Not every merchant sells everything. Each trader operates within a specialty shaped by their background, their connections, and whatever the dungeon or town allows them to source. The type is established at the merchant's creation and does not change.
Provisions, preserved goods, consumables, and the ingredients that go into them. A food merchant is the first stop for seekers who have run dry on rations or who need specific ingredients for crafting recipes. Their stock skews toward hunger and thirst relief, with occasional medical consumables for good measure. In lean dungeons, they may be the difference between a continued descent and a forced retreat.
Scrolls, tomes, skill references, and written works of practical or arcane use. A book merchant stocks the knowledge that cannot be found in a chest — spell scrolls not yet discovered in the dungeon, proficiency guides for skills the seeker has not yet practised, and lore documents that expand what the player knows of the world. Seekers who invest in Knowledge find more value in these traders.
Everything else. Weapons of uneven quality, armour pieces, oddities, salvage, and the miscellaneous output of a dungeon that produces more than its inhabitants can use. Junk merchants are unpredictable by design — their stock is broad, their prices are negotiable by circumstance, and they occasionally carry something genuinely valuable buried under the debris. Worth checking, rarely worth relying on.
Buying removes an item from the merchant's current stock and transfers it to the player's inventory in exchange for gold. The merchant holds their own supply of gold as a real resource — they can run short if the player sells them too much without buying, and a merchant with no gold cannot complete a purchase of that size.
Selling transfers an item from the player's inventory to the merchant's stock at a reduced value. Merchants do not pay full price for second-hand goods. The rate reflects the merchant's assessment of what they can move on — which is shaped partly by their type and partly by their current stock. Selling ten of the same item to a merchant who already has ten will not fetch the same return as selling the first one.
Theft from a merchant requires the Thief perk. Without it, there is simply no mechanism to attempt the act — the perk unlocks both the option and the proficiency track that governs it.
A successful theft transfers the item without payment and improves the player's stealing proficiency slightly. A failed theft does not return the item and does not end quietly. The merchant's response escalates — what began as a transaction becomes a hostile encounter. The merchant's event card fires, and the situation changes from commerce to combat. Stealing from the same merchant repeatedly increases the likelihood of failure regardless of proficiency growth.
Merchants do not remain static. Trade is their profession, and they grow through its practice — improving their stock, building their reserves, and sharpening the instincts that make them either a generous partner or a careful one.
Every transaction generates experience for the merchant. The amount scales with how comfortable the merchant was with the deal — a seeker whose equipment, scent, and behaviour align with the merchant's personality traits generates more goodwill than one who does not. A merchant who likes what they see does more business. A merchant who is unsettled by the seeker in front of them closes the transaction and moves on.
When accumulated experience crosses a threshold, the merchant levels up. Leveling restocks the merchant with better items appropriate to their type and level — a high-level food merchant carries rarer provisions, better alchemical ingredients, and consumables the player is unlikely to find on the dungeon floor. A high-level book merchant may carry spell scrolls that would otherwise require much deeper descent to locate.
Merchants roll personality traits at creation in the same way player characters do. A merchant with a strong preference for textile goods will react positively to a player wearing fine robes and negatively to one draped in animal hides. A merchant who dislikes the smell of blood will be uncomfortable around a seeker who has just come from a fight without cleaning up. These reactions affect the comfort score that shapes experience generation per transaction — trade with a merchant who likes you, and both parties benefit more.
A merchant has a history, a face, a level of experience, and a set of preferences. They are a person, not a shop front that resets between visits. Some of that carries over when the player leaves and returns.
A merchant's name, portrait, level, gold reserves, and personality traits are preserved between sessions. When the player returns to a merchant they have previously traded with, they are returning to the same entity — not a reskinned placeholder. The merchant's level and accumulated experience are the record of the relationship between that trader and the world that has passed through their stall.
Inventory is session-based. A merchant's stock is generated when they are opened for trade, not stored permanently between sessions. What they carry today reflects their level, type, and the template they were built from — but not a list carried over from the last visit. A merchant who sold the player a rare scroll last time may or may not have another one. Their level makes it more or less likely, but it is never guaranteed.