Merchant Empire

Merchant Empire is an unmarked quest in Fallout 3.

Walkthrough
Through discussion with Uncle Roe, in Canterbury Commons, you can ask if the traders could become a unified group. You can proceed either with the Master Trader perk, a high Barter skill, the Black Widow perk, or if you are carrying at least 250 bottlecaps. He offers you a map showing the paths of the merchants and their various trade stops, and the option of investing into any of the caravans. Investing in a caravan allows that merchant to sell a wider variety and higher quality of items in addition to raising their Repair skill, allowing them to restore your gear to near perfect condition, as well as the number of caps they have available for trading.

An initial investment of 200 caps can be made in each trader, followed by a second investment of 500 caps. This totals 2800 bottle caps for all four caravans. The Master Trader perk discounts each investment by half to 100 caps for the first and 250 caps for the second.

The first time you speak with a merchant after investing fully in their caravan, you will be given a gift of gratitude. The gift differs for all four caravans and specializes is the caravans particular ware.

Upgrading the Caravan merchants
Investing completely in Crazy Wolfgang will result in him having a wide variety of junk, detritus, and crap as well as the highest Repair skill of any merchant in the Capital Wasteland. He will present you with two to six Stealth Boys for you trouble. Investing completely in Crow will result in him having higher quality armor as well as a larger and more diverse supply. He will give you his eyeboy helmet as a gift.

Investing completely in Doc Hoff results in him having a wider variety of food and a larger supply of chems to deal. He will reward you with three to seven stimpaks as a gift. Investing completely in Lucky Harith's caravan allows him to upgrade his armory supply and carry a wider variety of "hot death". In addition, he gifts to a "micro nuke".

Merchant chart
Amount of caps available depends on the player's level and is random to a certain degree. Caps replenish every 72 hours, but they are also retained, for example: players who routinely use Crazy Wolfgang for repairs will end up seeing higher available caps totals, (in some cases extremely high).

† Dependent upon player's level