How To Invest in Stores in Skyrim?

how to invest in stores in Skyrim
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The economy in Skyrim is not ideal. Still, there are a few good opportunities to earn some gold if you have the necessary skills. You will earn the majority of your gold through looting and trading. Meaning you will loot some Ancient Nordic Ruins or Dwemer Ruins and trade your “junk” back to eager merchants that dot the cities and settlements of Skyrim. There’s one minor setback when it comes to this strategy, as merchants often don’t have enough gold to buy the most valuable items from you, at least not with fair prices. There is a possibility of investing in stores and, thus, increasing the amount of money a certain merchant has at its disposal. Before we move on to a more detailed analysis, let’s see how to invest in stores in Skyrim. 

You can invest in stores in Skyrim as soon as you acquire the Investor perk from the Speech skills tree. This perk will allow you to invest 500 gold in merchants, which will increase the gold that they have at their disposal permanently. As soon as you activate the perk, the option to invest in a store should appear among other dialogue options as soon as you interact with merchants. However, keep in mind that many merchants in Skyrim are bugged, and in some cases, it’s impossible to invest in their stores. 

Now that we’ve answered the main question, it’s time to analyze the issues of investing in Skyrim in a bit more detail. If you want to find out how to make the most money out of every transaction in Skyrim, stay with us and keep reading!

Can you invest in a store in Skyrim? 

It is possible to invest in a store in Skyrim as soon as you reach level 70 in speech skill and unlock the Investor perk. Investor perk gives you to option to invest 500 gold in a specific merchant and thus increase his pool of money. It’s not much by any means, but it can really make a difference if you invest in several – or all possible merchants in the game. 

As you know, merchant’s gold is reset every 48 hours, and the sums they have at their disposal can range anywhere between 100 gold to 4000 gold depending on their specific merchandise, factions, and your own skill in Speech. There are several ways to increase the merchant’s total gold, and if you’re looking for a list of merchants with the most gold in the game, we’ve covered this in the past, so you can check out that list as well. 

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Most Valuable Enchantments in Skyrim (Ranked)

How to invest in stores in Skyrim?  

As we’ve already mentioned, you can invest in a store as soon as you unlock the perk Investor in the speech skill tree. To unlock the Investor perk, you need to have speech skills at least level 70, and the Merchant perk likewise needs to be activated. 

As soon as you unlock the Investor perk, a dialogue option will appear when you interact with the merchant offering you the opportunity to invest 500 gold in his store. There are some limitations, however. You cannot invest in innkeepers and jewelers. The same goes for thieves guild fences. You will never get an option to invest in their stores. 

Investor perk

Certain bugs are affecting some of the merchants in the game. For example, Lod and Zaria from Falkreath can never be invested in unless you have an Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch. Most such bugs were eventually patched, but still, they might resurface at any time, barring you from ever reaping the benefits of the Investor perk. 

Still, there are alternative means to increase the available gold of merchants even if you can’t invest in them. 

How to increase merchant gold in Skyrim? 

You can increase merchant gold in Skyrim through investing and through the Master Trader perk. We’ve already covered the investing, and now it’s time to analyze the Master Trader perk in a bit more detail. 

Master Trader perk can be unlocked when you max out your speech skill, this means that you need to have speech 100 and the Fence perk unlocked. As soon as you unlock the Master Trader perk, every merchant in the game gains additional 1000 gold for bartering. This is a hefty sum of gold, and it really makes a difference if you want to sell a large amount of cheaper items or some high-end items in the game like Daedric items.

Master trader perk

Master Trader perk, however, does not affect jewelers, meaning that the gold those specific merchants have at their disposal is pretty much limited to what they have at the start of the game. It affects every other type of merchant, and if we combine it with the additional 500 gold from the Investor perk, you can easily increase the gold of merchants in the game by 1500 gold. It all depends on your willingness to invest your precious perk points into the speech skill tree, and it’s easy to acquire and allocate those points when the legendary skills are taken into account. 

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How to increase merchant gold in Skyrim by using commands? 

You can increase the amount of gold that Skyrim merchants have by using the targeted “additem” command. To do this successfully, follow these steps: 

  1. Open the console by pressing “~.”
  2. Click on a merchant whose gold you would like to increase. 
  3. Type additem.000000 f [amount of gold you wish to add], and press enter. 
  4. Exit the console and interact with the merchant again. The merchant should have a specified amount of gold to barter with you. 

When you use this command, try not to go overboard with the money. If you add more than 32767 gold to the merchant, the whole bartering system will be glitched, and you will not be able to earn money from transactions. It’s always a good idea to limit them to 32000 gold and simply repeat the additem command if more funds are needed. 

And that would be all. If you’re interested in more Skyrim-related content, check out our guide on selling your house in Skyrim

Starfield Beats Skyrim’s “Concurrent Players Record,” but the Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story

Starfield surpasses Skyrims concurrent player count
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Bethesda’s most recent launch of Starfield promised to be the largest in the company’s history, just like the massive game itself. Even though the developers were criticized for some exploration aspects of the game, to put it plainly, lack of things to do on some planets and lack of diversity on the planets in general, the launch did manage to surpass another legendary game from Bethesda’s repertoire, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Skyrim turns 12 years old in just a few short months, and around 12 years ago, it registered the peak concurrent players count of 287,411, according to SteamDB. Starfield managed to surpass that number a few times now, as 13 hours ago, the game registered a peak concurrent player count of 330,723 players in the game. 

Starfield playercount

Although the peak seems humble when compared to some other games, it’s important to note that Steam is not the only platform on which the game was released on. Due to lucrative deals, many players instead opted out to try out the game on Microsoft’s Game Pass, so what we’re seeing on Steam is a far cry from the real number of players. 

Starfield also hadn’t managed to dethrone Bethesda’s other giant, Fallout 4. At one point 8 years ago, the game registered an all-time peak of 472,962 concurrent players, as the interest in the game was enormous.

Starfield’s number look humble, at least on Steam, but it’s important to take into account that the franchise is also rather new, and players really don’t know what to expect considering an overwhelming amount of both positive reviews and criticism of some of the game aspect’s that were supposedly overhyped. 

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In any case, we don’t expect Starfield to fall off the radar anytime soon. The developers have announced the release of modding tools, scheduled to launch sometime in 2024. Even in the absence of official modding tools, its modding community is thriving, with thousands of mods already uploaded and ready to improve the game in several aspects that the players found lacking.

One thing that ensures the longevity of most Bethesda games is its modding fanbase, and we have no doubt that Starfield will see some drastic unofficial upgrades in the next several months and, due to them, perhaps even dethrone Fallout 4. 

The Elder Scrolls VI Is Still 5+ Years Away & Might Not Be Available on PlayStation, Says Microsoft’s Mike Spencer

The Elder Scrolls VI Is Still 5 Years Away Might Not Be Available on PlayStation Says Microsofots Mike Spencer
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It’s been 11 and a half years since The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released, and despite the game being re-released numerous times and content being added both officially and through the modding community, fans are eagerly awaiting tidbits of news regarding the so-far unnamed sixth installment in the franchise.

Bad news came last week when during the Activision Blizzard FTC Trial, Microsoft’s Mike Spencer announced that the game might still be 5+ years away. 

In December of last year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced its intention to block Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a deal worth $68.7 billion. Recently, a federal court in California issued a temporary restraining order, as requested by the FTC, which effectively halts the Microsoft-Activision Blizzard deal for the time being.

Last week, the FTC was seeking a preliminary injunction against Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. If successful, it would prevent the completion of the acquisition while the FTC conducts its review of the transaction’s compliance with U.S. antitrust laws.

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The granting of a preliminary injunction would have a significant impact on Microsoft and Activision Blizzard’s plans, potentially even jeopardizing the deal. The acquisition was initially expected to close by July 18, 2023. If the injunction is imposed, the parties would either have to renegotiate or face the possibility of the deal falling through.

An evidentiary hearing between Microsoft, Activision Blizzard, and the FTC is scheduled for August 2, which is after the upcoming deadline in July.

During the hearing, Mike Spencer mentioned the probable Elder Scrolls VI release window 

“It’s many years away, but it’s a game we have announced we would begin working on. “I think we’ve been a little unclear on what platforms it will launch on, given how far out the game is. It’s difficult for us right now to nail down exactly what platforms that game will launch on.”

IGN

“As I said with Elder Scrolls 6, it’s so far out it’s hard to understand what the platforms will even be at this point. It’s the same team that’s finishing Starfield, which comes out this September. So we’re talking about it being likely five-plus years away.”

Spencer’s words did little to quell the worry that Bethesda’s most famous franchise won’t be available on Play Station, and the fans that once welcomed healthy competition in the form of PS exclusives are now calling for fairer release practices. 

In any case, considering everything we’ve heard, there’s going to be quite some time before we hear & see anything solid related to Elder Scrolls VI. 

Bethesda is usually delaying its flagship IP as long as possible to ensure the best experience possible for fans, and considering the probable scope of the game and technologies involved in making it; it’s not surprising that the game is taking so long. 

How Do You Use the Investor Perk in Skyrim?

how to use investor perk in Skyrim
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A significant part of Skyrim’s gameplay revolves around its economy, and economy, in turn, is mostly influenced by your speech skill that can, when raised enough, help you accumulate quite the wealth. One of the most important speechcraft perks you can acquire is the so-called “Investor” perk, but some players have trouble utilizing this perk to the fullest due to the various bugs. So, we created this guide to explain how to use the “Investor” perk effectively in Skyrim. 

Investor perk will allow you to invest 500 gold in merchants to raise their overall gold available for bartering by 500 gold. All you need to do is navigate to the “I want to invest in your business” option while you are navigating through the dialogue options. However, You should consider that some merchants are affected by a bug that allows you to invest in their store for an infinite amount of times without ever remembering that you already invested in them. Their overall gold, however, will never increase. 

Now that we’ve covered how to use the investor perks, it’s time to analyze it in a bit more detail. If you’re interested in how to unlock the perk and how to utilize it the best, stay with us and keep reading!

What speech level do you need to be to unlock Investor perk? 

Generally, you will level speech every time you trade with the merchants or interact with other NPCs via special dialogue options such as bribe, threaten, etc., and it shouldn’t be too hard to max out speech in the mid-game, as there are various effective guides on how to do it. But luckily for you, you don’t have to be a master level in speech to unlock the Investor Perk. You just need to spend a lot of points in the skill tree and be fairly proficient at it. 

investor perk skyrim

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Which Merchant Has the Most Gold in Skyrim? Top 5 Revealed

You can unlock the Investor perk as soon as you hit level 70 in speech, and if you’ve previously unlocked the “Merchant” perk, that allows you to sell any type of item to any kind of merchant. This is among the most useful perks in the tree, so generally, everybody who decides to orient their character to, well, the speech will strive to get this perk as soon as possible. It makes flipping goods faster than usual, but it also causes your “go-to” merchants to be drained of funds relatively quickly, and this is where the Investor perk comes on. 

What does Investor perk do & how to use it? 

Investor perk allows you to invest 500 gold in merchants that can be found all over Skyrim. The perk is not limited to a type of merchant since you can invest in alchemists, smiths, or general merchants. It really doesn’t matter as long as the merchant in question is not affected by a bug. You can find a list of all investable merchants here, but keep in mind that the bugs that affect various merchants can be fixed with the Unofficial Skyrim Patch at any given time.

As soon as you activate the perk, the first time you wander into a shop and activate the dialogue with the merchant, you will get the following choice “I would like to invest in your business.” As soon as you click on that line, the money will be subtracted from your inventory immediately, and the merchant’s gold will be raised by that amount (500 gold). 

It’s a pretty useful perk to have, but most people are just not willing to invest in it early on in the game. Luckily the legendary skills allow you to acquire all perks eventually if you’re persistent enough and willing to grind. 

You can invest only once in any given merchant.

Bugs that affect the Investor perk 

Most of the players get confused by the perk since the option to invest is not present for at least 1/3 of the game’s merchants, and it’s mostly due to random bugs affecting them. So if the option to invest is missing, there is a really large chance that the merchant in question is simply “un-investable” due to a bug and not by design. You can resolve most of those issues by using various unofficial patches. 

Some bugs are more bizarre in nature, like the one affecting Angeline Morrard in Angeline’s Aromatics. This apothecary will allow you to invest in its store endlessly; as long as you have the funds, the merchant seemingly forgets about it, but, there’s a catch, her base gold will never rise. It will always stay at the pre-investment levels, which results in all your investments being lost forever.

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It’s probably best to avoid investing in Angeline if you don’t plan on installing the Unofficial Patch. 

Ghorza gra-Bagol, an orc smith that can be found near Understone Keep, has the option to invest in her, but the only dialogue option is to refuse the investment making it impossible to raise her standard gold by 500. 

You can install Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch to fix this bug, or you can simply “dispose” of Ghorza and wait for her apprentice, Tacitus Sallustius, to take over the store. In this case, you should be able to invest in the store without any issues. 

What is the difference between the Investor perk and Master Trader perk? 

Both the Investor perk and Master Trader perk allow you to raise the standard gold of merchants in Skyrim by 500 and 1000 gold, respectively, but there are some differences between the two perks. Namely, the Master Trader perk is significantly harder to acquire because it requires you to be level 100 in speech and it requires you to have almost all other prior perks activated. 

master trader perk skyrim

Master Trader perk will also add 1000 gold to all merchants, but it doesn’t require you to invest your own gold in traders. The game does it automatically, meaning it doesn’t cost you anything. It’s a useful perk to have, and it will allow you to accumulate wealth rapidly, but it might take some time for you to get there, and most players don’t want to prioritize speech in early or mid-game.

And by the time you are ready to invest all those points in speech, you might already be rich beyond your wildest dreams, so the perk might appear to be useless.