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The UESP: Arena Buying and Selling Guide
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Arena Buying and Selling Guide

19 February 2011

BUYING

Buying something in Arena can only be done at the mages guild and at the shops. You can bargain for the item that you want to buy. If you have a high PERsonality rating, than you can counter the price down to about 70- 75% of the asking price. If your offer is too low, the seller will tell you something like to come up with a real offer. The number of counter offers usually is 5, although you can also get 8 tries if you offer a price that is not acceptable for some time. The trick is to find out what about the minimum is you can get the item for. Offer about 6 times an offer that is refused and then make the minimum offer that is (normally) accepted. Then there is a big chance that the seller will accept that offer straight away, without first offering other prices somewhere in between. Caution: this does not always work, so you have to be careful. At least it worked well with me.


MAGES GUILD

In the mages guild you can buy potions, magical items and spells. I will discuss them in this order. For potions it is rather easy. It is all described above. The potion cost is just for one use only. You can, however, buy more potions at a time (there seems to be an endless number of one potion).

For magical items, the story is completely different. There are 3 types of magical items: 1. Those that lower your AR, 2. Those that boost your attributes and 3. Those that cast spells from the known spell book. I will discuss each of these separately.

For items that lower your AR (these are Bracelets, Belts, Torcs and Amulets), the cost is as follows:

METAL AR COST
Elven -1 500
Dwarven -2 1250
Mithril -3 2500
Adamantium -4 5000
Ebony -5 25000

These can then be negotiated upon.

Items that boost your attributes are very similar. Here's a list of the items and what they do:

ITEM BOOST COST
Bracelet +10 5500
Belt +15 15500
Torc +20 25500
Amulet +25 35500
Now it's time to see if you can get it for a nice price.

Magical items that cast spells are different again. These are: Marks, Crystals, Bracers and Rings. Their cost is based upon three factors, namely:

  1. The item type base cost,
  2. The spell/ effect is casts and
  3. The number of charges.
A formula to calculate the cost is the following:
           X = B + N*Y      where X = Price            
                                  N = Number of charges
                                  B = Base cost and    
                                  Y = Cost per charge
If you want to know the number of charges an item has, rearrange the above formula to get the number of charges. Here it is:
N = (X - B)/Y
The base price, B, for these items is as follows:

ITEM BASE COST CHARGES
Mark 1000 <= 15
Crystal 2500 <= 20
Bracers 5000 <= 30
Ring 10000 <= 50

The cost per charge, Y, is:

SPELL / EFFECT COST SPELL / EFFECT COST
Sanctuary 50 Ice Storm 250
Shocking 50 Force Wall 300
Stamina 50 + Lightning 300
Wizard's Fire 50 Opening 300
Light 50/150 * Pitfall 325
Wanderlight 75 Firestorm 350
Curse 100 Silence 350
Far Silence 100 Heal True 400
Shielding 100 Life Steal 400
Wizard Lock 100 Paralyzation 450
Healing 125 Cure Poison 500 +
Levitation 150 Free Action 500 +
Poison Dart 150 Wildfire 500
Fireball 200 Passwall 600
Force Bolt 200 Purification 800 +

+ A potion does the job cheaper in this case.
* I can't account for this difference.

The story for buying spells is very easy. You click the spell, you see the chart and you know the cost and casting cost. In the manual it said that the casting cost proportional was with the price. This is true, but the pity is that the casting cost does not drop even if you bargain the price down to 70%. For the rest it works as potions and as in the introduction.


SHOPS

Buying at shops is pretty much the same as described above. The weapons and armour that boost your skills give you a +10 boost. The items that can cast spells have their price based upon the spell it casts but NOT on the number of charges. Of course the price is based upon which metal the item is made of and the base price of the ordinary weapon. It is not so hard to guess, though, that Adamantium items will have more charges than a Silver one eg and Adamantium Flail of Life Steal has more charges than a Silver one. The number of charges given when you right-click the item is (often) not the real number of charges (see for yourself). Here is a list of extra cost if the weapon/ armour has a spell.

SPELL ADD TO COST
Jumping 100
Levitation 200
Fire Resistance 600
Frost Resistance 600
Lightning 600
Shock Resistance 600
Passwall 1000/7500 *
Life Steal 5000
Invisibility 10000
Paralyzation 10000
Firestorm 25000
Spell Reflection 25000
Regeneration 50000
* The 1000 is for weapons, the 7500 for armour.

The price is also dependent on the metal. Here they are:

METAL MULTIPLY BASE COST BY
Iron 0.75
Steel 1
Silver 5
Elven 10
Dwarven 25
Mithril 50
Adamantium 100
Ebony 500

And the base costs for each of the weapons are:

WEAPON BASE COST
Dagger 1
Tanto 3
Shortsword 5
Staff 5
Wakizashi 8
Mace 10
Short Bow 10
Broadsword 10
Saber 12
War Axe 12
Flail 15
Longsword 15
Long Bow 20
Battle Axe 20
War Hammer 20
Katana 25
Claymore 30
Dai-Katana 50

As an example, if you want to know the price of an Ebony Dai-Katana of Firestorm, it is easy to compute, namely:

 
50 * 500 + 25000 = 50,000 gp (quite expensive <g<)
For armour, the list is as follows (chain and leather armour are not included since these can't be enchanted):

ARMOUR BASE COST
Buckler 10
Round Shield 20
Kite Shield 30
Tower Shield 40
Plate Gauntlets 45
Plate Boots 50
Plate Pauldron 60
Plate Greaves 80
Plate Helm 80
Plate Cuirass 100

So, as en example, you want to know what an Elven Kite Shield of Levitation costs, it's

30 * 10 + 200 = 500 gp


SELLING

Selling can only be done at the equipment stores (a pity you can't sell at the mages guild). ARENA has a real buyers market when it comes to selling. If you sell weapons and armour, you can get at 99% of the asking price (if your PER is 100 and the condition of the weapon is NEW, see below). The first offer the keeper gives is 75% of the original value (if the weapon is NEW), and then you can negotiate. Sometimes you can get lucky and you can sell the weapon for more than the shopkeeper can sell it for. This is a bug in the game, but who cares?

If, however, you are selling magical items of any kind, you really get taken. The offers for magical items is about 18- 19% of the value at the mages guild and you can haggle that up to 25% if you're lucky and have a high PER rating. Potions are different. No matter what the price of the potion, he'll always offer 25 gp for it. Now, for cheap potions this is no problem, but for eg a potion of purification this is not a good deal. You can haggle the price for a potion up to about 33 or so, but again you need a high PER to do this.

A good rule to know what offer to counter with is the following:

add 1/3 of the offer to the offer made
So, as an example, if the offer is 2240, then you counter with:
2240/3 + 2240 = 2987 gp (you can use 3000 there I think)
In each city/ town/ village there is one shopkeeper who is more generous than others. If you are hard pressed for gold, then I recommend you go look for him. Do it in a village though, since you won't have so many shops to check then.

Most items that you want to sell probably come from treasures in one or other dungeon or whatever dirty place. The problem is to know what things to sell and what things to keep. If you want to know what the item is, you could go to the mages guild and have it identified. However, it's going to cost you. A better way for weapons is the following: if you get a weapon and the name appears in tan in the inventory slot, equip it to look at it. Every metal has its own colour. Here they are:

METAL COLOUR
Iron Light, dull grey
Steel Deep grey
Silver Bright, shiny grey
Elven Green
Dwarven Yellow
Mithril Purple
Adamantium Deep purple
Ebony Deep, dull grey

This should give you a reasonable estimate of the weapons cost using the list above. If the item appears in red, then I suggest you right-click it and look at the damage it does. Then get your manual, and see what it is. A san example: a Long Bow normally has a damage of 2-12. If the Long Bow in red has a damage of 4-14, you know that it is a Dwarven Long Bow.

And if the item appears in cyan, try it on. If you can't, look at the damage. If there's no modification either, then you can either have it identified or sell it blindly. The lists above may then help you to identify the item. If, however, you can equip it, Use the item to see what it does. If it fires a targeted spell, it can be a Firestorm weapon. If it appears not to have done anything, check your Status by clicking the snake-staff icon. It may tell you more. Note: for such weapons, the number of charges is not shown. If it's an item that boosts one of the stats, you won't know unless you try. I do recommend dropping any weapons that have no modification or are not shown in cyan. They are ususally hardly worth anything.

If you encounter a magical item like a Bracelet, Belt, Torc or Amulet, then it might be a good idea to right-click it. They will either lower your AR or boost an attribute. Here are the lists for the items and selling prices:

ITEM INITIAL OFFER COUNTER OFFER
-1 to AR 93 125
-2 to AR 234 310
-3 to AR 468 630
-4 to AR 937 1270
-5 to AR 4687 6310

Those items above are Bracelets, Belts, Torcs and Amulets. If you get one that boosts your attributes, here they are (for the boosts, see above):

ITEM INITIAL OFFER COUNTER OFFER
Bracelet 1031 1380
Belt 2906 3910
Torc 4781 6300
Amulet 6656 8900

If, however, the itm is a Mark, Crystal, Bracers or Ring, then only the number of charges is shown when you right-click. You can either: 1. Use the item as described above to see what it does, 2. Have it ID'd an then sell it or 3. Sell it blindly.

Some people drop the items that are -3 to AR and below. If you're hard pressed for gold, don't. If you have enough, it's up to you. And if you ever get angry with the shopkeeper and you are a high level character, you can always steal something...

If we have omitted anything or there is something not correct or you don't agree or any other comments, please let us know. We ain't perfect and we would like to help you and we are always open for suggestions!

Enjoy the game and may you all have full purses.

Original TEXT version created by
J.W. "Jaybird" Johnson - 74020.1734@compuserve.com and
Ramon Brasser - 101353.3414@compuserve.com

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