not be exactly the same you see here. But I can't clutter these posts with hundreds of numbers can I? Well I could... but that would just scare more people away than I already scared with this post. Oh... remember most of the things I add are costumizable, you can fiddle around with things to better suit your needs!

Complementary Player Mercantile Progression: This feature serves as a complement to the normal mercantile skill progression in the game. It works by accumulating all the gold exchanges made by the player in shops and increasing the mercantile skill once certain thresholds have been passed. The gold exchanges are accumulative and on each skill up attributed to a broken threshold the total threshold is subtracted from the accumulated amount... Example: Player has 5 mercantile. The gold accumulation needed to increase the skill would be 2500 gold. Player sells many items netting a total value of 2300 gold. Mercantile increased due to the many transactions made. New limit is 3000, 2300 gold still accumulated. Player sells an item worth 1000 gold. Accumulated gold is now 3300. Mercantile increased due to the player passing the threshold. Remainder is granted to the new accumulated sum totaling 300. New limit is 3500... so an accumulated sum of 3500 would be needed... etc... etc... etc... Another point is that by default buying transactions contribute only 80% to the accumulated total; while selling contributes 100% .
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So buying a 100 gold item would only add 80; while selling a 100 gold item would add a full 100. Refer to the spreadsheet for the actual gold vs. skill tables.

Shop Based pricing: There are different pricing schemes for the different types of shops. This is now completely customizable. Prices: Very High, High, Normal, Low, Lower, Zero and Absolute Zero General traders pay base value for every item by default. Smiths: Very High: Weapons, Armors, Repair Hammers, Hides & Pelts Normal: Precious Gems Very Low: Jewelry, Alchemy Equip, Soulgems Zero: Staves, Clothing Absolute Zero: Books, Clutter, Misc Magic Shops & Mages Guild: Very High: Soulgems, staves High: Jewelry, Clothing, Books Normal: Weapons, Armors, Precious Gems Low: Alchemy Equipment Absolute Zero: Clutter, Misc Alchemists: Very High: Alchemy Equip Normal: Books Zero: Weapons, Armors, Jewelry, Clothing, Gems, Staves Absolute Zero: Clut, Misc Book shops: Very High: Books, Quills, Inkwells Zero: Jewelry, Clothing Absolute Zero: Everything else Clothiers: Very High: Clothing, Cloth, Yarn, Hides & Pelts High: Jewelry, Precious Gems Zero: Armor, Weapons, Soulgems, Alchemy Equip, Misc
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Absolute Zero: Clutter, Books Fences & Pawnbrokers: Very High: Jewelry, Precious Gems, Lockpicks Normal: Clutter, Misc Low: Everything else

Quantity Based pricing: Depends on the amount of the item available to the merchant. Only available to specialized merchants. General traders will not offer this feature. Because this script has to constantly check for the quantity of items, only the most common items are affected to avoid performance loss. Threshold (TH) refers to the qty of items required for normal pricing. Anything below equals higher prices and anything above means lower prices. A price can never go lower than 60% of the base value. Alchemists: Alchemy equipment, TH-5 Booksellers: Cheap, Common & Religious books, TH-5 Clothier: Cloths and yarns, TH-15 Magic shops & MG: Soulgems & Varla Stones, TH-5. Welkynd Stones, TH-15 Smiths & FG: Unenchanted Iron, Steel, Fur, Leather, Chainmail items, TH-5. Repair Hammers, TH-15

Regional Pricing: Different cities will offer different prices for different types of goods. For a detailed table of the regional prices refer to the Living Economy Spreadsheet. The global economy factor changes every 3 days. By default it makes prices fluctuate between -20% and +20% of their normal values all across Cyrodiil. The local economy factor changes every time you enter a city and affects different item types differently. By default it makes prices fluctuate between -7% and +7% of their normal values. Since it is calculated differently for each item type, a city could be offering +5% for weapons and +-4% for armors one day. The next time you visit it could
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be -3% for weapons and +7% for armors.

CF's Prices: Taken from my post in the Elder Scrolls Forums: Well, the basic lay down of my prices is this: (Enchantment prices not taken into account)

*********** * In general the lower class weapons are priced considerably higher and higher class weapons are priced considerably lower. The differences in weapons quality between materials are not as noticeable as the differences between armors, that is why the prices between armors differ a lor more. I balanced the prices of the MOBs sheet's reach*dps values and some material values I assigned them to increase the price of the stronger items. The armor's I balanced off the default values and scaled their prices according to the weapons. You will also notice that a gauntlet is a lot more cheap than a cuirass. This is because I also scaled the items according to the protection % they granted... more or less. And some material values (though they weren't as necessary as on the weapons) Iron Weapons - 32 to 88 gold Iron Armors - 38 to 200 ... (It's pretty linear from here, prices take bigger jumps from dwarven to better materials) Daedric - 251 to 614 Daedric Armor - 411 to 2194 Some variants in the special weapons and daedric artifacts. Some special staves were considerably lowered. *********** The higher quality alchemy equipment was lowered. Books: Were raised all across the board. 5ish for the cheap, 15ish for common, 30ish for valuable, 70ish for rare books. Some vary considerably higher or lower due to their nature or original game values.
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Clutter: 2ish for low class, 7ish for middle and 15ish for high class. Some special clutter has much different values. Gems and Jewelry prices practically doubled. Some unique lowered. Clothes: 5ish for low, 30ish for middle, 100ish for high. ********** I basically took away the focus of the player's looting revolving around weapons and armors. Everything is also much better scaled in my opinion. No longer will a iron sword will be worth more than high quality clothing. There were a lot of inconsistencies with the pricing in vanilla and I tried to address those that bothered me the most, after all... These are just the prices that I use. So they cater to my specific tastes. I'm not the kind of player that just swipes a place clean, I am a efficiency-concerned looter. I take what will sells best and has less weight. (Unlike many players I believe... I use a 10gold to 1weight ratio for my normal looting) Of course with my prices you could practically steal all books in the mages guild and end up thousands of gold richer, but no single fence will let you move all those books at once (some clever investments aside) I have to admit that I felt that I got to much gold too quickly when I finally started playing the game myself, so I made a "Cutthroat Merchants" esp. I could have just lowered the prices, but I REALLY liked how all the prices scaled with each others. The esp lowers the base selling price by 20% (down to 8% on the toughest SOBs around) and increases buying price by 300% . It also increases the haggle range to 60 (from 40) so you could haggle from 30% to 90% to sell... Of course only a real master could sell at 90% . Let's just say I REALLY enjoy the game now! It's wickedly satisfying to get some spare gold, and it IS possible. I haven't released the extra esp, but Soto will make it a part of OOO 1.3, maybe a bit of a toned down version. I will release a more polished version of the esp in a future release of my mod, unless of course you want to play around with it yourself.

6. Known Issues & Compatibility

(BACK TO INDEX)

This mod includes: creepyfellow's Improved Barter Gold mod. So DO NOT use it in conjunction with this one.
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Known Issues:

Living Economy: The Complementary Player Mercantile Progression WILL NOT bring the player closer to a level up with the default leveling system. It works perfectly with leveling mods such as KCAS and AF's. If a mod-added merchant had a gold amount not following the game's normal default amounts, it's gold will be reset to a normal amount. (Example: a mod adds a merchant that has 6000 barter gold. My mod will override his values. Even if my mod is disabled, his gold will be set according to the NPC's mercantile skill like vanilla Oblivion does. If his mercantile is 100, he would have 1500.) Training is not affected by the services features. Isn't really a store like function. When playing with this mod disabled (un-installed works fine). The invested gold and gold from the mercantile perk will register at the second time you start bartering with the merchant. Example: You invest on merchant or you have the 100 mercantile perk, barter with him, he won't have 500+ gold, exit conversation, start barter, BAM! the 500 gold are there. It is a limitation of my current implementation... might be fixed later. For now think of it as a merchant taking time to update his gold supply after bartering with you. If you have a twitchy finger and enter the barter screen to quickly, the first transaction might be taken into account.

Living Economy - Items: It is NOT POSSIBLE to modify scrolls, potions and ingredients via my methods so they are not touched. The item count for the Qty based pricing is not EXACTLY accurate, the problem being the items are spread all over the cell and I have now way to count them all. I only count the items on the main merchant container, which is also the one where the items the player sell go. Some specialized stores are not affected by the qty. based pricing due to different
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reasons. The Best Defense and a few guilds mostly. Due to the fact I can't reference content from other ESPs there is no way to add support for the dynamic pricing of mod-added items... at least for now. I had to add persistent references to two instances. One for Hamlof Red Tooth and another for Tadrose Helas. These two may show conflicts with a couple of mods, but it is likely they can be ignored. When a fence is on a tavern (and you are in the thief's guild), the publican will also share his prices. The Nord Winds shop in Bruma is treated as a normal trader store, so all prices will be trader value. There is a smith and a clothier in the same cell and there is no way for me to compensate for that. Hopping between shops too quickly will make the prices take more time to change. This is because prices are applied when you enter or exit shops. If you exit a shop and enter another quickly. The "outside shop" prices will still be aplying themselves to items when you are in the other shop. The prices will end up correctly eventually, but it may take 1 or 2 seconds more than normal. This is especially noticeable in the IC where stores are so close too each other. When using Regional Pricing and using quick-travel to a city, don't rush to barter with merchants! Prices need a couple of seconds to update with regional changes.

If some items are incorrectly priced at zero when outside a shop when using this mod. Use the recalculate prices option. It is possible your CPU didn't have time to finish the price calculations before applying the prices. Compatibility:
Please note that this will NOT CONFLICT with any mods that alter items AT ALL. The pricing is done via script. In fact you could use my mod instead of some of the re-pricing mods out there of a non-conflicting alternative. Would conflict with mods: That change the conversation the original infos on the topics: BarterBuy, BarterSell, BarterStart, Invest, Repair & Recharge. This includes mods that remove the "barter chatter". As an alternative I have now released an optional Living Economy (No chatter).esp That change the game setting that affect the master mercantile perk. That alter the Barter Gold in weird ways.
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Don't use with the Valdacil's Scaled Economy mod. It is not needed as my mod can basically do the same thing (level scaling). JOG's Thievery mod will conflict with Living Economy, but the conflict can be ignored. However, the merchant that his mod adds will have infinite gold.

7. Credits
(BACK TO INDEX)

Rekvor - for the original Improved Barter Gold mod that inspired me to do all this. odfella - for giving me the idea to use messages reflect gold change. Even though as of version 2.0 these are not needed. Drokk - for a mean bug-finding streak. JOG - for helping me get to understand reference variables and get services working. Galerion - I used his skill progression formulas to balance out merchant mercantile progression. Everyone on the Official Forums for their support and ideas!

8. Version Changes
(BACK TO INDEX)

May/22/06 1.0 - Original Release 1.1 - Added Message boxes reporting change, fixed typos and errors in readme May/26/06 - 1.2 Released - Added the script to a merchant in Chorrol who slipped my fingers the first time around. - Made random transactions more rare. They will not take place when player is in same cell and just waits for an hour. Only when the player has been away for a while and has visited different cells. And even still, there is a chance no gold transaction will have occurred. - Made the script a bit more effective. - Made it any gold transaction not pertaining to a NPC service will not affect a merchant's gold. June/9/06 - 2.0 Released - Total rewrite of the mod. Compatibility should now be greatly increased.
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- Barter Gold now correctly updates in the menu. No more messages are needed. :) - Removed random transactions. For Now... - Added lots of customizable values and a handy menu to change them. - Different Merchant Classes now have different Base Barter Gold values. - Gave the Fences a separate value for the day reset from the normal merchants. - Made different barter scaling methods. - Scrapped the need to read a book to disable the mod. June/10/06 - 2.1 Released - Fixed a extremely nasty evil bug that would make the game run 40000 scripts at once and send it crawling to a slow freezing death of eternal damnation. - Renamed some placeholder items to better reflect what they are. - Made gold spent on training, repairs and recharge affect gold available for barter. June/12/06 - 2.15 Released - Fixed inconsistencies with the merchant's barter gold values. - Restored the functionality of the disable menu function - Added the menu option to Renew all merchant's gold. - Removed the effect of services other than bartering to barter gold. It wasn't working right at all. - Made it so the disable function is not necessary to uninstall my mod. - Made it so when Living Economy is disabled, mod-added merchants would properly restore their default gold values. - Fixed some issues when investing with the mod disabled. - Removed my changes to some actor references and their cells. June/13/06 - 2.2 Released - Fixed the messed up dialogue entries. Cleaned it up with TESSnip. - Added a safety check to prevent gold from going to the negatives. - Removed the individual renew gold option. Editor Spell IDs don't work in the console. June/15/06 - 2.22 Released - Added support for Repair, Recharge, and Spell purchases affecting barter gold. - Added an option for individual renew for mod merchants. - Added menu options to toggle the services feature and individual renew. July/7/06 - 3.0 Released - Rework of the mod implementation. - Now investments made with this mod enabled will not be lost when uninstalling the plug-in. - Services transactions will count in any occasion, even if merchant was scheduled for a reset. - Added merchant skill progression - Added random transactions - Included the Items plug-in that dynamically changes prices of all the items in the game
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according to shop type and qty available. July/7/06 - 3.05 Released - Fixed a bug regarding investments. - Added stuff I forgot to the readme. July/7/06 - 3.06 Released - Fixed a bug regarding that would disable the menu when changing the day renewal options. July/10/06 - 3.07 Released - Made mages pay higher and alchemists pay normal for books. - Partly updated Piratelord's prices. His clothing prices are not taken into account yet. - Raised the time delay when calculating prices for the first time to prevent it from sometimes setting it to zero. - Updated the known issues section with stuff I forgot. July/17/06 - 3.1 Released - Added customization options to enable to select price categories for different item types in different shops. - Added a common trader shop type to include the general trader shops. Everything is defaulted to normal pricing, but is customizable. - Added a customization option to allow you to select the maximum barter gold cap. - Added some clarifications to the Game Mechanic sections. - Finished updating Piratelord's prices. Now all his changes are included. July/18/06 - 3.11 Released - I mistakenly was adding Adventurer prices instead of Piratelord prices for clothing, this also broke the menu. July/19/06 - 3.12 Released - Fixed a problem with Common trader customized prices. They weren't storing decimal places. July/29/06 - 3.5 Released - Revamped the menus. Added more options and more freedom with numbers. - Expanded the investment system. Now there are more investment options and the higher investments grant an additional gold return to the player. - Introduced Regional Pricing. Different cities will offer different prices. - Introduced random global economy and local economy factors to dynamically enhance the regional prices even further. - Restructured the readme into HTML format for better ease of understanding. - Revamped the Living Economy spreadsheet with more information regarding the new features. - Added support for some items I overlooked in previous versions (quills and inkwells). - Made clothiers and smiths pay more for hides and pelts.
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- Added my own pricing scheme to the Alternate Prices menu. "CF's prices" based on the MOBS as a base for weapons. Everything else was scaled from there with a few of my own changes based on personal preference. August/1/06 - 3.51 Released - Fixed an issue with all Elven weapon prices being assigned alchemist's weapon prices. Thanks to Crazy Ace for pointing it out! September/1/06 - 3.55 Released - Updated the Items.esp with the OOO 1.3 price changes. - Fixed issues with fences. - Removed changes to mercantile perk description changes to prevent conflicts with mods that change skill gain rates. September/1/06 - 3.56 Released - I spazzed out and left some boxed checked for some placeholder items during my last testing. Nothing game breaking, but annoying if you like to pickpocket merchants! September/8/06 - 3.6 Released - Added a Complementary Player Mercantile Progression feature. - Added a Global Barter Renewal option to the menu for the sake of simplicity. - Removed the annoying "Day Pay is: " messages. These were intended for testing purposes and slipped in the release. - Added a table to the spreadsheet regarding the Complementary Player Mercantile Progression feature. - Added more Alternate Prices options. Dreighton's, Galn's Gems, Shadow's Values, Better & Realistic Prices and Oblivion Enhanced. - Some tweaks to my CF's prices. Increased soulgems, decreased some books, upped gems a tad more... - Added 2 extra optional esps. A "No barter chatter" LE.esp and a Cutthroat Merchants.esp - Added more information regarding Expanded Investments and CF's Prices to the Game Mechanics section. September/8/06 - 3.61 Released - Fixed the missing "more options" button in the Alternate prices menu. September/14/06 - 3.62 Released - Fixed an issue regarding Shadow's prices that broke the menu. September/16/06 - 3.63 Released - Fixed broken menu function on Max Barter Gold.

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