Robbery Economy

Ever wonder who bought all those enchanted items you sold to Belethor? Bandits, of course!

Robbery Economy

Immersion/Economy/Games

Ever wonder who bought all those enchanted items you sold to Belethor? Of course they're bandits!

This mod adds a chance that when you sell a weapon or armor to a general merchandise merchant, the merchandise may accidentally find its way into the hands of bandits around Skyrim.

game console

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The weapons you sell may come back to bite you, but you can sell them twice if you're able to kill the bandits wielding them. It's like recycling, but bloodier!

In terms of immersion, this will give the items you sell a chance of not simply disappearing after you sell them. Instead, they might end up in the hands of bandits! The chance that a merchant will "sneakly" throw away an item is usually about 50%, which means that after an average of 1 or 2 sales, the item will be filtered out. It's rare to find an item that you wiped blood off multiple times.

how it works

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Certain merchants have the opportunity to "steal" the weapons and armor you sell to them. Stored items are placed in "Possible Bandit Gear" chests, which are shared among bandits throughout Skyrim.

When their cell is loaded into the game memory, gangsters are given the opportunity to select an item from the "Possible Gangster Gear" chest. Bandits choose based on their weapon class; warriors use weapons and armor, mages use staffs and robes, and archers use bows and light armor.

Certain merchants are more likely to "hide" goods. Most merchants have a 50:50 chance of selling equipment and ending up in the hands of bandits, but this is different for trustworthy/untrustworthy merchants. (See merchant list below)

The fence will hold any weapons or armor sold to them and will always be used by bandits. You can use this to your advantage, putting more deadly or valuable weapons into the hands of Skyrim's bandits.

Quantity matters, so if you sell 62 magic rings and the merchant keeps them in his collection, you will eventually find those 62 magic rings on the gangster. When supplies are empty, they will no longer draw them.

Most bandits have about a 1 in 3 chance of pulling a piece of equipment from the chest. The boss has an eight out of ten chance. It's frequent enough to become a stable gameplay dynamic, but not so much that it replaces the entire game. You'll notice it changes the way you sell your loot and the way you view gangsters.

Merchants can traffic the following item types: weapons, staffs, armor, clothing, robes, ammunition, jewelry

Please note that the robber will not choose Cross! (The combat AI doesn't know how to fire them.)

compatibility

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Robbers with economy level 471+ are generated. It does this by editing base level bandit actors and adding scripts directly to them.

There are 2 scripts, one that is added to certain merchants' chests (see merchant list) and another script that is added to the level's bandit actors. A summary of the script is below (see Script).

You may run into incompatibilities if: other scripts are also added directly to the merchant's chest, or directly to the level bandits.

However, any mod that affects the merchant's appearance will do! As well as any mods added to the merchant's chest at runtime.

If you do find a compatibility issue, please leave a comment and refer to the comments for more information.

Author's Notes

Bandit Economy was inspired by Reddit posts.

As always, please comment with your experiences and insights. I recently hit 1,000,000 downloads across all my mods, which is a huge milestone for modders in the upcoming Age of Skyrim. I invite you to check out my other mods (if you haven't already), there are links at the top of this page.

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I also contribute to Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil and occasionally drink beer while chatti …