UESP Forums

I do not know if anyone else wondered about this.
If I have 5 mercantile or 100. Why exactly would that allow me a better deal with a merchant?

Person: A (5 Mercantile) sells iron boots for say 20 gold.
Person: B (100 Mercantile) sells iron boots for say 40 gold.

Why exactly? Assuming the boots to be fully repaired, they are the same item. And the trade should be the same too. Why would merchants grant better deals with expert/master mecantile people than with those who just start using it? The prices imo should be fixed. It is not very egalitarian. Maybe I am looking at this wrong. Any bright ideas?

The mercantilism skill represents you haggling with the merchant for the better price.

^.
If you want to test how hard you can "haggle", try buying a spell-for some reason, merchant's disposition will decrease when you want to buy/sell an item for a deal the merchant won't accept, while buying a spell at a too low price won't affect it. This way you can see exactly to what % you can lower a buying or increase a selling price to a merchant with certain "haggle difficulty" and disposition.

Many will say mercantile is a useless skill because on higher levels a player will be stinking rich revardless of it's level.

By the way, that Briathur(?) guy in Crucible actually stole gold from me when I spoke to him, lol!
Though it's just 1 gold I suppose.
Speachcraft becomes useless as well, because why bother with the persuasion when you can just click "bribe" a few times - no way to get bankrupt with a million gold anyway..

It's the same reason mechanics rip off women, why I get free drinks when my friends are bartending, and why stores jack up the price for water and food when a natural disaster hits. Good/frequent customers get treated better in an unregulated economy.