Skyrim Economy

[DarkEastwood]

Does anyone know how to help/sabotage different economies? And how this affects you

[DarkEastwood]

yeah i heard about them pre-release and now that i have the game i want to know more about them. And so do others most likely

[MasterRokon]

yeah i heard about them pre-release and now that i have the game i want to know more about them. And so do others most likely

I heerd about it ore release to, but no luck i think they scrapped it, what i was thinking was therewas going to be a feeeach merchant had to pay every month in game and if they didnt meet their payments boom no more shop, and thanks to you taking all the money and never buying, you lose a shop, but like i said i think they scrapped it outa the released version.

[OblivionDuruza]

I'm not sure if this pre-release feature actually made it into the game, because I haven't had the time to test it out due to exams, however, I do know that the economies of different cities rely on different industries.

For example, Morthal relies on a Lumber Mill, while Dawnstar relies on two Mines. Find those industries and try to sabotage them in some way, and you might be able to upset the local economy.

[DarkEastwood]

So if I were to go kill the owner of Lumber Mill in Morthal, would this make arrow prices higher since they're made of wood?

[OblivionDuruza]

That's the theory, sorry I haven't had time to test this yet, I haven't touched the game in almost a week. Stupid school.

[soda popinski]

I have a couple of things to discuss regarding the economic system:

1) Early in development, Todd was talking about sabotaging the economies of various cities. Has anyone figured out if you can do this or not?

2) If you talk to certain shop owners in each city, and ask how business is, they will often say that bandits or whatever is causing prices to go up. Can you eleminate these problems and improve the economy of a city?

Also, does anyone know what those grain mashers or whatever they are called do (the circular things in certain towns that you can grab onto and walk around in a circle)

[Will Zurmacht]

1) Don't think it's possible. Well, you can kill shopkeepers or swipe inventory off shelves, but as for subtle scripted effects like clearing all the bandit camps in the area and merchants lower prices by 10%, hunt lots of game in the area and food vendors run low on stock, no, I haven't seen it, and doubt it is in. Besides, most bandit hang outs respawn and are prime candidates for radiant story quest objectives. If you mine all the ore you can out of the town mine, the resident miners keep on banging away. There was one quest where a village was specifically having trouble with its miners being out of work, but it was too small to even have a shop.

2) see 1.

3) Gristmills? They're for grinding grain into meal/flour. Oh, you meant in game effects? Their owners usually just want you to gather the wheat in their field for a few septims a bushel. That's why we need a mod that lets you insert bones of various kinds into the mills and get meal out: bone meal, dragon bone meal, etc.

[Pandamatak]

I also heard of a system where items become less valuable to a merchant (they buy it for less, sell it for more) if they have a large stock of said item.

I guess that was cut out, too.


Oh, that and different cities paying different amounts for certain items based on their primary exports/imports and individual merchants paying different amounts (ex. Blacksmith pays more for ores)

[DarkEastwood]

I tested it a bit (stole everything from the store called Fletching) and it didn't affect it. Can somebody confirm this?

[Assassin540]

What Todd was talking about is that in just about every shop somewhere in there is a ledger if you have the right tools you can forge the letter and I think that would be sabotaging a shop but I have never tried it I would imagine you need a quill and ink

[AeraDunmerMoon]

Hmmm, what about the effect that doing the woodcutting jobs might have. Like if you spammed it and sold a bunch to the guys by the mills, would arrow prices go down? Must test...

[DarkEastwood]

Ill make an Economy page on UESP once something is confirmed

[panikk89]

I'm at current spamming wood cutting (working on xbox) at Angas Mill, see if it does anything. i'd personally love to see some economic changes in the game fingers crossed.

[DarkEastwood]

cool. I'll try killing a lumbermill owner to see how it affects prices in nearby stores

[adamly]

I killed the owner of riverside trader and Alvor did not have the selling stuff option so i went back into the store and the girl took over. When i went back outside Alvor sold stuff again. It wasint because he was not open it was 8:30 when i talked to him.

[panikk89]

yeah erm sold all the wood. did sweet FA. i think howard ****** us on the economy front.

[mcjordalini]

yeah erm sold all the wood. did sweet FA. i think howard ****** us on the economy front.

LOL, yup pretty much. ): What a jerk hey.

[DarkEastwood]

I stole everything in a store, baskets and all and waited 12 hours and checked his inv and the only visible difference was lower quantities of certain items and some items just not there anymore. Tested on Riverwood Trader.

[soda popinski]

There is evidence in the game that they were trying to figure out how to make it work, such as asking the shopkeepers how business is, and them saying "it would be better if..."

I just think it would have been too complicated to get right.

[SyberSmoke]

I am not to sure the idea of at least a basic economy is that hard. If you think about it prices could be easily based on "quantities" or a supply value of only the three key resources (Wood, Food, Ore, and may be Herbs). Heck the average RTS does this.

With this in mind as scarcity increases of the three key materials, so would prices. While if the materials were common, then the prices would go down for the relevant items. The issue is integrating a stable economic model into the system.

Trade routs, materials carried, current raider/bandit risk, Random Number Generator for off screen bandit attacks based on risk. While there would also be additional NPC's on the road that could come under attack that the player could help...of kill. So in this way you could say flood the economy of a smaller town with wood. In time, baring excessive bandit attacks, that wood would then flow in to the hub cities where it could be traded for other goods.

It is when you start getting more complicated that things get messy. But for the most part this stuff has been done before and there should have been little issue with making such a system reliably. Ahhh...the memory of many an hour as I played a trader in some simple game or in some space game. Heh.

What could be interesting is if the remnants of this system were still in there. If the community could resurrect and then refine it, that could be interesting!

[metaphysician]

That already *is* pretty complicated. Note that its not just a matter of getting it to run without crashing the game. Its also a matter of getting it to run without undesired emergent properties. If basic, desirable items cease to be available in various places for no logically discernable reason, such as it interferes in gameplay? That is bad. The player shouldn't have to hack the economy just to get the alchemy shops to start selling ingredients again.

Admittedly, it would be much, much worse if you also had notable radiant AI active, since if economic effects can induce NPCs to steal or starve, thus triggering fights and deaths. . .

[Talamare]

Admittedly, it would be much, much worse if you also had notable radiant AI active, since if economic effects can induce NPCs to steal or starve, thus triggering fights and deaths. . .

and riots and looting in the streets...


I WANT TO PLAY THAT GAME!

[Giordano]

My only concern with this is that it might mess up gameplay by having a shop close down. (Now I'm supposed to run the next hold over to sell these heavy dragon bones!?)

It's a nice idea, but Beth should make it simple and easy to fix, less they create a major annoyance.

[RavenCeV]

Guys, one thing I think I've noticed, after doing the quest

Spoiler:

for hes East Empire trading company where you attack the mage on the island

I have had guards come up to me and say something like

Spoiler:

'What you have done has benefited all of Skyrim'

. And then I THINK vendors

Spoiler:

had significantly more money, some with 750 but the dark elf in Windhelm had like 2K,

.

Can anyone confirm/expand on this?

Also inns I use regularly seem to have a greater variety of goods.

The Khajiit caravans get quite a bit of business from me and thier range seems to vary.