Master Trader Merchants gain infinite/unlimited gold

True Story...

One day, I came out from a bloody dungeon with barely any strength left. My bags were filled at capacity, I even had to drop some valuable loot to be able to travel safely to the nearest city. When I arrived in Whiterun, I visited Adrianne Avenicci to sell my treasures. After a couple items, she ran out of gold so I had to visit Ulfberth War-Bear next. Then, I went to Belethor, Arcadia, Elrindir, Eorlund Gray-Mane and finally Farengar Secret-Fire. The town's merchants litteraly ran out of gold. So I decided to visit Solitude's merchants then Riften's to sell what remained of my treasures. It took me over a week to sell everything.

So what! That's a common tale, I hear you say? What does it have to do with us?

Let me enlighten you and let us rejoice in the glory of the Nines as our prayers have been heard! As of this very moment, all merchants across Tamriel and beyond have been granted an infinite amount of gold!

Ahhhhh! But there are other mods that give merchants a ton of gold you replied to me.

Oh no! Noooooooo young one! No mod does what mine does... Simply adding gold to a merchant merely delays your misery, wouldn't it be much better if merchants never run out of gold instead? Let that sink in for a moment... NEVER RUN OUT OF GOLD...

I can hear you asking yourselves if your first born will be enough? Fret not brothers and sisters as this one is granted for free, we're of Dovahkin blood, we're family. Just help this humble prophet spread the word so all our brothers and sisters can see the light!

How does it work?

In simple words, the barter dialogue has been modified so every time you ask a merchant What have you got for sale?, it adds 5 times the basic amount of gold to the merchant if you have the Master Trader perk.

To resplenish gold once a merchant doesn't have enough left, simply exit the barter menu and ask again What have you got for sale?

The longer explanation

Merchants keep their barter gold in the same hidden chest they use to keep their inventory, which means it's governed by leveled list laws.

Since the barter gold is technically not on the merchant, you can't pickpocket that gold or temper with it directly, at least not in a live fashion.

To circumvent this problem, this mod adds gold directly on the merchant before the barter menu appears. It's like reverse-pickpocketing, an invisible hand place gold in the merchant's pockets instead.

The final effect is the gold added on the merchant adds up with the barter gold, giving the merchant more gold.

To avoid exploits, the mod removes the gold on the merchant as soon as you quit the barter menu. Killing the merchant or asking "What have you got for sale?" multiple times in a row will not result in any gain.

Gold formula

Barter = Basic + New Master Trader Effect + Investment + Nerfed Vanilla Master Trader Effect

Barter is the total gold the merchant has to barter with you

Basic gold depends on the type of merchants (see table)

New Master Trader Effect gold is 5x the Basic gold

Investment gold is 500 if you invested in the merchant or 0 if you didn't

Nerfed Vanilla Master Trader gold is always 50

City blacksmith or fence
1000
General goods or some of Riften's street vendors
750
Apothecary, spell vendor or town blacksmith
500
Orc blacksmith
400
Innkeeper
100
Hunter, jeweler, peddler or street vendor
50
Limitations
The effect applies only if you have the Master Trader perk

You need to invest yourself to get some goodies.

Unlimited Gold doesn't mean Unlimited Selling Price

To address the gold problem, all the mods I've seen go in the same way: they add a lot of gold to merchants. The unfortunate effect is you can sell 1 item for a disproportionate amount of gold. My mod address this problem by limiting the total amount of gold available, but replenish the merchant's gold to avoid waiting the usual 2 days or the need to find another merchant.

Not all merchants are equals

To be more realistic, the gold added is proportional to the merchant type. For example, a city blacksmith has 1000 gold, so with Master Trader he will have an extra 5000 to spare, which brings it to a total of 6000 gold. On the other hand, a street vendor has 50 gold, so he will have an extra 250 gold which brings it to a total of 300 gold.

The vanilla Master Trader perk only gives 50 gold instead of 1000 now

This was done to keep balance and avoid messing with leveled list. The original 1000 gold was balanced for a blacksmith, but it was out of proportion for a street vendor who had 50 gold to begin with. Since an extra 50 gold won't unbalance a street vendor, it's a good compromise to avoid compatibility problems.

Investments and leveled gold have no effect on the gold added on the merchant

Including those would unbalance merchants' gold unnecessarily and would require a much more complex solution.

The gold on a merchant will never be greater than 20k

Technically speaking, it's impossible for a vanilla merchant to have 20K on him/her/it. The only way this could ever happen is if a mod introduces a custom merchant with gold on himself. In that case, this mod caps the gold to 20K to avoid the merchant gold bug where the gold get stuck at 30k something and you receive nothing for things you sell. I chose the 20k value because I didn't want to get in the way of other mods too much. Normally, you'll never get near that amount of gold on a merchant.

A merchant that doesn't use the standard dialogue to barter with you will not benefit from this mod

You could ask the author to add the functionality to his mod or do it yourself. I include the sources for that reason. Normally, it should work out of the box as modders don't tend to stray too far when it comes to this aspect of the game.

Installation
Requirements

Latest version of Skyrim (Original or Special Edition)

Install (auto)

For an automatic install without risk of errors, I suggest you use the NexusModManager

Install (manual)

For a manual install, extract the files from this mod and copy them to the appropriate folders

Compatibility
  • Compatible with everything that doesn't modify the "barter" dialogue branch. To my knowledge, only Vendor Sale Delay - GONE does that
  • Compatible with mods that modifies the Master Trader perk as long as you load my mod first. The only downside to having such a mod is the Master Trader description in the perk screen won't be the one from my mod. It's only aesthetic, my mod will be perfectly fine
  • Compatible with mods that add gold to merchants, but the gold added/replenished by Master Trader won't change, nor does the 20k limit
FAQ
Known Issues

Merchants enthralled by Miraak to build pillars in Solstheim will simply not work. The problem isn't easy to fix as they're not considered by the game as NPC, at least not by the console or the Papyrus engine. Since they're not NPCs, I can't resplenish their gold. Fixing this would mean changing a couple things in the Dragonborn's main quest... Let's just say I wouldn't dare try to touch this with a ten foot pole, so I don't plan on fixing this. In any case, you can still find merchants in Solstheim that weren't enthralled and work flawlessly, use those instead.

Do you use scripts?

There seems to be a lot of FUD about scripts so let me explain a couple things. Scripts are part of the game, without them vanilla Skyrim wouldn't work at all. All vendors and trainers are purely scripted. Most of the quests wouldn't work without scripts and there must be countless other scripted things in that game I never thought about.

Scripts aren't inherently bad, inexperienced mod authors are. Because mod authors used badly explained functions in the past, which is the Creation Kit wiki's fault, scripts have been pointed as the cause for all the problems in the world... Like most things in life, clueless people will mess things up, but those that do know how to work with them can do wonders. As a professional programmer myself, I make sure to the best of my knowledge that all my scripts won't cause you any trouble. I also make sure they are upgradable and can be stopped at anytime.

With that said, yes there are scripts in my mod. In fact, the game is made in a way where the barter menu is always called by script so I kinda had no choice. Those scripts cannot mess your game and are extremely fast to execute. I also packaged the sources in case you want to look at them and decide for yourself. Stop worrying your world's gonna implode and enjoy the mod.

Any future plans?

I'll fix problems (if any), offer support and answer questions when needed.

Credits

Amgepo (Vilja in Skyrim) for giving me the right hints on giving infinite gold to a merchant

Emma (Vilja in Skyrim) for introducing me to amgepo which was invaluable in getting this done

Recommendations

Trade and barter introduces some variability in the merchants gold. You can still use it to add more gold to merchants if you wish to

Trade Routes allows you to be a successful traveling merchant

Download

Master Trader is available on Nexusmods.com