Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide Hints

Merchant Tips

• 1 of 11: Gone are the days of simple, straightforward buying and selling. SoU has added a couple of interesting complications to that process that you need to be aware of in order to get top dollar for all the items that you sell to merchants.
• 2 of 11: Before, nearly all merchants would pay the exact same amount for any given item (except special merchants like Alhelor in Chapter 2 of the main campaign). Now, things have been "livened up" with the addition of the Appraise skill and a random roll of the dice.
• 3 of 11: Now, the prices merchants sell things for and what they pay when you sell them things depends on the item's base value, the merchant's base setting (called "Buy Mark Down" by the Aurora Toolset), your character's Intelligence and Appraise skill, and a random factor. All other things being equal, the merchant's base setting determines which merchant is the best.
• 4 of 11: However, even more important than the base setting is the random factor. In order to get the most out of a merchant, your strategy should be to equip every item you have that boosts your Intelligence and Appraise skill, drink a Potion of Fox's Cunning (which boosts Intelligence), and then do a quicksave before viewing the merchant's store for the first time.
• 5 of 11: Then pick out one item in your inventory and see what the merchant offers to pay for it. Make a named save with the amount he offered as the save name (to help you remember it), then restore your quicksave and repeat the process. If the merchant offers you more money for the same item, then save over your named save. Repeat this several times until you're fairly sure you're getting the highest value you can. (Then go do the same thing with all the other merchants in the area to see which one can go the very highest -- or just read on in these hints for my tips on who's best in each chapter).
• 6 of 11: Fortunately, merchants don't redo the Appraise skill check and random component every time you view their stores. That only gets recalculated when you view their stores with an Appraise skill that's higher than when the values were last calculated. That means you can go through the above process with a merchant again in an effort to get even higher sell prices whenever you increase your Intelligence or Appraise skill (via level-up or new enhancement items).
• 7 of 11: Another thing to remember is that the best merchant to sell to isn't necessarily the best merchant to buy from. Be sure to comparison-shop whenever you're out to buy anything expensive.
• 8 of 11: Read on for specific information on who's best to sell to in the various chapters. Note that if you use this advice, you won't have to go through the above tedious process of maximizing a merchant's sell prices for every merchant in the chapter (just do the best one).
• 9 of 11: In Chapter 1, Farghan in the herbalist's shop can usually be "coaxed" (via the above save-and-restore process) into offering the best prices for things that you sell.
• 10 of 11: In the Interlude, it's best to save up all your valuable goods to sell to Musharak in the Ao Encampment area. Remember that you can offload equipment onto henchmen, even if they're not currently adventuring around with you.
• 11 of 11: In Chapter 2, Ashtara the asabi merchant is a little better to sell to, but the shadow servant in the Lair of the Shadow Lich is by far the better of the two to buy from.

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