The Sound of Gold (Guide to Merchants by Soirana)

This guide got delayed for quite a bit due to a combination of overall business and a sound amount of outright stupidity, and I offer my sincere apologies to the author, veteran and ADOM expert Soirana, and to the diligent reader and aspiring merchant for depriving them of much-needed guidance.

The sound of gold

Playing a Merchant is looking for problems, since they are weak and probably are intended to be such. So why to do so? Random generation, boredom or looking for extra challenges are good reasons. They will not be killing machines in regular game (ring dipping engine might get you high, but…). So they provide character, which needs constant care. If you like this, welcome to merchant’s world.

I. Manual information:

MERCHANT -- Merchants are masters of trade and bartering. They almost all are very wealthy, charming and experts in communication. (None of this helps while facing bunch of monsters.)
Each merchant specializes in trading with a certain type of magical items during their apprenticeship. At the beginning of their career, they are equipped with a sample of items to trade with (or use). Merchants are neither well armed nor well armoured and have to be careful in fights. Should they encounter one of the rare dungeon shops, they will probably make some great deals (if money was ever a problem in ADOM…).

Merchants are trained in the following skills: Appraising, Detect Item Status, Gemology, Haggling, Herbalism, Literacy, Metallurgy, Pick Pockets, and Survival.
Nothing what could help in combat. Sure.

Experienced merchants become true masters of their trade -- being able to sell almost anything to anyone and also being able to haggle for the best prices (sniff, if I want to play with economics I’d rather choose another game).
At level 6 shop prices for merchants will be lowered by 20%. Feel the power of gold… I do not like that at all.
At level 12 their carrying capacity is doubled. At least this one is useful.
At level 18 shop prices will be lowered by 40%. Who cares?
At level 25 they no longer are affected by any kind of weather. Another wasted one.
At level 32 shop prices are lowered by 60%. At level 32 you should reach Casino. Money is a non-existent factor after getting access to slot machines.
At level 40 they learn to calm monsters by giving away items. By level 40 you should have met cat lord and I cannot think of any other monsters you really want to calm.
At level 50 their carrying capacity is tripled (due to their enormous talent of organization). Finally at that level they also learn a magic spell that allows them to create new items. “Create item” spell and more carrying power. At level 50? You don’t need that.

FAQ: Merchants and Bards can be quite easy to impossible, depending on the luck of the dice. The random element of Merchant item specialties and Bard skills makes every game with one of these classes unique. All in all, they are very challenging classes to play. Almost any race works here; these classes are a test of the player's ability to adapt.

Item specialties won’t help you very much as being a merchant is more test of your skill and knowledge.

II. Starting up Merchant

1. Starsigns:
You need somehow survive until getting herbs (stat training, healing). Candle with extra healing, extra talent is very good. Since merchants will rely on ranged attacks early on Raven with 10 to speed is decent choice also. Other ones are somewhat harder.

2. General starting equipment:
Gold – merchants start with extra money. This pile should be somewhere in 400-1200gp area. It seems slightly influenced by family history (nobles vs. poor family) and race (gray/high elves gets around 1000gp). I used to believe gold depends on starting charisma or/and appearance but that seems to be misperception.
Specialized items: each merchant has specialization – rings, wands, scrolls or potions. This gives couple things. Some starting “samples” – character has some items of his specialization - random number of random low danger level (less or equal to DL3) stuff. I’ve seen as low as four wands and scrolls being in teens. Usually you get fewer wands than potions and so on. Another one is automatic identification of item class you specialize in. That means if ring merchant sees ring he knows what sort of ring it is. Very good early on.
It is also believed specialization partially affect starting stats (scroll merchants having more Learning and Literacy), but that might be a misperception due to random adjustments and personal history.
Specializing in potions also gives Alchemy skill. This fact puts potion merchants into good position for a long game. Having few offensive wands to start with is nice, but get unimportant later on. Both ring and scroll merchants are somewhat weaker options.

3. Race-specific starting equipment, evaluation

a) Human:
Skills added: Food Preservation, Swimming
Starting equipment: clothes, club (1d6), two rings on hands (even for non-ring merchants), leather boots, fire making equipment.
Cons: Mediocre strength and toughness
Verdict: if that is blessed ring of damage, ring of mental stability and some PV on boots and clothes they might be good. If not… Food Preservation is good skill, having lousy weapon to start is not big problem due to coin throwing.

b) Troll:
Skills added: Athletics, Bridge Building, Food Preservation, Mining
Starting equipment: Thick furs (worse version of leather armour), heavy club, leather boots.
Verdict: I do believe Trolls need they personal guide. Well, you are strong, dumb and have heavy club. What not to like if you can deal with trolish metabolism and slow levelling.

c) High Elf:
Skills added: Dodge, Stealth
Starting equipment: Clothes, short sword, leather boots, one ring – left finger
Pros: Dodge, long lifespan, Dexterity bonus should give you a couple points of extra speed at start.
Cons: Low toughness
Verdict: Dodge is good but starts at 20-25area, which gives +1DV. Low toughness isn’t making your life easier.

d) Gray Elf:
See high elf. Except for alignment I do not see any differences. One of richest starts being at around 1200gold.

e) Dark Elf:
Skills added: Alertness, Find Weakness, Stealth
Starting equipment: Clothes, leather boots, hand crossbow, some dark elven quarrels (below ten), two daggers in back pack.
Pros: Find Weakness is worth wish. Alertness is even unwishable, good chances for extra talent due to high Mana.
Cons: Low strength and toughness, problems with shop prices.
Verdict: As dark elves start with no weapon in hand they start without melee weapon levels. Instead they start with 1lv in crossbows. None of this really matters due to coin throwing, but tiny quarrels are very fragile so do not rely on them. Very nice skill set. Price problems are counteracted with merchant powers. Hard to start but mid and late game is a lot easier than other races.

f) Dwarf:
Skills added: Smithing , Mining, Detect Traps.
Starting equipment: chain mail (-1, -3 [-3, +5]), warhammer (2d3), leather boots.
Pros: reasonable strength and toughness, nice lifespan, chain mail, discount while using gold for (pre)crowning (around 25 percent).
Cons: not really much to mention, some don’t like their skillset, but it is okay for me
Verdict: This is a very good choice. Chain mail alone is life saving. Good toughness helps also.

g) Gnome:
Skills added: Mining, Ventriloquism
Starting equipment: Leather cap, leather armour (+2PV), short sword, gnomish boots (+2DV at least), fire making equipment.
Pros: Ventriloquism, extra talent, reduced need in xp.
Cons: mediocre to low toughness.
Verdict: Well, you have Gemology anyway. Ventriloquism is very good if trained. Gnomes lack a bit in the physical department but have at least some reasonable equipment.

h) Hurthling:
Skills added: Cooking, Food Preservation, Gardening, Archery, Stealth
Starting equipment: Leather cap, clothes, club, cursed ring, firemaking equipment, cooking set.
Pros: higher than average Dexterity, reasonable Toughness, Archery, extra talent, Food Preservation, reduced need in xp.
Cons: problems in strength department.
Verdict: Hurthlings make money incredible fast. Selling loads of crap gives good money for merchant. Lv12 power solves some strength problems. Equipment is very poor.

i) Orc:
Skills added: Metallurgy, Mining, Backstabbing, Find Weakness
Starting equipment: studded leather armour, broadsword right hand, dagger left hand, club and dagger in back pack, leather boots.
Pros: High strength and toughness, nice starting equipment, Find Weakness.
Cons: very short lifespan, iirc smithing costs about 21.000gp in dwarftown.
Verdict: good choice, Toughness helps early on, and Find Weakness can carry you through mid to late game.

j) Drakeling:
Skills added: Alertness, Food Preservation, Music
Starting equipment: clothes, short sword, bracers of defence (+2DV which are in slot you won’t touch for a while).
Pros: Good strength and toughness, Acid Breath , Food Preservation, Alertness.
Cons: Drakelings metabolism (heat-cold problems)
Verdict: Good to mediocre choice. If only bracers were protective ones… Acid Breath is less interesting as Merchants can rely on gold coins in very beginning.

k) Conclusion: Dwarves give good start, Dark Elves provide some nice skills, but my vote should go to Orcs. Toughness, starting PV equipment and Find Weakness gives them an edge.

4. Gender:
Apparently Dexterity gives some bonus to missile combat and probably coins tossing. Appearance is easier to manipulate and leads to faster money. So my advice is – pick a girl.

III. Trade of death

1. Merchants in general
Start is not that impossible because you have gold coin throwing (hurting even doplegangers) and good deal ammo for this. Mid game should be solved by early farming (stats, healing) and smithing (extra DV/PV is very useful, pimping your weapon up doesn’t hurt either). Later merchants usually run into problem with damage output, aka not dealing enough damage in comparison to other chars at lv30+. At least that is my impression. You will need extremely good weapon to cope with that.
Overall in Diablo II terms – this is character build on equipment not skills. So get ready for precrowns, gremlin bomb and milking everything you can.
Warning: throwing a coin is a 1200 points action, so being one square away from vortex might be not safe distance. This cost can be reduced by quick /lightning shot.

2. Starting tips:
I would recommend visiting bandit village immediately. Surely there are outlaw leaders and possibly assassins, which are extremely dangerous for lv1 merchant. If you are not Raven born keep close to border and calculate they speed. If you have torch lit it. Main gain is shop. There is quite a chance to buy something useful like PV granting gauntlets, wooden shield or spear. I suggest you get quests from crime lord also.
For non-Candle born I suggest getting healing as next step. Jharod is not a big problem. Having healing at 60 in exchange for some mental stats is very good deal for your weakling. Usually I would forget about carpenter. You do not need that manual of Bridge Building and VD7 is already in area there vortex is not rarity. Since good toughness for merchants is something like 17 they can instant kill you.
Next probably shot at puppy cave just in case there are herbs there or Infinite dungeon to gain some gear. Next ones are upper level of assassin guild (extra shot on herbs/shops) and caverns of chaos.
Look for weapon guidelines at equipment section.

3. Talent choices:
Early on:
3.1 Heir – gift is Beautiful leather armor of carrying. At cost of three talents? Never.
3.2 Starting with alert and going into early treasure hunter. Overall TH combines well with gremlin bomb and some other methods. Items are good, more items - even better. This might not be very helpful to keep character alive at low levels. Probably best to pick Alert on lv1 to open up path and follow by some immediately useful talents.
3.3 PV line with or without healthy. That has one aim - to help early in game. Surprisingly despite mithril skin this not a perfect option for dwarfs as they have starting PV and some toughness in their bodies.
3.4 Long stride, quick, moving to quick/lightning shot ASAP (possibly picking alert at 1lv). These help early on and are still nice mid to late game. You can skip these if you a Raven born. Quick shot line is nearly must for blingers.
3.5 Orcs and trolls can consider taking Long-lived at start, but it is comparable to one blessed potion of longevity, which might have easy recipe…
3.6 Rich line. Since merchants get something like 5xstarting money getting further 2x, 3x is nice. But money is not a problem in Adom and definitely not for merchant.
Conclusion: depends on playstyle. All variants are possible.
Later:
Depends on playstyle again and so on. Personally I would take anything that gives + to damage. Yet, I am not sold upon Melee master. Reasons – extra lv1 only talent (Strong of will) and some wasted affinities to weapon classes.
I’d rather pick Natural berserker since my merchants tend to spend lots of time in Berserk towards endgame. Basher into Powerful strike is nice if your weapon of choice is heavier than 100stones – heavy artifact for example.
Shield talents and Dodger line might also not be very good options late in game. Spear and shield combo combined with smithing gives ridiculous amount of DV anyway.

Potential variant:
lv1 – Alert, Long stride lv3 - Quick, lv6 – Misser, lv9 – Treasure hunter, lv12 – Good shot, lv15 – Keen shot, lv18 - Quick shot, lv21 – Main melee weapon affinity (if you made your choice, otherwise missile affinities), lv24 - bow affinity (as they do less damage than crossbows anyway), lv27 – crossbow affinity, lv45 – Very Quick, lv48 – Greased Lightning(as these reduce xp gain).
It leaves open five talents – you might want Dodger line for elves, Keen shot- Lightning shot for hurthlings, Basher-Powerful strike variant, melee master or some magic talents if you managed to get concentration.

4. Monsters to watch out for:
Nothing too special or not mentioned in my previous assassin guide.

5. Battle tactics
Late in game I usually find myself spending most time either in very aggressive or berserk. Early on… depends on situation. Two things two remember – true berserking very early on and running away at coward on low hit points. As manual states that gives you discount on run away movement if your hit points are one third or lower.
Also worth to notice – if you press “T” you get melee modifiers. Missile modifiers have smaller improvement from very aggressive to berserk, so if you are involved in ranged duel it is probably better to stick with very aggressive.

6. Merchant skills:

6.1 Free for all skills

6.1.1 Climbing
Good for climbing… actually falling into rift. Grants access to library and potentially some SoCR along with some spellbooks. IMO, this location is potentially too dangerous for merchants.

6.1.2 First Aid
I have mixed feelings upon this one. Early on it is good, but at that time skill is usually low. You are recommended either getting Healing really fast or being Candle born anyway. With good Healing First Aid becomes less interesting. In general very good in case character gets poisoned. Should be used early on.

6.1.3 Haggling
You can apply this skill on a shopkeeper. But don’t blame anyone if prices go up. The only time I would ever use it is early on and being desperate to buy something, which can save my ass. I would give up after first increase. Don’t put your skillpoints here.

6.1.4 Listening
Affects some game messages – from traps triggered by monsters, tension rooms, hearing roars while killing cats and so on… Not useless, but usually doesn’t need rises. Trains itself for good at arena.

6.2 Class skills

6.2.1 Alchemy (potion merchants only):
As manual says: Alchemy allows you to brew magical potions. To use this skill, you need to collect the ingredients required to mix magical potions. It would also be useful to have the recipe for a potion at hand.
You can’t brew anything without recipe except big “boom”. Luckily you get one recipe per 10 points of skill. At 100 you will gain recipe for gain attributes potion. It might be something like “youth and longevity” or “strength and cure corruption”. Still skill is very good and should be developed early on.
Some other recipes should be good. My favorite is potion of blindness denying fair fight than you feel yourself in trouble. But cheap recipe for extrahealing or making booze out of burb roots and carrot juice can ease your life quite a lot.
Notice: recipe for potion of blindness will include two non-repetitive ingredients from these (two herbs per recipe is not possible) – potions of booze, water, carrot juice, burb root, pepper petal, daemon daisy. This one can’t be bad.
Offensive alchemy: if you are wearing ToEF gear (fire immunity/quadruple fire resistance and ring of ice/all vulnerable stuff behind fireproof blanket) explosions from failed mixtures will not harm you and blast surrounding creatures away. Don’t forget you can mix two herbs, giving to you virtually unlimited fireballing power.
Also in my opinion power of fireballs decreases as your Alchemy skill raises and increases as your Willpower goes up.

6.2.2 Appraising
Some guys don’t trust that, but wield/taste/read identify is sad reality. Which you prefer to drink in case of emergency potion rated as “good” or “fair”? Skill becomes redundant after finding altar and getting some identify scrolls into holy water.

6.2.3 Detect Item Status
Good early on at very least to avoid some cursed stuff and cycle through uncursed one finding some extra PV/DV/to hit and so on. Spares some visits to altars or blessed ID scrolls later on.

6.2.4 Gemmology
Lets to identify gems on pick up, grants some gems if walls are dug up with pickaxe or by monsters.
At high end (100) output of gems is huge. Well, at least enough to cover pickaxe fixing costs for dwarf friendly races, especially if pickaxe is corroded.
Can be exploited to gain a lot - crystals of power, learning, health, fire, light, darkness.
Keep in mind fire crystals act as spells of improved fireball, darkness gives… darkness and a chance making some fights one sided (as certain monsters do not fight in darkness). Crystals of learning can permanently increase characters learning if used in blessed status (easily up to25 and with some work on learning potentials extends to 30).
Mining some stuff for gems, ore and stone giants (as they leave tasty corpses) is one of ways to improve your merchant.

6.2.5 Herbalism
Luckily merchants are born with it.
Herbalism allows you to pick herbs faster, identify them on pick up and to know bush status. All are very nice options.

6.2.6 Literacy
Grants ability to read scrolls, if planning to read some spellbooks put skillpoints here. Trainable with rereading certain scrolls (ratling pamphlets, papyrus scroll).

6.2.7 Metallurgy
Considered to be most useless skill. Can identify ingots on pickup. If you can’t do that by weight… I somehow suspect this skill might increase ore generation while digging. But this needs further tests.

6.2.8 Pick Pockets
Nice skill. Gets extra stuff from their pockets into your pockets. Stuff under 10 stones. Rings, scrolls, potions…
Theoretically it has some problems with monster inventory system. Things you can pick from pockets should appear on dead bodies, right?
Grants entrance to thieves’ guild and some training by master thief.

6.2.9 Survival
Rumored to work with stealth on wilderness ambushes. Can give food in wilderness, but that is incredible waste of time.

6.3 Racial skills

6.3.1 Alertness:
Sell point for dark elves and drakelings. Non wishable. Lets you dodge combat magic (bolts including death ray), makes detect traps more effective.
Provides some DV bonuses (manual states +4 at skill level 100). It is rumored that Alchemy combined with high Alertness gives even higher DV bonus.
Notice: that is one of skills, which is significantly better at 80 and 100, making double or even triple check in your favour.

6.3.2 Archery
Hurthlings skill giving access to two great talents Lightning Shot and Eagle Eyed.

6.3.3 Athletics
Unluckily prerequisite for this perfect skill is being troll. In my opinion trolls need they own guide.

6.3.4 Backstabbing
Orcs skill, which increases chances to hit and your chance to score a critical hit when you attack friendly or neutral monsters (or on hostile monsters if they don't notice you).
Put stress on not noticing part. With invisibility it is very nice. Also 80/100-type skill.

6.3.5 Bridge Building
Unluckily prerequisite for having this is being troll. In my opinion trolls need they own guide.

6.3.6 Cooking
Hurthling’s skill – considered being good. In my opinion skill is pretty useless, unless used to preserve something like displacer beast corpses. First, skill can ruin precious corpses (orb guardians and a like). Secondary if you want cooking it, you can always blast with some fire. Or simply keep corpses blessed via holy water.

6.3.7 Detect Traps
Dwarven skill helping in…detecting traps. There couple of heavily trapped areas in game. Also sometimes kicks in automatically, gets bonus from alertness, helps to avoid known traps (just when you try step over that stone block trap…)

6.3.8 Dodge
Skill of gray/high elves. Direct boost to DV can’t be bad. Dodge is somewhat hard to train in late game so start pumping it early on.

6.3.9 Find weakness
Totally awesome. Boosts up chance of criticals. Self trains at some point as skill give you criticals and criticals train skill. Worth wishing if you are not orc or dark elf.

6.3.10 Food preservation
Drakes, trolls, humans and hurthilings have this skill. Very good. Helps in corpse preservation (also works on raw meat, melons, apples), also at higher levels is rumoured to increase chances of monsters dropping corpse. Since this means more stat increasing, intrinsic giving corpses…
As training goes I suggest keeping low weighted corpses in inventory and buying some apples at Terinyo (these comes for around 5gp a piece).

6.3.11 Gardening
Hurtlings racial skill. Can be used on herb seeds to create herbs. Of course you can use holy water for same effect, but…
If you create herb bush with seed on level which doesn’t support herbs it is… it becomes herb supporting. Any level - Infinite Dungeon (report on google groups), Dwarftown (personal testing). Under certain circumstances this can be very very useful.

6.3.12 Mining
Skill of dwarves, orcs and gnomes. Decreases time of mining, helps to preserve pickaxes. Not a thing I would ever miss.

6.3.13 Music
Skill granted for drakelings. You need to put some work in that skill before it is starts working. If you do so you could tame some animals. Potentially this could be useful early on to deal with cats. Unluckily early on skill is way too low.
And you can always keep a tamed dog (give him some bones) somewhere in dungeon.

6.3.14 Smithing
Dwarven skill. Very good one. Very… boring one. Let’s start. You need hammer (easy), anvil (complicated), forge (depends on random luck) and some ingots/ore.
With all in place you can increase your weapons and armour quality. If you pass skill check…
Let’s start again. Probably easiest to obtain forge is in dwarftown (potentially corruption free area). You need to get stupid dwarven smith out of forgery (which becomes decent storage place). Technically easiest ways are either to teleport him out, or wait until he stands in door way and switch positions (:s) with him. Next take him out of level, cause he will sense you using his forge and claim for money.
Once he is out of level you might kill dwarven smith for anvil. But than you will not get pickaxe fixes. And smithing needs ore. And ore needs mining (you can use a couple of your pets giant racoons tamed by music, but I prefer pickaxe). And no you can’t fix pickaxe via smithing. Glod can. You not - even if being dwarven weaponsmith. You can kill dwarven artificer in Darkforge, but that is very deadly fight. It is wiser first to mine ore, then to kill dwarven smith. This should be done before ToEF.
No you can start melting ore and getting smithing up. (Removing rust also trains skill and is slightly faster in game.). Once you done, you can start smithing up your gear.
Notice: with some patience gear can be smithed seriously up to a point of giving positive DV to … a phase daggers.
Also crossbows can be smithed up (heavy ones seem to be better anyway).

6.3.15 Stealth
Skill of elves and hurthlings. Good with backstabbing, good at library for keeping librarian happy. Rumoured to be neutralised by source of light. According manual: “is extremely helpful in ambushing monsters in the wilderness”. If so should increase chance of avoiding fight on wilderness encounters (uber jackals).

6.3.16 Swimming
Humans and drakelings are good in this. Somewhat useful early on. Don’t forget you may use blessed ring of fish to cross water safely. Unluckily that ring is autocursing, so that means one potion of holy water each time you put it on. There is also guaranteed means of waterbreathing on lowest level of rift.
As far as my understanding goes this skill doesn’t help against water breathing attacks.

6.3.17 Ventriloquism
Gnomish skill. Very useful if trained. Allows to confuse monsters for couple of turns. Confusion duration is stackabale. So 15 passed applies in a row should leave monster confused for 20+ turns. Drawback is obvious you need to be next to monster while applying it.

6.3.18 Acid Breath
Drakelings special racial ability (invoked via “m”). Acid power depends on character level. As physical ability it uses not power points, but satiation. It does allow manipulating characters satiation status, regaining some speed by removing satiated status or abusing induced starvation.
Also might be used as backup attack as it works while being on coward and do not disclose your invisible location.
Obtainable via corruptions.

6.4 Obtainable skills:

6.4.1 Backstabbing
Golden gladius package. For evaluation look above.

6.4.2 Bridge building
Huge manual dropped by carpenter. Good for making bridges, requires hatchet, manual and logs. Most players prefer making ice bridges or teleport traps instead. If you haven’t got any other way to cross chaos piranhas… well, most chars don’t ever build bridges.

6.4.3 Courage
Old barbarian’s quest. Very good. Your merchant is supossed not to be surrounded but if that happens skill helps a lot. Gives minor help in rift climbing, but I’ve told you not to go there.

6.4.4 Detect traps
Thieves’ training package. For evaluation look above.

6.4.5 Disarm traps
Thieves’ training package. Occasionally useful, gives some minor experience, but not really necessary.

6.4.6 Gardening
Don’t say you picked this over healing.

6.4.7 Healing
Unless you are Candle born or Troll go for this (take carpenter’s quest) early on. In many cases I’d recommend getting healing chaotic way. Stat drain won’t hinder much and you get decent skill value.
I wouldn’t try to heal carpenter heavily, but using some of Jharod’s healing first is wise.

6.4.8 Law
Sheriff quests. Pretty useless for advanced users, might give idea that is lawful and that is chaotic to new players. Whatever it says eating humanoids is not chaotic act.

6.4.9 Pick Locks
Thieves’ training package. Sort of usable, especially for locking doors. Keep in mind picking usually triggers in traps. Cursed locked picks are rumored to have nasty effects (trap creation?).

6.4.10 Pick Pockets
Thieves’ training package. For evaluation look above.

6.4.11 Smithing
Dwarftown. For evaluation look above.

6.4.12 Stealth
Golden gladius package. For evaluation look above.

6.4.13 Swimming
Feeding carrot juice to baby water dragon. For evaluation look above.

6.4.14 Tactics
Golden gladius package.Extremely useful. Influences your tactic modifiers. You are more defensive on coward and more brutish on berserk.
As i understand this case the higher your learning the higher received skill will be – having Le above 30 (abusing crystals of learning) might give you skill at 100 right away. And that is huge.

6.4.15 Two weapon combat
This guide heavily advices to use one weapon combat at all cases, leaving twin daggers fir rangers and alike.

7. God gifts on crowning:

Boots of the Divine Messenger - death resist, paralysis resist and teleport control via boot slot. Still I prefer well-enhanced 7lb, but this is close call.

Crown of Leadership – means of see invisible. Other than that… I seen caps smithed to better stats.

Iron Crown of Havlor – comes with some to hit penalties, but still nice thing since to hit is not a real problem and chars can’t have to much DV/PV.

Shezestriakis – merchants are supposed to be fighting class…

Staff of the Wanderer – shock immunity is nice, but quicksilver quarterstaff beats this on any given day.

Trusted One – 5d3 damage? I told you merchants have problems with damage output. This one doesn’t solve them.

Racial gifts:

Elves – Sun’s messenger. Looks good.

Dwarves – Hammerhead. Good for mining as far as bashing goes… Loook up for better stuff.
Not any melee weapons worth to mention, you should hope for boots or racial gifts.

8. Equipment

8.1. Melee weapons
Getting yourself crude spear is one of primary priorities. Even without DV gain it beats merchant’s starting weapon.
Later on as you get DV from Smithing and finding better armour, any decent weapon you find. By DECENT I mostly mean huge damage. Stuff with “of devastation” is very nice.
Decent weapons:
Kickass artifact (emerald dagger, executor, skullcrusher, minotaur axe) > higher metal weapon of penetration (weapon class doesn’t matter)> higher metal weapon with huge damage output (eternium of devastation would be best) > non higher metal of penetration (phase dagers including).
First thing – damage output. Secondary PV bypass, but I would keep penetration/phasing stuff as back up weapon.
Rating weapons “of penetration” and “of devastation” is rather tough. Devastation potentially gives 4d8+6 –average 24 that is comparable to end game monsters PV. But if you take +6 out of equation by smithing your penetrating weapon, it will get better rating.
As slaying artefacts versus weapons of penetration go… Most slayers have nice damage on them, coupled with critical hits… very very nice.

Even after serious Smithing up I probably keep shield. Unless I get eternium two-hander with “of penetration”. Somehow I love oversized phase daggers…

Weapon class evaluation:

a) Unarmed fighting
Rating: no weapon, no shield, not a chance.
Good weapons: none.

b) Daggers and Knives
Rating: Emerald Bite is one real reason to use daggers; orcish knives can be obtained in large quantities by milking orcs.
Good weapons: phase dagger, Emerald Bite, smithed high metal ego dagers and orcish knives (penetration, devastation).

c) Clubs and Hammers
Rating: low, you see artifact listed bellow, you go for this. If no… well no.
Good weapons: Skullcrusher, ego stuff (penetration, devastation), Hammer of Gods (good damage, even better with Basher line)

d) Maces and Flails
Rating: low
Good weapons: ego weapon (penetration, devastation), artefacts like Big Punch or Purifier combined with Basher talents might give good damage, but you should look for better options.

e) Swords
Rating: low
Good weapons: sword of sharpness? (people tend to love it), ego weapons.
Sword of sharpness… you really need better stuff. No intrinsic, no resistance to fire or acid.

f) Axes
Rating: low
Good weapons: Executor, ego weapons
You get Executor or mithril axe of penetration - you go in this class.

g) Whips
Rating: extremely low
Good weapons: whip of the snake, penetration weaponry
Whips of the snake --- let me think. One per wish, no slaying powers, no resistance to fire, acid. Not a huge damage.

h) Pole arms
Rating: awesome
Good weapons: ego weapons (milk down orcish scorchers), Wyrmlance (more backup weapon), rune-covered trident (more missile slot), Trident of the Red Rooster. Scorched spear is passable weapon in midgame, until you find something nice.
You should find some good orcish spear while milking scorchers, hill orcs and alike. Spear traps do not give ego weapons.

i) Two-handed weapons
Rating: powerful, but requires to give away shield
Good weapons: ego weapons, axe of the minotaur emperor,
Okay, Cow Axe is guaranteed. Just if going for two-handed weapons I prefer rune-covered trident.

j) Staves
Rating: questionable
Good weapons: ego weapons, quicksilver quarterstaff
Quicksilver for merchant… damage output - 6d3+5. I still prefer rune-covered trident.

8.2. Missile weapons
You are not trying to bash every mob, are you?
First missile you use will be gold coins. If you have seen shopkeeper killing in one throw forget it. You are not local talent and will start with 1d2+something, which is reasonable, but gain is something like + 1 to damage per 2 experience levels. Some talents like good shot, keen shot helps, but you will want switch to bow and crossbow reasonably fast (as soon as you know they are uncursed).
Don’t forget slaying ammunition. Don’t forget skill level bonuses (+1.5 to damage per level). Don’t forget all these missiles of thunder, darkness, as they might be very useful to stop someone chasing you.
Except of bows and crossbows I wouldn’t waste time on anything else.
I suppose crossbow will be your third missile weapon to train, but it is worth that.
There are rare daemon slaying sling bullets, but I would leave slings away, even if playing hurtling. Bow and crossbow is more than enough. May be a bit of thrown spears.
Oh, and there is that “Fling the bling” challenge – win with merchant using only gold coins as attack. As far as I know that challenge was not completed.

8.3. Armour
Nothing new. Get your PV fixed early and keep working on DV.
Somewhere mid game you should choose which way DV or PV to go. DV is considered to be better, but 100/20 or 20/100 is both good. Believe me even 60/60 does quite well.
Remember Darkforge is famous for armour room and smithing is good way to improve stuff. Alternatively you can keep buying off scroll shop. Normally scrolls should be used on non smithable parts of your inventory (seven league boots being prime example).

a) Rings
As put on and see result tactics go… I would say no at least until you find altar. Skipping rare stuff (like weakness and doom) worst thing is cursed ring of damage. So it is advisable to check rings via left finger if needed.
Early on: anything you can get. Speed, mental stability are nice at least for giving PV, blessed ring of damage (right finger). Ring of protection is also nothing to be ashamed.
Mid to late: ring of the High Kings, probably ring of slaying, keeping in backpack blessed ring of ice, rings of invisibility, regeneration, mental stability/clear mind.
Dream stuff: ring of master cat and ring of immunity.

b) Amulets
This time I would say yes to put identify tactics. The only harmful thing is amulet of hunger and these are AoLS rarity level. Okay, cursed amulet of rapid healing isn’t nice, but iirc this one doesn’t affect Candle or Healing skill effects.
Early on: anything you get, hopefully not cursed one, remember glass amulet gives light.
Mid to late: ankh, but in reality I found myself wearing something to affect my alignment most of time. If you like being chaotic you can throw away that marble piece called amulet of order.
Backpack: petrification, death resistances, free action, balance. Stash away some willpower, mana, appearance boosting amulets, water breathing (if you have one).
Dreams: Preserver. Renereation+luck+paralysis restriction...Blessed amulets of life saving. Good choice if you have doubts of battle outcome. And my merchants usually do…

c) Helmets
Early: metal cap, orcish helmet, bone helmet or anything getting good price in shop before big identify.
Mid to late: Smithed higher metal gear, smithed crowns of lightning, regeneration.
Backpack: helm of mental stability (confusion resistance).
Dreams: Iron Crown of Havlor, very well smithed gear from above.

d) Girdles
Early: metal girdle, girdle of carrying, strength.
Mid to late: Smithed high metal, enhanced girdle of giant strength
Dreams: platinum girdle – not really an option, waterproof girdle of giant strength [+6, +6] {St+15}- requires ring of ice to function proper. At least until you meet bunch of black/blue dragons.
If wishing I’d rather choose ring of weakness not GoGS. Nope I am not on drugs. Ring lowers strength so you can abuse things like ogre armies or mined out stone giants to get lots of natural strength. This doesn’t burn away easily.

e) Cloaks
Early: hooded cloak unless you run in any 30stone or 20stone non-light cloak.
Mid to late: any scroll-enhanced cloak, cloaks of protection, defence.
Backpack: cloak of invisibility (good but refuses to hide behind gauntlets)
Dreams: very enhanced cloak of appearance.

f) Bracers
Early on: anything you find. There are no harmful bracers.
Mid to late: enhanced bone bracers, smithed up bracers of resistance, regeneration, speed.
Dreams: bracers of war.

g) Gauntlets
Do not put on any unidentified gauntlets of 10stones. You’ve been officially warned about gauntlets of peace (well, you can drop gauntlets in front of mob and wait until he equips them… if they don’t glow dark you can try them as well). Playing with gauntlets is not very wise as cursed gloves stop your ability to exchange rings. (As cursed girdle doesn’t allow to exchange armour and so on.)
Start: some coloured gauntlets.
Mid to late: gauntlets of strength, smithed dragon hide gauntlets, enhanced alchemistic gloves (if lacking resistances)
Backpack: elemental gauntlets, thick gauntlets (poisoned hands)
Dreams: Ironfist, but rustproof [+6, +6] {St+5} gauntlets of strength are also very good.

h) Boots
Start: anything with good price at shop, heavy boots.
Mid to late: smithed high metal, seven league boots, boots of speed
Dreams: well enhanced seven league boots.

i) Shields:
DV is main thing as higher DV allows higher DV bonus from skill, still PV doesn’t hurt.
Early to mid game: best shield you get. Somewhere midgame final choice in shield or no shield has to be made.
Dreams: Protector, if not well smithed tower eternium shield.

j) Body armor
Early: anything useful with PV.
Mid to late: high metal smithed, preferably with suffixes, prefixes (of life, coloured)
Backpack: AMW- death resistance, see invisble, cold immunity.
Dreams: Nature’s Companion, smithed moloch’s armour (if going for PV), well smithed dragon scale mails.
Well, there are things like chaos knight entourage in wilderness. Dealing with this usually provide some eternium plate armour. So in theory they can be abused to gain something like eternium plate armour of health. In practice personally I haven’t seen them dropping ego stuff.

9. Items to wish for

- "Amulet of life saving" opens ultra, gives six blessed scrolls of chaos resistance, blessed spellbook of teleportation.
- "scrolls of chaos resistance" I regularly find enough chaos removal in the game, but that’s me. And make sure you used wish for sage.
- "Concentration" clever choice. Another good - "scrolls of education", if you want to get lots of new random skills and play self educational games.
- "magical writing sets" – obviously needed for self education.
- ultra ending stuff
- “rings of weaknes” – strength is good
- “phase daggers” – bypassing PV is good
- “pairs of seven league boots” – decent thing.


10. Killing big guys
Once again I cannot ad much to my thoughts in Assassin guide.
General tips:
As merchants are screwed a lot, you better… make fights one-sided.
Common methods:
a) Absolute immobilization – there two ways either abusing darkness as some monsters (including Snake from Beyound) do not fight without light, or using wand of paralysation. Paralysed monsters do not fight back or cast spells and so on. Natural regeneration stays on.
Bright side is there are no resistant to paralysis monsters all nasties from mimics to emperor lich might be paralysed.
b) Partial immobilization – monster remains capable of walking (and attacking) in random direction, stops casting, is unable to perform ranged attacks. There a few of ways to do so: potions of confusion, blindness (obtainable via Alchemy), cursed potions of invisibility (cheap option), wand/spell of stunning.
It is possible to throw potion with sling. Putting potion in missile slot and WHEN putting sling in missile weapon slot. That doesn’t give extra range, unless… you have knowledge in slings. Lv3 in skills giving extra range is applied to potions on top once this is happening other bonuses like archery suddenly are applicable too. Slings of long shot do not seem to have any advantages in such case.
c) Webbing – similar to a) except monster can break webs and that moment is not possible to prognose. It is possibly better not to shoot wands directly at monster but lead it into webbed area. Webs are susceptible to fire and acid.
d) Entrance denial – using locked doors, walls and area spells/offensive alchemy. Alternatively if you are fighting emperor lich and way is blocked by fire lizards you can use offensive alchemy while fire lizards serve as living wall.
Using poison on bosses usually is clever idea. Although I doubt that you can cause acute blood poisoning (severe loss of hit points due to multiple poisoning hits) it is still helpful. You can try potions of sickness, as they should lower opponents hitpoints in general. That might not work on high level stuff.
Particular monsters: Kranach – no unless you are a wand merchant with good offensive wands. For others look in Assassin guide.

11. Merchant and magic
If you haven’t concentration once again try looking at assassin’s guide. If you got try wizard’s one – just be warned learning things like Death Ray and Acid Ball might be problematic even after installing Concentration on your Merchant.
Game manual has great section on spells, so check it.

12. Getting nice stuff (aka scumming tactics)
As I said merchants are very dependant on gear, so you should try to get nice things.

12.1 Milking mobs
Usually considered being “OK” tactics. Mainly means intentional running around some monster in order to force them throw/shoot extra stuff. Thrown stuff is usually one per mob while missiles are nearly unlimited.
Milkable stuff:
-orcish spears – orc scorchers, hill orcs (encounters on wilderness hill squares if you not worried about 90 day limit)
-orcish knives – regular orcs (I’m somehow unsure about large orcs, iirc, they are not throwers, but I might be wrong),
-battleaxes – gnolls,
-rocks – goblin rockthrowers, out of interest since gold coins are better,
-arrows – kobolds, raiders, barbarians (possible wilderness abuse again),
-quarrels – ratling archers, Hawkslayer, titans.
I would emphasize crude spears and non-rock missiles.

12.2 Gremlin bomb
Somewhat controversial, but considered to be game feature. IMO until you start copy-pasting it is good one.
Basics – gremlin+water= more gremlins. Usual way is water trap and either live gremlin or fluff balls. Fluff balls can be easily obtained in Gremlin cave.
Water trap can be created either by zapping wand of trap creation or diging hole and covering ("U"sing blanket while over the pit) it with blanket at proper square. Notice: wands do not work on grassy squares so in wilderness/ Dwarven graveyard you need pickaxe+blankets,
Usually gremlins are first pickpocketed and after that killed maximizing chances of nice stuff.
Placing bomb. Tough question. If you are searching for particular thing, it is best to use exact danger level of item cutting higher end stuff. If not, higher end stuff tends to be powerful, right?
Two basic approaches:
-Dwarven halls (first level as second is to corrupting). Pros you can use walls to control gremlins, stops monster generation on level, if things get out of hand you can leave level and use Animated forest path instead. Cons: corrupting area, but that means 1-2 corruptions per few thousands gremlins.
-Dwarven graveyard. Pros: high danger level non-corupting area. Cons: It is somewhat harder to control. The only walls are the ones surrounding stairs. Probably it is best to create trap near wall (I’d say out of LOS), stand inside building and keep chopping gremlins in doorway. If you have done grave digging esacape is simple – pick stuff, teleport near border, kill anything around you (Willpower boost +light should do) and exit.

12.3 Extensive dig out
More or less “OK” tactics which are nice since merchants have Gemology. Provides with gems, crystals (quasi spells), ore for smithing and some stone giants. Problem – need for pickaxe. Pickaxe can be repaired either via scroll of repair or via dwarven smith. Getting your pickaxe corroded by jellies to lower repair costs is very smart idea. IMO, merchants learning should be improved with crystals of learning to 25-30.

12.4 Shop restock
Never heard anyone complaining about, although forcing Casino shop for multiple restocks via Casino gold is somewhat nasty. (I’m still unsure if Casino restocks might give artefacts, personally I haven’t seen reports confirming this)
Idea simple you buy off stuff they get more after some time. You can do it forever. Alternatively just put stuff in one pile to trick shopkeeper.
Problems: prices seem to go up after few full restocks. Casino restocks generate lot of junk, so I would dump it in wilderness to keep my save files in reasonable area.
Notice: merchants have better chances for extra shops. I’ve heard of ¼ chance but I do not feel merchants to find shops that often.

12.5 Dragon hunt
Classically used in blue dragon caves, as there is endless stream of them. You need to be strong to go for them, but rewards are nice.

12.6 Wilderness abuse:
Chaos knights entourages can be used to gain some eternium gear (although I haven’t seen that being suffixed/prefixed).
Hill orcs to gain some spears, gnoll warbands to get some axes, barbarians for arrows.
Hunting lonely dragons in wilderness is pretty useless as they drop only danger level one stuff.
Also giant bands, ogre armies might provide corpses to raise strength, quickling corpses from raiding parties acts as permanent speed boost and black unicorns (if they drop corpses) can be exchanged for potions of cure corruption.

12.7 ID stair walkk
Not very nice method, but gets job done. Basics: keep going up/down in reasonably deep ID and check loot. With some patience provides all things you need. Considered to be at very least morally questionable tactic.

13. Fling the Bling challenge:
Seriously I do believe it is possible.
Some advices: starting month – Raven, gold coin is hindered by being set on 1200 energy points so you need to counteract it, specialization – not really important, potions of Blindness can be replaced by cursed invisibility and you can’t use offensive Alchemy so potion merchants loose their edge. Talent choices – Alert gives access to both TH and Missile weapon master so is almost autopick at start. Purchasing Good and keen Shot erarly on is clever, later on you have choice between getting early Treasure hunter or start going for missile weapon master. I felt TH being better, but that is me. Getting Quick shot at some point is also nice as it is only way to lower attack energy.

Equipment – anything giving bonuses to coin throwing. Even metal cap can have +2 to hit with missiles. Rings of slaying are enormous boost and rings of damage totally useless.

Precrowns – geting gifts like executor or farslayer are frustrating but there is still a bunch of good ones – Protector, bracers of war, Preserver, Nature’s companion.

Skills/race:
Find weakness is totally must have skill for this challenge as doubling your damage output (or is it even better with missiles?) is the only way to deal with high PV monsters.
Orcs and dark elves come with this skill other races need to get it somehow. Wishing or scumming shops for potions/scrolls of education are ways to obtain Find Weakness skill.
Dark elves might be very hard to get started, so you might consider using water barier to kill some powerful stuff like (old barbarian, some NPC from bandit village) to get fast level ups.

Still I would not put hurthlings out of contention. Archery (lightning shot, eagle eyed), Food preservation, faster leveling (and levels are transformed into some damage output) give them a nice bonus. Still they do need Find weakness skills.

Important skills which are hard to train with this challenge:
Archery – pumping to 60 is reality, but getting to 80 for Eagle Eyed can be quite hard to reach.
Tactics – drink some potions of boost learning before trading in gladius.

ToEF – well, reality is you probably will not want to use ring slots for RoTHK and ring of ice. Intrinsic+elemental gauntlets give triple resistance and remaining loses can be counteracted with some blessed spenseweed. Item destruction is also not that problematic. In test I took char with Crown of science and 100K gold in missile slot. I still was losing only 2gp for one melting. So this is not a problem. Regarding wyrm and other bosses – best way is to paralyze them, at very least not allowing them to heal.

Summoners: these are worst thing for blinger. Early on it is probably best to step back and lead summoner into corridor there his powers are less impressive, later on using on demand invisibility allows to sneak past summons and eliminate target.
Worst things
– high end lichs – suummoning+self heal+see invisible
– chaos wizards – most of their summons see invisible so you cannot bypass them.

Mana teple is probably one of worst places ever, I can only suggest waking up Archmage ASAP. On D50 I would advocate wand of door creation ending. It is somewhat unstylish but is easier to achieve and doesn’t do damage to surrounding monsters as Wand of destruction does.

Have a good coin throwing.