Daggerfall:Items

Miscellaneous Items
There are many items in Daggerfall which either appear to have a purpose but don't, or don't appear to have a purpose but do.
Light type objects, candles, lanterns, torches etc... are useless and can be sold at a general store or pawn shop.
Holy tomes, holy daggers, and other objects don't appear to have any value other than for selling.
These items, although they cannot be equipped, will sometimes carry enchantments. When this is the case, they can be used directly from your inventory. 
Bandages don't appear to have any real use, but apparently if you sleep with one in your inventory when you wake up it will be gone.  Not sure if it actually helps heal you or not.
Paintings don't appear to have any other use than aesthetics, and when you click on one with info selected, you will see a random image with a random title rather than information.

See here for a more complete list.

Some quests require finding a particular object in a dungeon.
Auriel's Shield - A dull metal plate floating in air.
Finger - A large object which looks more like a bed roll. Was evidence in a missing persons case.
Ingredients - These will look just like they do in your inventory except perhaps a bit bigger and brighter. Usually hard to miss.
Small Statue Sitting on Dungeon Floor: If you click on it, it makes a strange noise and opens one of the red teleport doors.

Shields and Helms
Shields and helms in Daggerfall aren't labeled with their component materials. All helms are universally referred to as helms, while shields are named for their shape rather than their material.

Because armor and weapons tend to have different colors based on their material, some shields and helms can be identified this way; however, certain types of helm and shield will be visually indistinguishable from items of other tiers. Leather, chain, silver, and elven shields share the same appearance, and some types of helm always appear to have a golden coloration. The material a helm is made of can always be identified from its armor rating; a higher-tier helm will have a higher armor rating than one of a lower material, even though they may be identical. The armor rating of a shield is determined by its shape, not its material, but the weight of a shield may still vary between material tiers, and higher-tier shields have higher enchantment capacity.

The material an item is made of can be estimated by attempting to sell it; items made of higher-tier materials will be worth more to any given store.

In Daggerfall Unity, the material of a shield or helm can be displayed alongside its name through an optional setting.

Cheap Items

Several people have noticed that the magical items bought in the mages guild are much cheaper than usual. For example, the list price of a daedric longsword of oblivion is around 7,000 gold, compared with a price of around 40k-50k gold for a regular daedric longsword in a normal shop. That said, these items are already enchanted; if you wish to create a custom enchantment for a daedric longsword, you will have to spend the time (in a dungeon or thieving) or money (purchasing in a store) to get a normal one.

Pre-enchanted items, such as those purchased from Mages Guilds, may be much cheaper than the value of that item's unenchanted equivalent. This is the value of a magical item is determined by its enchantments, rather than by any qualities of the item itself. High-tier items can therefore be acquired at a significant bargain, but because the items are already enchanted, their enchantments cannot be customized, and cheaper magical items will always be weaker than more expensive and more thoroughly-enchanted items.

Good Places to Sell Items

Several shops may offer different prices for the same item; influences of mercantile skill and reputation aside, this will vary mainly based on the quality of the store, which can be determined from the message that appears when entering, but can also vary by location.

In general, the best prices will be offered by shops of the lowest quality, which will be introduced by the following description:
:Rusty relics lie wherever they were last tossed. All the wares show the cracks and chips of shoddy workmanship. A mouse scampers over your feet before burrowing into a nearby sack.

These shops will naturally offer much less to buy as well, so their usefulness extends primarily to offering good prices while selling.

Shops of any given quality may also offer different prices than each other based purely on location; one shop may offer more money than a shop of the same quality the next region over, or even in another town in the same region. Exploration will be required to locate the shops offering the best deals on offloading dungeon treasure.

Computing Item Prices

Around the Iliac Bay, the price of an item will vary based on several factors, including what type of item it is, whether or not it's enchanted, and what material it's made of.

Material Price Modifiers

First, the price modifications of the various materials for armor and weapons. It works like this:
 
The (Base Item Price) here would be the price of the leather version of the item (for weapons the leather and chain versions obviously don't exist but for the sake of simplicity we'll assume they do). The material modifiers are as follows.
 
 
 
	   
	   
           
 
	 
	 
         
 
 
	 
	 
         
 
 
	 
	 
         
 
 
	 
	 
         
 
 
	 
	 
         
 
 
	 
	 
         
 
 
	 
	 
         
 
 
	 
	 
         
 
 
	 
	 
         
 
 
	 
	 
         
 
 
	 
	 
         
 
 
	 
	 
         
 
 

Notes on Material Multipliers:
These values computed by basic trial method by selling/buying various items at a variety of stores. Prices used are the ones displayed in the upper left corner above your character portrait.

The prices of items vary by as much as 20% depending on an unknown variable (reputation relative to storekeeper?). The price fluctuates independently of store quality (stores of same quality can have vastly different prices) and item quality. One can assume this is a random fluctuation and not worry about it too much (ex: the range of the daedric multiplier could actually range anywhere from around 1000-2000).  Take the above values to be the average multiplier.

Base Item Prices
In order for one to calculate the price of any armor/weapon one needs to know not only the material multiplier (above), but the base price of the item.  This base price is simply the price of the leather item.  For weapons, which don't have a leather material we take the price of the iron weapon and divide by three to get the base price.
Notes on Base Prices:
The base price of items fluctuates as much as 20% from store to store. The price also fluctuates according to which region you're in.  As such, the above values are _mostly_ average item prices from a large variety of stores (where possible). They probably won't be 100% the same as the prices you get with your character since the price most likely depends on the mercantile skill (mine's at around 70%) and reputation with merchants.

The prices here are the ones seen above your character's picture at the left when you're selling/buying.  The actual selling price will of course be much less but with a good reputation, the worst quality store, personality and mercantile skill you can  get up to 70% of this price when you sell items.  On the contrary, if you pick your store poorly the selling price may drop to as little as 25% (or so).

Magical Properties Modifiers
The cost of a magical item will be the sum of all magical properties on the item, the object's base price is not considered. For example, an enchanted daedric cuirass will only cost the price of its enchantment divided by 10.
 
The price of bound souls can be found above on this page. The magical properties prices can be found below and are deduced from visiting the mages guilds a few times.  The values appear to remain constant and are not affected by rep, Personality, etc... There are no prices for adding any of the disadvantages to an item (other than the cost of buying a bound soul). One may also note that the required enchantment points for a spell/effect is equal to the price of the enchantment divided by 10.

 
 
 
 
	   
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Notes on Spells:
The enchanting cost for spells is the same regardless of the type of spell, ie, whether cast when strikes, held, or used (although most spells are available only in one category).
 
 
 
 
	   
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More Notes on Item Prices

Sometimes, you just have more items than you can carry, even if you have a wagon. This is especially true when you are fighting inside a big dungeon like Castle Daggerfall, Wayrest, Sentinel, etc. You just can not go outside to unload stuff onto your ship. Then, what items do you put on the wagon: the elven mace, leather pauldron, daedra's heart, or book? If you have space left for the wagon, pick up all loot, by all means. But, when you have more than you can carry, which item should you take, and which should you discard? From a mathematics point of view, if all you care is to sell all these items, you should put items having the highest cost (in Gold Piece - GP) per kilogram (kg) on your wagon. In other words, put the most expensive items pound-for-pound on your wagon. You should take two 1 kg items, each having a cost of 15, instead of one 2 kg item with a cost of 20. Obviously, you must carry your Quest items and powerful weapons. If you wish to use one item, always carry it. If you just wish to sell it for Gold, you can use the tables below for guidance. Books, clothes, and potion ingredients already have their weight and cost descriptions displayed in game. But weapons and armors only display their weight. So, how do you decide what to take?


 
 
 
	 
	 
	 
	 
 
 
	 
	 
	 
	 
 
 
	 
	 
	 	
	 
 
 
	 
	 
	 
	 
 
 
	 
	 
	 
	 
 
 
	 
	 
	 
	 
 
 
	 
	 
	 
	 
 
 
	 
	 
	 
	 
 
 
	 
	 
	 
	 
 
 
	 
	 
	 
	 
 
 
	 
	 
	 
	 
 
 
	 
	 
	 
	 
 
 
	 
	 
	 
	 
 
 

Below is a table listing the base price in cost (GP) per weight (kg) of all weapons and armors. Use it in conjunction with the table above to determine the cost per kg of items made from other materials. The formula is :
 item price (in GP/kg) = (Base price in GP/kg) * (material cost ratio) / (material weight ratio)

For example, you wish to know how much a Dwarven Saber is worth. First, you reference the table below, and find an Iron Saber is worth 9.6 GP/kg. You then reference the table above, and find the material cost modifier of Dwarven is 48 and that of Iron is 3, giving 48 / 3 = 16 for the material cost ratio. You next again reference the table above, and find the weight modifier of Dwarven is 1.5 and that of Iron is 2, giving 1.5 / 2 for the material weight ratio. With that information, you can calculate the cost for a Dwarven Saber as follows: 9.6 * 16 / (1.5 / 2) = 563.2 GP/kg. You might then similarly determine the value of an Elven Helm, resulting in 96 * 8 / 1 = 768 GP/kg. You thus find, by weight, an Elven Helm is worth much more than a Dwarven Saber. Similarly, you will find that a Leather Pauldron (90 * (1 / 3) / (1 / 2) = 60) is worth more than an Elven Mace ( 6.7 * 8 / 1 = 53.6 ), kilogram for kilogram.

If you don't have the time to perform all the tedious calculations, here are some rules of thumb : 
Armors of one material, in general, are worth more than most weapons of the next two higher materials.
Cuirasses are worth considerably less than other armor pieces of the same material.
Katanas and Bows are worth much more than other weapons of the same material.
Tower Shields and Kite Shields are the cheapest metal items per kilogram. Unless they are made from special material, take anything else to fill up your wagon. Round Shields and Bucklers fare slightly better, being on the order of a Mace, but are still not very cost-effective. 
Daggerfall has a classic supply-and-demand pricing structure. Very rare items (e.g. those made from Silver or Orcish materials) can sometimes fetch up to 10 times their value as calculated from these tables. As you sell more items, the price of similar armors and weapons will drop. The tables describe more or less the average price. Moreover, the money you receive depends on many factors (merchant skill, shop quality, region, reputation, etc.), but the relative costs between weapons change little. As a result of all this, all prices shown here are necessarily estimates. Errors of 50% on prices for each individual sale are common, considering all the conditions above. Nevertheless, if you've proven a more useful pricing formula, please propose the formula in the "discussion" section of this page.

The following table shows the price in GP per kilogram for non-enchanted iron armors and iron weapons.



Base Price of non-enchanted Armors and Weapons
All values are given in gold pieces.
Armors


Weapons


Weight of non-enchanted Armor and Weapons
All values are given in kg.

Armor



Weapons


Value to Weight Ratios of non-enchanted Weapons and Armor
All values are given in gold pieces per kilogram. (Gold itself is 400 pieces per kilogram.)