Do I have to invest on Barter skill?

[DoomNAVY]

I cleared Red Fighter and doing some quests in KRZ.

However, guard ask me to pay 7,000 rubles to enter the bunker.
It was somewhat ridiculous to me cause I don't have enough rubles even selling every junks and other items that I have.

Investment for my cozy place costs approximately 15K to 25K I guess and it is acceptable to me.
But guards at KRZ are helluva RIP-OFF in my opinion.

[flushfire]

In a semi-related note you can get back at that guard somewhat, just look for a bored woman in white around the city

[Blackdragon]

Screw barter and invest in pickpocket and stealth. Combine with DLC +stealth item and just take what you want rather than paying for it.

[Dorok]

Barter is totally optional, with plenty skills points it's fun push Barter high, I have doubt that pickpocket and stealth will match the generated income. But Pickpocket can provide an extra attribute point avoiding a tedious slow murdering through ciggy. For me the problem with Pickpocket is the random it's not appealing me.

[Shining Hector]

Can't really recommend pickpocket, even with 135 pickpocket and 199 stealth, I got caught all the time, and it was still nearly impossible to steal from high end merchants. It takes a lot of skill points and still requires save scumming. A little bit of barter skill is nice, but nearly all barter dialogue options other than a merchant discount have a speechcraft alternative, to get the bunker guard to reduce his price, etc. And it's not very long before you can knock over bandit random encounters for plenty of stuff to sell, anyway.

[Blackdragon]

160 pickpocket + 100 stealth (actually 40, since you get +60 from items) lets you rob the Peregon caravan (not to mention all other caravans). Get fast all the money/guns/armor/ammo/stuff you need for free. 100k rubles, 6B2 vests for entire crew, HK/RPK/AKMS/Remington + Ammo, stims, all kinds of drugs, etc. No "barter skill" can ever compete with that. You can also rob guards of their ammo and stims then kill them easier. And of course stealth is a useful skill in general.

Afterwards kill the bounty hunters for PK/Minimi/PTRD + Altyn/STSH, and you're set for the whole game until you get VVE.

So yeah, pretty useful skill. And you can still use the conversation skill to get discounts on various payments, so barter is useless.

Even before I got high pickpocketing I just killed every caravan I met rather than buying. It gets you XP + more stuff (+ notoriety for juicy encounters later on). Win/win.

[Shining Hector]

To me it's more neither barter nor pickpocket are really worth it. Getting rich isn't hard at all in this game, and if there's something on a caravan you just gotta have but can't afford it, you can just kill them and take it. It's kinda like nobody ever recommends boosting tinkering, because it's not worth the skill points. The best gear is looted or bought rather than crafted. There's no godly weapon or armor that you need 199 tinkering to forge. If there was a skill that raised your radiation resistance, poison resistance, food consumption, etc., it wouldn't be worth buying, either, because none of these are actually a real problem to manage.

[Poppi !!]

I've never pur a point into Barter. There's already the % discount perks in the skill tree to compensate.

[Dorok]

I wouldn't advise lost a perk on 10% price reduction/increase.

I played many run without bother spend any skill points in barter, it's totally fine. But I played a character with some barter focus, I think I gone to 80 then 100 then 120. And it's certainly a change. But it was character INT 11, and past some point it's almost too much.

A quick quick on high barter is certainly a bit special because it's a big influence on economy. But quick start on Speechcraft is so important.