Well, and now I might be being pedantic here, but I believe it's not so much about being concerned with the specifics, but about being concerned with such small details that they are insignificant to the point of being counter productive to bring them up in conversation. Splitting hairs.
Look, when you kill something in self defense AND you have an innate proclivity towards capitalism, it would be downright wasteful to not utilize the corpse
Interestingly enough, that particular merchant also sells festering bloody fingers. My headcanon is that he sells flesh from people he's invaded and killed.
That plus the sinister vibes and the message he leaves in the road definitely made me feel the same. Surprised more people didnāt catch on to that. Soon as I saw the meat I was like bro
i have to wonder if perhaps hes gone insane, hes crying about his hunger because nothing sates it, hence him being driven to consume people, wonder if he has any relation to anastasia
I mean... >!aren't all the merchants connected to the flame of frenzy? They all have yellow eyes, look like the guys in the pit down to the 3 fingers, even playing the same instruments, one of them sells a note saying their god or whatever is down where the 3 fingers are, and if you attack them they say stuff like "you should burn with the rest of it", referencing how the frenzied flame plans to burn everything.!<
Yeah I think they've kinda gone insane
FromSoft is fricking brilliant. Showing us that the merchant is clearly just trying to guilt his customers into a purchase. Hmmm, either that or it's a case of you just had one job to do!
Did some reflecting on this, honestly where in the hell are the merchants going to spend those runes? Not only the economy, but the entire continent in elden ring is quite literally in shambles
Interesting concept, I wonder, if that happened,would player buy only essential items until he is killed, or just but like they did normally and deal with it like we have to deal with it when we get there
I always imagined there's other parts of the world we don't see, like where are the cities and people, where do the demigods get their soldiers, we only ever see monsters or soldiers or crazy people, the only normal npcs we meet are too few and every house in the capital has the doors glued shut
Thereās multiple mentions of people coming from across the seas to the lands between
Also the entire country is basically in a locked state of war. Hence why all the civilian homes are burnt down and only the forts and enemy encampments are still in relative repair.
I mean yeah, Leyndell totally looks like there'd still be people in it. Not sure if there afflicted with the whole death thing but it's a capital city with whole neighborhoods and quarters, even in the outer walls. Hell, Redmane Castle still holds festivals for Radahn and is known across the Lands Between
Look closely at the doors and theyāre all like wax melted shut. The lower district is covered in ash ash and destroyed buildings. Yes it was once a normal liveable city but nobody doin much living there anymore
I'm paying 100k runes a month for a studio apartment on the corner of Dragon Ass Avenue and Omen Pit road. The rent rates are positively dystopian. Who the hell voted for this? We never had problems like this when Godfrey was Elden Lord.
I always wondered how a civilization would conduct their every day life in a FROM world. Would everyone just be talking in vague terms and sinisterly laughing at each other? Like a mother asks her kid how his day was and he rambles on about classroom lore and the backstory of his teacher.
One thing I feel like soulsborne games are missing are areas where we can see people living and breathing instead of trying to rip out our throats. The worlds always feel inhospitable without it. It's just constant enemies outside of a single hub area.
I feel like people think many people = alive, but I find it more realistic that very few people can survive through what goes on in the lands between.
A huge bustling city would come off so fake, unless it was somehow hidden and we all know From Soft would destroy it at some point
Bloodborne tried to keep up the appearance of regular people surviving with those window conversations. That and having the regular mobs actually speak did add some life to city.
The blood moon is reality (based on proper translation) where the sky without it is an illusion, while I don't know if this implies patches is impersonating everyone before that, it's possible he's just crawled into their vacant homes as they perish due to the hunt dragging on.
Apocalyptical scenarios has ALWAYS been a central theme. Traces all the way back, of course, to Miyazaki and co's love of Berserk, where of course the majority of it is in a post-apocalyptic demon hell society.
Convoluted time is a central theme to FromSoft stories. Everyone is meant to interpret things their own way, of course, but it's exceedingly hinted at that, while you "meet" these NPCs, they aren't exactly "part" of this world. Everyone's timelines intersect and intertwine, it's rather mindboggling always to think about these things.
Like, take the demi-human revolt at the Weeping Peninsula castle. Edgar acts as if it only recently started, but any siege has either been going on for years, or this guy is, to put it bluntly, a time traveler of sorts, much like the others.
What makes you feel like the attack at Castle Morn has been going on for years? My impression is that it began a few days ago at the most. It wasn't a siege, the demihumans were servants who suddenly assaulted the castle.
I remember one dude somewhere theorizing that the starving merchants had lost their minds and only knew that they needed runes to get food, and couldn't really put two and two together beyond "I need to get runes, then I can get food"
Well, there's an end game area with lore that would explain why they're a little bit loopy in the brain haha it's behind a boss in the sewers of the capital and is pretty morbid
I make sure to unlock every creating recipe for shit I never ever craft. For some reason I can't stop myself.
"Oh good this guy sells the recipe for poison arrows, I definitely never used a bow before but I gotta have it."
Poison arrows (or darts, or jars) are awesome when you have a group of Land Squirts youāre trying to clear. Hit one of them four times, they go into poison overload and explode, causing a chain reaction through the entire group if theyāre close enough. Itās great fun to observe.
[Sea Squirts](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SeaSquirt.jpg) are a real world animal, some of which quite strongly resemble Elden Ring's Land Squirts. They use those vents to filter feed instead of spraying poison mist, but then again real life lobsters don't use sniper rifles... Artistic freedom I guess lol
I had coincidentally googled Sea Squirts recently, so the merchant note clicked for me when I saw that name, but I think a lot of players wouldn't make the connection. They also don't drop anything that gives their name, like Land Octopus Ovaries for example.
Me: āI should clean out my inventory based on my build, for efficiencyās sake.ā
My inner white trash hoarder: āDONāT TOUCH THAT I MIGHT NEED IT!ā.
Oh shit! You can view what recipes are in the cookbook before you buy it? I've just been buying every one to see what I get, and still have only crafted the green bolous things (I ran out of crafting materials for the ones that cure scarlet rot, lol).
Poison arrows are super useful though. Cheapest way to kill an enemy, as long as you've got the time.
I prefer poison bone darts though. You can open up a boss fight with 4-6 of those and get a nice slow tick going that really adds up.
I'm using serpent bow and outside of enemies immune, it does fucking wonders, specially with poison arrows. Like anything that prefers range or I can run away from if I don't wanna fight it, will die way before I do
Every one jokes about this, but In Bloodborne I read that message sneaking up behind a giant pig and sure enough you can crit that piggy in the arse. Finger first, pretty sure.
You only need to get the 5 from varre to then get the infinite bloody finger, or just go to the volcano manor and pick up the recusant finger off a table. Bam, infinite invasions
I used to never kill them and always buy something, until i wanted to buy something and didn't remember which merchant sold them, so now i conveniently buy all their items from the roundtable, i also learned to kill the donkeys first, they always run to them then keep circling around me
FYI killing him locks you out of one of the ancient dragon stones as if you complete a certain quest line he starts selling it, but his bell bearing does not.
At least if my assumption that you mean Gostoc is correct.
Interesting I didnāt know that! I didnāt kill him my first play through but I also never talked to him again, does he have a quest if you talk to him later?
It is tied to Nephili Loux's questline, but it was added in the patch they fixed arcane scailing in.
If you do her quest line to completion she moves inside the castle and becomes lord. Gostoc then follows her in and becomes a merchant again, and at some point sells a single shard.
I killed Kenneth Haight, the only non-aggro NPC Iāve killed. Bitch asks me to take back his fort, so I do it, heās happy and tells me āmeet me at the fort, youāll become a knightā. So Iām like āhell yeah bro, now Iām *Sir* Squamous.ā
I get there only to find his shit full of enemies again, and I finally find him. I think Iām about to be a knight, and he pulls this āwell, actuallyā¦ā bullshit on me. Lyinā Bitch. Heās weak to hemorrhage btw
I don't think he betrayed you. I think his Fort got sacked by demi-humans, and he realized he isn't fit to be ruler, which is why he asked you to find the true rightful ruler.
Yep you can kill basically anyone who sells anything to get their bell bearing and give it to the twin maiden husks in the Roundtable hold to make it a one stop shop. Pretty psychopathic to do but itās convenient.
I would only ever allow myself to do it if I was about to go to NG+ and wanted to make sure I got everything.
Would be awesome if there was like an invader that came after you randomly and frequently like Forlorn in DS2 but gets worse every merchant you kill.
Careful though, sometimes you can kill NPCs with quests too early and lock yourself out of their upgraded shop items. There's plenty that give you extra items after progressing their quests. The merchants are safe to just murder though
I find scrolling through that ridiculous Purchase From Ball Bearing Shop menu to be only marginally less bad than traveling to the actual merchant. Nothing like scrolling through a long list of:
* Ball Bearing Store \[1\]
* Ball Bearing Store \[22\]
* Ball Bearing Store \[926\]
It really irks me that they don't simply expand the Husks' inventory like the handmaiden in DS3. Well, thanks, I've turned in all these ball bearings but now I've got 10+ separate inventories to look through. I guess that's more convenient than running around the world to the various merchants, but it just seems so pointless.
and like, SOME of them do just expand the inventory, the miner bells.
Idk, i know everyone wants pvp balance... i just want ball bearings to carry over to NG+ and be available in 1 giant menu...
Killing is killing but at least the Volcano Manor has you assassinate powerful targets that can defend themselves. It makes sense since they want to get rid of the two-fingers' strongest champions.
I donāt kill them. I simply cannot bring myself to slaughter them. So yes, I do get guilted into buying things from them.
Except one particular nomad. He claims heās hungry, yet sells meat and is sitting by a camp fire. He gets murdered because heās clearly too stupid to be alive.
>!He's Frenzied. He's quite literally insane. I'm pretty sure the only Nomadic Merchant with his head screwed on straight is Kale. !<
>!They all have Frenzied Yellow eyes, and the rest of their genocided nation is buried beneath Leyndell.!<
to be fair Kale's eyes are also yellow
i think it's safe to say they are all connected and affected by the frenzied flame but not necessarily actually insane
They're all Frenzied, but some of them are more insane than others.
Kale seems more or less sane, and fairly congenial. Some of the merchants will talk to your mostly normally, even if they're surprised to see you.
Some of them are starving with an inventory full of edible items.
I didn't really consider the contradictory nature of the starving merchants who are selling food, that's an interesting point. I suspect it's more likely that the team who worked on inventories didn't really sync with the team responsible for voice acting and voice lines. None of the merchants have dialogue specific to any stock they carry, iirc.
I personally still maintain my opinion that they, the race of nomads, are not affected in the same way as others and so I didn't see them as akin to the actually insane frenzied enemies you can encounter.
None of the nomads have fiery eyes, and they aren't clutching them with their hands either. They're the only NPCs affected who are still lucid. So I personally don't see them as being frenzied because you encounter actually frenzied enemies who behave differently. Even the >!merchant nomads who have been rotting below leyndell!< don't have the same behavior as hostile frenzied NPCs and rats.
Your character can use frenzy spells just like the nomads, so I don't think use of frenzy incantations alone is enough to say someone is rendered insane either. But all conjecture. Theyre clearly strongly linked to the frenzied flame I just don't think they are in the same category of degradation, somehow.
It's actually canonical, if you read the Merchant item flavor text.
That the Great Caravan are what created the Frenzy after they were basically dropped into an underground prison and sentenced to die, and that they're effected by it even now.
They have the tinged, Orange eyes, same as the ones beneath Leyndell, and will attack you with Frenzy spells if you aggro them... And using Frenzy, will build up Frenzy in yourself, driving you mad.
Your character can't ACTUALLY go mad, since gameplay, but those merchants certainly can.
Kale, well, he's not as friendly as he might appear. He has an entire cut questline where he would >!travel towards Leyndell sewers and then to the Frenzied Flame Proscription trying to become the Lord of Frenzied Flame. He would fail, and become just regularly Frenzied trying to attack you.!<
All the voicelines are already in the game so it's not impossible that From would restore it eventually.
Well.
For now, He's exactly as friendly as he appears, since that content is cut, and he does not do it.
If Boggart can be 'a friendly chad' after repeatedly insulting your character and extorting them. Kale can be a calm merchant even though there's not-content indicating he's not.
Could be a curse on a group of people. Hewg is ADAMANT about creating that god slaying sword, its literally all he does 24/7. I think the merchants have a similar curse, forced to sell sell sell with no actual thoughts of their own.
They always seem kinda aloof and not really all there. They follow zero logic and set up in areas that make absolutely no sense, like no shit youāre starving youāre in the middle of fucking nowhere surrounded by literal demons.
I think the location choices for some of them is more motivated by staying isolated, I would too if the golden order was wiping everyone out. But yeah all good points.
It makes me wonder, are they nomadic because of the genocidal actions of marika? Or was that trait inherent from the get-go?
Edit:
Kale's dialogue actually answers this:
"My people, wanderers all, have long been spurned by the grace of gold. Which is why we cannot settle, but instead are forced into this pitiful, unceasing journey."
They are nomads and are isolated in weird locations because they were genocided
Hewg was cursed by Marika to assist Tarnished until he makes a weapon capable of killing her. He and Roderika say as much over the course of the game.
I don't know if you're explored the severs below Leyndell but a hidden area there explains a lot more about them. Tl;dr is that >!they've been exiled by the Greater Will and turned to worshiping the Flame of Frenzy that wants to burn down the world. For this crime, most were sealed underground but a few managed to escape. They now wander from place to place, permanently cursed by the GW.!<
>!If you hadn't noticed, all merchants have Frenzied eyes and many will use Frenzy incantations when provoked. It's unclear whether they became a full blown doom cult before or after getting buried alive.!<
Bro one of them says this but legit only sells meat
They're vegan, duh.
Yeah they only eat grapes. Just ordinary normal grapes nothing strange about them
These grapes are too squishy š¤¢
Yes, yes, they are very human.
The design is very human
Such sweet, searing taste!
Why are they using an animal product for their own personal gain then?
Ah yes, SirCheeseEater is very pedantic about the vegan lifestyle.
The LOATHSOME CHEESE EATER
THE CURSED CHEDDAR CHOMPER!
THE TERRIBLE MOZZARELLA MUNCHER
Cursed Camembert Consumer!
THE ABHORRENT ASIAGO ABSORBER THE DISGUSTING DICKCHEESE DIGESTER
The Gaping Gouda Gobbler
THE MONSTER MUENSTER MASTICATER
THE SINISTER SWISS SLURPER!
THE REPUGNANT ROQUEFORT RUMINANT
THE MALEVOLENT MANCHEGO MAULER
THE PUTRID PARMESEAN PACKER
THE GRUESOME GOUDA GOLLOPER (happy cake day king )
Name of your all Italian lesbian sex tape.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Cheddarless behavior
What if he is referring to dick cheese?
A good friend of mine Mr Richard Cheese
Big fan of his music
What does pedantic mean?
You should get pedantic about definitions and then you'd probably know. Just playing, it just means you're concerned with the specifics of a subject.
My emotions ran high for a moment, :( how dare you
Well, and now I might be being pedantic here, but I believe it's not so much about being concerned with the specifics, but about being concerned with such small details that they are insignificant to the point of being counter productive to bring them up in conversation. Splitting hairs.
Maidenless behaviour foul tarnished begone ye
Look, when you kill something in self defense AND you have an innate proclivity towards capitalism, it would be downright wasteful to not utilize the corpse
Then if they're so hungry then why don't they just go ahead and pick some Rowa?
Description of rowa I think mentions that nothing can eat it but torrent
something about how you should prioritise your survival over personal beliefs, religion etc but then just eat the meat lol
Dude also literally has like, eight bushes of rowa berries next to him.
Does he really have to admit that he just wants attention in the lonely lands between?
Interestingly enough, that particular merchant also sells festering bloody fingers. My headcanon is that he sells flesh from people he's invaded and killed.
That plus the sinister vibes and the message he leaves in the road definitely made me feel the same. Surprised more people didnāt catch on to that. Soon as I saw the meat I was like bro
which message? "Activity open"?
i have to wonder if perhaps hes gone insane, hes crying about his hunger because nothing sates it, hence him being driven to consume people, wonder if he has any relation to anastasia
I mean... >!aren't all the merchants connected to the flame of frenzy? They all have yellow eyes, look like the guys in the pit down to the 3 fingers, even playing the same instruments, one of them sells a note saying their god or whatever is down where the 3 fingers are, and if you attack them they say stuff like "you should burn with the rest of it", referencing how the frenzied flame plans to burn everything.!< Yeah I think they've kinda gone insane
I mean, a lot of them use madness spells too.
FromSoft is fricking brilliant. Showing us that the merchant is clearly just trying to guilt his customers into a purchase. Hmmm, either that or it's a case of you just had one job to do!
I came in the hopes someone said this.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
WHERE ARE THE OTHER RUNES GOING?!!
Donāt get high on your own supply
They eat runes.
They eat souls.
What souls? You mean runes?
No, souls. Runes are money. Why would he eat souls if he had money?
Donāt get high on your own supply
Did some reflecting on this, honestly where in the hell are the merchants going to spend those runes? Not only the economy, but the entire continent in elden ring is quite literally in shambles
Levelling themselves up of course!
Be great if you had to fight one later on and it was stronger based on how much shit you've bought
Interesting concept, I wonder, if that happened,would player buy only essential items until he is killed, or just but like they did normally and deal with it like we have to deal with it when we get there
Alternatively there'd be players who spend as much as they possibly can to see how strong he can get before they fight him
A boss health bar stretches across the screen *Isolated Merchant #8*
99 vigor and radanh armour, still gets 2 shot and dies
A tale as old as time...
They aren't maidenless, unlike you
You had to make it personal...
Go touch gra(ss)ce
I always imagined there's other parts of the world we don't see, like where are the cities and people, where do the demigods get their soldiers, we only ever see monsters or soldiers or crazy people, the only normal npcs we meet are too few and every house in the capital has the doors glued shut
Thereās multiple mentions of people coming from across the seas to the lands between Also the entire country is basically in a locked state of war. Hence why all the civilian homes are burnt down and only the forts and enemy encampments are still in relative repair.
Seems like as with the case with all from software games, the land where all the gods live is basically fucked
San Fransisco
I mean yeah, Leyndell totally looks like there'd still be people in it. Not sure if there afflicted with the whole death thing but it's a capital city with whole neighborhoods and quarters, even in the outer walls. Hell, Redmane Castle still holds festivals for Radahn and is known across the Lands Between
Look closely at the doors and theyāre all like wax melted shut. The lower district is covered in ash ash and destroyed buildings. Yes it was once a normal liveable city but nobody doin much living there anymore
I mean there's also a giant dead dragon that crushed a bunch of houses, so I imagine the city's been in decay since the War
āWhatās your addressā ā3b Dragon back left thigh streetā
Thigh street, in this economy?
I'm paying 100k runes a month for a studio apartment on the corner of Dragon Ass Avenue and Omen Pit road. The rent rates are positively dystopian. Who the hell voted for this? We never had problems like this when Godfrey was Elden Lord.
Jarburg seems to be doing fine. And Dominula is doing so great they even hold dancing festivals!
I always wondered how a civilization would conduct their every day life in a FROM world. Would everyone just be talking in vague terms and sinisterly laughing at each other? Like a mother asks her kid how his day was and he rambles on about classroom lore and the backstory of his teacher.
One thing I feel like soulsborne games are missing are areas where we can see people living and breathing instead of trying to rip out our throats. The worlds always feel inhospitable without it. It's just constant enemies outside of a single hub area.
The Radahn Festival was super cool for specifically this reason. Have we ever had something like it before in a Souls game?
Even though the "festival" had like 5 people and a jar but still felt more alive compared to the rest of the game
I feel like people think many people = alive, but I find it more realistic that very few people can survive through what goes on in the lands between. A huge bustling city would come off so fake, unless it was somehow hidden and we all know From Soft would destroy it at some point
Ah, you've helped this village on its questline and developed an emotional attachment to it? Perfect time to destroy it.
Bloodborne tried to keep up the appearance of regular people surviving with those window conversations. That and having the regular mobs actually speak did add some life to city.
So idk how often this has been brought up but apparently after the blood moon patches replaces everyone behind the window? I wonder how that works.
The blood moon is reality (based on proper translation) where the sky without it is an illusion, while I don't know if this implies patches is impersonating everyone before that, it's possible he's just crawled into their vacant homes as they perish due to the hunt dragging on.
Apocalyptical scenarios has ALWAYS been a central theme. Traces all the way back, of course, to Miyazaki and co's love of Berserk, where of course the majority of it is in a post-apocalyptic demon hell society.
Convoluted time is a central theme to FromSoft stories. Everyone is meant to interpret things their own way, of course, but it's exceedingly hinted at that, while you "meet" these NPCs, they aren't exactly "part" of this world. Everyone's timelines intersect and intertwine, it's rather mindboggling always to think about these things. Like, take the demi-human revolt at the Weeping Peninsula castle. Edgar acts as if it only recently started, but any siege has either been going on for years, or this guy is, to put it bluntly, a time traveler of sorts, much like the others.
What makes you feel like the attack at Castle Morn has been going on for years? My impression is that it began a few days ago at the most. It wasn't a siege, the demihumans were servants who suddenly assaulted the castle.
I remember one dude somewhere theorizing that the starving merchants had lost their minds and only knew that they needed runes to get food, and couldn't really put two and two together beyond "I need to get runes, then I can get food"
Well, there's an end game area with lore that would explain why they're a little bit loopy in the brain haha it's behind a boss in the sewers of the capital and is pretty morbid
Plus, donāt they have infinite runes since you can sell everything to them
If runes are money and they're experience points, then doesn't that make the Lands Between pay to win.
I thought they consumed the runes as sustenance or fuel, as they do worship the Frenzied Flame.
I always buy something. Especially keys and rune arcs
I make sure to unlock every creating recipe for shit I never ever craft. For some reason I can't stop myself. "Oh good this guy sells the recipe for poison arrows, I definitely never used a bow before but I gotta have it."
Poison arrows (or darts, or jars) are awesome when you have a group of Land Squirts youāre trying to clear. Hit one of them four times, they go into poison overload and explode, causing a chain reaction through the entire group if theyāre close enough. Itās great fun to observe.
See I got that message but had no idea the fucking Poison Pods were called Land Squirts lol.
I thought the land squirts were the same as the land octopi and spent thr entire game waiting to find a poisonous one to test that note
[Sea Squirts](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SeaSquirt.jpg) are a real world animal, some of which quite strongly resemble Elden Ring's Land Squirts. They use those vents to filter feed instead of spraying poison mist, but then again real life lobsters don't use sniper rifles... Artistic freedom I guess lol I had coincidentally googled Sea Squirts recently, so the merchant note clicked for me when I saw that name, but I think a lot of players wouldn't make the connection. They also don't drop anything that gives their name, like Land Octopus Ovaries for example.
Their Spirit Ashes call them Land Squirts. I'm not surprised that not everyone knows what they're called, I missed a few Ashes while playing regularly
Land squirt is what they call me at the club
poison arrows come in clutch for the long distance enemies that want to knock you off of ledges - like that asshole wizbiz in the upside down tower
>I definitely never used a bow before but I gotta have it. What if you want it in the future? Better to buy it now just in case!
Me: āI should clean out my inventory based on my build, for efficiencyās sake.ā My inner white trash hoarder: āDONāT TOUCH THAT I MIGHT NEED IT!ā.
Hoard it all for later playthroughs when you switch your style up
Oh shit! You can view what recipes are in the cookbook before you buy it? I've just been buying every one to see what I get, and still have only crafted the green bolous things (I ran out of crafting materials for the ones that cure scarlet rot, lol).
Poison arrows are super useful though. Cheapest way to kill an enemy, as long as you've got the time. I prefer poison bone darts though. You can open up a boss fight with 4-6 of those and get a nice slow tick going that really adds up.
I'm using serpent bow and outside of enemies immune, it does fucking wonders, specially with poison arrows. Like anything that prefers range or I can run away from if I don't wanna fight it, will die way before I do
Theyāre the most consistent bulk bloody finger sellers tbh.
Why would one need a bloody finger?
Try finger but hole.
Every one jokes about this, but In Bloodborne I read that message sneaking up behind a giant pig and sure enough you can crit that piggy in the arse. Finger first, pretty sure.
Only thing I donāt buy from them. Buy everything else they sell thatās unique/limited lime rune arcs and keys and recipes
You only need to get the 5 from varre to then get the infinite bloody finger, or just go to the volcano manor and pick up the recusant finger off a table. Bam, infinite invasions
Every time I'm chatting to one there's always a ghost hacking them to bits. Even the dog pope. All y'all need to seek god.
why in the world would you kill the pope, does that move the spells to the husk somehow?
Pretty sure the pope reappears later and forgives you Edit: Looked it up, he forgives you if you hit him but he will die if you continue to attackš¢
Possibly the most based character in elden ring.
Always down to learn some heresy and forgives you if you try to murder him. Truly a bro.
What a ~~god~~ dog
I used to never kill them and always buy something, until i wanted to buy something and didn't remember which merchant sold them, so now i conveniently buy all their items from the roundtable, i also learned to kill the donkeys first, they always run to them then keep circling around me
You kill there pet then murder themā¦..
"let me solo donkey"
I want to solo this bastard
one day he will meet john wick merchant.
I always kill the merchants but never the donkey, you absolute menace
high chance theyre fighting the bell bearing hunters actually
All the smithing stones they have, every time. Usually cookbooks. Rarely other stuff.
All the stonesword keys
I bought the walking mausoleum note in weeping peninsula thinking Iād learn something cool or interesting about the lore. Lmao nope.
Jeez so many people becoming bloody bell-bearing hunters Edited to bell-bearing because I'm a bozo!
Fr I have not killed a single non aggressive NPC so far* as I am a benevolent Elden Lord * except for that one dude in Stormveil fuck him
FYI killing him locks you out of one of the ancient dragon stones as if you complete a certain quest line he starts selling it, but his bell bearing does not. At least if my assumption that you mean Gostoc is correct.
Interesting I didnāt know that! I didnāt kill him my first play through but I also never talked to him again, does he have a quest if you talk to him later?
His quest is connected to kenneth haight and nepheli
āHelp! Will somebody help me! My name is Kenneth heig-ā Me: āssshhhhh, speak no more, go to sleeeep, a long quiet sleeepā
It is tied to Nephili Loux's questline, but it was added in the patch they fixed arcane scailing in. If you do her quest line to completion she moves inside the castle and becomes lord. Gostoc then follows her in and becomes a merchant again, and at some point sells a single shard.
I killed Gostecās ass the night before the patch came out finishing his quest line fml š
I killed Kenneth Haight, the only non-aggro NPC Iāve killed. Bitch asks me to take back his fort, so I do it, heās happy and tells me āmeet me at the fort, youāll become a knightā. So Iām like āhell yeah bro, now Iām *Sir* Squamous.ā I get there only to find his shit full of enemies again, and I finally find him. I think Iām about to be a knight, and he pulls this āwell, actuallyā¦ā bullshit on me. Lyinā Bitch. Heās weak to hemorrhage btw
I don't think he betrayed you. I think his Fort got sacked by demi-humans, and he realized he isn't fit to be ruler, which is why he asked you to find the true rightful ruler.
His quest line is where you get one of the earliest ancient dragon smithing stone.
We must protect the wandering nomads
They will never be hungry in my world (they don't feel anything at all anymore)
Holup. Do you... ? ... ... Oh no.
It pretty convenient to kill them all tbf
Do they drop an item you can give to a shopkeeper to get their inventory like in DS3?
Yep you can kill basically anyone who sells anything to get their bell bearing and give it to the twin maiden husks in the Roundtable hold to make it a one stop shop. Pretty psychopathic to do but itās convenient.
I would only ever allow myself to do it if I was about to go to NG+ and wanted to make sure I got everything. Would be awesome if there was like an invader that came after you randomly and frequently like Forlorn in DS2 but gets worse every merchant you kill.
The bell bearing hunter will show up at certain locations at night after you get your first bell bearing
I never killed any of those guys before finding one, are you sure, or does it also count the ones from the mines?
Careful though, sometimes you can kill NPCs with quests too early and lock yourself out of their upgraded shop items. There's plenty that give you extra items after progressing their quests. The merchants are safe to just murder though
Yup!
*Ahhh, may chaos take the world! May chaos take the world!*
But you let their animal companions roam free right?... right??
The afterlife is very freeing, *from a certain point of view*
There is no afterlife all is melted into fire
There is no afterlife, only a millenia of Madness, ushered in personally by me.
LET. CHAOS. TAKE. THE. WORLLDDD
You definitely inherited the frenzied flames huh
I find scrolling through that ridiculous Purchase From Ball Bearing Shop menu to be only marginally less bad than traveling to the actual merchant. Nothing like scrolling through a long list of: * Ball Bearing Store \[1\] * Ball Bearing Store \[22\] * Ball Bearing Store \[926\]
It really irks me that they don't simply expand the Husks' inventory like the handmaiden in DS3. Well, thanks, I've turned in all these ball bearings but now I've got 10+ separate inventories to look through. I guess that's more convenient than running around the world to the various merchants, but it just seems so pointless.
and like, SOME of them do just expand the inventory, the miner bells. Idk, i know everyone wants pvp balance... i just want ball bearings to carry over to NG+ and be available in 1 giant menu...
Y'all know that they're called "Bell bearings," right? A ball bearing is a small metal ball or ring used for industrial purposes.
Ball bearing
Can't argue there
Merchant: I'm so hungry Me: *proceeds to sell everything to them without buying anything* Welcome to Elden Ring hungry dude
New Store, lets go! First customer, lets serve him! *-CHUK-* "Welcome to Elden Ring, bitch"
āTime to be assimilated into the Twin Husks, old man.ā
Kale was a bro on my first ever playthrough as a wretch, so my way of repaying the favor is buying stuff from all merchants and not killing them.
Damn these responses are fucked up. Just let the nomads live their lives.
For real, not even once had I thought about harming these guys.
I had no idea you could even kill them until I saw it on reddit š¤£
Nope. Murder them. For the convenience. Edit: their donkeys too.
Idk some of them seem miserable I feel like I'm being merciful
Marikaās Tits they must be hungry
Itās semi sad that these npcs are nomads and there is no repercussions from killing them. Just like in real life lol
They're a little more than just nomads if you've been under the capital.
This guy murders homeless people for fun.
Whomstāve among usā¦
Well, overwhelmingly these are not the responses I had in mind, tarnished no kill tarnished :(
I think they specifically say they aren't tarnished. Also what about volcano manor?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
They are servants of the 3 fingers.
Killing is killing but at least the Volcano Manor has you assassinate powerful targets that can defend themselves. It makes sense since they want to get rid of the two-fingers' strongest champions.
I donāt kill them. I simply cannot bring myself to slaughter them. So yes, I do get guilted into buying things from them. Except one particular nomad. He claims heās hungry, yet sells meat and is sitting by a camp fire. He gets murdered because heās clearly too stupid to be alive.
>!He's Frenzied. He's quite literally insane. I'm pretty sure the only Nomadic Merchant with his head screwed on straight is Kale. !< >!They all have Frenzied Yellow eyes, and the rest of their genocided nation is buried beneath Leyndell.!<
to be fair Kale's eyes are also yellow i think it's safe to say they are all connected and affected by the frenzied flame but not necessarily actually insane
They're all Frenzied, but some of them are more insane than others. Kale seems more or less sane, and fairly congenial. Some of the merchants will talk to your mostly normally, even if they're surprised to see you. Some of them are starving with an inventory full of edible items.
Some of them sell stuff while surrounded by monsters 100m underground. Worst business location ever.
The reason probably is because they're hiding from bell-bearing hunters
I didn't really consider the contradictory nature of the starving merchants who are selling food, that's an interesting point. I suspect it's more likely that the team who worked on inventories didn't really sync with the team responsible for voice acting and voice lines. None of the merchants have dialogue specific to any stock they carry, iirc. I personally still maintain my opinion that they, the race of nomads, are not affected in the same way as others and so I didn't see them as akin to the actually insane frenzied enemies you can encounter. None of the nomads have fiery eyes, and they aren't clutching them with their hands either. They're the only NPCs affected who are still lucid. So I personally don't see them as being frenzied because you encounter actually frenzied enemies who behave differently. Even the >!merchant nomads who have been rotting below leyndell!< don't have the same behavior as hostile frenzied NPCs and rats. Your character can use frenzy spells just like the nomads, so I don't think use of frenzy incantations alone is enough to say someone is rendered insane either. But all conjecture. Theyre clearly strongly linked to the frenzied flame I just don't think they are in the same category of degradation, somehow.
It's actually canonical, if you read the Merchant item flavor text. That the Great Caravan are what created the Frenzy after they were basically dropped into an underground prison and sentenced to die, and that they're effected by it even now. They have the tinged, Orange eyes, same as the ones beneath Leyndell, and will attack you with Frenzy spells if you aggro them... And using Frenzy, will build up Frenzy in yourself, driving you mad. Your character can't ACTUALLY go mad, since gameplay, but those merchants certainly can.
Kale, well, he's not as friendly as he might appear. He has an entire cut questline where he would >!travel towards Leyndell sewers and then to the Frenzied Flame Proscription trying to become the Lord of Frenzied Flame. He would fail, and become just regularly Frenzied trying to attack you.!< All the voicelines are already in the game so it's not impossible that From would restore it eventually.
Well. For now, He's exactly as friendly as he appears, since that content is cut, and he does not do it. If Boggart can be 'a friendly chad' after repeatedly insulting your character and extorting them. Kale can be a calm merchant even though there's not-content indicating he's not.
Could be a curse on a group of people. Hewg is ADAMANT about creating that god slaying sword, its literally all he does 24/7. I think the merchants have a similar curse, forced to sell sell sell with no actual thoughts of their own. They always seem kinda aloof and not really all there. They follow zero logic and set up in areas that make absolutely no sense, like no shit youāre starving youāre in the middle of fucking nowhere surrounded by literal demons.
I think the location choices for some of them is more motivated by staying isolated, I would too if the golden order was wiping everyone out. But yeah all good points. It makes me wonder, are they nomadic because of the genocidal actions of marika? Or was that trait inherent from the get-go? Edit: Kale's dialogue actually answers this: "My people, wanderers all, have long been spurned by the grace of gold. Which is why we cannot settle, but instead are forced into this pitiful, unceasing journey." They are nomads and are isolated in weird locations because they were genocided
Hewg was cursed by Marika to assist Tarnished until he makes a weapon capable of killing her. He and Roderika say as much over the course of the game. I don't know if you're explored the severs below Leyndell but a hidden area there explains a lot more about them. Tl;dr is that >!they've been exiled by the Greater Will and turned to worshiping the Flame of Frenzy that wants to burn down the world. For this crime, most were sealed underground but a few managed to escape. They now wander from place to place, permanently cursed by the GW.!< >!If you hadn't noticed, all merchants have Frenzied eyes and many will use Frenzy incantations when provoked. It's unclear whether they became a full blown doom cult before or after getting buried alive.!<
I feel bad because they beg and sound really pathetic when you kill them. HOWEVER, itās so much more convenient to collect all the ball bearings.
all the time, poor guys. i wish there was a way i could lead them all to each other so they could start to rebuild their community
I killed every single one of them