Special-ordering? "Half now, half on delivery."...

[Narf the Mouse]

The basic idea is to add the ability to order items from a shop; for example, to pay a weaponsmith to create the weapon you want for you, rather than wait for the item to show up on a store shelf, probably dropped off by an adventurer more skilled than you. ("Hey, I've got 200k Septims; can you make me a Daedric Katana?")

While the idea is fairly simple, Implementing this is not so much. One idea on how it could be done is through a customized store GUI based off the "purchase" GUI with no steal button, another through a customized store GUI based off the "repair" GUI, and by adding two new merchant conversational topics; "order" and "pickup".

The basic idea is that you scroll through a selection of all the items you could theoretically buy from that merchant, then order whatever you want, with three downsides. First, the item would be marked up; say, 50%. Second, the item would take a while to make; say, twice as long as the time it would take to repair the item from "Broken" - Since the item has to be created "from scratch", including sourcing the raw materials. Third, you'd have to pay half upon ordering the item, and the other half upon picking up the item. The reasoning behind this is that, if you payed on pickup, you might not show up to pickup the item; if you payed on purchase, the item might not show up to be picked up! Heh.

The days until completion would be visible in the "pickup" window, and once the item is complete, the item would be labelled with the remainder of the price. After some time, say, three months? the item would disappear, and the next time you talked to that merchant, you could get a comment about "You had items to be picked up, but you were over X months/days late, so they're gone."

This could tie in, lore-wise, to why alchemist shops don't sell potions - They do, but by-order only. This would also allow a certain amount of forward planning; for example, ordering a supply of Levitation potions as part of your initial supplies after taking out a loan from the bank.

[NikitaTheTanner]

This does make complete sense, and Daggerfall really needs crafting systems - these would make world exploration much more rewarding.

Placing orders for specific items makes perfect sense, but the price should be really high, as it often is for bespoke items - this will give a new way to spend all the hoarded treasure on something meaningful. Plus, craftsmen's skill should play a role on what you can order - only the best can offer ebony/daedric weapons and armor, for instance.

Would be awesome to add recipes, crafting materials and more ingredients to the world one day, so player could bring all the materials to the craftsmen and make the order much cheaper.

[Narf the Mouse]

This does make complete sense, and Daggerfall really needs crafting systems - these would make world exploration much more rewarding.

Placing orders for specific items makes perfect sense, but the price should be really high, as it often is for bespoke items - this will give a new way to spend all the hoarded treasure on something meaningful. Plus, craftsmen's skill should play a role on what you can order - only the best can offer ebony/daedric weapons and armor, for instance.

Would be awesome to add recipes, crafting materials and more ingredients to the world one day, so player could bring all the materials to the craftsmen and make the order much cheaper.

Agreed completely. Not sure on the exact price increase, though - That'd be one thing to work out.

Recipes could be extended to cover more than potions, and standard recipes could be purchasable. For armour and weapons. perhaps up to silver, but definitely no higher than elven. Unless you're a member of the appropriate merchant guilds, of course... Ebony and Daedric would require the very highest ranks in those guilds. Can't teach guild secrets to just anyone, of course.