They're enraged by being bled on too.
Ironic way to kill shopkeepers[]
I tried this but once however it worked quite well. In a shop that sells weapons, pick up a shotgun and kill the shopkeeper with it. It seemed to kill him in one shot. I haven't tested it thoroughly though but it seems to be an incredibly easy way to dispatch weapon store shopkeepers. Maybe test this a bit more before adding to the article as a sure fire method.--89.125.136.228 18:57, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
- Yeah, it's known that that's one of the easiest ways to kill him.
- Note to self: Don't be a sales clerk at the WalMart gun counter when the apocalypse comes. --Interiot 19:37, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
Theft/Kill Methods[]
1. If you can plant a bomb directly beneath a shopkeeper with only one block of the store floor in the way (no further rock) then the shopkeeper will fall on the bomb and die after the bomb is set off. This can be done with or without sticky bombs (but requires a convenient floor in the right position underneath the shop without).
2. As mentioned, a point-black shotgun blast will do enough damage to kill them outright.
3. I forget where it is on the wiki, but someone showed a video of using a pistol to bounce a shopkeeper around long enough to kill him without letting him fire his shotgun. It required luring him about halfway across the store so he bounced off the wall rather than landing next to the shotgun.
4. One time just recently, the shopkeeper followed me outside of the shop area when I bought something and dashed out quickly. Since I was outside of the shop area for the trigger for the "take out bomb" aggro, I could plant a bomb next to him and kill him without retaliation. I'm not sure how to achieve this regularly, but it's worth testing.
5. Due to the game not tracking sprites that are significantly offscreen (and stops them in their movement when they reach the edge, continuing once you approach again) it's possible to get a bunch of bullets at the edge of the screen that will all shoot forward again once you get closer. Fire enough off the edge of the screen when a shopkeeper is further along and you can kill them in one "shot" with the pistol or shotgun without fear of retaliation.
- E-mouse 22:08, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
you don't need a special method for killing him with the pistol, just keep shooting him 'till he is dead. works for me all the time (and I'm not a professional shop robber or something, this is the only method that works for me, apart from climbing up a rope, dropping a bomb and praying he leaves the shop into the frozen zone) 80.101.53.239 20:12, June 8, 2011 (UTC)
Exit Shopkeeper Trigger[]
I think the appearance of shopkeepers at floor exits is not necessarily linked to killing a shopkeeper. After killing one with methods 2, 3, or 4, no exit shopkeepers appeared for me - until after I got spotted by another shopkeeper. The wanted posters and shotgun-toting existing shopkeepers were still active, though.
The exit shopkeepers don't appear until a shopkeeper aggros, rather than one dies: if you can kill a shopkeeper without activating any of the triggers that would make them attack, then you can rob the shops and be wanted but not get tracked by exit shopkeepers. Shopkeeper aggro seems to be shown by when a shopkeeper comment appears, like "Terrorist!" "Die, vandal!" or "You'll pay for your crimes!" Until then, you won't see exit shopkeepers, but normal ones will still try to kill you on sight (and activate the exit shopkeepers if they spot you).
Result: Assassinating shopkeepers from afar or with other sneaky methods lets you avoid dealing with extra shopkeepers every level!
-- E-mouse 22:08, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Ahah, thank you E-Mouse, an excellent conclusion to the perplexing scenarios where you could dispatch a shopkeeper and not have to pay the reaper's toll on the next level. I'm thinking of adding the Webcannon shop heist scenario youtube to the article for perusal as well (previously uploaded the pistol one to the pistol article) --MechanisMs 23:36, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Sounds like a plan. I was fantasizing about having a video with examples of all of the reliable methods to kill shopkeepers, but I'm lazy and they aren't easily set up. Also I don't have a good recorder.
I also discovered that triggering at least the "take out bomb" condition in the shop, even after the resident shopkeeper is dead, will give you the "You'll pay for your crimes!" message. I don't think I lasted long enough that game to see whether exit shopkeepers started spawning, but I expect they would.
-- E-mouse 00:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
- If it would help to record these, I can work on creating an enhanced user map that includes each kind of full shop, that would allow you to easily restart each different type of shop, at will.
- A decent screen recorder is CamStudio.
- Anyway, I updated the article to clarify the game state a little bit (the fact that there's two variables the game keeps track of independently). However, I'm still not totally sure my description is correct. If anyone has time to work on this further, by far the easiest way to explore this is to run the game in debug mode, and do Watch>Add with these two variables:
- global.murderer — whether you've ever murdered a shopkeeper
- global.thiefLevel — your "wanted level", it goes up by two or three when a shopkeeper shouts at you, it goes down by one each time you complete a level, and whenever it's non-zero an extra shopkeeper will guard the exit.
- This allows you to see during an encounter exactly what actions cause the variables to change. This method is MUCH better than waiting until the next level to eventually see what the outcome of your actions were. --Interiot 15:37, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
"Murderer" trigger[]
Do shopkeepers become perma-hostile after one dies at your hands, or from any cause? For example, if you steal from a shop and convince the shopkeeper to leap into a spike pit in area 2 without harming him, do you get marked a murderer despite not actually killing the shopkeeper?
To be fair, this is an ambiguous example since you still caused the shopkeeper to move out there, but there's probably rare situations that could lead to similar provocation without your interference.
- E-mouse 02:44, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Here's a better example: If I throw a man-eating plant into a shop and let it eat him, will I be marked as a murderer? If the exit shopkeeper spawns in hostile circumstances, such as next to a totem pole or a man-eating plant, and I never touch him, is that murder?--216.68.192.91 20:41, October 16, 2009 (UTC)
Throwing a man-eating plant is tricky business to begin with, as the plant seems reluctant to recognize the shopkeeper as a meal. I tried it once and had to knock the plant out and reintroduce it after it peacefully left the shop. In that instance I died before seeing if it would work. In another instance, I did see a plant eat the shopkeep without my help, and I didn't get a message suggesting I had murdered him. This may be buggy however... I took his shotgun (nothing else) and he revived and killed me with his bare hands.
As for ambiguous situations, I wouldn't expect leniency. In one instance, taking the golden idol and inadvertantly causing the boulder to damage his shop was sufficient reason for a "DIE, VANDAL!" and a shotgunning. 161.184.178.71 08:19, June 15, 2010 (UTC)
Shopkeeper Alignment[]
As suggested on the TIGSource forum, I'm moving the "shopkeeper alignment" bit to discussion; maybe it ought to be pared down a tad and placed with other trivial things in a trivia section.
- "Some have speculated about the alignment of shopkeepers. Shopkeepers will become aggressive at the slightest hint of provocation from the player, yet they ignore monsters who come into the shop and attack others. Worse, the shopkeeper only becomes annoyed if the player tries to actually defend themselves against foreign monsters. It is thus argued that shopkeepers have an evil alignment."
MagFlare 13:27, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
Telefragging[]
it's probably a bug, but you can teleport onto shopkeepers, killing them, without any consequences. I have killed 5/7 of the black market shopkeepers like this without having the remaining two (ankh/dice shop, since you cant really teleport onto them without a high risk of death) caring. what's even better is you can do this with a teleporter that you havn't bought, assuming the bottom left shop is selling it.
Though, when you do kill those 5, their merchandise is still considered owned by the other two shopkeepers, and you have to find a way of dealing with them, which is easy enough--71.63.135.35 21:25, September 20, 2009 (UTC)
Damaging the shop[]
Shopkeeps get upset if their shop gets bouldered or fire-frogged right? Should that be in the article? 96.255.195.232 15:23, July 25, 2010 (UTC)
- "When a block considered part of the shop is destroyed", that pretty sums up the thing. Plasma cannon, mattock, bombs, ...
- GregMendel (talk) 12:32, July 1, 2014 (UTC)
Free Cyclops makes them go nuts ?[]
I changed the wiki when it happened to me without checking it out with you guys first, so I'm going to fix that
When I played Cyclops for the first time (after finding him later in a coffin without buying him in the black market), a shopkeeper went mad for no reason (no cobra or else) in a slave trade shop. At this time I assumed the game didn't realize that Cyclops was free and thought I stole it, and as it only happened to me one time it's not a fact.
Did you guys got the same bug ?
GregMendel (talk) 12:29, July 1, 2014 (UTC)