Skyrim talk:Speech

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Archive 1: Oct 2011 - Jul 2012

Is investing really needed to sell stolen goods?

I could sell stolen goods to normal merchants but I never invested in anyone. I did quests for them though, and it appeared they liked me. Could this affect anything? — Unsigned comment by 109.99.107.212 (talk) at 02:24 on 1 December 2011

Are the goods really stolen? It's worth noting that once you do one or two quests for any particular person, they will start to like you enough that you're able to take just about everything (barring one or two items) from their houses without repercussion. Items that the game classes as 'stolen' are those which said 'steal' in red when you picked them up, or whose name was red when taken from a container.

You can identify these items in two ways: either go through your inventory and check each item to see if the word 'stolen' appears at the bottom of the window under the picture of the item, or simply dump everything into a container you own and see if any items show up in red lettering.

To answer your question, you do need to invest to sell stolen goods. You can only sell stolen goods once you have the 'Fence' perk, and the description of that perk in game is "Can barter stolen goods with any merchant you have invested in." - so if you're somehow managing to sell stolen items without investing in the store first then it's probably the effects of a bug/glitch or maybe a mod as the intended behaviour is clear. 31.111.99.138 22:26, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I can confirm this behaviour. With legendary skills made availible, i got many skill points to spend. I invested in Allure, Merchant, Investor, Fence and Master Trader, all at once. Since then all merchants buy my stolen goods, even though I have not yet invested in any. 82.242.106.213 08:28, 26 March 2013 (GMT)

Prices possible formula errors

I'm an old math teacher and I can tell you if an algebraic expression has 8 leading parentheses '(' then it must have 8 closing parentheses ')'. I cannot get these formulas to work, that is match up with in game experience on a spreadsheet. Could someone with access to these formulas provide the parentheses, please. Kalevala 22:49, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Update: after a lot of trial and error I came up with some corrections that made things work better, including extra parentheses in the buy price modifier and removing those in the final sell price and buy price formulas.

This leaves only the case of having a necklace, the Masque of Clavicus Vile and drinking a potion of fortify barter with regard to its effect on the buy from merchant price. The formula seems to give a lower buy price than the game experience, so I will continue to work on it. However, that said, my request above still stands with regard to checking the formulas, especially as to the summing of the equipment fortifies. Any help will be appreciated. Kalevala 02:15, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

i'm really sure that the formulars we currently have here are not complete/correct.

example:

with the given equations of

• price factor = 3.3 - (1.3 * skill/100)
• buy price modifier = (1 / (1 + Haggling %)) * (1 / (1 + Allure %)) * (1 - Fortify Barter from potion) * (1 - the sum of Fortify Barter from equipment - Fortify Barter *from Blessing of Zenithar)
• buy price = [ value of item ] * base price factor * buy price modifier
• for buying an amethyst e.g. (value 120) i (speechskill 90, haggling perk 1 (10%), allure perk, but male pc vs. male vendor, no potions, no eqipment, no blessing) should be charged:
• pf = 3.3 - (1.3 * 90/100) = 2,13
• bpm = (1 / (1 + 0,1)) * (1 / (1 + 0)) * (1 - 0) * (1 - 0 - 0) = 0,90909 * 1 * 1 * 1 = 0,90909
• bp = 120 * 2,13 * 0,90909 = 232

but the vendor is actually selling it for 198. so either i have some hidden bonus of about 17% somewhere (not showing up in the "active effects") or the fact that i helped that vendor before in a small quest does influence his price... however, i just can't seem to find the reason, so could anyone with access to the game's internal formulars plz correct / complete them equations here? — Unsigned comment by 85.178.185.123 (talk) at 11:19 on 22 April 2012

The formulae on the site are just users' best guesses. Unfortunately, they aren't in the Creation Kit, so the only way of determining what they are with 100% certainty is to reverse-engineer the game code. Only a very few users are highly skilled at that sort of thing, and others like myself dabble...but I don't think we have anything more than dabblers on the site, so it will likely be a long time before the exact formula is discovered, if ever. – Robin Hood↝talk 19:20, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Prices vary from merchant to merchant. I found that the teachers in the College of Winterhold offer 10% more for a necklace than four other merchants that I tried. However, Enthir offers far less. The prices don't correlate with relationshiprank. Biggus1 04:26, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Did you donate to a beggar or use any Zenithar equipment/altars? Beggars give you +10 Speech for an hour, and Zenithar's blessing and amulet each give a 10% price bonus. Don't know who made the original price factor equation but it looked like they tried to shoehorn the setting values into other titles' formulas. The equation here is different from previous ES/Fallout games. Anyway, I've updated it so at least that's correct. If I'm feeling less lazy later, I may check the full formula out. Sortitus 22:22, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

We ran into the same problem with the formulas today, and our solution was to not use 10% as Allure perk value, but 9.5898% (this is with 10% Haggling). I would not be surprised if the game rounds up % displays to the next ten percent; which means that higher Haggling perks could run into a similar issue. — Unsigned comment by 71.34.150.204 (talk) at 22:16 on 5 August 2012

Patch notes

The patch seems to have changed the bee and barb persuasion spamming. If you choose that option twice in a row, he says "take a look" and shows you his merchant chest without the pointer actually resetting to that option. This remains true even if you move the pointer. I don't know if it's just me affected, though, so I didn't add anything. 173.219.77.134 00:00, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually this is pretty obviously a glitch. Moving the pointer down one will move the dialogue into the speech. For the record what I means is this:

You go into the menu and talk to him. You choose the second option "Tell me about Maven Black-Briar" and go through the persuasion as normal, then at the end you're given three options again.

What have you got for sale? Tell me about Maven Black-Briar What makes Black-Briar mead so special?

with your pointer defaulted on the second option from memory. Going down one to #3 does the options for #2 whereas immediately hitting E (I'm PC) goes through the motions for #1 even though the pointer's on #2. 173.219.77.134 00:05, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Holding the mouse over and clicking completely bypasses this, lulz 173.219.77.134 00:07, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Intimidate formula

Does someone have it? If so, could he/she(/it?) add it to the page please? I can already come up with a plethora of things to use it for... --SuggestedBowl (talk) 19:05, 6 December 2012 (GMT)

High skill eliminates need for Persuasion/Intimidation perks?

So, if I'm reading this correctly, the Persuasion perk gives you a bonus to skill, but 100 skill is enough to succeed every persuasion check, even without perks. Is that correct? And is the same true for the Intimidation perk? Is it worthless if you have a high enough skill? Thanks. --Irrevenant (talk) 00:50, 25 December 2012 (GMT)

I can't verify the info on the page technically, but my sense is: Yes, it seems that the persuasion perks (including intimidation), become useless at some point from middle-high to high speech skill levels, and in a substantial "zone" before they become useless, they are "practically useless", giving you a very small edge. This is based on my experience and the fact that a similar issue occurs with some other skill/perk relationships: Block reduces attack damage up to a cap, for example, and once you begin to reach middle-high levels in the skill, it's likely that having several of the "basic" perks will take you to the cap, which is (essentially) useless, since at that point in the game, you can expect to always or usually have some kind of fortify block effect available (enchantment, potion, standing stone effect), all useless if you are at the cap anyway. So, I'd say that the perks are generally useful only for a short time after they become available, and if you can use Fortify Speech or other enhancements at critical moments, then certainly other perks will yield greater overall value. I'm not sure how player level is related to intimidation "power". That may change things depending on the speech skill to player level ratio, but to say it simply, these perks can certainly give you no edge, and even when they do, they will generally do so for a relatively short time. There are definitely other perks that will be more generally valuable to most players. --JR (talk) 03:33, 25 December 2012 (GMT)

If I may add my two cents, I noticed two specific Intimidation check that cannot be successfully completed even with 100 Speech, either with a Taunting Adventurer or a Skooma Dealer. Well, in my experience anyway; I must admit I haven't played in a while. Elakyn (talk) 10:31, 25 December 2012 (GMT)

Clarification re: bugs and Angeline's Aromatics

The bugs section says "[...] Angeline's Aromatics in Solitude will never remember an investment" and "It is occasionally possible to invest in a merchant multiple times, giving them an exorbitant amount of gold with which to buy. This may be specific to certain merchants—it has so far been observed only with Ulfberth War-Bear and Angeline Morrard." These are obviously mutually contradictory. Which is it, please? Thanks. --Irrevenant (talk) 13:41, 1 January 2013 (GMT)

Missing persuasion checks

"What follows is a list of all persuasion attempts" is missing:

• Skyrim:No News is Good News
• The Mind of Madness, getting the key to the Pelagius Wing from Una.

--DayDreamer (talk) 06:34, 2 January 2013 (GMT)

Speech Reset + Master Trader

On the bugs section, I've confirmed the report that resetting your speech skill will NOT remove the master trader bonus. If you've got Dragonborn installed along with the Unofficial Dragonborn Patch, you can get that reset using the reward you get after battling Miraak. If you're using the Patch 1.9 legendary skills menu, you'll be out of luck since that calls directly into the engine routines to reset the skill which makes it impossible for a user fix to correct it. Arthmoor (talk) 21:06, 9 April 2013 (GMT)