For those who don’t mind partaking in some of the more morally questionable jobs in the wasteland, you might be aware that enslaving people results in a payout of 250 caps plus any personal belonging you decide to strip from the slave before sending him/her to Paradise Falls.
But even those of you not interested in joining the fun might at least be aware that for getting a slave outfit to go into the Pitt, Ramsey, the slaver in charge of transferring slaves to the Pitt, will charge 200 caps per slave… and that didn’t make much sense.
At first glance this makes it look like Paradise Falls is actually losing 50 caps per slave, rather than earning any, but it is actually worse: the 250 caps you earn from Grouse is just “your cut”, meaning that it is just your share of the commission that Grouse split between the two of you.
We don’t know the exact split of this arrangement, whether it’s just a 50-50 or a more uneven split, and in case of the later, if it favors Grouse (for organizing the business, controlling the slave collar signals and carrying out the actual transaction), or you for being the one in the field, risking you neck doing the actual enslaving.
I’m actually inclined to think the actual ratio likely favors the Lone Wanderer since Grouse seems to have a way to make an additional commission out of this arrangement, namely the sale of Mesmetron Power Cells: these have a value of 10, but Grouse will sell us 10 for 200 caps, or 1 for 20 caps, so he is taking an extra 10 caps of profit per Cell.
And while he claims that they are rare, gameplay wise he never runs out of them and you can but as many as you want. Plus, he gives you the Mesmetron and an initial batch of 50 cells for free. But I digress.
So what’s going here then?
To better understand I took a deep dive and check the market prices of slaves in the game:
BUY
-200 caps for Pitt Slaves
-300-500 caps for Sammy/Penny
-600-1,000 caps for Squirrel
-500-1,000 caps for Clover (bodyguard)
SELL
-250 caps cut per slave (230 w/ammo cost)
-110* caps for Bumble
-100-300 caps for Bryan Wilks
*Value of the unique Boogeyman’s Hood given as payment.
The ones with a range indicate the base price and a potential negotiated price if you can pass a speech check.
Clover has a base value of 1,000 caps, but you can convince Eulogy to lower it to 500. Same way you can have him up the payment for Bryan Wilks from 100 caps to 300.
I listed the Boogeyman’s Hood at 110 caps, which is its trade value and also happens to be the same value of a helmet of T-45d power armor, which happens to have the same DR as the Boogeyman’s Hood, minus the PA training requirement, which makes it more valuable in my eyes.
Regardless, the kids values actually give use the more ground to work with:
-Around 100 caps payment for a regular kid
-300 caps payment for a more valuable kid, assuming Eulogy is upping the payment to a similar rate he gave for Squirrel.
-500 caps price for a regular kid
-1,000 caps price for a more valuable kid
That would suggest a 400 & 700 profit respectively, which does sound more logical.
But what about adults?
-Clover’s 1,000 price tag seems more in line with the above if we take a 250, perhaps closer to 300 with Grouse’s cut, which would also leave a 700 profit.
-It do needs to be pointed out that Clover has already been brainwashed and that’s what makes her a more valuable slave that will actually protect her owner, meaning that a regular slave might actually have a lower price tag, since as Eulogy puts it, such slave might not have your safety and survival being such a have priority or even something to preserve.
But what about the 200 caps Pitt slaves? The difference in prices between kids suggest the same could be true about adults, meaning that the payment for these was likely well below the 250 caps you are paid for.
However, two things to mention is that there’s a 4th dead slave in Ramsey’s pen and Ramsey himself apologizes for only bringing 3 slaves, promising to bring more next time, so perhaps he is actually giving a discount as an apology.
Curiously, he also says that this time it is caps only, not trade, suggesting that trading might have been an option some other times. Wonder if that could be the way Metal Armors could be supplied to the Capital Wasteland?
Lastly, I will just point out that in theory a slaver can get some extra profit from the personal belongings of captured slaves, which seems to be the case of the 4 slaves in Ramsey’s Pens as they are all dressed with the simplistic slave outfits. This however is very viable: you get more profit from the belongings of a power armor clad soldier than from a wastelander wearing rags.
And that’s all I have right now, so I would love to hear some thoughts on what may actually be going on here:
-Do you think other slavers are being paid less for their captured slaves?
-Is Eulogy/Ramsey giving a discount due to being unable to honor a previous agreement?
-Anything else I might have missed?
