Why are shopkeepers finding me annoying?

Question

I've been spending a few months around Vernis, diving into the Puppy cave over and over (and over and over...). When I come back, I sell all the loot to the shopkeepers. Most of it isn't useful to me, and some of it is quite valuable.

So I more or less sell everything to the baker ("Here, have a Spellbook of Teleportation! What do you do with it? I dunno."), until he runs out of cash, then the Innkeeper ("I have this doomed breastplate I don't want. Give it to your cat or something."), and then on down to the General store clerk and the Magic vendor.

One thing I've noticed is that these shopkeepers don't really like me, and I don't know why. The baker, especially, hates me. Still lets me shop, but seriously hates me. The innkeeper finds me annoying, and the other clerks are definitely trending downwards on the likability scale. It doesn't look like they pay me less for my items, but I might be wrong about that.

Why is this? Is it because I'm treating them as convenient useless loot repositories, with no regard to what they actually sell? Will they stop buying my pile of junk if they hate me enough? What can I do to make them like me more? Is there any use in trying to make them like me more?

Answer 1

When you talk to an NPC that isn't an ally in your party, their Impress level may increase or decrease. The direction it goes is based largely on your Charisma score - the lower it is, the likely they'll start to dislike you, and vice versa.

As well, each interaction with an NPC also reduces their "Attract", which is a bar underneath their impress on the talk window. This sorta represents how much of their time they're willing to give up to talk with you and after that point, repeated attempts to talk will usually reduce Impress further.

Shopkeepers actually have a bit of a meh part here (one folks have hoped would be changed at some point) in that choosing to "Buy" or "Sell" with a shopkeeper counts as Talking to them and so it causes both the Attract drop and also changes Impress level. As such, simply doing your business can cause them to start disliking you.

I don't recall that shopkeepers particularly do anything nasty at low levels of relationship though - they'll still do business with you and their prices aren't affected as far as I know.