Shops & Services

Where to buy your groceries, your meds, your gadgets and your next bad habit — and what happens if someone decides to rob the till instead.

The city runs on a spread of independent shops rather than one big supermarket. Cornerstores, pharmacies, electronics stores, vape shops and tool shops are all real interior spaces with a till, a shopkeeper, and shelves you actually browse — not menus you open from thin air. Most of them can be owned by players too, which is covered properly in Owning a Business.

Finding a shop

Regular stores show up on your map as a general “stores” blip that only appears when you’re nearby and fades at range. Tool shops get their own separate blip category that stays visible from further out, since they’re outdoor stalls rather than proper shopfronts.

Tool shops are never player-owned — they’re a fixed clerk selling a fixed 12-item stock at all times, so you’ll never find one closed or sold out.

Cornerstores

Your everyday grocery and general-goods shop, of which there are plenty scattered around the city. Walk up to a shelf, fridge, or display fixture and interact with it to open a browse panel, add items to a running basket, then head to the till and talk to the shopkeeper to check out.

• You can pay cash or card at the till, and the quoted total reflects the store’s current price (which can drift over time — owners can also nudge prices within limits).
• A high enough Charisma stat (see Jewellery & Stat Boosts) can shave a bit off the bill.
• You’ll need enough free inventory space for everything in the basket, and enough money to cover it — if a grant fails partway through, you’re refunded in full rather than left short an item.

Cornerstores are also the only place selling scratchcards — see below.

Pharmacies

Pharmacies stock medical and health items the same way cornerstores stock groceries: browse the fixtures, basket what you need, pay at the till. They’re worth knowing for anyone patching themselves or a mate up between trips to hospital — see Health, Injuries & First Aid for what the items actually do.

Electronics & iFruit stores

The electronics shops carry phones, tech accessories and similar gadgets — including the standard iFruit Phone every player eventually wants (see Phones, Tablets & Radios for what the phone itself does once you own one). Shopping works the same browse-and-basket flow as cornerstores.

Trading in old devices

If you’ve got an eligible device sitting in your inventory — one the store recognises as tradeable — you can bring it to an electronics shop’s trade-in panel instead of binning it. It’ll show you what each eligible device is worth based on its condition, and handing one over converts it straight into store credit.

Trade-in credit is a single running balance, not tied to whichever store you traded at — spend it at any electronics-type shop in the city.

Vape shops

Vape shops sell the usual hardware and pre-made flavours through the normal till, but their real draw is the mixer fixture near the till: pick a base and up to three flavours to build your own custom blend, priced on the spot and added to your basket like anything else. It comes out as a proper custom item in your inventory once you’ve paid for it. For what vaping actually does to your stress and habits, see Drink, Smoke & Addiction.

Tool shops

Tool shops are simpler and quicker than the other archetypes — there’s no basket-and-till crawl, just a clerk NPC standing outside. Greet them to open a dedicated shopping screen showing their full stock, build a cart, and check out with cash or card. Stock never runs out and there’s no tax on anything you buy here. Wander more than a short distance from the clerk mid-browse and the screen closes on you, so finish up before you walk off.

Scratchcards

Cornerstores sell scratchcards in £1/£2/£5/£10 tiers, bought at the till alongside your shopping — look for the separate “Buy Scratchcards” option when you talk to the till. Once you’re holding one, use it from your inventory to trigger a scratch-off mini-game: the prize is already decided the moment you buy it, you’re just uncovering it. Scratch off enough of the foil and it reveals your result — anything from nothing back, to a refund, to a genuinely useful cash prize — paid straight to your cash on hand.

Close the mini-game before you’ve scratched enough foil and you forfeit the card and whatever it would have paid out. Starting a second card while one’s still uncovered does the same to the first one, and a card left mid-scratch too long will time out on its own.

When a shop turns dangerous

Cornerstores, electronics shops, vape shops and pharmacies can all be robbed at gunpoint — draw a weapon and target the till for a hold-up option. What happens next (whether the clerk complies, fights, or the whole thing escalates into a proper safe-cracking or ransack job) is covered in full under Heists & Robberies, along with the risks of getting caught in the act. Ordinary shopping carries none of that risk — it’s only the hold-up option that puts you and the shopkeeper on a collision course.

Owning a shop

Any of these stores can occasionally come up for sale, at which point buying it gives you a management dashboard covering pricing, stock, staff-free auto-restocking, and sales analytics, alongside a cut of every NPC and player purchase made there. That whole side of things — along with wholesale ordering and the businesses hub more broadly — lives in Owning a Business and Businesses & Jobs.