So ever since the City expansion came out I always wondered about playing the merchant and just running a trade route like a caravan, I just never got the opportunity. The plan is you go into the city as soon as you can and buy a riding horse and every cheap magic item you can like scrolls. You save one gold. You then leave by way of the port and pay one gold and next turn go to the village on the corner end of the main board. You then sell all your magic items for three gold each. Then you go back to the city and with this increased amount of gold buy even more magic items and a horse and cart and port to the village. Rinse and repeat. Somewhere around third of fourth trip you start buying spellbooks or flails or warhorses or what-have you. Someone should try this and tell me how it went.

How are you selling anything at the village?

How are you selling anything at the village?

The Merchant character can sell Objects for 1 gold and Magic Objects for 3 gold at the Village.

The above procedure allows the Merchant to do what the Alchemist does freely in the City, without the need to build the "trade route". That's a viable strategy, even though it might take ages to collect a decent amount of money. Never tried this, but no one has ever played the Merchant in the games with City expansion we had so far.