Question about merchants

I was wondering the exact locations for the merchants in villages and other generated structures. I know the food merchant in apex cities that's in the building labled shop. The gun merchant on the flying boats that's on the 3rd floor.The weapon/food/clothing merchants all over avian cities. The random little cart/isolated house merchants selling food/clothes. Glitch merchants that has a cash register. Frog merchant. And Wizards. I want to know if when I go into structures if there are merchants I'm accidentally killing. Where are all the merchants located.

Have this picture of a man crying as tribute to your answers.

 

If you are talking about places like Prisons, temples and such there are not friendly NPC you are mowing down along with the inmates of cell block 9.

As for the leveling up thing, could be kind of neat. Maybe not exactly like Minecraft but building a reputation with a merchant to get new offers or minor discounts (or get fewer offers and markups if you murder all their friends) could be interesting. Could encourage you to buy more stuff from them in hopes of unlocking a better selection (namely for merchants on your home planet or the ones you can spawn. maybe the outpost ones depending on how they work as well.). Would be neat if the more food i buy from my ships chef the more likely he will get some better foods so maybe i can just buy OP carrot cake rather then having to buy the carrots and bread then combine them.

 

That sounds very similar to Nethack merchants. Everything they own is a real item stored in their shop. Unfortunately there is a very common abuse with such systems. The big one is you sell the merchant all your stuff, and then kill him to get it back. Nethack solved this by making merchants ruthless demigods. Most other games don't give player access to the items at all. It's not an easy thing to solve.

One thing that WOULD be cool is to have the merchant's "level" based on how ornate their shop is. Items do not directly impact their inventory, but more furniture/valuables would upgrade them to higher tiers of business. That way players can upgrade their merchants in a visual way which becomes its own reward (rather than dumping buckets of quest items in them). Of course no single merchant could do everything. Thus players would have to decorate several kinds of shops to upgrade different kinds of merchants. The quest system can assist by telling players what the shopkeeper is missing to upgrade.

 

That sounds like a really good idea but i don't think it (if that will ever be implemented) would come out for a long time.