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Baldurs Gate 3 provides two options to exchange goods vs gold at merchants.

  • Trade allows to simply buy/sell single items one after the other for a set price.

  • Barter allows to... what? Fill the "barter section" with multiple items + gold and then do a deal against a similar selection of items + gold on the merchants side?

From what I have seen so far there seems to be no difference in price at all - i.e. the actual bartering doesn't even happen: for items I 'barter away' I get the same amount of gold I would get for 'trading' them away, and if I 'barter' for an item I need to offer the same amount of gold as it would cost to just 'trade' it. Or does this somehow depend on skills / ability bonuses which my character doesn't have?

What is the point of bartering? Why would I do it?

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  • I think you can negotiate the actual price. If you click the scales icon, gold is added on either side to balance the values of selected items. I think you can lower or increase the amount and try to buy or sell at a better price, depending on the standing you have with the seller.
    – MeanGreen
    Commented Aug 10, 2023 at 10:55
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    @MeanGreen I have tried this with a moderate CHA bonus (+1 IIRC) and a trader that I have frequently traded with... to no avail. Wasn't able to reduce the amount by even 1 gold.
    – fgysin
    Commented Aug 10, 2023 at 13:51

1 Answer 1

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Bartering is more valuable when you have either high Charisma on the character who initially interacted with the trader, or you have a rapport with the trader.

If you have good rapport or high charisma you can barter for items at less value and determine the success of the deal with the feedback under the traders portrait.

Here is a page about bartering with vendors. They suggest the following...

To increase merchant attitude, you need to donate 6 gold pieces (or 6 gold’s worth of items) per attitude point, up to a max of 100 points. This means donating 600 gold pieces will max out a vendor’s attitude.

At 100 attitude, the cost of buying items from a particular vendor is reduced by 25%, while the sell price of items you sell to the vendor is increased by 30%. This particular bonus might change depending on the trader, but that’s the general impact of trader affinity. Either way, we suggest improving merchant affinity with vendors who you’ll interact with many times during your campaign. So you may want to wait until you reach Baldur’s Gate before worrying about merchant affinity.

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    Ok, I see. Do we know what the "rules" are for this, e.g. Char +4 bonus = 20% discount or something similar?
    – fgysin
    Commented Aug 10, 2023 at 13:49
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    To increase merchant attitude, you need to donate 6 gold pieces (or 6 gold’s worth of items) per attitude point, up to a max of 100 points. This means donating 600 gold pieces will max out a vendor’s attitude. Source: gamerevolution.com/guides/…
    – Neon1024
    Commented Aug 11, 2023 at 8:06
  • Thanks, that's great info, would make this answer even better.
    – fgysin
    Commented Aug 11, 2023 at 8:31
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    I tried doing this with a vendor in Act 3, but it's taking much more than 600 gold. Donating 1200 gold brought me to an attitude of 50 with Exxvikyap.
    – Kyle Pollard ♦
    Commented Aug 12, 2023 at 23:16

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