Talk:Merchant/@comment-6615988-20130228052125/@comment-5395153-20130228221153

Apart from the arena type matches the Merchant should always be a top-performing class (depending on which race it's paired with). As far as I remember, there's about 4 matches which are arena based - one of which is a random event in the Dwarven mountains in the East (Griffons attack the hero and the player gets no Army Setup Points). By picking a support/physically weak class, the player should only lose out on: That said, there are some wizards and normally fragile classes that can get through those events eventually. By a high enough level many spellcasting classes can summon a group of creatures and defeat most enemies.
 * Being allied with the Barbarians (unless the player is a Barbarian)
 * A campaign item bonus which is called something like Champion of Bartonia which makes the hero attack faster
 * The Bartonian Joust which basically just gets you some more money
 * If the player avoids the Griffons entirely, getting from the Sserin Forest in the East to the land of the Knights above the Dwarven mountain range is much more time consuming in game.