Black Market Shops

Black market shops are illegal, underground shops found throughout Karnaca. A thriving business, Emily Kaldwin, Corvo Attano and Billie Lurk can purchase new upgrades, ammunition and gadgets from the shops.

History

While Dunwall has a small black market organization, on which Piero Joplin and Daud's Whalers sold items for coin in 1837, the system in Serkonos is the envy of the Dunwall underworld, and Hatters can be overheard bemoaning the lack of a similar organization in Dunwall. By the time the protagonist returns to Dunwall in the mission Death to the Empress, at least one such store exists in Dunwall, a continuation of the Serkonan branch.

The exorbitant prices caused by the Duke's tariffs has played a large part in the rise of these shops, whose own steep prices are excused when compared to the price for buying the items through legal channels, if they are one of the few items which can be purchased that way.

Location

Black market shops can be found all over Karnaca, including at the Campo Seta Dockyards, the Aventa District, the Dust District, the Palace District, Cyria Gardens and the Upper Cyria District. One has also been set up in the Black Pony Pub in the Tower District by the time the protagonist returns there. There are also some shops in Cullero. While the shopkeepers pay off members of the Grand Serkonan Guard to avoid being shut down, and pay protection money to the Howlers to keep themselves safe, the shops still have to be set up in rather out-of-the-way locations. The symbol of two hands indicates the presence of a black market shop nearby.

Products

Black market shops sell products that fall into two categories: upgrades and gear.

Upgrades

In Dishonored 2 and Death of the Outsider, upgrades either allow black market shops to sell new kinds of ammunition, improve the ammunition that black market shops sell (and the ammunition found around the world), or improve the equipment that the protagonist has, increasing their carry capacity, making them take less damage and the like. See here for Dishonored 2 upgrades and here for Death of the Outsider upgrades.

Gear

All black market shops in the game sell certain items, listed below. Some shops also sell other items which are generally only useful at that time. Black market shops in Death of the Outsider also sell one or two of each black and corrupted bone charms for 350 and 250 coins respectively.

General Items (Dishonored 2)

Item	Cost	Requirement	Description
Crossbow Bolt	20 Coins	N/A	Quiet. Can be recovered.
Explosive Bullet	50 Coins	Small-Scale Combustion Refinement Blueprint	Explodes upon impact.
Pistol Bullet	30 Coins	N/A	Pistol ammunition. Loud.
Incendiary Bolt	50 Coins	Dispersed Incendiary Release Blueprint	Immolates an enemy.
Stinging Bolt	50 Coins	Mercury Vapor Distillation Blueprint	Causes an enemy to flee and forget.
Howling Bolt	50 Coins	Pyro-Sonic Casing Blueprint	Blinds enemies.
Sleep Dart	30 Coins	N/A	Puts an enemy to sleep.
Grenade	70 Coins	N/A	Hurled explosive. Can be "cooked off".
Sticky Grenade	100 Coins	N/A	Anchors to a target
Stun Mine	70 Coins	N/A	Stuns your enemies.
Springrazor	50 Coins	N/A	Throws out shrapnel.
Addermire Solution	150 Coins	N/A	Revitalises the spirit, made from exotic ingredients.
S&J Health Elixir	75 Coins	N/A	Restores vigor, increases blood flow, and heals the body.
Rewire Tool	200 Coins	N/A	Disables Walls of Light and Alarms. Confuses Clockwork Soldiers. Fits standard Security Panels.
Rune	400 Coins	N/A	Runes can be used to gain or upgrade supernatural powers.

General Items (Death of the Outsider)

Item	Cost	Requirement	Description
S&J Health Elixir	150 Coins	N/A	Restores vigor, increases blood flow, and heals the body.
Incendiary Bolt	50 Coins	Incendiary Bolt upgrade	An incendiary bolt that immolates enemies.
Voltaic Shot	30 Coins	N/A	Standard ammunition for the voltaic gun. Muffled, but not silent.
Grenade	70 Coins	N/A	A metal shell, packed with a thick, explosive tar made from refined whale oil.
Hyperbaric Grenade	80 Coins	Hyperbaric Grenade upgrade	Special grenade exploding in a circular non-lethal blast.
Sticky Grenade	100 Coins	Sticky Grenade upgrade	A light framework that sticks to all surfaces, and allows a grenade to anchor to a target.
Rewire Tool	200 Coins	N/A	Disables Walls of Lights [sic] and Alarms. Confuses Clockwork Soldiers. Fits standard Security Panels.
Springrazor	60 Coins	N/A	When triggered, this tightly-wound mechanism releases shrapnel. Can be locked onto most surfaces. Triggered by vibration.
Hook Mine	60 Coins	N/A	A mine that can be thrown or placed anywhere and grabs your enemies.

Unique Items

Item	Cost	Location	Description
Location of sunken supplies	250 Coins	Campo Seta Dockyards	A pair of sailors passed along the location of a boat that sunk in the bay, containing supplies.
The key to unlock the ticket booth	250 Coins	Lower Aventa District	Someone took the ticket booth key off a drunk guardsman assigned to protect the carriage station. With this key, unlock the ticket booth and gain access to the money inside, if you can avoid the Grand Guard.
Safe Combination	250 Coins	Cyria Gardens	The shopkeeper's cousin once attended a lecture in a building directly across from the Royal Conservatory, now infested with bloodflies. He knows the combination to the safe there.
A map of Aramis Stilton's home	100 Coins	Dust District	Digging through the Office of Architectural Planning, someone has found a map of Aramis Stilton's home.
Disabled carriage rails	250 Coins	Palace District	An engineer on the take will shut off the electricity to the carriage rails, allowing passage through the Wall of Light, and easier access to the Grand Palace.
The key to the City Watch armory	250 Coins	Tower District	The shopkeeper's young son snatched the key to an abandoned City Watch armory, near the gate to Dunwall Tower. This checkpoint was used to stock military equipment, which might prove useful.
Poppy Tincture	800 Coins	Upper Cyria District	A sleep-induced opiate from Cienfuegos Pharmacy.
Smugglers' Passageway	150 Coins	Cyria Gardens	N/A

Robbing

During the events of Dishonored 2 and Death of the Outsider, every black market shop can be entered and robbed through various ways. If the shop owner spots the protagonist, they will close the store, and thus the only way to purchase upgrades. Ammunition and other valuable items, sometimes including bone charms and runes, can still be collected.

Campo Seta Dockyards

This store is entered by the back door. The key to this door can be found in the bloodfly-infested apartment located near the store, at the top floor within the glass case containing bloodflies. Note that Mindy Blanchard will become hostile if she notices the protagonist attacking the shopkeeper.

Aventa District

Adjacent basement, about to be breached.

After bypassing the locked apartment gate through the abandoned apartment above the shop and accessing the basement, two burglars can be overheard discussing a plot to blow up the back wall, but are lacking the required third whale oil tank. The protagonist can either find a third whale oil tank and detonate the explosion, or toss a grenade. Either of these will blow a hole in the wall, allowing access to the store. Caution must be observed if attempting a nonlethal run; the explosion of all three tanks can kill the merchant inside the shop. Detonating each tank one by one can prevent killing her.

Cyria Gardens

During Dishonored 2, a crank wheel can be found just outside the store, and needs to be taken to the nearby river gate to open it, allowing access to a chain leading to a trapdoor. This trapdoor can be opened by shooting a link from a window grille next to the store. Climbing the chain gets the protagonist into the store.

During Death of the Outsider, a second store has opened up nearby, capitalizing on the chaos created when the Abbey of the Everyman sealed up the area around the Royal Conservatory. To rob this store, Billie has to access the room behind it via a balcony opposite the Conservatory. In there, she must use Foresight to travel through a rat tunnel to behind the shop's counter. By placing a Displace marker in view of the counter, Billie can swap with it when she goes to the front of the shop. In Original Game +, this place cannot be robbed without using glitches.

Dust District

This shop is accessed by a code taken from a calendar in the apartment above the shop, accessible by breaking the wooden barrier blocking the door from an outside window. The code is the date (Day/Month) of the couple's marriage, the month provided by the note next to the silvergraph of the couple, and the day being the only date highlighted that month on the calendar near the door.

Palace District

The shopkeeper here opens the door himself, when provided with the appropriate code phrase. After stealing the note carried by a woman behind the shop, the phrase can be found by listening to an audiograph found in a boat being used to smuggle supplies to the store, at the dock near the beginning of the mission where two workers chatting next to it. If the boat has been raided, it will instead be on a desk in a small apartment occupied by the Grand Guard, with training mannequins on the balcony, near the wall of light blocking the entrance to the Grand Palace. The code must be given to the shopkeeper from the shop's back door, and the woman behind the shop (or her unconscious body) must be present.

Tower District

Out the back of the Dunwall Courier office (behind some bottles on a rack) is a key, its general location vaguely hinted at in the note Warehouse Key, found under the locked door to the basement of the Black Pony Pub. Opening this door allows the protagonist access to a hole in the black market shop's floor, and thus the store itself.

Upper Cyria District

During Follow the Ink, the door is protected by a combination lock, the combination to which can be found scrawled on a blackboard just inside the door. By knocking over the sign telling customers to report theft, Billie can access a rat tunnel. Using Foresight, she can travel through the shaft and read the blackboard. Billie can also place a Displace marker when inside the shop and bypass the door entirely. In Original Game +, this place cannot be robbed in normal gameplay but the combination to the door does not change from previous playthroughs and can be used to gain access to the shop.

By the time Billie returns during the mission The Bank Job, the shop's new owner has changed the security system to a button on the inside of the door and boarded up the rat tunnel. There is a door on Ferella Way that is locked with a secure bolt. If Billie obtains the access wrench from the worker below the Dolores Michaels Deposit & Loan Bank, she can use it to undo the bolt and open the door. From there, she can use her voltaic gun to shoot the button and open the door.

Trivia

• Purchasing anything at a black market store only gives the customer one of that item, with no limit to how many times it can be bought. Robbing the shop and collecting the items gives the usual amount, but only once.
  • The exceptions to this are runes, bone charms, rewire tools and other unique items, all of which can only be obtained once.
• The rewire tool is not available in the black market shop at the Campo Seta Dockyards, but is at every shop after that.
• There is no rune available at the black market shop in the Dust or Palace Districts, nor any of the shops in Death of the Outsider.
  • There are no runes available in any of the stores if playing in No Powers Mode.
• The shops can also be shut if the owner witnesses hostile action taking place outside their store, or if the owner is possessed. In the case of the latter, they will open the shop up again.
  • Mesmerize will not shut the store, and upgrades and gear can still be purchased while the owner is mesmerized.
• In Dishonored 2, entering a black market shop grants the special action Black Market Heist for that mission. In Death of the Outsider, a special action is still awarded, but each has a unique name.
  • Robbing a black market shop for the first time in Dishonored 2 grants the achievement Black Market Burglar.
• The code for the black market shop in the Palace District is "Serkonan Wine is Better Than Tyvian Prisons". However, this cannot be used without having found the code in the mission.
  • The code also has a countersign, "And Better Gristolian Clap Than Morleyan Gout".
• If Emily or Corvo rob more than one black market shop, the Howlers set up an ambush outside the store in the Palace District to try and capture the protagonist.
  • This locks the achievement Songs of Serkonos, as the third and final musical pair would otherwise be set up in this area.
• While fixed in an update, there was originally a mistake where, if the protagonist returned to the black market shop in the Palace District after entering the next map, Disabled Carriage Rails would no longer be available for purchase, but could instead be found on the shop floor. It still functioned as advertised if picked up.
  • On top of this, the grenades would move to the right hand side of the store, and selecting them caused the background to display a nearby building instead. Furthermore, there were no grenades in the store if it was robbed.
• The store at the Campo Seto Dockyards is run by Horatio Weatherby, the store in Cyria Gardens is run by a man with initials M.V., the store in the Dust District is run by Martha, the store in the Palace District is run by Ricardo Marletto and the store in the Tower District is run by Geraldina.
• If the protagonist delivers the Roseburrow Prototype to the shopkeeper at Cyria Gardens, the shopkeepers in Karnaca will give them a 15% discount on gear thereafter. This only occurs if the protagonist has not been seen robbing any shops earlier.
• In Death of the Outsider, contracts are available in black market shops. Each shop has a board with some posters on advertising the various contracts available.
  • The shopkeepers will point out this board to customers, telling them it is a chance to make some extra money.
• It is not unheard of for someone to arrange an "accident" for a shopkeeper and take over the store themselves.

Gallery

The two hands signifying a black market shop.

The interface presented when interacting with a black market shop.

A closed black market shop.

Horatio Weatherby in his black market shop at the Campo Seta Dockyards.

The owner of the black market shop in the Lower Aventa District.

M.V. in his black market shop at Cyria Gardens.

Martha, the owner of the Dust District's black market shop.

A board advertising various contracts in a black market shop.