Creeper Acceleration

[ragged-gothic]

One of my most common and consistent ways of “cheating” is what I call “Creeper Acceleration”. All of my characters use the Creeper as a main client for selling their loot. The advantages are obvious: the Creeper is well financed (5000 Septims, renewing daily), centrally located in Caldera with a Mage’s Guild guild guide just up the street and easy teleports to Balmora (Almsivi Intervention) and Ald’ruhn-Fort Buckmoth (Divine Intervention), and, best of all, he pays full price on the items he buys (plus, there is a relatively rich general merchant across the street for the stuff the Creeper won’t buy). What often happens though, is that one of my characters will hit a truly fabulous jackpot, worth several times what the Creeper has in cash for buying. (Remember this is as easy as one daedric item.) I think that the best single loot jackpot was by a character who ransacked the Telvanni Vaults in Vivec...about 300K Septims if I recall correctly.

This is where accelerating the Creeper comes in. I will often have the character take such a loot pile to the Creeper, offer it to him all at once (finding out what its worth) and then I press the max sale button and sell the whole thing to the Creeper for 5000 Septims. Then I deduct 5000 from the original value of the loot and console my character the difference.

I justify this on the basis that my character is not acquiring any more money than the loot was worth, and that they could sell it to the Creeper in 5000 Septim allotments over several days or weeks. It just wouldn’t be much fun for me having the character do a deal a day for that long, interspersed with 24 hour sleeps in the orc bedrolls or over at Shenk’s Shovel or Surane Leoriane’s pad. Instead of doing it the daily 5K (which, for 300K Septims, would mean 60 game days!!!), I just indulge in a little creeper acceleration.

I am wondering if most other players (on PC) do this as well, as well as describing the procedure for any new players who wish to use it. I am curious to an extent, too, whether others consider this cheating, or just a useful workaround to speed up play.

[Rohugh]

I do none of the above as you have them, I find that by the time you have reached level 10 abouts, you are able to make enough money in the game without having to resort to selling items to Creeper (or Mudcrab) that are over their trading money amount.

I do not consider it cheating, it is your game, you bought and paid for it (hopefully), you can play it how you want.

As you are into "cheating" ways of making money, you also forgot to add the easiest solution of them all - if you want money, just add it via the console.

[wagers286]

well my trick for getting the hard earned cash I deserve is much trickier. I sell an item for 5k then wait 24 hours and sell him an item worth 10k and buy the 5k item back wait 24 hours then sell him an item worth 15k and buy the 10k item back. So on and so on (this way I don't lost all that much money however I do tend to lose a lot of time...)

[ragged-gothic]

I do none of the above as you have them, I find that by the time you have reached level 10 abouts, you are able to make enough money in the game without having to resort to selling items to Creeper (or Mudcrab) that are over their trading money amount.

I do not consider it cheating, it is your game, you bought and paid for it (hopefully), you can play it how you want.

As you are into "cheating" ways of making money, you also forgot to add the easiest solution of them all - if you want money, just add it via the console.

I suppose that it is quite possible to make money without selling items, but I find that my characters quickly, and certainly by level ten, regularly acquire many more items than they will ever use, so they simply sell them. It makes more sense to me than to just ignore that ebony longsword or daedric shield, or to collect it, bring it back to wherever that character currently calls home, and leave it in a crate or something. What do your characters do with treasure that they find after they reach level ten or so?

My philosophy on cheating, when it comes to other people, is the same as I understand yours to be. Basically: it’s your game; play it as you like. When I am talking about cheating in this thread and in my poll, though, I mean “cheating” in the sense that one considers oneself to be cheating, not in the sense of judging other players. I personally don’t consider Creeper acceleration to be cheating, because I am not altering the flow of the game in my favour, I am simply speeding up the process of selling off items that I could do incrementally. My characters don’t gain unearned money, nor do they enrich themselves to a greater degree than they would have if I had never opened the console. I am simply reducing a large number of transactions to a single one, as I find doing ten or twenty sales to a merchant, interspersed with 24 periods of inactivity to be very dull. The only change that acceleration makes to my game is that the date when the transaction(s) finish is different, which doesn’t, so far as I know, change the game at all.

Responding to your last point, I would consider myself cheating if I just consoled my characters a pile of free cash, in the same way I would consider myself cheating if I had them run around in god mode all the time. I would feel that I was gaining unearned rewards and removing the challenge of play (ie. cheating myself). Acceleration, on the other hand, to me is simply removing several tedious steps (repeated item sales), to liquidate treasure my characters have already earned within the normal limits of the game.

[The Old Alchemist]

The way to get paid for things like daedric weapons is to trade them to an enchanter for pretty much the whole inventory (scrolls add up quickly) and any extra cash they've got. Now go sell that inventory to any other merchants who will buy it or use it yourself. You get the added benefit of being able to haggle with lots of merchants, thus boosting your Mercantile skill and eventually boosting your Personality.

What makes you think you're entitled to the full market value of a particular item in cash?

[Rohugh]

Responding to your last point, I would consider myself cheating if I just consoled my characters a pile of free cash, in the same way I would consider myself cheating if I had them run around in god mode all the time. I would feel that I was gaining unearned rewards and removing the challenge of play (ie. cheating myself). Acceleration, on the other hand, to me is simply removing several tedious steps (repeated item sales), to liquidate treasure my characters have already earned within the normal limits of the game.

I accept your points on this, but it is only self justification for using a cheat.

For example, I make a character who has to complete the main quest first before going onto the things I have planned for him. So, I will console in the journal entries and hey, I am at the correct stage.

I will justify it with the fact that I have done the MQ so many times I can see no reason for dragging through it again. Cheating, yes, self justified, yes, but I sure will save a lot of time doing things that I know I would be able to complete.

It is always possible to find a reason to "use the console just this time".

Having said that, I don't care what others do. I will always support and help them in their game whether it be on XBox, messing up with quests on pc, or needing a complete set of console commands so they can be the best. It's about fun!

[Akulakhan]

well my trick for getting the hard earned cash I deserve is much trickier. I sell an item for 5k then wait 24 hours and sell him an item worth 10k and buy the 5k item back wait 24 hours then sell him an item worth 15k and buy the 10k item back. So on and so on (this way I don't lost all that much money however I do tend to lose a lot of time...)

I'm like wagers, if I needed money then I'd do it that way. I agree rohugh, once you get up in a few levels, forget the creeper. Especially when there's Mournhold tradespeople.

[ragged-gothic]

The way to get paid for things like daedric weapons is to trade them to an enchanter for pretty much the whole inventory (scrolls add up quickly) and any extra cash they've got. Now go sell that inventory to any other merchants who will buy it or use it yourself. You get the added benefit of being able to haggle with lots of merchants, thus boosting your Mercantile skill and eventually boosting your Personality.

What makes you think you're entitled to the full market value of a particular item in cash?

That is good advice regarding the haggling to boost mercantile skills, thanks. I will have to try your scroll idea, though, without experience with it, I’m surprised that enchanters have enough value in items to equal some of the more expensive loot piles.

As to what makes me “think you're[sic] entitled to the full market value of a particular item in cash”, well, I don’t believe I am entitled to anything per se. I do believe that if a merchant, such as the Creeper (who is a special case of merchant but also a part of the “vanilla” install of the game) is willing to pay my characters full price for items, then my characters certainly have the right to sell items for the most that they can get – in this case full price as the game values items. By accelerating the sale, they are not getting any more money than they would selling the items piecemeal. I am just skipping over a long period of play which I would find tedious, so that I can continue with the aspects of the game that I enjoy more. If I found sixty game days of haggling with a scamp in an orc mansion ecstatically fun, I would play it out, but I don’t, and whether I play out the bartering, or accelerate the process, my character will have the same number of Septims in the end. It’s just factual that this is the case...I don’t see what the concept of “entitlement” on my part has to do with it.
>shrug<

[The Old Alchemist]

Creeper and Mudcrab are weird cases, almost easter eggs in the game, in that they give you the blue book value of your items. Nobody else in the game buys at full price. They're a bad example of how the economy in the game is supposed to work.

I'm not using the word 'entitle' to mean 'entitlement mentality' and imply that you're a spoiled rich kid or anything. (Although, looking at ragged-gothic's avatar's extended tongue, does move me, as his elder, to remind him that his face is going to freeze like that.) Instead, I meant that the value listed with each item might represent the going rate on the mainland, but you're in an occupied territory. Prices that the Vvardenfell market will bear are quite different.

Enchanters may not be able to afford your whole loot pile, but they'll usually be able to handle an ebony weapon or a daedric spear if you go one at a time.

The best place I've found for unloading high end weapons (but not armor) is the AEA shop in Vivec (added by the official plug-in.) The merchant has something like 8K in cash and tons of enchanted ammo and a daedric bow. I like enchanted ammo because it's consumed on use and I have bad packrat tendencies.

[Rohugh]

Creeper and Mudcrab are weird cases, almost easter eggs in the game, in that they give you the blue book value of your items. Nobody else in the game buys at full price. They're a bad example of how the economy in the game is supposed to work.

Creeper and Mudcrab are both Easter Eggs - listed on TIL as such.

They differ from all the other traders in the game in as much as they are both creatures, thus do not have the AI to barter.

[Bear]

I always traded the way wagers286 described it, but there have been some other good options given here.

[satan_n_stuff]

Why would you ever sell any rare item if you, like me, can make a half a million in one hour by using alchemy?

[Rohugh]

Why would you ever sell any rare item if you, like me, can make a half a million in one hour by using alchemy?

Maybe because different people play in different ways. I have never been into using alchemy abuse, but it is a good idea for making money.

[The Old Alchemist]

I'm all for alchemy abuse, but selling your potions off for money is weak. A true alchemist drinks everything he brews, good or bad.

[Bear]

A true alchemist drinks everything he brews, good or bad.

Somehow that seems totally like you!

[The Old Alchemist]

Cheers! <belch>

[Bear]

nippin a little of the homeade brews, eh . Cheers to you!

[satan_n_stuff]

nippin a little of the homeade brews, eh . Cheers to you!

The homemade brews are much more effective than regular booze anyways, and more expensive.

[The Old Alchemist]

And, they're lighter nine times out of ten, too.

[MyDireLife]

lighter? how about weighing 0.0?

[Warwolf Dash]

i just dobt hold with actually cheating on the console.v the 1 time i did, i deleted. i only use it to raise my stats to go on a morrowind killing spree, and then i revert without saving

[Miles]

Personally I think using the console command (unless fixing some sort of glitch) destroys the gameplay and what was intended. Yes Bethesda added it so it was intentional but I want to earn money through the game itself.

Its certainly not cheating if Bethesda intended adding the console command. Sarcasm. ha.

[The Old Alchemist]

I tend to save the 0.0 potions and drink them last. For me, the game is a constant battle against encumbrance.

[satan_n_stuff]

I tend to save the 0.0 potions and drink them last. For me, the game is a constant battle against encumbrance.

Same here, I can never decide which weapons to take so I take them all with me.

[MyDireLife]

i dont take ALL of them, but only a couple, i think i had a jinksword, a firesword, a sparksword, an enchatned bow from that tribe, and of course my summoned bow.