How to level up mercantile and speechcraft?

[TheFinkinator]

Is there any reasonable way to level up the mercantile skill? and is there any real benefit to it in the long run? I put mercantile as one of my minor skills, but Ive never been able to add more than maybe 2 or 3 gold, 5 on a good day, to any merchants suggested price. and when I do, i gain like one measly little point in mercantile, which I guess I deserve since i didnt do a whole lot. I assume as I level up the skill my bartering skill will increase, but it seems like itll take years at this point to gain one level. I try and score that extra one gold or so on every transaction I make, and after playing the game for 24 hours I have not grown a single level.

Speechcraft doesnt make alot of sense to me either. Ive grown one level in speechcraft since I started, and that only because I resorted to just using bribes whenever I had to convice people of something. none of the other options ever work out. So is this just a "pay tons of gold to get good" skill? wth?

[stoneinfocus]

It's been a while since I've played, but I feel like there are certain quests you can only get if an NPC's disposition is high enough, so speechcraft is useful for that. According to the wiki you can level up quickly by repeatedly intimidating someone at a much lower level than you, but intimidation wasn't my style so I just repeatedly admired people and saved constantly so I could quickly go back to an old save if their disposition took a huge dive.

I don't think I really used mercantile all that much; at a certain point you end up being gorged with money anyway, especially if you make use of the mudcrab merchant.

[asd]

Speechcraft is useful when someone doesn't like you and doesn't want to talk to you about certain things. But it's not the only way you can convince someone. Bribes are the simplest, a 100 gold bribe will work most of the times, even if you have a low speechcraft skill, most of the times NPCs will accept the 100 gold bribe. Give them a few 100 bucks and they'll love you. It also progresses your speechcraft skill. If you have a high speechcraft skill, you'll be able to reliably use the other 3 options that doesn't require you to spend money. I think they are "taunt", "compliment", and something else that I can't remember...

Alternatively, you could raise your personality, and get some telvanni bug musk to make people like you more. Illusion spells can also help, the "Charm" spell is expensive, but it will temporarily make the target like you more. How much more depends on how strong the spell is.

Leveling up speechcraft is slow, so I just use trainers when I have a lot of money, but I never really use it... I just didn't find it that great in my playthroughs... there are always alternatives... and you should always have a spare few hundred gold in your pocket anyways if someone needs convincing. But anyways, if you want to level up your speechcraft without trainers, then what I did in one playthrough was that once you progress in the game, "Dreamers" will appear near some cities and next to some roads. You can kill them without consequence, but they won't attack you on sight. So just talk to them, give them all your gold so your speechcraft gets leveled, then kill them and get back your gold. I guess you could use the other 3 options on them to level your speechcraft if you're out of gold.

And about mercantile... if it's high, you'll be able to basically scam merchants... it's really useful if you want to make money, but... once you raise it high enough, you should have loads of cash, so it's kind of useless by the time it could be useful... at around 40-50 you can save, or earn an extra 100 bucks or so, which is not THAT much... I use trainers to level it when I have more money than I can spend, but it's not my top priority.

But either way, I'm no "expert" by any means so my words aren't the absolute truth :P it's just how I played the game

[Saelune]

Speechcraft as Tabus as mentioned, is very useful. Its infact secretly super useful since it lets you complete alot of quests peacefully/easily, since you can often just persuade people to give you what you want.

Such as the early Balmora Mage Guild quests for getting Guild Dues and a Telvanni to join.

Anytime someone seems reluctant try raising their opinion of you. If you really want, you can save, bribe them to 100 and see if they do anything different, then reload and peruade them. Usually 70 is all you need, but sometimes it requires more or less.

[__-__-__]

To level Mercantile, adjust all transactions by a certain percentage (I usually use half my Mercantile skill as the percentage) and keep clicking on "Offer", they will eventually accept your offer and it will get you a good amount of skill progress.

For Persuasion realize that your skill determines the highest level to which you can take someone's disposition, if they're already above that point (which they will be with starting level persuasion) you'll have to accept that thier disposition will be and remain low for a time, but once it gets low enough your "Admires" and "Intimidates" will start working more consistently (A successful "Taunt" may start a fight, it may not be the best method of practice).

[Asus]

Taunt is useful if you want to kill, and rob someone. Guards won’t attack you if an NPC attacks you first. The guards will even help you kill the NPC.

Intimidate can be useful if you want to ‘persuade’ someone.

[TheFinkinator]

I know that intimidating someone depends on your speechcraft AND your general level, which makes alot of sense. Even the most silver tounged person whos a level 1 wimp shouldnt be able to intimidate a level 50 badass.

But does taunting work the same way? it doesnt seem to make sense that you could "fail" at taunting someone so much that their opinion of you literally drops to 0, yet even at that point where they hate your guts taunting them wont cause them to attack you.

[Asus]

Originally posted by TheFinkinator:

taunting them wont cause them to attack you.

They will eventually attack you. Just keep spamming the taunt. It could take awhile if your skill isn't very high.