Hi everyone,
In this dev-blog, we will talk about shopping in Terra Randoma.
There is one shop in each settlement in Terra Randoma where you can gear up and get ready for adventure. The shop keepers’ looks and names are randomly generated. The availability of items vary with respect to the settlement status.
There are currently seven settlements in Terra Randoma (though we are thinking to offer an option to play in a bigger map with more settlements in the future) and the starting map randomly ranks them as rich, moderate, poor and very poor. The rich settlements have the biggest market, so there is more variety and quantity of everything you can buy: food, potions, equipment and armor. Accessories can only be found at the rich settlements.
In an earlier article, we talked about events and crisis that randomly happen to the settlements and how they may impact your gameplay. These directly affect the availability and price of items in the market too. For example, in a poor town, you can normally find only a few potions. But if there is an Alchemy Festival being held at that town, all of shop slots will be filled, and the potions will be sold at half price. Or, if the roads are insecure, then availability of items reduces to 25% and they become 50% more expensive. You can make a small fortune by keeping track of the events and crisis, trying to buy items where they are cheap and abundant and sell them where they are needed the most.
Another factor that affects the prices of items is your Speechcraft Skill. You can improve this skill as you level up (or you can buy skill points from the Adventurer's Guild).
The prices also depend on your reputation level. As your reputation level rises at a certain settlement, the shops will be happier to give you better prices.
You don’t need to rely on the shops entirely to get supplies. There are traveling merchants you can come across on the roads. They usually specialize in selling one type of item, for example Traveling Farmer sells only food, while Traveling Alchemist sells only potions. There is also a hunter who sells meat and arrows. They all offer a small quantity but at 25% cheaper than shops. They will conveniently buy anything from you.
Your speechcraft affects the prices of these vendors. You can also pickpocket travelling merchants. But if you fail, you will lose reputation in all towns since they will effectively spread the news all over the island.
We will add an Alchemist's Tower which you can sell materials coming from monsters for better prices (like spider silk, snake tongue).
There is a shop at the Adventurer’s Guild too. It sells food, potions, arrows and Talent Stones, which can only be found here. What are Talent Stones? Well, we will talk about them in a separate dev-blog.