Can't find any merchants?

[Cowdoy]

After googling, I found my way to the Small Settlement that's northwest of the starting location. But the building that the Pal Merchant should be in is empty. The only NPCs at the settlement are the officer, researcher, gossiping villager and chief. Can't find anything on google about the static merchant at the settlement not being here at any point, so I'm wondering if this is a bug or if i just need to come back another time or something?

are you playing multiplayer, if yes, then someone either killed them, or stole them

[Cowdoy]

Originally posted by ;4203615946839557992:

are you playing multiplayer, if yes, then someone either killed them, or stole them

oh boy didn't realise that's a thing!! yeah it's multiplayer, how annoying

[Monkey Magic]

From my experience (both in SP, and server) a travelling merchant will spawn and head towards your base when you first construct a Palbox. On SP you will also get a pop up message alerting you, and a marker will be placed on the compass.

Planning ahead (a bunch of pals either crafted, bought for the settlement merchant, or collected) one can pretty much assure you can have that merchant at your base (pull all pals away and lower his health yourself) so there's that at least.

With regards to missing NPCs in towns, they will respawn in SP after a certain amount of RNG time/days passing, so I assume the same applies to servers. The time can vary for respawning, and log out may be necessary (not sure if a server needs to reset or not)

Finally, there are some RNG events which may spawn on your travels. I have seen a travelling Pal Merchant (lvl 10) under attack by thugs, and saved him with a handful of HP left. Unfortunately I checked his wares, and when I exited my bow slipped, and he died.

I have also seen wandering alpha spawns in the same location, and bands or mercenaries under attack which you can also help, and capture (throw vat ball at them from behind if they have low health left - or kite mobs to "accidentally" attack them and chip away at their health so you can capture them by spamming the back-throw method