To begin, let us examine the different kinds of shops. There are three kinds: Regular, Discount, and Stationary. Regular and Discount shops move locations every twelve hours, and the community contributes to their discovery via A View in the Dark. Their locations are discovered by buying drinks at a pub or asking humans. Stationary shops, as their name implies, remain at their locations permanently. There is also a difference between all three shops in the prices they will sell items to you for.
A Regular shop gives us the baseline price of all items - in terms of percentage, their prices are the "100%" that all future calculations come from. A Stationary shop, due to the ease of finding it, sells items at either 110% or 125% of their normal cost. A Discount shop sells items at 70% of their original price.
However, and this is where things get complicated, there are then subsections of these general kinds of shops. Categorized into Magic, Potion, Scroll, and Pawn shops, each provides a different variety of items. Stationary shops tend to sell a variety of common goods (such as is found in Magic shops), but also sell what are referred to as Specialty Items; baubles that are typically expensive and serve no actual function. To simplify things until a later time, Magic shops sell most items, Potion shops sell potions (which includes holy water and garlic spray) and are home to Necromancers, and Scroll shops sell scrolls. Pawn shops allow you to sell any of your items for a fraction of the price you bought them for.
Regular Shops
- Magic Shops
- Dark Desires
- Interesting Times
- Sparks
- The Magic Box
- White Light
- Potion Shops
- McPotions
- Potable Potions
- Potion Distillery
- Potionworks
- Silver Apothecary
- The Potion Shoppe
- Scroll Shops
- Herman's Scrolls
- Paper and Scrolls
- Scrollmania
- Scrolls 'n' Stuff
- Scrolls R Us
- Scrollworks
- Ye Olde Scrolls
Discount Shops
- Discount Magic
- Discount Potions
- Discount Scrolls
Pawn Shops
- Ace Pawn
- Checker's Pawn Shop
- Reversi Pawn
- Spinner's Pawn
Stationary Shops
- Eternal Aubade of Mystical Treasures
- Liski's Shadow Phial
*(The Shadow Phial does not outright sell items, but works on a 'barter' system that will be detailed elsewhere). - The Cloister of Secrets
Charisma directly affects the price of all items, as detailed here. To summarize that information, the discount of Charisma 3 takes 10% off of items at Regular and Discount shops. It is important to note that while the discounts provided by Charisma and Discount pricing stack, this stacking is multiplicative, not additive. Without boring you, what this essentially means is that the 10% from Charisma 3 and the 30% provided by Discount pricing do not equate to a 40% discount, but rather to a 37% discount. Charisma does not affect the pricing at Stationary shops.
- e.g. The regular, non-Charisma price of a Sprint Potion is 150 coins. Shopping at a Discount shop lowers this price to 105 coins. Charisma 3 lowers the price further to 94 coins. A Sprint Potion at a Stationary shop costs 165 coins and can not be discounted.
As mentioned above, each shop can sell a different kind of item. This often results in overlapping, but the takeaway here is that the single most efficient shop is Discount Magic as it provides the most commonly bought goods at the highest discount available. Discount Potions is also high on the priority list of shop hunters, as it provides both discounted weapons and a Necromancer. Specialty items will not be listed here (unless requested by others, in which case edits shall be made), except those items which serve an actual function. All pricing is listed assuming the vampire has Charisma 3. If you are not shopping with Charisma 3, you are wrong.
Not listed above is the Safety Deposit Box Key, available only at The Cloister of Secrets, which costs a flat 11,000 coins.
Discount and Charisma also do not affect the prices demanded by Necromancers. These beings are found at any Potion shop and, for a price, will return lost blood to you. Each pint restored costs 25 coins. The amount he can restore you to is equal to your highest blood count obtained minus 100 pints, a number generally referred to as a "necro cap." Blood lost to hunters can not be regained unless you have suffered a loss through other means since your last visit to the Necromancer. A vampire with a Battle Cloak cannot be healed while in Torpor.
