Arms Dealer

He wants an empty house and a gun or ammunition on your person. Anything sitting in a chest or a Piggy Bank is invisible to the check, which is the usual reason people decide he is broken. Neither the Flare Gun nor the flares it fires will pass that check, since nothing about either one is a bullet. Once he has arrived the condition stops mattering: if he dies he comes back on his own, and you do not have to carry a gun again to get him.

In a fresh world the quickest route is underground. The first Shadow Orb or Crimson Heart you break always hands over a starter firearm, so one trip into the evil biome settles it. Those same guns turn up in Corrupt Crates and Crimson Crates if you would rather fish for them. The Boomstick out of jungle chests counts, and so does the Red Ryder if you opened presents over Christmas. Bullets on their own are enough as well, and a Pigronata smashed at one of the Party Girl parties can supply those.

He is the reason ammunition stops being something you think about. The basic rounds are cheap enough to buy several stacks at once and forget, which on its own changes how a gun build plays before the wall. The metal bullets are the awkward part of his early stock, because they only appear while a Blood Moon is running, so you cannot plan a shopping trip around them; after Hardmode starts they sit in the shop permanently. The Unholy Arrows work the same way, night only and locked behind whichever evil boss your world gave you, and they are the one line worth going out of your way for while they are still gated.

The Minishark is what people rush him for, and it stays useful well past its tier as long as you feed it the cheap rounds rather than the expensive ones. The Flintlock Pistol is a stopgap you will drop the moment anything else appears. Illegal Gun Parts exist for exactly one recipe, so buy at night and move on. The Shotgun arrives with Hardmode, and the Quad-Barrel Shotgun needs a graveyard standing around him after Skeletron is dead, which is a few minutes of tombstones and very easy to forget about.

Several ammunition lines only appear when the matching weapon is in your inventory as you open the shop, so a blank where you expected Stynger Bolts, Stakes, Nails or Candy Corn usually means the launcher is in a chest rather than any progression gate. In Hardmode he also carries the Ammo Box, a permanent upgrade for any gun build that pays for itself quickly, and Empty Bullets for anyone crafting their own rounds in bulk.

He is one of the better neighbors to have during an invasion, since he shoots at anything that comes near the house: a pistol before Hardmode, a Minishark after. His damage per shot actually drops when he upgrades, because the fire rate more than covers the difference, and he keeps getting stronger as you clear bosses.

Over Halloween he stocks the Nurse outfit rather than anything of his own, which fits the running joke about where his attention is. He sells a pylon like every other vendor once he is in the right biome with a neighbor nearby. Dropping him in shimmer changes his sprite and nothing else. He and the Demolitionist keep up a running argument about guns against explosives, and he and the Guide simply do not get along, though none of it touches anyone's happiness.