Six Day Stilt merchant distribution

[Sentient_Toaster]

From a recent run:

Apothecary/Simples: 2
Apples/Cider: 4
Books, general: 2
Clothing: 3 (1 ea. cloaks, hats, shoes)
Exotic Liquids: 1
General Cooking: 7 (2 Foodstuffs, 2 Spicy Foods, 3 Sweet and Savory)
Honey: 2
Herders: 8 (2 cat, 3 goat, 3 pig)
Mint Smoke & Wine: 2
Schematics Drafters: 1

No vintners, no gunsmiths or grenadiers or armorers. 8 herders but only of three categories.

Having 11 of the merchants be either for general cooking or specializing in apples/cider, and another 8 being herders, seems a bit much.

I'm inclined to think that there should be caps on how many of any specific type there should be, perhaps per category (jewelers and gemcutters and ichor merchants can be rare, chefs can be common... but that common?).

[inSane]

I vote +1 on this idea. I know there is beauty in randomness that is Qud, but I had only food merchants in Stilt too many times.

[Faital Ryuu]

I +1 this also. The distribution for merchants could use some tweaking. I haven't had too many runs where certain merchants never show up. I usually see at least one ichor merchant, one gun merchant, and at least one data disk salesperson. But I frequently see a lot of vintners and cider guys going by many runs I've had. Its hard to complain if you see vintners and cider as low-effort financial gain. However, having higher representation of restocking merchants one would actually buy from may be a good way to balance the "go to the Stilt, kill merchants you don't like for money" meta.

[Amestria_Amestria]

That's similar to a Stilt setup I just had. Lots of food merchants and herders (three of them cat farmers who hated their cats and killed them), an apothecary, a liquids merchant, two book merchants, three clothing merchants, a gem merchant, an armorer, a single tech merchant, and a bunch of relaxation places. No grenadiers or gunsmiths

It made being a gunslinger a little difficult (I had to get really careful with ammunition for a bit) and no doubt has slowed down my tinkering somewhat, but you just need to make the Stilt setup work for you. Since there were so many food merchants I specialized in cooking as I had a lot of opportunities to experiment with ingredients and now I regularly go there to buy the rarer ingredients.

So, I don't think there needs to be a Stilt with guaranteed merchant spawns. For me the frustrating thing is the clothing merchants almost never have anything good -_- This part of the Stilt (and clothing commerce in general) feels rather underdeveloped. It would be nice if the clothing merchants had a little more varied of a selection, sold modded basic items, and could maybe do one or two mods for you in exchange for ingredients + fee. That would benefit players who don't want to put points into tinkering or are just having trouble getting mods.

[Rodka]

+1.
I also think that merchants should have more advanced/expensive stuff. And someone that sells a Stilt recoiler!

[Faital Ryuu]

If there's any tweaks to the merchant distribution in this, I've noticed I see jewelers more frequently. But there haven't been mentions of tweaking this in the patch notes. It could very well just be I'm having better luck finding at least one jeweler. For other merchants, I've noticed sometimes I'm not guaranteed a guns guy or a data disk guy. Then I have other games where I have 3 different gun vendors, so it's not consistent.

[Amestria_Amestria]

Originally posted by Phi:

+1.
I also think that merchants should have more advanced/expensive stuff. And someone that sells a Stilt recoiler!

That's a little overpowered - the Stilt is a very nice location and being able to pop back whenever you needed something would greatly reduce early-mid game difficulty.

Though you can eventually make your own Stilt recoiler...

[inSane]

Originally posted by Amestria_Amestria:

Originally posted by Phi:

+1.
I also think that merchants should have more advanced/expensive stuff. And someone that sells a Stilt recoiler!

That's a little overpowered - the Stilt is a very nice location and being able to pop back whenever you needed something would greatly reduce early-mid game difficulty.

Though you can eventually make your own Stilt recoiler...

If nothing else, as Phi mentioned, it would be really nice if someone in there would sell Stilt recoilers. I don't always have tinkering to assemble things I need.

[Rodka]

Originally posted by Amestria_Amestria:

Originally posted by Phi:

+1.
I also think that merchants should have more advanced/expensive stuff. And someone that sells a Stilt recoiler!

That's a little overpowered - the Stilt is a very nice location and being able to pop back whenever you needed something would greatly reduce early-mid game difficulty.

Though you can eventually make your own Stilt recoiler...

I only found one programmable recoiler in almost 90h of gameplay (not even a data disk). Considering that programmable recoilers are pretty rare and how often you go back to Stilt to buy stuff, share Resheph's life stories and donate books, I think it's totally ok to have a merchant *there* that sells a Stilt recoiler.
In my experience, in the mid-late game it was more of a chore having to travel all the way from somewhere distant back to Stilt.