Gothic Question about the economy in Gothic 1?

hi guys, I just registered here.

Let me first say, I'm not actually new to the Gothic games, they are beyond epic, and they are among my very best RPG memories, if only other dev's did RPG's this way. So anyway, although i'm not new, I do have a noobish question, its been a long time since i've played through Gothic 1.

So, its simple, its about selling your goods. Can you only trade? or can you sell?
I stole some stuff from the first camp you get to, the old camp i think. they only purchase through Ore?

Basically I sold a bunch of stuff, or managed to get all the stuff I wanted to sell to that Fisk guy, I managed to get all that stuff into the middle of the trade window, and then i hit enter, and it showed the value up top being close to 600 or so. So my assumption was that I was going to get 600 coins or something. I pressed enter, and accepted, but now I don't have anymore coins, and less stuff.

So i've done something wrong, or i've forgotten how the economy works.
Can someone shed some light on this?

thanks guys.

You can only trade IIRC. You need ore to buy armours (which is done as a dialog option) and maybe for some other things (learning skills? it's been a while since I played the game), so it might be worth it to trade to get all the ore from traders. As far as I remember the inventories are restocked when a new chapter starts.

ah ok, so sometimes i do see ore in people's inventory. So i buy with Ore, or trade something of the same value in the trade window.

Ok i think it's coming back to me now. Thanks.

Ore is the closest thing to currency behind the barrier. You barter by putting the goods you want on one side and goods from your inventory of an equal or higher value on the other, and then confirm this.

I wouldnt use ore for normal purchases when I have an alternative, it is better to get rid of old weapons and extra soup laidles

There's also a way to sell more than single units quickly. Some key combinations for 1 / 10 / 100 units.

Yeah, I think it was alt or shift in combination with the default ctrl.

The version I played had a major bug with smithing. If you pressed the key combos to use the anvil* quickly you would produce more end products than you should get out of the raw materials used, making money a non-issue.

* At least I THINK it was the anvil, it's more than five years since I played the beginning of the game.

Why does the last post seem more relevant to Dragon Age, I wonder...

Thanks for sharing.