NPCs and shops
The NPC table (npc.dat) has 39 entries. Most of them stand in the towns; a few wait in fields, towers and dungeons, and three are placed on no map at all. Each NPC page says where the NPC stands and in which chapters, what it sells, crafts or trades, which quests it gives and completes, and when the game hides it.
Mr. Lee and Mr. Wang keep the shops of every town: Mr. Lee sells equipment and Mr. Wang consumables. Each shop page lists its full stock with prices, the towns where it opens and the chapters in which it does.
Mr. Smith in Kerning City Village crafts equipment from minerals and jewels (crafting), and Blackbull, Ericsson and Broker Han trade monster drops for those materials (trades).
Chapters are the game's own: the tutorial is a new game until the tutorial ends, then chapters 1 to 3 follow. An NPC can stand on a map in one chapter and not in another, because the game runs a chapter's own script over the common one (knowledge base).
NPCs by area
Shops
A shop's stock is fixed: it comes from market.dat and does not change between chapters. Three shop numbers have stock but no script opens them. In the original game the arrow keys reach only a tab's first two rows (original bugs, 12); the port fixes it.