The mercantile skill extra feature and merchant's clock

[Raven]

First of all underrail is a great game, got it and love it. The crafting is good (could be better) but it has a big problem - it's hard to find needed items to craft. It gets much worse with long REAL time stock reset for merchants. Specially at the start, when you don't have too much traders, so some builds are screwed for HOURS of real time, before you can get/craft needed items (like sniper rifle)

I suggest 2 things, that can make gameplay much smoother:

1)Option to "order" items from merchants based on your mercantile skill. It can be double price,but the quality of item will be identical to mercantile level (or what's best for ballance)
You can order only 1 item per merchant and you will have to wait restock to order again (so no spamming/getting everything)
Item type have to match merchant's speciality (weapon dealer will provide gun parts etc)
With this you are not spending hours waiting, running/reloading to check every trader for the last needed part, or cursing bad RNG/luck

2)Put a countdown clock in merchant's menu to see, when it will reset. I had so many infuriating moments, when I didn't had enough money, or skill - went fast to level up/get some quest - return to see all reset to a new stock with needed items gone.

The gameplay is great, but after restarting many times (new ideas for build/screw some builds/etc) I got many times this invisible wall of "can't progress properly with this build, cause I can't craft @@@ item" And the point of this game is to make a specialist, which is crippled until RNG bless you with needed parts. A sniper build without sniper rifle, or heavy melee build without metal armor, etc.

[Tamior]

Just to clarify: do you suggest that only components can be ordered, or finished items as well?
Because if you can orders finished items, crafting becomes effectively redundant.

[Raven]

Just to clarify: do you suggest that only components can be ordered, or finished items as well?
Because if you can orders finished items, crafting becomes effectively redundant.

Only components like scopes, reloader, gun frame etc from gunsmith, or cloth, plates etc from armorsmith.
Imagine you almost got everything for sniper rifle, but none has anatomical scope, so you just wasting time waiting for a random chance next reset, or craft subpar item.

The mercantile level can be used to get components with higher quality. This way there maybe will be a point raise this skill over 105. I'm not sure if it's game breaking and maybe after 100Q the skill will give less bonus for spent points. (till 100 mercantile = quality, after 100 +5 mercantile = +1 quality, so you gonna need 200 mercantile to get 120 quality?)
This idea was to help a player to gear up with less RNG at the start and then slowly make it obsolete.

[newageofpower]

Just to clarify: do you suggest that only components can be ordered, or finished items as well?
Because if you can orders finished items, crafting becomes effectively redundant.

Finished items with limited mods would be fine, imho. Better yet, also work in some Unique Upgrading mechanic as well.

[Phyroks]

I ques it would be nice to request the shop to have a larger stock of certain items, but not too specific (more snipers / pistols / assault rifle frames / rubber soles)

But naturally certain shops would only allow certain items to be ordered.