Trade with merchants for what?
Their stock is miserable and never changes, so once you've used up their stock of potions, tough luck. They sell only basic early-level weapons (my level 16 characters are still using weapons found in the first two hours of the game... a ranger using a damage 7-31 bow at level 16 is pitiful, just pitiful). My Hero is still using basic 6 leather armor. Not because it suits her svelt form; she has not found anything better. My characters used up every goldpiece available in Act I... and there really weren't that many of them... just trying to open skill trees to have somewhere to plop the skill points that were accumulating.
After exploring the Imp Village and solving several quests there, I'm heading to the Act II Battlefields. If I can't find decent weapons and armor there, I fear BD may end up in the graveyard of unplayed disappointments. Level 20 monsters are laughing at our pitiful level 5-type weapon damage.
And if anyone dares say that a game must make players scratch for decent weapons, spend hours doing quicksave/quickload to discover what herbs, charms and skills actually do, make gold rare as hens' teeth, and make enough insta-death traps to wear the stencil off the quickload key just to present a decent "challenge", may the fleas of a thousand camels infest their armpits.
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