GB Feature: Eschalon: Book I Review
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Once you talk to a merchant you can see their true inventories, which are nicely stocked, if not overwhelming in their variety of goods. Prices are high, twice those that merchants will pay for items, but that's to be expected. You can always improve your Mercantile skill to lower the cost, and/or find a wearable that gives you a bonus in it. Alchemy, too, plays into this system. At low levels, ingredients are more expensive to purchase from a magic shop than finished potions, but as you raise your Alchemy skill, the potions you produce increase in quality. Finally, you're able to sell back potions you make at a good price advantage over the cost of their ingredients, but by then, the items you want to buy are more expensive. You still can't afford them outright, and the cash your potions bring in need to be weighed against the value they provide against foes. This offers tradeoffs as there should be in a well-balanced game.
Kudos to the Eschalon: Book I team, as well, for creating a convincingly non-linear RPG that mixes a direct main plot with a goodly number of side quests, and avoids ramping the difficulty up too much, too quickly, if you decide to take The Grand Tour, instead. Not that you won't be killed easily if you travel too far away, at least if you try and fight or box yourself into a corner. I don't like the too restrictive pathways through the linked map sections, but at least there's a great deal of territory to explore. It's worth exploring, too, because Basilisk has created plenty of mini-encounter spots, where minor collections of monsters hang around a body or treasure chest. Sometimes their proximity is well-motivated, but at other times it feels rote, with the monsters obviously placed to furnish the obligatory challenge.
