Is Mercantile Worth It?

[Seven Samurott]

I'm pretty new to the game and I've seen a lot of conflicting information on the Mercantile skill. A lot of the builds I see on this site have both Persuasion and Mercantile as invested skills. While people on other forums say that Mercantile is worthless. So I wanted to know what the deal is because it seems obvious the community knows something I don't regarding the mechanics.

[cypherusuh]

Auto-pick for me. Special merchandise are very strong in term of high quality availability. Price modifier is secondary benefit for me

[TheAverageGortsby]

Mercantile is so good that it should be a core skill, if you are going to be doing serious crafting.  If you just want to dabble, or make some grenades and maybe cook some drugs, then Mercantile isn't necessary at all.  But if you intend to craft weapons or armor or shield emitters or stuff like that, to use throughout the game, then yes; you need Mercantile. Preferably you need enough that you can buff up to 105 effective skill to unlock the best tier of equipment from the hardest check in-game, but even 80 effective is enough to make a very large difference in what components are available for purchase.

[ciox]

Mercantile is pretty good now because of the numerous skill checks added, the posts that are against it are probably from years ago when that wasn't the case.

[Bruno]

Mercantile is so good that it should be a core skill, if you are going to be doing serious crafting.  If you just want to dabble, or make some grenades and maybe cook some drugs, then Mercantile isn't necessary at all.  But if you intend to craft weapons or armor or shield emitters or stuff like that, to use throughout the game, then yes; you need Mercantile. Preferably you need enough that you can buff up to 105 effective skill to unlock the best tier of equipment from the hardest check in-game, but even 80 effective is enough to make a very large difference in what components are available for purchase.

This, TheAverageGortsby has got it.

If you rely heavily on being able to craft specific gear with the very best components then Mercantile is a good skill that will help you a lot.
But Mercantile is by no means necessary at any time, it is perfectly possible to find necessary components without it.
If you only craft a bit, or mainly drugs that you extract from mother nature, then skip it.

(As a side note, I have never seen any hard evidence that special merchandise is in fact of higher quality than normal goods, other than HEAVY confirmation bias. Anyone got proof of this? AFAIK It just increases your chance of finding something useful.)

[Seven Samurott]

This makes far more sense now. Since most the builds I see in that part of the forum assume you're going to be crafting. And considering that crafting is such a large part of the game.

[cypherusuh]

(As a side note, I have never seen any hard evidence that special merchandise is in fact of higher quality than normal goods, other than HEAVY confirmation bias. Anyone got proof of this? AFAIK It just increases your chance of finding something useful.)

Idk and idc about the truth of special merchandise. But based of 18-ish run I've done, oligarch special merchandise constantly pumping out Q145+ each refresh. Sometimes, the normal merch able to spawn on 120-ish, but so far, I never saw Q150. Checked on all oligarch, Blaine (in this case Q80 pre-drill),and that 2 opposition faction. Tested on Hard and normal difficulty.
But, leather gears, especially Balaclava and Ninja Tabi boots, usually has similar quality between normal and special merch, albeit special merch more consistently able to spawned in slightly higher stats.
I think at some point, Styg said he wants to revise special merch, from only adding more stocks, to increased chance to spawn higher quality. Not sure what year he posted that

[Tamior]

One other thing: back in the days when mercantile was considered not-so-good economy was the same on all difficulties.
Today merchants only pay you 50% the "normal" price on hard and 25% on dominating. That alone makes mercantile much more desirable, as money actually ARE tight on higher difficulties.

[TheAverageGortsby]

(As a side note, I have never seen any hard evidence that special merchandise is in fact of higher quality than normal goods, other than HEAVY confirmation bias. Anyone got proof of this? AFAIK It just increases your chance of finding something useful.)

I would suggest that since any individual is a decidedly finite set, even if it is so that Mercantile does not unlock higher-quality merchandise (and I truly believe that it does - across dozens of characters and hundreds and hundreds of hours, I've never seen base inventories match the quality of expanded inventories though as you say that could just be chance and observer bias) then just having more opportunities to get the better stuff does, for all practical purposes, mean that Mercantile unlocks higher quality loot.  It's not reasonable to assume infinite restocks, so even if all it does is triple your chances, that takes you from single standard deviation territory into the narrow far margins.  For a single play-through, rather than considering raw mathematical probabilities, that does in fact mean higher quality gear is unlocked.
 
That said, it sure would be nice to hear from someone who knows for sure. epeli? Styg? Mac? Phryg? Wanna come drop some knowledge bombs on us? Pretty please?   

[Sykar]

Of the three social skills it is easily the strongest imho. Has some limited diplomatic use but saves you loads of money and increases the amount of money you gain from quests and helps with getting better prices from the store. Almost a must have for me on Dominating on any character with decent or better intelligence.