Charisma Bartering Cap

[Beatmasterfresh]

Hey folks, i'm working on my max difficulty playthrough and it's challenging but going quite swell. One thing that has been keeping me successful is both living in my power armor (Nuclear physicist) and keeping myself stocked up with ammo and power cores. I am convinced that Charisma (though perhaps not as useful as other stats) is most useful for this reason. Preperation.

However, disturbingly I just did an experiment and found out my efforts to maximize the trading potential has hit a cap and any future efforts are in vain. I have maxed my Charisma at 10 stars and wear charisma boosting gear when trading. This places my Charisma at 13. I also have two stars in cap collector to increase my but/sell rates.

I notice a minor increase in my rates from 12 Charisma to 13. However, this must be a limit as anything done to increase it beyond that (Grape Mentats/gear) has absolutely no effect. My Charisma ends up at a crazy 18 and I have nothing to show for it...Except for a damn Mentat addiction.

Has anyone else confirmed that there is a ceiling that can be reached with barter rates?

[zacharyb]

Just make a bunch of water purifiers, and you'll be swimming in caps.

[ImHelping]

Basically, yes. Even Caps collecter only goes so far for trying to sell things for caps.

More importantly. Prices are HEAVILY skewed towards the prices it takes you to buy thing from merchants, than the prices you get for selling to them.

That caps collector for example. With 10 Charisma, two ranks of Caps collecter will get you THREE CAPS more than without it.

with a 100 cap item example (such as a stealth boy).
10 Charisma and 4/8 trader mags: Sells to vendor for 50. You buy it from them for 175.
10 Charisma, 4/8 trader mags, and caps collector ranks: Sells to vendor for 65ish. You buy it from them for 125.

tiny difference when trying to earn profits. Bigger difference when buying things.

[Beatmasterfresh]

That's perfect "I'm Helping!" I burn through supplies like a madman in this playthrough so better buying rates for missles, fatman shells and fusion cores. Heck supply shipments I use too. It is actually a lot of fun for me to be a mogal. However, the change in my current status from 13 to 14 Charisma for buy and sell rates is non existant so I have to assume this is the cap. I am thinking of respecing a little since I found this out. Still high Charisma but not quite as high since I don't use anything above 7 Charisma perk wise.

[CustomGoban]

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Charisma

Buying price is capped at 1.2x item value, and selling price is capped at 0,8 item value. This can be achieved with 15 Charisma and no perks.

[mrmike_49]

an experiment I ran
buying Fusion Cores
base CHR 7: cost of Fusion Core = $295
CHR 8, F.C. =$271
CHR 9, F.C. =$259
CHR 10, F.C. =$ 241
CHR 11, F.C. = $240

and $240 is as low at it goes, even for CHR=17
I have Barter Bobblehead, and I think 2 copies of Vendor magazine, and Cap Collector 1

[CustomGoban]

Also heres an unrelated tip on how to make money by selling ammo. These are the minimum amounts of charisma for ammos price to go up. This is important becauses you can get lots of money on 10 charisma character (including buffs) with the scrounger perk.


6 Char- .50 ammo/2 caps
10 Char- .308, .44, Fusion Cells, Shotgun/2 caps
13 Char- .50/3 caps
15 Char- 10mm, 5.56/ 2 caps.

[Beatmasterfresh]

Great advice from everyone thanks! I was gettin the same results as MrMike but without the magazines. However i needed 13 Charisma to cap out the Fusion Core at 240

[ghpstage]

Due to the cap, how easy it is to boost charisma by enormous amounts temporarily with beer, grape mentats and clothes and how easy it is to get worth a lot to sell in htis game charisma is only worth having for any perks you want.

Special note on fusion cores, a core has the same value whether its full or at 1/100 so if you take near empty cores out of your power armour before they drain fully, or reload your gattling gun when the mag is near empty you can sell them to cover most of the cost of a new one.

[Beatmasterfresh]

Thats tricky! I like that

[Makeithappen]

Interesting. I am just past level 50 on a charisma build and I have most of the magazines. I fail to see any benefit from getting more of the junktown mags since I have charisma past 15 with Reginald's Suit. Purified Water will not sell past 16 caps per in my game.



Speech checks at 10 charisma seems to be 100% success.
buying and selling no price change past 10.
I've seen reports you can get your charisma to like 31.
From my research someone said the only thing charisma is good for that high is the amount of settlers you can have in one settlement.

So are we saying there is an actual cap at 15?

[Proconsul]

Originally posted by baulthazar:

Speech checks at 10 charisma seems to be 100% success.
buying and selling no price change past 10.
I've seen reports you can get your charisma to like 31.
From my research someone said the only thing charisma is good for that high is the amount of settlers you can have in one settlement.

So are we saying there is an actual cap at 15?

Since you asked the question 4 months after the thread died, I figured it wasn't too inappropriate to provide the clarifying answer 9 months after that. (Besides, this thread is ranking high on Google searches on this issue, so others wanting to know are likely to see it.)

As was already said, when it comes to bartering the cap is on the pricing, not on the stats that are used to calculate the pricing. No matter how many issues of Tales of a Junktown Jerky vendor you get, no matter how high your charisma or whether or not you got the Barter bobblehead.....prices are capped based on the base cost of an item. You can never buy an item for less than 120% of its base cost and never sell one for more than 80% of base cost. Ever. No matter what mix of barter-improving means you employ. And if you get all of those Junktown mags plus the barter bobblehead, then CHA may stop helping at a score as low as 9 or 10 (iirc).

Now as to the Charisma stat itself, no it isn't hard capped, though it is soft-capped at 31. It will stop effecting barter prices once you hit the barter cap, and you will hit that cap at a lower charisma if you get magazines and/or the barter bobblehead. But charisma also sets your max settlement population, as you remarked, which is calculated as CHA+10. So sure, you can get your charisma to the soft cap of 31 (temporarily!) if you want and it WILL be better than having just 15. Not better on prices, true, but your settlement population cap will be 41 instead of 25, for the duration of the chems and alcohol you took to get there. That is long enough to push a settlement to a higher pop, as the pop limit only determines whether the settlement can take another settler - it won't lose settlers to return to a lower pop limit when the drugs wear off or you change your gear.

By the way, when I say "soft-cap" above, I mean it in the sense that in the unmodded game there is no combination of items, drugs, etc. that can push it higher than 31. However, if you mod in some high-CHA items the game will allow your CHA score to go even higher than that.

[wellsoul2]

This is funny because after a certain level I end up with so much water and crops and junk to sell that it is academic. I end up making shops to sell to and dump all the items to.

After playing over 1000 hours I find it hard to keep up with all the trading.

Also all the settlers....seems I spend all my time outfitting them and moving the unemployed to another settlement. I end up storing all of my settlement beacons eventually.