Talk:Barter

To get the most for your money replace any NPC's clothing which increases Barter to a workmans coveralls.

min/max buy/sell price = value
It appears that sell/buy prices are capped at the value of the item. I realize this appears obvious to most people, but I think it should be explicitly stated near where the formulas are calculated. ElvisDumbledore - eschew obfuscation 18:53, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

The above, combined with the numerous ways to make caps, has made me question the value of this skill in new vegas. generally if you get a high reputation with someplace, they will sell to you very cheap already, at min/max caps or close... which makes the value of this skill dubious at best.

their are a few barter checks in the game, but i would say the vast majority of them also have a parallel speech check at the same time. there are some barter only checks in the game, but with the limited skill points in new vegas, i dont think they are worth it alone, especially if you get the 4 skill books, can slap on some clothes, use a magazine, and pass most of them.

i suppose if you wanted a particular perk that used barter it would be worth it for that... but at the same time most perks revolving around barter are just in essence to make more money a little easier, and again caps are not hard to come by in new vegas after you are a little ways into the game.

i suppose if someone made a character that somehow managed to have an absurd amount of extra skill points by having a stupidly high intelligence, why not get barter, but then i would question the character build to be honest... even with only 4 intelligence im able to max out Guns, and with clothing items alone Lockpick, Science, and Speech are max... and have around 90 in Repair, Sneak, Survival, and Medicine. what else do you really need? explosive requires a huge perk investment to be good, and energy weapons suck except for a couple select weapons and even then guns are still comparable. meh.
 * Long Haul and Packrat are not just for making money, they are useful on Hardcore where ammunition has weight (doctor's bags/weapon repair kits become 0.5 pounds instead of 1), for transporting goods from point a to point b without numerous trips (in the absence of a mailbox, non-official player housing most notably), and the best vendors in the game have no discounts (Gun Runners, Silver Rush, Great Khan armory, etc). It's also not very "stupid" to have high intelligence for skill points, as you can easily have 6+ skills at 100 without clothing/chems/magazines and then another few skills boosted through clothing, etc to high levels. My character has 10 int, educated and comprehension. Energy Weapons 100, Survival 100, Repair 100, Science 100, Medicine 100, Lockpick 100, Sneak 100, Explosives 80 all without clothing. So max skill (with a single magazine) in 8 of the 13 skills isn't bad. Mictlantecuhtli 12:14, November 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * ok look at it like this. just doing blackjack at casinos until you get banned you will make around 50,000 caps. then get the snowglobes for another 12,000 caps, then all the quests that award between 500 to thousands per completion... my character has well over 100,000 caps and i never sold anything to a vendor for money, ever.


 * so yeah, you can try to convince yourself you need all that money, but honestly there is nothing to spend it on, and all you are doing is impressing yourself with a big number instead of playing the game.


 * as far as the skill point arguement goes, all you have proven is what i said, you gimp your character build with all that intelligence. you just wasted a lot of skill points to see 100s on your character sheet you never need. your character would have been stronger overall by dropping down on some of those skill points and having higher stats in something other than intelligence. the only skills you need a passive 100 is your weapon, everything else is fine with clothing, and some things like speech so rarely need a 100 check you are fine relying on clothes + skill magazine.


 * congrats on ignoring game features put in the game to make you stronger, you win the dumb-bell award.


 * p.s. having a couple pounds of weight in clothes isnt an issue if you arnt OCD about picking up every tin can on the ground because -omg- you can sell it to a vendor for more caps you will never spend.


 * though i dont know why i bother responding. i mean this is someone who values trigger discipline, the worst trait in the game. values energy weapons which are pretty terrible compared to guns in this version of fallout. thinks barter is worth it when you have caps falling out of your pockets. wants to ignore game features to save skill points that would make his character stronger... i mean its just ridiculous. i mean its like trying to explain something to someone who is just plain terrible, yet arrogantly thinks they are elite and better than everyone else.


 * After a certain point combat effectiveness becomes overkill and is entirely useless on all but the highest difficulties. Convenience then becomes the primary focus, high skill points (including barter which let's you buy high quality weapons and mods earlier in the game), pack rat and long haul are convenience choices, many of the weapons in the game do not even make combat perks or combat skills important in the least (for example, start with a barter, medicine and sneak character with good natured and only 1 luck, I guarantee on all but the highest difficulty you will have no problem killing geckos, powder gangers or other starting enemies with a simple 9mm pistol if you use free aim over VATS). The YCS/186, Anti-materiel rifle and Pew Pew are a few weapons that do not require high skill to be effective, furthermore energy weapons outperform guns in damage (especially with the patched ammo bonuses) and are one of the only weapon categories that can use weapon handling and 6 strength (let's you boost other stats) to fully utilize all weapons with no penalties (explosives being the other).


 * Overall excessive combat perks are the true waste in the game, because after a while combat becomes extremely boring. This is especially true if you use VATS, which is overall less efficient in my opinion than free aiming (since you can use pistols as sniper rifles with free aim but will only have a 1-2% hit chance in VATS). Furthermore with the added DLC you have more skill points available from books and leveling, so it is now possible to have 100 in all skills even if it is just temporarily. All in all I have far more fun with a convenient character that has adequate combat skills than a combat character that is inconvenient everywhere else in the game (constantly requiring clothing or items to meet necessary skill checks). Combat is easy, convenience perks, skills, etc make the rest of the game easy. I mean hell, a level 2 character with the armored vault suit, chance's knife, high str/end (8 and 9) with medicine as a tag skill and smart combat movement (no VATS) can raid black mountain and survive with as few as 30 stimpaks on the normal difficulty).


 * So it sounds to me like you wasted all of those perks to make your character overpowered in battle and inconvenient when it comes to skill checks, crafting and setting up or breaking down a base of operations to move to a better location. Mictlantecuhtli 18:38, June 29, 2011 (UTC)

Temporary +18 to barter for 1 Charisma Characters.
I just wanted to note that is actually possible to stack party time mentats, regular mentats, moonshine and regular alcohol for a +9 charisma bonus, even without 100 survival. I'm not really comfortable editing the front page however, since I don't know how the formatting works. I don't want to screw it up. Rhomb 10:20, November 23, 2010 (UTC)
 * Me neither, but hey: if someone stumbles across and doesn't like it he/she will edit it ;) It's a wiki after all. --The Bart 18:24, December 7, 2010 (UTC)

Caravan Betting
It seems that your Barter skill also affects how much of their current money total someone is willing to bet on a single game of Caravan. On a character with fairly mediocre Barter, I was only able to get them to bet about half, while a superbly diplomatic character (10 Charisma, 100 Barter) was able to have them gamble their entire fortune. Anyone care to confirm? 61.9.200.246 03:58, December 14, 2010 (UTC)