Merchant

The merchant is a special type of friendly npc. Several merchants will be spawned throughout a run somewhere in a level. There are five types of merchants, but they all work the same and they all will sell at least 3 different items, usually ammo or weapons. Unless attacked the merchant is friendly and will not attack. The items can be bought in exchange for ammo, health or hearts. The sold items will become better the further the player progresses. Starting a B-Level will cause existing merchants to regenerate their offerings.

All items can be bought. It is also possible to come back to a merchant in a previous level to trade at some later point.

Enemies will usually ignore the merchant and the merchant will ignore enemies, but when in doubt the merchant will join the enemies.

Merchant types
Merchant types are random and can be identified by their offerings but also be the slightly different carriage next to them.

General Merchant
This merchant is the default merchant and the most common type. He will always offer three items. The first one will always be some kind of ammo. The second option is some kind of weapon and the third option could be anything, including health or upgrades but also more ammo or weapons.

Ammo Trader
This merchant is specialized in trading ammunition. He will have every ammo type in stock, but the quantity is randomized. He is the only merchant with five choices to choose from.

Doctor
This merchant is selling health items. This means you can buy regular medicine, but also large medicine to increase your maximum health. It's very useful to know where a doctor is located, just in case.

Arms Dealer
This merchant is trading with weapons. Sometimes he will offer surprisingly rare or powerful weapons way before they would usually show up. The prices vary from very cheap to extremely expensive. Make sure you know what you are spending your ammo on.

Upgrade Merchant
This merchant is rather rare and very similar to the general merchant but is selling 4 instead of 3 items and has an increased chance for offering an upgrade.

Currency
The Canyon does not have a cash-based currency. Instead people usually use ammunition as currency.

The trader will put a price on his items. Usually this is a set of different ammo types. But sometimes he will also trade for health points (red hearts) instead. On rare occasions he will also ask for hearts (gray hearts), which will decrease the player's maximum health but is very valuable.

Fighting the merchant
It is possible to attack and to kill the merchant. This will cause the offered items to be destroyed, except for a single one, and the merchant to turn hostile. If some items were bought beforehand the remaining items might not be the one that would have been spared destruction. Therefore it is possible to not get any items from killing the merchant.

The more merchants are killed the stronger future merchants will become.