NPCS & SHOPS

Quantum Rift is staffed by dozens of NPCs — Empire officials, merchants, bandits, and rank envoys — who sell gear, run services, or just add flavor to the world. Every NPC is a humanoid Villager-model character wearing a player-style skin, so they look like people, not vanilla villagers. This page catalogs who they are, where to find them, and what they sell.

Quick overview

• 41 NPCs are actually spawned in the world, the eight company offices included. (A 34th, the old Team Registrar, is retired — team management now lives in the Base Core and /team commands, and it never appears in-game.)
• They break down into four groups:
  • Service NPCs (9) — the first shops you’ll meet, all in the Imperial City.
  • City NPCs (9 live) — the Empire’s hub city.
  • Bandit Settlement NPCs (10) — two rival bandit camps, five roles each.
  • Rank Envoys (5) — one per paid rank tier, clustered near the Banker.
• The economy starts small: a fresh player has 5 credits. Almost nothing sells back to a shop — most sell prices are 0, so plan purchases carefully.
• Most machines, defenses, and siege gear require researching the matching Tech before you can buy them — the shop sells the physical item, but the tech tree unlocks your ability to purchase and place it.

Talking to NPCs

Right-click an NPC to talk. What they say appears in the dialogue box at the bottom of your screen (see Quests & Story NPCs for the controls). Hold something plain while you do: with the PDA, a voucher, a Repair Kit or a rank egg in your hand, the right-click uses that item instead and the NPC stays quiet.

• NPCs with a shop or a service greet you on your first visit of the day, then offer an answer that opens their menu (for example Open my vault. at the Banker). For the rest of the day, a right-click opens the menu directly.
• Your first visit. The first time you talk to a City NPC with a shop or a service, it explains what it does (the box is headed First visit), then offers its usual answers. You only hear this once per NPC. After that, its greeting has a What do you do here? answer if you want to hear it again. The Beacon Operator skips it if you finished the tutorial, since the tutorial already covers the portal. While your tutorial is running, no NPC gives this explanation: it waits for your first visit after the tutorial is over (finished or skipped).
• If an NPC has a quest for you, they always talk first, and the quest appears as a golden answer.
• Lore NPCs (the Imperial Administrator, the Empire Historian and the five tutors) have no menu; they talk every time.
• A greeting waits until you are standing still on the ground. If you click an NPC while riding, they speak once you dismount.

Service NPCs

Spread through the Imperial City, around spawn and the market streets. These are your first stop after arriving.

Blacksmith:

• Sells armor, swords, spears, axes, pickaxes, shovels and hoes from leather and wood up to diamond, plus the bow and the crossbow. No mace and no netherite.
• Leather, chainmail, wood and stone are sold to everyone. Anything above needs your team to have researched that gear: you can buy a piece only if you could use it. The bow and crossbow need their own research.
• The price is four times what the crafting materials are worth to the Empire, so crafting your own is always cheaper. Examples: Wooden Sword 0.02 cr, Chainmail Chestplate 1.952 cr, Iron Chestplate 1.6 cr, Diamond Chestplate 48 cr (a diamond counts as 1.5 cr).
• Buys gear back for a quarter of the material value, less for worn pieces (paid by the durability left). An Iron Chestplate in new condition sells for 0.1 cr. Trimmed pieces sell at the plain price; named or enchanted gear is refused. Anyone can sell, research or not. The Flea Market usually pays more.

Dialogue highlights:

• Quartermaster: “Welcome to the City, citizen.” / “Speak with me when you’re ready for new orders.”
• Spawner Depot: “Resource taps, livestock, the rare stuff — all here.” / “Research it first. I don’t sell what you can’t plant.”
• Defense Depot: “Walls, turrets, pads. Research it, then buy it.” / “A sentry only fires inside your own claim. Don’t waste one out here.”
• Imperial Administrator: “The Empire watches over you.” / “Quantum Rift is one of many worlds we shape.” / “Your work here shall not be forgotten.” / “Carry on, citizen.”

City NPCs

Found in the Empire’s hub city (around y=80).

Master Smith services:

• Repairs gear per durability point, priced by tier: 0.001 cr for T0–T4, 0.002 cr for T5, 0.02 cr for T6 and 0.05 cr for T7.
• Strips an armor trim (removes a Gathering/Scout set look from a piece) for a flat 10 credits — otherwise this is a permanent choice. This isn’t free by design, so re-picking a set between fights costs something.

Dialogue highlights:

• Tag Merchant: “Words are cheap. Mine are not.” / “Pick a flourish, sign the paper, wear it forever.”
• Empire Historian: “This city was the Empire’s first foothold on Quantum Rift.” / “The bandit clans came later — drawn by the wealth we built.” / “Read carefully, and you’ll find the planet remembers its rebellions.” / “Knowledge outlasts every emperor.”

Company offices

The eight Companies keep an office each in the City: Damten Industrial Alloys, Skelf Alloys & Ores, Fashioned Weaponry Inc., Jernan Arms Factories, Rekto Agrifood, Amira Laboratories, Ultramats and Herz. Right-click one for its contract board, your standing with the company and its rival, the licensed machines it sells and, from Associate, its shop. Each explains itself the first time you talk to it. See Companies.

Bandit Settlement NPCs

There are two rival bandit camps — a “main” camp and an “East” camp — each with the same five roles. No hostile mobs spawn at either settlement; the only danger there is other players fighting over merchant access.

Dialogue highlights:

• Bandit Leader (main): “Hey ! I heard you are trustable, come here.” / “I’ve got jobs the Empire would imprison you for.”
• Bandit Leader (East): “Be quick, I don’t have time to lose here…” / “Looking for work ? I might have what you are searching.”
• Siege Engineer: “You here for the heavy gear? Show me the rep — and the tech.” / “Empire doesn’t sell what I sell.”

The Bandit Leader hands out daily/weekly missions with a PvP/illegal flavor and pays out bandit reputation on completion. Some quest objectives require killing specific wilderness mobs (wolf, hoglin, ravager, fox, pillager, vindicator, witch, stray, husk) outside any claim or POI, or mining inside “danger zone” POIs: the Mines (the map’s caves) or the Volcano Heart interior. The daily “Mines-Run Quota” asks for exactly that.

Bandit reputation

Stock at the bandit shops is gated by your bandit reputation — a stat tracked on your PDA that only ever goes up from kills or missions.

Reputation never decays on its own — it’s a permanent, one-way-earnable stat by design.

Rank Envoys

Five NPCs near the Banker in the city hub, one per paid rank tier, each with its name shown in its rank’s colour. Each opens the same storefront, bound to its own rank, with two tabs: Perks lists everything the rank gives you in sections (storage & trading, discounts, research, cosmetics, and what you get when you claim the egg), and Buy shows the price and your token balance and sells you the rank egg. Each envoy has its own hero-style skin, with its rank’s colour as the accent.

Rank egg prices (Tokens): Hero 1,000 · Mercenary 3,000 · Aurora 5,250 · Legend 12,500 · Imperial 25,000.

Shop catalogs

Medical Merchant

Nothing here sells back. Bread is no longer sold, because an Empire mission accepts it.

Engineering Merchant

Every automation machine (except the spawners, which have their own shop) plus two vanilla bootstrap items. All machines require the matching researched Tech, except the Conveyor and the two vanilla items, which are deliberately ungated. Redstone is no longer sold, because an Empire mission accepts it.

Spawner Depot

All 27 spawners are tech-gated but not reputation-gated. Contraband spawners (gunpowder, blaze rod, breeze rod, ender pearl) are not sold here — those are bandit-only. Note: an ancient-debris spawner was removed from the game entirely, so the Volcano Heart POI remains the only reliable source of Netherite.

Defense Depot

Everything here requires research first, and nothing sells back.

Armour Trim Templates (Quartermaster)

These templates let a team apply a permanent cosmetic/functional armor “set” at a smithing table. When used, a purchased template duplicates itself plus 7 diamonds, so one 50-credit purchase is meant to outfit an entire team, not just one player. Not sellable back.

Chat Tag Merchant

Five purely decorative, one-use chat-flourish papers.

Buying repeatedly is allowed, and each purchase counts toward two hidden loyalty milestones: Merchant Patron (5 lifetime purchases) and Gilded Voice (25 lifetime purchases). These milestone rewards aren’t sold directly — you earn them by buying tags.

Bandit Quartermaster (contraband shop, both camps)

Gated by bandit reputation — the required rep is listed per item. Gunpowder and Flint are no longer sold here, because Empire missions accept them; TNT is still sold.

Bandit Fence (both camps)

No reputation gate. The fence only buys from you; it sells nothing. Its prices are deliberately worse than the Imperial Market’s — the fence is a worse deal than the city market by design, and it can never pay more than the Empire.

What the fence pays for iron, gold and emerald follows the Imperial Market: it pays the listed price at most, and never more than 60% of what the Imperial Market would pay you for the same amount right now. Selling to the fence also pushes the Imperial price down, exactly like selling in the City, so dumping a stockpile at the camps saturates the market just the same.

Bandit Smuggler (both camps)

The endgame fence — a single line, deep reputation gate.

This is the only way to get Netherite-tier ancient debris outside the Volcano Heart POI, deliberately gated behind deep bandit alignment.

Siege Engineer (both camps)

Almost every line is double-gated by reputation and a completed team Tech.

The Cannon is a placeable siege weapon; Cannonball is its consumable ammo. The Portable Battery fuels the Siege Drill — a Drill has 10 charge cycles and each battery powers 5 of them, so a Drill burns 2 batteries over its working life. Explosives and the Cannon are the most expensive siege items on sale, at 500 cr each.

Tips

• Save up before visiting a shop — nearly everything is a one-way purchase. The Bandit Fence is the only place selling back iron, gold, or emerald for credits.
• Check your Tech tree before heading to the Engineering, Defense, or Siege Engineer shops — most items there are locked until you’ve researched the matching tech, even if you can afford them.
• Bandit reputation only goes up through PvP kills or bandit missions, and only goes down by attacking bandits or their camp — it never fades on its own, so a single bad decision (attacking a camp) can set back your access to the best contraband and siege gear.
• The Master Smith’s trim-stripping fee (10 cr) exists specifically so switching gear sets mid-fight costs something — plan your loadout before you commit.