Fable 2 tactic and spoiler

I’ve been playing my daughter’s copy of Fable 2.  I was watching, and spotted what I thought to be a.. I’m not going to call it a flaw, just a tactic that’s almost overwhelming.

Basically, how to get rich.  (sigh).  I want to note that if you’ve lots of money you can purchase statistic-enhancing potions, becoming significantly overpowered against most of the foes you’re facing.  Instead of having to choose which to emphasize and hope it’s enough, it’s possible to be… well, it’s possible to be an all-around god if you go long enough.  But it takes money – lots and lots and lots of money.  (Note, you can also use all this money to become King/Queen of the realm.  If you own a largish proportion of the land – and yes, you can buy property here – you get the reward. )

So how do you get money – or rather, what’s the tactic/flaw?  It’s in trade.

At the simplest level, purchase weapons from either the Bowerstone blacksmith or the Oakfield weapons dealer, take them to Fairfax, and sell them to one of the wandering Weapons/Rifle/Melee/Pistol traders.  If you do absolutely nothing to earn a discount, Bowerstone will cost you 1.07% (approx) base cost, and Oakfield will cost you approximately 96%.  You can modify that by making them like you at which point you get to purchase the Bowerstone stuff at an additional 19% discount – that’s about 89% and the Oakfield stuff for about 77%.  The sale price at Fairfax is around 125% (132 if you are buying).  You can do this purchase and sale every other “day”, though if you’re using Oakfield as the far end (and walking instead of using the carriage) you’re using up one day just to travel.  Using Oakfield and the “we love you” numbers, every 77 gold you spend will return approximately 125 in return — just over a 58 gold (or 75% profit).  And it’s possible to be worse. Or to be more accurate, get even larger returns.

First, there are sales.  (and, sometimes, shortages).  Sales and shortages modify the amount by 25 or 50%.  Yes, that means you’re purchasing your stuff at a 55 or 69% discount.  Those are great, but there is another action.  As I said, you can purchase buildings. And if you own the shop you get a 39% owner’s discount.  Now the owner discount overrides the “we love you” discount.  Big deal – you’re getting 39 instead of 19 percent off; and the sales prices still modify.  Catch the 50% and you are paying 11% of the base price, modified by the economy.  The game won’t allow the shop to give the items to you for free, but it’s darn close.

And if you own the shops the sales are just gravy.  In a few hours of play I raised my wealth to over 100,000 while not yet getting deep in the game.  (I just saw Garth captured, if that helps – i was at 125,000 gold on hand.)  Let me run the detail, again.

Take your first job – blacksmith – and earn a thousand gold or so.  Sweet talk the blacksmith, then buy as many weapons as you can afford.  Run to Fairfax, find a trader who’ll take them, sweet talk them, and sell the weapons.  Go run the story line and quests to get through two days, and come back and buy, then sell.  As soon as the quests take you to Oakfield, do this with the Weapon’s trader as well.  At this time you can stop quests for a bit – till you get bored making money anyway – and start the following.

Go to Oakfield.  Buy weapons.  Go to Bowerstone Blacksmith.  Buy weapons.  Go to Fairfax.  Sell weapons.  Go back to Oakfield.  At the earliest opportunity buy the Oakfield stall.  As soon after that as you can manage buy the Blacksmith store.

One last curlicue.  As you get enough, start purchasing other stores in Bowerstone.  You get the discounts.  You can pull things off the shelves and as owner it’s not stealing.  And most important, every store generates more income.  That 125000 I’m at right now is after purchasing all but one of the Bowerstone Big Stores (haven’t purchased the furniture shop or the tailor yet – hmmm, need the stylist too.)  I also picked up the Oakfield tavern.  I get about 3,600 gold every 5 minutes while I’m playing – it’s almost to the point where being a gunrunner doesn’t pay enough to make it worth my while (grin).  That’s a lie, of course.  I purchase all the weapons at the two stores for about 30,000 these days, and sell them for about 60,000.  That’s ~30,000 per 15-20 minutes of play.

I’d be a lot richer but I keep buying stat enhancing potions.  shrug.

~ by Kirk on November 5, 2008.