Shop

A shop is a special room found on some dungeon levels. Each has an attendant shopkeeper and a selection of items to buy. The shopkeepers will also buy items from you, depending on the type of shop. A complete list is below.

The shopkeeper

A shopkeeper owns a shop and buys and sells the items within.

At first, shopkeepers seem skilled enough to prevent adventurers such as yourself from taking anything without payment. However, many NetHack players know where shopkeepers are vulnerable; if you do not, see stealing from shops.

Normal transactions

Normally, shopkeepers own all items on any square of the floor of their shop, with the notable exception of the square adjacent to the door, here called the "entrance square". Here we make a distinction between:

• the shop inventory, the items on the floor of the shop.
• the shopkeeper's personal inventory, the items which the shopkeeper is carrying; this often includes several dangerous offensive wands.

If you pick up such an item, you will have an unpaid object in your inventory. Press [p] to pay for the items; the shopkeeper will ask you about each unpaid object, and if you pay, you will own the object while the gold will transfer to the shopkeeper's personal inventory.

If you drop an item onto the shop floor (not the entrance square), the shopkeeper might offer to buy it. If you refuse, or if the shopkeeper makes no offer, then you continue to own the item and can pick it up again without paying. However, if the shopkeeper forgets that you own the item, then the shopkeeper will start selling it. This will happen if you exit the shop after dropping an item there.

Shopkeepers are greedy!

• Shopkeepers will own and sell anything on their shop floor. If you kill a monster in a shop, even if you had to kill it to save your own life, the shopkeeper will own all the dropped items and the corpse. Likewise, if you eat fried food and drop your weapon, it's his. When you are in a shop, never kill a leprechaun that has stolen your gold or a nymph that has stolen an item, unless you like paying for what was previously yours. In Slash'EM's Black Market, dropped artifacts may reach ridiculous prices.
• If you are hungry, shopkeepers charge more for food! (They even do this for corpses of monsters that you killed.)
• Shopkeepers will reveal the identities of common weapons and armor when you buy or sell them. For example, if you sell a crude dagger, the shopkeeper will reveal that it was an orcish dagger. These identities are the same during every game. What shopkeepers never identify for you are scrolls, spellbooks, rings, or other such useful information. Shopkeepers also never tell you about BUC status or enchantment (directly - though price can hint at an item's enchantment).
• Shopkeepers will sell unidentified gems at high prices (as if all gems are valuable) while purchasing them at cheap prices (as if all gems are glass). So the most obvious way to identify gems by price does not work.
• You can calm an angry shopkeeper by pressing [p]. If you have enough money, you can calm nearly any shopkeeper. In some cases, such as when you attack them unprovoked, they cannot be placated ("Izchak is after your hide, not your money! You try to appease the angry Izchak by giving him 1000 gold pieces. But Izchak is as angry as ever")

Notable shopkeepers

• Asidonhopo
• Izchak
• One-eyed Sam

Table of shops

Shop	Probability	Stock
general	44%	100% random
used armor dealership	14%	90% armor, 10% weapons
second-hand bookstore	10%	90% scrolls, 10% spellbooks
liquor emporium	10%	100% potions
antique weapons outlet	5%	90% weapons, 10% armor
delicatessen	5%	83% food, 5% fruit juice, 5% water, 4% booze, 3% ice boxes
jewelers	3%	85% rings, 10% gems, 5% amulets
quality apparel and accessories	3%	90% wands, 5% leather gloves, 5% elven cloaks
hardware	3%	100% tools
rare books	3%	90% spellbooks, 10% scrolls
lighting	Minetown only	40% tallow candles, 32% wax candles, 10% oil lamps, 5% brass lanterns, 3% magic lamps

Accessories and rare book shops may not be larger than 20 squares; if they would otherwise be (about half the time), they are converted into general stores instead.

Generation

Shops have a base 3/DL chance of being created between level 2 and Medusa, provided there is a suitable room to put them in (no stairs, only one door), and provided that there are enough rooms on the level to start with (minimum 3, 4 for a branch level). Note that this means that there will always be a shop on each of levels 2 and 3 if the conditions are right (which in practice turns out to only be the case about 45% of the time).

The probability of a shop being of a particular type is given in the second column above.

Minetown is also guaranteed a number of shops, including Izchak's lighting store. Abandoned shops can be found in Orcus-town and occasionally in bones files.

Shops can be generated "closed", in which case the message "Closed for inventory" will be written in dust outside of the shop door. The shop door itself will be locked. Opening the door with a lockpick or key will not anger the shopkeeper, and you will be able to buy and sell as usual. Breaking down the door will anger the owner unless you immediately pay 400 zorkmids.

Messages

You can tell there is a shop on the level if you receive any of the following messages.

Message	Reason
"You hear someone cursing shoplifters." "You hear the chime of a cash register."	There is a shop on the level
"You hear Neiman and Marcus arguing!"	There is a shop on the level You are hallucinating
"This shop appears to be deserted."	There is no shopkeeper in this shop

Strategy

Shops are extremely useful. As well as being a source of items, they let you do price identification.

Robbing shops

Main article: Stealing from shops

It's possible to steal from a shop with the help of a pet, or without.

Scrolls of scare monster

Because a cursed scroll of scare monster turns to dust when picked up, novice adventurers who shop by picking up items can find themselves trapped in a store with no money and no way out. There are several ways to prevent this from happening to you:

• Use #chat instead of picking up items.
• Always carry a few hundred spare zorkmids to cover any accidental charges you incur.
• As a last-chance option, sell everything you have to cover the cost of the scroll. Better to leave naked than in a coffin.

Mimics

While mimics may appear elsewhere in the dungeons, they are most likely to appear in shops, disguised as items. Earlier versions of NetHack made them relatively easy to identify, but more recent versions have made them virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the shopkeeper's wares. Clever adventurers can still identify mimics:

• Search before walking onto an item.
• A mimic can be healed while disguised. This will result in a message such as "the leash looks browner".
• Throw an inexpensive item across the store. If it hits the wall, nothing in its path was a mimic. (Don't throw anything other than gold at shopkeepers!)
• Wear a ring of protection from shape changers. This will cause mimics to appear as mimics.
• Use telepathy.
• If you don't have telepathy and can't chance being attacked by a mimic, a less effective method is to only walk where your pet or the shopkeeper has walked.

This page is a stub. Should you wish to do so, you can contribute by expanding this page.

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"There is an awful lot of collected wisdom on shops to add."

This page is based on a spoiler by Dylan O'Donnell. The original license is:

Redistribution, copying, and editing of these spoilers, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. The original contributors to any spoiler must continue to be credited.
2. Any modifications to the spoiler must be acknowledged and credited.