One Elden Ring player learned the hard way why it's not always the best idea to attack the merchants that can be found scattered around the Lands Between. Merchants in Elden Ring are typically found chilling out near Sites of Grace, all with their own unique items for players to purchase.

Like most other FromSoftware games, Elden Ring is fairly open-ended in terms of what players can do. This includes giving players the ability to kill almost every NPC they come across in the game, even friendly ones that otherwise don't pose any significant threat. Elden Ring merchants, who often wear Santa Claus-style clothes, can also be killed by the player, though they won't go down without a fight.

Reddit user Konglesniper69, who has over 200 hours logged in FromSoftware's open world action-RPG, found this out when trying to kill one of the merchants in Elden Ring. After resting at the nearby Site of Grace, the player tried to kill the merchant. At first, the merchant begged for the violent Tarnished to stop their assault, but it didn't take long for them to start fighting back. The merchant spit flames at the Elden Ring player, ultimately killing them in the process.

Since the merchants in Elden Ring are friendly NPCs, one might wonder what the point of killing them would even be. However, there is actually some strategy to killing the merchants in Elden Ring. While doing so may lock players out of certain content, they will get a bell bearing for their efforts. This bell bearing can then be turned in at the Roundtable Hold, which in turn lets players purchase any item that the merchant was selling. This way, players can have a centralized location where they make purchases in the game, which is much more convenient than traipsing around the Lands Between, bouncing from merchant location to the next.

If any Elden Ring Tarnished decide to kill the merchants, or other friendly NPCs for that matter, they need to be prepared for the consequences and potential retaliation. Most players will likely opt to leave the merchants be, as they pose no threat and there are many other things found in Elden Ring that are actively trying to kill the player.

Rumor has it that an Elden Ring expansion pack is on the horizon, and if so, it will most likely introduce even more deadly enemies and friendly NPCs for players to interact with. Elden Ring DLC has not been announced at the time of this writing, but hopefully an official announcement comes soon.