Monster population and merchants

[Xaphan]

Hello !

This is again one of theses topic when I ask you some little things

This time, it's about monster population and merchants. Let's start :

Is there any areas where you think the monster population is too low or too high ?
I personnaly think that caves area (the ones that look like the Den of Evil in vanilla) are a bit overpopulated. However, areas that use the 'Barrack' tileset (like the Temple of the Triurne) were too low on population.

Currently, I find merchants are not that usefull. Do you think that allowing thems to sometimes sell rare items can be a solution ? (At an higher price than magic items, of course)
This could make the game too easy if the player can farm the merchants and buy all rares, so I'm not sure it's a good idea. Do you have any other idea to makethems more usefull, or do you think they should be left like they are now ?

[bleedingapathy]

the only thing I ever bought from a vender was to repair my items that is all I used them for.

[NikafieNd]

Area's like the Maggot Lair from vanilla are very low populated like Stik's lair in Act 2 Dry Plains, It had the boss pack and 1 other normal pack of monsters only.
I love the cave areas for how populated they are

There's an area in act 1 where monsters suddenly start getting special skills when you hit them. The areas before it has no mobs of that kind it's like a transition point, Suddenly all these diff mobs are doing tons of dmg when you hit them. I think you should introduce afew of these mobs earlier to get the player used to it.

The NPC's can be useful for crafting, Quite often i buy white/blue items from them to turn into rares for Set/Unique crafting, but apart from that there's nothing else i really buy from the armor/weap NPC's.

[NikafieNd]

*Sorry to double post, but need attention drawn to it.*

Your idea about merchants selling rare items could be nice, I don't think people will farm merchants cause you can make custom rares via crafting but the RNG god can be interesting sometimes.
Are you able to change what items cost in NPC's? Like instead of a gold price for these rares maybe you can add material costs, Like Demonic Essence or certain monster charms/relics? If so that would be epic.