This is ver 5.0.5, by the way, not 5.5.0. Those trader's shops never showed up for me - EVER. On multiple campaigns. Are they meant to be down the alley with the two doors that don't have blue doors near them? What if I uninstall and re-install everything? ~ That Shenshock appeared in his little emporium and we bought some amulets of WIS, CON, gloves of DEX, Girdles of STR etc etc for Taki and Darley. Then, when we went back, the items disappeared. When I bought more and equipped them on the NPCs they disappeared again! What's all this? SHENANNIGENS!! Err... moving on from Verbobonc, Darley never revealed her demonic nature - is this something to do with my Sense Motive, Gather Int, Dip or what? There doesn't seem to be any way to make her shape change. Thromnmel's mob FINALLY gave me the sword, but those damned Elves never turned up either, and we cleared the Temple, wandered the wilderness, did Hickory Dickery etc. What's the trigger for the Elven reward? Cool discovery! You probably know already, but I cast Mage's Sword in the fire node and finally killed the Balor, but the sword got killed before the expiry of the spell and I could loot it of a 4d6 sword with something like +28 to hit. So I gave it to Darley. Sword lowers AC by a lot, though, but never disappears once the sword is looted off the "corpse" of the, err... sword.. Gotta go...
On my last run-through, I escorted ONE of the merchants back to Verbobonc, and told the other to go on by himself (which causes him to disappear). The one I escorted back did appear as a merchant a short time later. No shop door appears - he's a sidewalk vendor. The other merchant never did appear. I would try escorting both of them back one at a time if you want them to open shop. I've tried several times bringing them both back at once and this doesn't seem to work. They're going to be eliminated in future patches anyway, which I think is a good thing.
Everytime I've escorted both merchants back they don't open up their shops but if I let both find their way one of them will open up a shop. It's the same shop no matter which one you send back.
