To my grand surprise today when I went to sell to Raoul, in Blaustein, I reliazed that most of the items were now selling for about 1/4 of what they used to! Most of the usual "crap/junk loot" that we find in dungeons would hardly sell for more than 250 gold per item, and that's talking for those that used to sell at 1000. Most now sit in the 50-100 range. Even the most expensive of my items had a hard time going over the 500 gold piece per item sold.
I can only think this is intentional, since it is made right at the same time as the hak, but I saw no mention of it in the Changelog. How, I once again question the benefits of nerfing a merchant in such a hard way. A few months back, perhaps a year?, most of the merchants, including Raoul, were changed with the way appraised was calculated, and Raoul was maxed at a 1000 gold piece from items. This was already a hit to the amount of gold someone could make from adventures, since quite a bit of items used to sell for over 1000 if you had good appraise. Now this comes at ever a bigger hit, and makes it pretty much useless to go to Blaustein to sell the junk from adventures.
So my question... why?
Now, if it is to make people go sell to other merchants, it will work, nobody will ever bother going to Blaustein anymore, other than to kill reavers. If it's to make gold less accessible to players, I find it a very weird way to do so, as per my estimations, a trip to some of the desert temples will yield perhaps 4 to 6 thousand gold, which divided between the adventurers will make a very low income for everyone. Even hardly enough to cover the expenses of the caravan for someone who travels quite a bit between the domains.
Also, these prices are considered with an appraise score of 30, which requires skill investment, gear, and a lot of intelligence.