Cha-ching! The Merchant job focuses on money; it’s great at making money and spending money. In terms of stats, it’s average in most areas, so it’s not great as a long-term job (ironically). However it has some useful abilities that you can take advantage of.

Just having a Merchant in your party will boost your after-battle earnings by a half, so it’s a good idea to field one when you’re farming for gold. They’re also great for supporting the party, if you can spare the cash; for example, BP Drink lets you pay for additional BP for your team-mates.

The Merchant’s biggest claim to fame is that it has abilities with the biggest multipliers in the game–great if you’re aiming for massive damage. Speculate doubles the damage of any of the Merchant’s attacks (with a 50% chance of failing), while Full Leverage doubles damage, recovery and the associated costs for friend and foe–combined, you can potentially quadruple your damage.

Aptitudes¶

Specialty: More Money¶

Earn 1.5 times the money after winning a battle; 3 times if combined with the Golden Egg. Sadly, it doesn’t combine with other Merchants, so the best you can get is triple money, which is still fantastic. Needless to say, this ability makes it easier to acquire those expensive gear and items.

Level 1: Pay to Play¶

Spend your Level times 50 pg to raise a character’s Critical Rate by 300% for four turns (multiples their Critical Rate by 4, in other words). So if your Merchant is Level 10, you can spend 500 pg to boost an ally’s Critical Rate. Not bad by any means, but be careful to monitor your cash flow.

Level 2: Salesman¶

Make one enemy buy a recovery item from you at 2.4 times the selling price; success rate depends on the item. If you sell recovery items to shops, you’ll only gain a quarter of the item’s worth, so this ability lets you get a better price for your goods. Be sure to use this on weaker mobs so you’re not getting horribly impaled as you’re selling.

Level 3: White Knight¶

The ally with the most HP protects you when you receive a single-target physical attack while your HP is below 20%. This acts like a reverse version of the Knight‘s Protect Ally. It’s good for keeping a particular character safe from physical enemies, such as your healer.

Level 4: Pharmacy¶

Purchase a recovery item during battle and use it on one target. Ran out of potions or need a Phoenix Down desperately? Have no fear, because you can buy one mid-battle and use it straight away!

The items you can buy include: Potion, Hi-Potion, X-Potion, Phoenix Down, Ether, Turbo Ether and Remedy.

Level 5: Hedge Risk¶

Halve the damage your character suffers for five turns by spending money equal to half the damage. If an attack did 1000 damage originally, your character will now take 500 damage and you’ll spend 500 pg to cover the cost of damage. If you’re flowing with cash, this ability is a neat way to keep your casualties low.

Level 6: Takeover¶

Attack one enemy with damage equal to your Level times 50, spending money equal to the damage done. For example, if your character’s Level is 20, you will do 1000 damage and spend 1000 pg to finance your attack. Talk about a hostile takeover… Since this ability does fixed damage, it’s good for bypassing enemies with high Defense (or even max Defense).

Level 7: BP Drink¶

Purchase a BP recovery item and use it on one target.

• Small BP Drink (restores 1 BP): Costs 1,000 pg
• Medium BP Drink (restores 2 BP): Costs 10,000 pg
• Large BP Drink (restores 3 BP): Costs 100,000 pg

When you have an excess of cash, this ability is good for building up BP fast, so you can perform more actions or use your powerful moves more often. Potentially, you can get a crazy amount of BP just by having your Merchant Brave three times and buy four Large BP Drinks for each person in the party, but the cost is staggering.

Level 8: Speculate¶

Each of the character’s attacks has a 50% chance to deal double damage and a 50% chance to deal no damage. This is pretty much the ultimate gambling move. On average, you won’t be doing any extra damage, but each time you get lucky, you’LL hit twice as hard as normal, which has its benefits (like an one hit K.O.). Normally you shouldn’t need to gamble like this though.

Level 9: More Money¶

Earn 1.5 times the money after winning a battle; 3 times if combined with the Golden Egg. Doesn’t combine with other characters with this ability. Now is a good time to ditch your Merchant, since its Specialty is no longer so special.

Level 10: Millionaire¶

Use this ability along with the Send command to gift money equal to your Level times 25 to a friend who summons this action using Summon Friend. If you want to be kind to new players, this ability is pretty nifty. It’s too bad the most you can gift at one time is 2475 pg. By the way, you only spend money to use this move and not each time somebody summons your character.

Level 11: Big Pharma¶

Heal one enemy’s HP and earn money equal to the HP recovered. This ability is certainly an interesting method of gaining money. For best results, your Merchant should have high Mind and Healing Lore to improve their healing power.

Level 12: Full Leverage¶

For five turns, damage, recovery and the HP, MP or BP required for actions will be doubled for all allies and enemies. This ability is great for those who want to live the dangerous life or get easier battles over and done with earlier.

Level 13: Low Leverage¶

For five turns, damage, recovery and the HP, MP or BP required for actions will be halved for all allies and enemies. This ability will make battles drag on, but it’s useful against foes that normally one-shot your characters, for instance.

Level 14: Payoff¶

Spend money to bribe the enemy and end the battle; you still earn the usual post-battle rewards. You set the value yourself–from 10,000 to 9,990,000 pg–and the enemy will either accept your bribe or refuse it altogether. The best bit? You can even buy off bosses! However, you’ll need to spend exactly 9,990,000 pg (close to the maximum) which isn’t cheap at all.