I'm having a weird issue with the X360 version of the game. The merchants never have any gold removed from their coffers when they purchase my equipment. I can have a merchant start with 800 gold, and when the merchant has purchased 500 gold worth of equipment from me, he still has 800 gold. I know some people (cough... cheaters... cough!) might find this to be a good thing, but I hate it. In my opinion, the fact that you sometimes have to hunt for a person who can afford to buy your stuff is much more immersive than someone who has endless gold.

Has anyone else had this problem, and if so, were you able to get around it? I've filled out a support request from Bethesda, so hopefully they may have some advice.

Well, I had it once with one of the merchants in Chorrol...but dont remember who it was...something must have gone wrong,since when the merchant bought some of my stuff, he suddenly had like a million gold, so it's propably a bug...

Edit:This should be in the Oblivion forum...so I have taken the liberty of reporting this to the moderators, so that they can sort it out.

It's happened with EVERY merchant in the game so far for me.

Do you know if the X360 game can be "patched" in the way PC games are?

Yep, cheers

Same problem for me, I'm on a PC. Hopefully they'll patch it, maybe an xbox-live patch too? Can they do this via your marketplace or whatever you call it?

That's what I'm hoping for.

Are you sure it's a bug?
I don't think so, if a merchant have 800g to buy for he probably can only buy stuff for less than 800g, but he can buy just as much as he want to.

Well, this wasn't how the merchant system worked on Morrowind, so I'm assuming it's a bug. On Morrowind, every time you bought/sold something, the vendor's gold changed immediately. There were many times that a merchant would literally be unable to buy something that was worth 1 gold. Obviously, there have been some changes since Morrowind, but I don't think this is one of them.

Is there anyone out there playing that ISN'T getting this issue--ie, is your game working the way Morrowind did?

one way to test this would be to find a way to buy one of those like 5000g enchanted items and try to sell it to the 800 golded merchant. I can't play the game at my house, where I am. Other wise I would test it myself, so someone should try it.....also...

I agree I liked having to find the merchants with lots of gold or having to sell loot to three different merchants on a good haul.
I hope there will be a mod/patch to fix this, elsewise I will have to keep track of how much I sell to every merchant every time I go selling, so as to keep that restriction on myself.

Um, why has this been moved to the cheats section? I was asking if this was a bug--I don't cheat, and people who do are weak.

I thought the merchants were supposed to have that gold like that.... hmm well I guess it doesn't make much sense to sell 500 gold worth of items to a person who only has 50 gold...

I also read in one of the waiting screens that merchants will have more gold to barter with if your mercantile is high... the way that is phrased it made me believe instead of having 800 gold max barter, the guy could have a 1000 gold max barter....

I think the way the mercantile works is once you've gotten a high level you can "invest" gold into merchants so that they have more to trade with you.

Fortunately/Unfortunately this DOES appear to be a glitch on 360. I have started two games and my wife the same.
No matter how much gold the merchant says he/she has, they can give you unlimited money for those special magically-imbued items (my latest character after restarting is lvl 12 and sold about $6k to a merchant listed as having 600 gold).
If you must follow the limitations, the only way for now it to self-limit your sales.

This really sucks. How could Bethesda not notice such an obvious glitch?

I don't think it is a glitch. I agree with Ola Martin. I think that the idea is that each merchant has a "sell limit." I could sell my $6000 sword to a merchant with $800, but the most I can get for the sword is $800. And unlike morrowind, I could sell him 50 of those swords without having to wait 24 hours.

But there is no mention in any of the literature (manual, strategy guides, etc.) about a "sell limit." Also, the Elder Scrolls games are notorious for not making things too easy on you at the sacrifice of realism--it seems very unlike them to allow a merchant in a tiny hamlet in the middle of nowhere to have unlimited funds.

I'm still waiting to hear from Bethesda on this. If I don't hear from them soon, I'm going to try calling them.

It isn't realistic, but I kinda like it. In morrowind, all I had to do was sell, then wait 24 hours until a merchant reloaded his $, then sell again. It wasn't realistic either, but hey, you think I was just gonna drop a $20,000 deadric dai-katana. I don't think so!

I most definately don't have a sell limit.
I've sold an item for 1200+ to a merchant (listed as having ~$400) and had the money instantly in my 'account.'

There's an easy way to solve whether or not this is a bug if somebody who doesn't have this happen would post and let us know.

Hmm... interesting. Maybe it is a bug. I was just speculating, but it really dosn't make sense for it to say $800 on a merchant when there are apparently no restrictions. Good luck on finding out what's going on earwicker7!

Hopefully they give you an answer - I agree, we've found a few things that make the game broken pretty easily (with at least two free money bugs). I like how they only let you purchase 5 training total per level.

I'm generally keeping to the merchant restrictions now, give or take a thou, despite the fact that the game isn't doing it for me. Sometimes you gotta sell that expensive item though, and there isn't a creeper or mudcrab to leverage your sales on.

The way a merchants gold is handled is not a bug. A merchant with an $800 gold limit will not buy anything worth more than $800. Well they will buy it but will not pay full price.

Every merchant I've sold to have unlimited gold, but will not pay more than thier "cash limit" for an item. I have seen this happen with an item that i accidently sold that was worth at least twice what i recieved for it. The merchant gave as much gold as his "cash limit" when i sold that item.

Earlier posts (unless I'm misunderstanding them) have said that they actually will pay more than their limit.

We're going to have to take this to the designers, aren't we

LOL axebane. You're not paying much attention but I'll repeat myself. I play a 360 - don't know if you do. Last night I sold another expensive object (a $6000 ring). The merchant PAID me that much for it, despite a limited max of 800. I watched it happen. It is a bug. For sure. No kidding. No sell limit on my box.

OK, that's a bug, but I don't think the fact that you can sell as many items as you want to for a lower price than it's limit is a bug. Maybe the bug is only on X-box, or? (I play on PC)

this is happening to me aswell. I sell my stolen goods to a fence and he has, what, 800? his gold supply doesn't go down.

Edit: I'm on the pc btw

Resurrecting the thread to see if this is still happening to any 'boxers out there.
I tested it at the time just to be sure it was happening, and observed it numerous times ( I even sold a $1200 item for that amount to a $50 innkeeper).
As of about Thurs/Fri last week, the merchants started paying their max only for any single item/sale, but continued allowing multiple sales. Yes, I do log into Xbox live every time I play.
Interesting.

OK, on PC, they don't deplete their gold resources per item sold....ie. sell 50G item to 200G merch, and they still have 800, this isn't/shouldn't be a bug. I tried to sell a 1200G item to a 800G merch and he said he couldn't buy it, so mine is working as it is supposed to, sorry about lack of immersion for you 'boxer's out there.

btw I like this system better b/c I wasn't prone to dropping 20,000 gold items either. And waiting for a day just to sell more got really old.

So you think that Bethesda is doing automatic patching on Xbox Live? Interesting.

I am playing IV on a 360 and I have to say that I am not having your problem. The merchant's money never goes down (I think this was intended.) But unlike some, on my game, if the merchant has an $800 sell limit and I have $900 sword, the most I can get for it is $800. I think this is how it is supposed to be, but I could be wrong. So I guess your problem isn't global. Your merchants don't have a sell limit and mine do. This is quite odd.

I've had a few others make the same comment. I have no other evidence for it except that for the first 5 or so days after release merchants paid over the maximum for items. I have no other way to explain it....
and as several others have stated, it was never a problem for PC.

I'm not on live, never have been, so I can test you theory tonigh when i get home, though i think I tried selling a coat of tounges or something like that which is worth 2800 to a merchant and only got 800 for it, their total gold amount, i will try again and see what happens

I dont have this glitch, i can only sell for what the merchant has in gold, so i only get 800 for a 3000 item