Killing Traders

[Chico One Million]

I have a quest where I may need to kill a trader who sells some items I want. If I kill them can I loot the items they sell off their body?

[Aeternull]

Good Question. Save, kill him, check the answer to your question :)

[「GOLD EXPERIENCE」]

no if you kill trader you dont get all of their goods. only some.

[Eyescream]

Steal all the goodies first. If you can :D

[myhv]

No, you only get a portion of what he sells. You can buy all you want and then kill, and get about a third of your money back (also try pickpocketing some beforehand).

[Angelous Wang]

They will typically only have some of thier shop item, typically the most expensive or rare.

For example if you kill griff, his invisiblity and drudiane will drop, but most of his other stock will not.

[Prester]

i usually

1. check out what he has i realy realy want.

2. use eneryone but the thief to talk to people to turn their vision away and hold them in place if they patrol

3. sneak up and steal ♥♥♥♥


4. run away with everyone, wait for him to notice crime, get angry, search for culpit, find noone since im far away, settle down

5. go to him again, buy the rest of the stuff i realy need from him

6. kill him

-> when they die they drop something between 20% to 50% of their trading stuff, so you might get some great items but half or more of his skillbooks might get lost, so i usually buy important stuff first.

BUT they drop SOME of the gear they sell, and more often than not its the expensive stuff.

[civilization]

Note that the 20% to 50% doesn't affect scripted deaths, at least not re Gawin, and only (so I've read) so long as you've observed their inventory first. The implication is that if you don't observe their inventory before they get killed you get just some random loot (which I presume would not reach anywhere near the same value) and not the skill books. However, the gap between cause and effect means that I haven't tested most of this. All I can confirm is that I managed to get four books off his corpse during one run through and six during another: His entire inventory appeared to be intact each time.

I wonder if it's possible that the difference in the drops is due to a strict combat/non-combat interpretation and whether there are methods of damaging NPC's that could register as non-combat but I have little interest in experimenting.

[Chaoslink]

Often, if you’re worried about it, the best option is to wait to finish that quest until later, when you’re sure. Stingtail and Sebille can be a good example. Simply don’t let her have that conversation until you know you’ve gotten the pyro books you wanted or have access to them elsewhere.