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Trading and trade-related tasks. The ability to get better prices for items you sell, and lower prices for items you buy.— In-game description

Barter is a Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Fallout Tactics, Fallout: New Vegas and Van Buren skill.

The Barter skill is primarily used in the buying and selling of items, such as trading with a merchant or scavenger. In general, the higher this skill level is, the lower prices will be when purchasing items, and the higher they will be when selling items. It is the primary factor in price determination, and is also offset by the Barter skill of the non-player character in question. The skill is also used in certain dialogue options with non-player characters, where certain responses require Barter checks.

Fallout and Fallout 2

Example: A starting Charisma of 5.

Having the Master Trader perk will give the player character an automatic 25% off all goods, and the Good Natured trait will provide an additional 15% to the Barter skill.

Barter is noticeably effective in Fallout and Fallout 2 if you have limited funds. With a low Barter skill, item prices may be as high as 700 for Rad-X and 32,500 for combat armor.

Fallout Tactics

The initial level for Barter is still governed by Charisma, but usually starts out lower than Barter in Fallout.

Barter also determines how much you can sell things for in Fallout Tactics, whereas selling prices were always static in the older Fallout games.

Fallout 3

Bobblehead Barter

"Never forget to walk away with more than you've brought."

Barter Value

Example: A starting Charisma of 5 and Luck of 5.

Derived Values

  • Modifier is normally 100%, but can go up or down in 10% increments. For example, if you're nice to Gob he'll pay at 120% and sell for 80% of normal.
Barter Sell % Buy %
0 45 155
20 54 146
40 63 137
80 81 119
100 90 110

A Barter skill of 11 allows the player to sell at 50% of the rated value of an item. Each 5 point increase in score only increases sale prices by approximately 2.25 percent. A barter skill of 86 is required to buy ammunition costing 3 caps at value from a normal merchant, while if you have a 10% discount (e.g. in Rivet City) only 57 skill is needed, or with a 20% discount (possible with Seagrave Holmes & Bannon) a measly 21 skill works. However, the Barter skill does not reduce the charge for having merchants repair items.

A high Barter is a good choice for players with low Strength, since they do not have much room to carry many items and, subsequently, have less things to sell. However, having a companion partially negates this, since you can put around 200 pounds of weight on him or her.

Barter Based Perks

Perk Required Level Additional Requirements
Master Trader 60 14 Charisma 6

Available Discounts

Interactions that require Barter skill

A number of dialog based trading can be altered with sufficient Barter.

Ways to Increase Barter

Permanent
Temporary

Notes

  • The player will eventually have more bottle caps than is possible to spend, so deciding whether or not to put points into Barter during character development is a strategic decision. Barter is best taken early on, to more effectively sell loot or acquire better equipment.

Fallout: New Vegas

Example: A starting Charisma of 5 and Luck of 5.

Barter affects the prices you get when trading with merchants. There are also many barter skill checks in the game that can help you advance in quests by displaying a good sense with money, talking down costs, and talking up rewards. The Barter skill is governed by the Charisma attribute.

General price (before application of reputational fees or discounts) is counted with the same formula as in Fallout 3.

Barter Sell % Buy %
0 45 155
20 54 146
40 63 137
60 72 128
80 81 119
100 90 110

Barter in quests and exploration

While hard to tell in the abstract from the following list, in many cases Barter is offered as an alternative dialogue skill check to Speech (though generally involving paying money) or other skill checks. This may be to help compensate for the fact that Barter on its own may not be as useful as other skills.

Available Discounts

Ways to increase Barter

Permanent
Temporary

Barter-based Perks

Perk Requirement Level Additional Requirements
Pack Rat 70 8 Intelligence 5
Long Haul 70 12 Endurance 6

Van Buren

In Van Buren, as in Fallout and Fallout 2, Barter did indeed have an effect on store prices. However, it also represented a certain level of knowledge about the caravan houses and trading in general, giving it a small role in dialogue. The intended depth to Barter development came in the perks available at higher skill ranks.

Notable Barter experts

Fallout 3

Fallout: New Vegas

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