The Troubles With Shopkeepers Who Bring Items Every Two Weeks

The idea of a secretive, mystical trader who comes along at a set time every couple of weeks, selling a rotating stock of rare items not available elsewhere, sounds like a great idea in a game, as it inspires people not just to check back regularly but to keep on playing so that players can afford to buy the rare things this magical trader brings.

Baro Ki’Teer is one such trader. A stuck-up bastard who pisses most players off in three ways: his wares are very expensive for new players, middling players wait for weeks and months trying to get what they are missing and veterans always have everything and want something new.

Now, the problem with newbies isn’t too bad. Aside from a handful of mods (most notably the electric and status mods), most things that Baro has aren’t really meant for them. Newbies will eventually be able to earn credits and ducats later on and can’t even access the later relays anyway. Newbies wanting all of Baro’s shinies need to work their way up like everyone else.

But the issues that middling players and veteran players have kinda counteract each other.

On the one hand, veterans want new stuff and Baro Ki’Teer rarely brings new stuff. Most of his wares are on a cycle and repeat regularly, particularly things like armour sets. For most of 2019, we didn’t get anything particularly new, aside from little Ki’Teer-themed ship ornaments. Sure, the ornaments are pretty, but not everyone is into IKEAframe and not everyone wants to waste ducats on trinkets. 2019 was also somewhat awkward because of the constant reappearance of the Ignis Wraith, a weapon that often has its blueprint given out for free on PC, PS4 and Xbox, by people like me. In fact, I still give out free Ignis Wraith blueprints if people ask for them. The Ignis Wraith being available from Baro Ki’Teer is solely for the people playing on the Nintendo Switch, who weren’t around for the Pacifism Defect. So veteran Tenno just see the same old stuff being cycled through over and over.

For middle-gear players though, this cycle can be a bit of a curse, especially when it comes to primed mods. While a veteran player may have seen Primed Flow in Baro’s inventory multiple times, a middling player probably missed it the first time and now has to wait weeks for these mods to return. The alternative to Baro is to buy these mods off other people, but primed mods have a one million credit trade tax on them, so this path is really only viable for other veterans. The same applies for weapons – while the Ignis Wraith is common enough, things like the Supra Vandal, the Vulkar Wraith and the Prisma Shade come by almost at random. Then there are items like the Prova Vandal – an absolutely useless weapon but it was only ever available from Baro Ki’Teer and players had to wait over a year for it to properly show up in his wares.

So you have this awkward disconnect between players. Either you are waiting forever to see something new and are sick and tired of the same things appearing; or you are waiting for things to reappear because you missed them last time. And frankly, adding more new items for veteran players to buy means that middling players who miss out have to wait longer and longer. This can somewhat be solved by increasing the total number of items Baro Ki’Teer brings every two weeks, but you still have long, long waits until items can some back.

It’s a tricky scenario to balance and I doubt anything can completely fix the situation, because Baro is SUPPOSED to bring rare and exclusive things on a time-limited basis. But just how rare and hard to obtain do you want to make his wares?

I was also going to mention Xur, a mysterious trader who works very similarly to Baro Ki’Teer, but there’s a few… different issues with him: frankly and firstly, I don’t know enough about Destiny 2 gear to be able to tell whether what he brings is good or not. But Xur only brings four items anyway, one exotic gun and three exotic armour pieces, one for each class. Now, this wouldn’t be too bad except for the fact that Xur will happily sell expansion-only gear, which is a real gut punch when you’ve been waiting a week to see what this guy has.

Oh well.