Where to sell high value items

[theLegendofWalt]

honestly, most of the ingredient effects i learned from random experimenting with ingredients... the few i didnt learn i googled. then i found a handy list that would have been helpful, learning all the effects brewing 56 potions... but a lot of the fun i had was from randomly eating ingredients and brewing them together.

 

[JoeReese]

Moris, try sending your follower to wait somewhere they can't interfere while you visit a cleared Imperial/Stormcloak camp. There should be one unkillable officer there, with whom you can level your melee, armor, and restoration skills all day long, if you like.

Once I reached a certain armor level, nothing he did hurt me enough to bother healing, so I would smack him down, heal him, then do it again. I gained levels in light armor, one-handed, and restoration, left and right.

 

[JoeReese]

If this will help you any, the gf and I have been taking notes on what readily-available ingredients will net a few gold. This is in no way a complete list, and I am still occasionally finding inaccuracies from hurried writing or late-night exploring, but it may help you some. In higher levels (read: when I have the excess money to do so) I've taken to buying most of every alchemist's ingredient list, save for the really expensive ones. Lower levels, I may buy everything worth a single-digit price, or something like that. In lower levels, I find myself harvesting everything I can get my hands on in-game and taking them to the enchanter.

This list is only what I've found lucrative/useful when at lower levels and when I can pick these things up off the side of the road and make some money. Some of them will have negative effects as well as positive, but will still get you some gold, so I tend to create "use" and "sell" potions separately.

Others, please correct anywhere you see a bad recipe.

Weakness to magic: salt, taproot

Sneak: frost mirriam, purple mtn flower

Invisibility: chaurus eggs (falmer dungeons), luna moth wing (sell) or...

chaurus eggs, vampire dust (use) * vampire dust is expensive, but the moth wings

have a negative effect.

Paralysis: canis root, imp stool or canis root, swamp fungal pod (but not imp stool/swamp fungal)

Slow: deathbell, salt pile or deathbell, river betty (adds damage component and higher value

Poison - dmg health: nirn root, red mtn flower

Fortify Block - bleeding crown, tundra cotton

Fortify Conjuration - blue mtn flower, lavender

Poison - lingering dmg magicka: purple mtn flower, torchbug (also restores stamina)

Poison - dmg magicka regen: bear claws, hanging moss

Regen health: namira's rot, juniper berry

Regen magicka: garlic, salt pile

Resist fire: snow berries, fly ammotia

Resist frost: purple mtn flower, snow berries (or frost mirriam for more value)

Resist Magic: bleeding crown, tundra cotton

Resist poison: garlic, thistle

Restore health: blue mtn flower, wheat

Restore magicka: red mtn flower, white cap

 

[JoeReese]

When you go to the alchemy table with all your ingredients on you, what it shows you depends on what potions you've already successfully discovered. For example, restore health may be highlighted and will point out which ingredients currently in your inventory have been used to make restore health previously. As you create new, or the same, potions with new ingredients, the list updates. I generally start out with the cheapest/easiest and then I will experiment some when I have excess, just to the list will eventually point out every possibility with the ingredients I have on me. When you can select a potion and see 4 or 5 different possible ingredients, you can experiment with clicking two or more and then changing your selections, seeing which gives you the higher price or the greatest power, without actually creating the potion until you're where you want to be. That is helpful for making money later, because there are too many variables for me to remember or even try to write down.

 

[JoeReese]

Where I hope this will do you some good is in the low overhead. Almost everything here can be readily found, walking around Skyrim, or in the caves and dungeons. I have learned, over a few play throughs, that I'd rather leave a sword in a dungeon than to dump ingredients which will buy me 10 swords later. Take everything you can get your hands on, ingredient wise, and don't forget the things hanging from the ceiling.

Red, purple, and blue mtn flowers are everywhere along the sides of the road. On the road from Whiterun to Fort Greymoor, there is quite a bit of tundra cotton, as well as lavender. Most of your mushrooms can be found in caves. White River Watch, on the mountain between Whiterun and High Hrothgar, has a pile of different alchemical mushrooms in it, and swamp fungal pod is in abundance in the area between Morthal and Solitude.

If you ask the Whiterun mage, Farengar, if he is the only wizard in town, he will give you a mission to take something to Arcadia right downtown. When you do this, she will be your friend and a lot of the items on her counter will change from steal to take. (Be slow and deliberate about this, though). Also, if you join the College of Winterhold, even before starting the Saarthal mission, the alchemy and enchanting lab in the hall upstairs are open to you. Good ingredient shopping there.

Good luck. Crank out that cash.

 

[Bad-People]

Simply improving the speech skill will get you better prices, but not by much. Taking the first perk under the speech tree, and possibly the subsequent 4 levels of it will get you much better prices.

Depending on what patches you have there is an elf in Riften who works the counter at the black-brier meadery whom will repeat the same speech challenge over and over. One could master speech in a half hour with him, though I wouldn't recommend doing it all at once because focusing solely on speech(As it would raise you by about 7 levels) might make combat harder.

 

[Moris]

Moris, try sending your follower to wait somewhere they can't interfere while you visit a cleared Imperial/Stormcloak camp. There should be one unkillable officer there, with whom you can level your melee, armor, and restoration skills all day long, if you like.

Once I reached a certain armor level, nothing he did hurt me enough to bother healing, so I would smack him down, heal him, then do it again. I gained levels in light armor, one-handed, and restoration, left and right.

I meant, actually, that restoration was a bugger to level naturally, just in the course of ordinary gameplay.... without doing something that breaks immersion.

Speech goes up just from selling stuff. No need to power level it. Restoration is another story.

 

[Bad-People]

That's because restoration is expected to be used a lot. By spell casters at least that's why that and destruction level slower than other magic skills, because they'll probably be used more.

 

[Moris]

That's because restoration is expected to be used a lot. By spell casters at least that's why that and destruction level slower than other magic skills, because they'll probably be used more.

Oh, totally. I'm not arguing with game mechanics. If using heal spells levelled you as fast as casting muffle, the game would become very hard to play. It is what it is. I'm just making an observation that there isn't really any need to powerlevel speech (or pickpocket or lockpicking or sneak or block or any melee skill). All of these will reach 100 during the course of normal gameplay, if they are the sorts of things your character does.

 

[Rye01]

Back at the selling stuff comments - does it matter where you sell an item? In Whiterun there is like seven places to sell loot.

 

[JoeReese]

Back at the selling stuff comments - does it matter where you sell an item? In Whiterun there is like seven places to sell loot.

Early on, yes. Each merchant will only buy items which fall in their arena. Blacksmiths will only buy weapons and armor, ores and ingots, etc. The alchemist will buy dragon bones and scales, but will rarely have the coin for more than one of each. The general goods merchant will buy most things, but is usually among the poorest. (not counting the cart merchants)

With a high enough speech skill and perks, you can sell anything to any merchant, which helps some. Where hunting for "the right merchant" becomes very handy is with the investor perk, as most will increase only by about 500 Septims, except Riverwood, which shoots up to 10,700 Septims. That means one-stop buying and selling, more time for combat play.