My suggestion is that there should be innkeepers and bartenders in inns and pubs, to make the world more alive. Merchants right now are too expensive to be used as dwellers of the land, to achieve a more lively feel in pubs, inns, towns, etc. I think that there should be 3-4 types of them, they could be cheaper than merchants and that they could be packed like merchants, but only with cheap items, and they could only take 5-10 items of a kind (they could take several types). They could sell items like wine, meals, cakes, water, cutlery and so on. I know that this could be used to preserve edibles, but they could be made, so the items in them take damage, only slowly. With this addition visiting pubs and inns would be good, beacuse you could buy items and not just sleep. This way these places could be more interesting.