There are several levels of shop randomization in Free Enterprise. Each shop has its own unique manifest (unlike vanilla FF4, where some shops shared the same inventory).
Even when randomized, weapon shops will always sell weapons, and likewise for armor and items, with some exceptions:
Shops are categorized as “gated” (those requiring at least one key item to access) and “ungated”; most randomization levels make a distinction between these two kinds of shops.
Item prices are not randomized, but they have been changed from the original game; see item stats tables for pricing info.
Under Svanilla, shops sell the same items as they did in the Japanese version of FF4.
If Pshop is not enabled, the Pass shop in the Toroia Cafe sells nothing. (See Pass settings.)
Under Sshuffle, the same items are available in shops as in the Japanese version of FF4, but are shuffled amongst each other. That is, anything you can find in a shop is something that could be found in a shop before; it will just be in a different shop.
The shuffle is weighted so that items in ungated shops are more likely to still be in ungated shops, and likewise for gated shops. (Specifically, 50% of ungated shop items and 40% of gated shop items are mixed into a pool, and then randomly redistributed back to ungated/gated shops in the same quantity.)
Sstandard, Spro and Swild generate randomized manifests for each shop:
There will be a total of 63 weapons and 48 armors randomly selected for sale across the world (excluding the Smithy shop). The number of different non-weapon/armor items available for sale is flag-dependent:
Sstandard - 90% of possible items (ie. those not excluded by other flags)Swild - all possible itemsSpro - 30 item typesItems forced into shops by safety checks or other guarantees do not count towards these numbers. If possible, the randomizer will not select the same item more than once (though forced item inclusions may result in duplicates).
The randomization level controls what tiers of items can appear in what shops. (There are some exceptions to these numbers; refer to the item stats tables for exact information):
| Level | Shop type | Item tiers |
|---|---|---|
Sstandard | Ungated | 1-4 |
| Gated | 1-5 | |
| Smithy | 6 | |
Spro | Ungated | 1-3 |
| Gated | 1-4 | |
| Smithy | 5-6 | |
Swild | Any | 1-8 |
After selecting the items to be placed in shops, the items are randomly distributed one at a time to shops that may carry them. Every shop gets at least one item, if possible.
The Smithy shop is handled independently; it receives four random items from the indicated tiers. These items can be of any type, including weapons and armor.
As a tweak for game balance, under Sstandard, the Cave Eblan item shop is guaranteed to contain at least two tier-5 items. (See item stats tables)
To prevent unwinnable/painful roadblocks, under these shop randomization levels, some items are forced to be available:
Sno:j).
Setting Sunsafe will remove all of these guarantees. Setting Bunsafe will remove the ThorRage guarantee.
For extra challenge, some flags effectively remove shopping from the game:
Scabins ensures that all shops only sell Cabins.Sempty ensures that all shops sell nothing.
Note that if Pshop is enabled, you will still be able to buy the Pass somewhere. (See Pass settings.)
Setting Sfree will make all items in shops free to purchase. (They will also sell for 0 GP.)
The amount of GP earned from selling items can be modified with these flags:
Ssell:quarter makes items sell for 1/4 of their purchase price instead of the normal 1/2.Ssell:0 makes items sell for 0 GP.Certain items can be excluded from shop availability:
Sno:j will prevent Japanese-version exclusive items from appearing in shops.Sno:sirens will prevent Sirens from appearing in shops.Sno:apples will prevent AgApples, AuApples, and SomaDrops from appearing in shops.Sno:life will prevent Life potions from appearing in shops. (This flag has no effect under Svanilla or Sshuffled.)