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[Aslandus]

Are the trade glitches still in where disassembling the Trade depot or marking the goods to be dumped causes the trader to leave without them? It could easily make however strong the legendary +1023102039 trader irrelevant if he just lets dwarves carry his goods away...

[Bumber]

your changing from hard to defeat, but killing him gives great rewards to invincible and why should you even interact with him if you asks for legendary dwarves

Hard is still too easy to cheese with dwarven ingenuity. Obviously you're not going to be giving him any legendary smiths or good artifacts. He shouldn't be invincible, but killing him should curse his goods in some way (once magic is in) and/or summon an angel siege (brings more goods, harder to deal with than a single unsuspecting trader.)

[YAHG]

your changing from hard to defeat, but killing him gives great rewards to invincible and why should you even interact with him if you asks for legendary dwarves

Hard is still too easy to cheese with dwarven ingenuity. Obviously you're not going to be giving him any legendary smiths or good artifacts. He shouldn't be invincible, but killing him should curse his goods in some way (once magic is in) and/or summon an angel siege (brings more goods, harder to deal with than a single unsuspecting trader.)

Yeah this. Curses are cool imo.

[TheHossofMoss]

Sorry for the necro, but this has peaked my interest.

What if one made the merchant ethereal? Sure, it may be a cop-out making the merchant some whispy, ghost-like trader, like a Spirit of Armok or something that you couldn't kill. But the trader could kill you quite easily (it's humble servant of the God of Blood, after all). Something that can't be killed by traditional means or killed at all. That's probably not fit for Dwarf Fortress, but that's just an idea of mine.

If that example isn't clear, consider the King of the Dead and his army from the Lord of the Rings. They could most definitely kill Orcs, and whomever else stood in their way. But when Legolas tried to shoot him with an arrow, it merely passed through him. i don't know why that's the only example I could come up with, but that's it! haha

[Crinkles]

Personally I think this suggestion is too limited; it assumes that fortress made will stay the same. (Which, of course, it will not.) Having a merchant show up to sell you lots of overpowered stuff is weird, and as we've noticed in this thread, causes a lot of practical problems.

It makes more sense for civilizations never to trade their special stuff with anyone. Or an adventurer might decide to keep it for their personal use. In this case you might see, say, a warrior from an invading civilization using the divine metal. But even if they keep in the deepest dungeon in the keep...why not send out your own army to take it from them? Sending out armies is a planned feature. Steal-the-enemy's-artifact is a very sensible reason to make use of it.

[Devin]

Wait, angels and divine metal?  Is this in vanilla?

[vjmdhzgr]

Wait, angels and divine metal?  Is this in vanilla?

Yeah. There are vaults now and, I don't want to spoil them for you, but they're quite !!fun!!

[Aslandus]

Personally I think this suggestion is too limited; it assumes that fortress made will stay the same. (Which, of course, it will not.)

Well, we don't really have anything to work off of besides what is in the game and what have been stated as planned features, so for the sake of discussion we generally assume things will be as they are...

[NW_Kohaku]

OK, sorry to interrupt the fun game of "I magma-flood you!" "Nuh-unh! I have my super-magma-repellant pants on!" but to rerail this, at least temporarily, this reminds me of an older discussion back in 2010...

The Stranger Thread, which was based upon the then-supposed-to-be-soon-coming Caravan Arc, where traders could come and go freely through your fort. 

Having multiple interactions with the outside world a year, or even a continuous stream of in-and-out visitors, as well as a tavern and some sort of shop where you keep a continuous stream of economic activity going would make the idea that maybe one of them brings along a divinemetal doodad for trade without having players immediately spring upon them as an obvious target a good idea.  If you start murdering your guests, your caravan trade will be more disrupted.  Also, more regular caravan/smaller merchant traffic from a wider range of places means that forts can be forced into embarks with less and less resources (the way that not having metals in every embark was supposed to do) to be something players could overcome easily through trade.