Trading is one of the most important things that you can do in a role-playing game as this opens opportunities to get good items or lots of Gold.
In Baldur’s Gate, there is a mechanic called Merchant’s Attitude, which determines how your trading experience will be when haggling with merchants.
It is possible to improve the attitude of such merchants by being generous in a way that requires you to part ways with some of your items or Gold without getting anything in return.
What is Merchant’s Attitude?
The Merchant’s Attitude system is how happy they are, which will determine how much you need to trade to purchase and how much you will get if you sell.
When a Merchant’s Attitude is high, they will pay more for the items you sell while also selling you their items for cheaper prices.
This is calculated based on their meter, which begins at 1 and is maximized at 100, giving you the best deals when it is at its highest.
How To Increase Merchant’s Attitude?
To increase a Merchant’s Attitude, you will need to donate items, which is considered as an investment in some way by not taking anything in return.
You can do this by placing items that you would rather give away to increase their attitude, and instead of balancing the deal by pressing the “scale” icon, you go ahead and press barter.
Doing a barter wither pressing the scale icon will prevent the vendor from adjusting the trade if you are giving more to them, which means you don’t get gold for selling.
This will result in you donating any items that have not been matched by price from the merchant’s side, which will increase the Merchant’s Attitude points.
Each 6 Gold or 6 Value that you donate will contribute to 1 point, making the maximum Merchant’s Attitude reachable with an overall amount of 6 Gold/Value donated.
How To Donate Items?
To donate items, you will need to press barter if you have already placed items that you want but the value you are trading should be more than what they are giving.
A fast way to donate is to give them a bunch of Gold but if you have junk on you that you will not need, you can trade these as well.
You will be able to see the overall value of everything you have put up for sale as well as how much value they are trading back for it. (0 means you are donating it all)
Verdict
Donating is great if you plan on returning to a merchant now and then but if you don’t plan on buying anything, it is not worth it.
A Merchant’s Attitude will go up depending on how much you give to them, so the more you donate, the higher the points go.
Most of the time it is better to just sell your items for all the Gold that a merchant has and just donate the rest when they have nothing else so you can buy certain items for cheaper prices.
