GameBanshee Forums

I currently have a 6th level elf fighter. I had a bunch of magic items that needed identifying. I went decided to add a NPC wizard and have him do the identifying. All goes well until I run out of money and find out that he takes my money. Also then he takes my stuff.

Is there a reason I shouldn't just add a single level wizard class so I can Identify my own stuff? Supposidely there is no penalty for the Elf Wizard class. Also, is there going to be a big cost in XP?

Level ten is the highest you're going to get in the game, so wasting a level is not a good idea. (I'm even doubtful about multiclassing at all.) Plus even if it's your PC casting Identify it's still going to cost you 100 gold per cast. (Yeah, it's stupid.) If I don't have a mage I go ahead and have a merchant identify stuff. Since it also costs 100 gold it's not like it's worse than doing it yourself.

A few things:
1. If you've got temple.zip (or any patch including it), you can go up to level 20.
2. A single level of wizard just for identify is not a good idea. It'll cost you 100gp to cast it, but you can do the same thing at the shops without wasting a level.
3. A wizard is a good addition to the party anyway.
4. Wands are a great solution to many problems. Identify is one. It'll cost you 375 gp to make a wand of identify with 20 charges. Then you can sell it for over 600 gp after you've used like 18-19 of them.
5. If you install Drifter's Humble NPC Patch (there's a sticky about it above), NPCs will no longer keep stuff in their inventory that you can't access. So you can hire an NPC to use a wand of identify and then sell everything.

Another workaround if unpatched for NPC theft

Well I discovered by accident that once your party has spoken to a merchant and an attempt to sell has been made, you can freely take the loot from an NPC and move it to one of your characters. The trick is to make sure the NPC doesn't sell it. Since the merchant always deals with them first that would normally be a problem. But I have discovered that some merchants will only buy certain items and aren't interested in much of the "good" loot. Although I now lose some coin to the NPC or two in the party I have recovered every magic item or other bit of loot the NPC took.
In Hommlet go to the tailor Jinnerth and barter with him. He has yet to buy any loot from an NPC in about 6 or 7 exchanges. Spugnoir did sell him a mage armor scroll he had scribed himself, but interestingly DIDN'T sell him the cat's grace scroll he looted from the moathouse that was also in his inventory. I reloaded and took the mage armor scroll first and then bartered. He still didn't sell the cat's grace and after ending the barter I moved it to my mage who then promptly learned it. I haven't tried it yet, but would bet that in Nulb you could do the same trick by bartering with Lodriss in the Boatman's tavern. She doesn't wanted to buy anything from anyone to my knowledge.

Also, there are patches out there that allow you to craft.

You can craft the Helm of Reading Magic, it costs a little to make, but that will allow you to identify potions and scrolls free of charge after that. For the other things get the wand of identify Lord Plothos mentioned.