Appraise Skill

[jclay65]

I came across this on Wiki. Can anyone tell me if this applies to BGTSCC?
If I understand how the appraise skills works, 30 is the max one should take for this skill? If that's not correct, please explain.

Note that the hard-coded MarkUp/MarkDown function is bugged, resulting in WORSE "Sell to store" prices if the player's Appraise is too high (in general, once the player's Appraise skill reaches 25, she will get less money for items sold to most merchants). The greater the difference between Markup<->Markdown becomes the less money you get for selling items to store (buying items from stores is not affected by this bug).

Thanks!!

[DM Mouse]

Generally you can disregard that for our server. No merchant will ever buy from you for much more than 1300 give or take 100gp (depending where you go). That means get the skill as high as you can, then your purchase prices have a chance of being better.

[Azmodeth]

1350 I think...

[Meldor]

Let say I have 50 appraise, will it affect the price of buying items from npc vendors by a lot ?

Let's take the exemple of ammo that are quite expensive: +2 / +3 or even elemental dmg ammo.

Will a character with high appraise get half price discount or it will be slightly less ?

[narcaleptic]

I hear there is a cap at around 50, but I cant verify that for certain. I have a merchant/rogue character with 45 appraisal and 3 levels in guild thief and the prices are reduced by about 25% and I havent seen it stop lowering yet. On average a heal potion cost near 1000 gold for someone with no appraisal skill and with my own skill its about 650 to 700 per bottle.

[Meldor]

Yeah I just did a personal test with no skill, lesser fire arrow(99) cost ~600g in nashkel.

with 26 appraise they are ~500g.

so i bet at 50 skill you get 1/3 discount on item and it seem to be what you are experiencing with your heal pot.

Thanks for sharing info.

[LordLP]

I can safely say appraise does matter on this server. With the selling cap at 1350 (Bergost), you won't get much out of the sell aspect; just a little extra for low items under 1350 gold worth.

If you're new to the server though or an ammo based class - it pays off big time. When we all started, one of us played a bard and decided to max appraise. The discount buy price was quite impressive, even over 10k on some vendor sold items.

If you're not buying vendor items or ammo it's worthless though - I haven't met one person willing to RP my apprise

[jclay65]

Thanks for all the timely replies. I am mainly interested in how the appraise skill works when buying from merchants. I have a toon with 69 appraise and there doesn't seem to be any improvement in the discount then a toon with 40 appraise.

If anyone can explain how the appraise skill roll works, that would be quite helpful. Was wondering if it is worth having appraise skill above 70? Is there a max of 50?

And if anyone knows what spells improve the appraise skill, that would be helpful as well.

[DM Mouse]

There is a maximum benefit to be gained from Appraise at a %30 discount.

However, the Merchant also has the Appraise skill and they pit their Appraise against yours in a contest of wits and skills.

Where you saw a "maximum of +30 or -30" on the wiki is where the Appraise battle comes into play. If you have 60 ranks in Appraise and the opposing Merchant has 30 ranks in Appraise you will still get your %30 discount. This is because you beat the Merchant by 30 ranks, completely demolishing their haggling skills!

If you had 30 ranks and the merchant had absolutely none then you'd similarly still get the %30 discount on account of the Merchant's bad business skills.

It can work in the reverse, however: If your Appraise skill is far outclassed by the Merchant then you will end up paying a marked up price higher than the base retail value. That is why some merchants are more expensive than the others for the same products!

[NeOmega]

I know all about appraise.

And I ain't sayin' nothin.



You'll just have to figure it out.

There is a max yes, but none of the numbers guessed are right.

Also, appraise checks are done with dice rolls, so they will randomly be different. I've had time where prices went up when I upped my appraise by 3. :O

[DM Mouse]

Later patches removed the die rolls. The formulas are fixed now and consistent.

[NeOmega]

Later patches removed the die rolls. The formulas are fixed now and consistent.

The why is it, even yesterday, I was buying a 23,013 katana. I took a potion of fox's cunning to up my appraisal by 2, and then the katana was 23,779? True story. I've witnessed this many, many times these past couple of weeks.

If you lower your appraise, you do not get a re-roll. If you raise it, you do. And then it stays that way until reset or you try with an even higher appraise.

[DM Mouse]

In NWN1 the roll was a 1d10. If it is still rolling dice, the difference may be negligible, but I was going off the Wiki which said the roll was dropped.

I'd be willing to go verify soon. Regardless, the rest of the listed formulas are still applicable. The die roll simply means you'd have more wildly varying success at low skill ranks while at high ranks it wouldn't have any impact at all.

[dzidek1983]

i thought the skill is bugged and after a certain level it works backwards...

[NeOmega]

i thought the skill is bugged and after a certain level it works backwards...

no. There is a number of appraisal skill points where you win the best price every time, so that price is the same, (but dependent on the merchant). For instance, in Sshamath, Droin Ironflat pays the best for items, but only pays up to 1100, so I sell smaller items to him, and the items above 1100 I sell to the merchants at the glouras wings.

At Maltz', it is always a good idea to check the prices both with Maltz and Blunt, because in the end they have the same prices, but if you don't achieve enough appraise to win by the most every time, they can have different prices.