Oddly enough most players I've had the honor of playing D&D tend to skip out on trawling through shops...

And then there's the rare exception and that's how the ranger got a dire badger as a faithful companion.

My group and I tend to be that way a lot of the time. Mostly we'll scrounge our gear out of whatever we loot from the field and otherwise leave it be, though that can leave us severely under-prepared when we run into a situation that would benefit from having a specific type of item or weapon.

I have had entire campaigns where the party has never set foot in a store. In half the campaigns where we do, it's just to chat up the locals or find out information. Note that I'm not just talking about campaigns where we don't buy stuff, we don't sell our loot either.

In some cases, this is for in-character reasons (for instance, one of my characters only loots to take trophies to remember worthy enemies by, and crafts all his own equipment). Other times, we have no excuse except for it just never coming up.

Our Witch had an Alchemist husband, and *owned* a shop. My character's sister was an Oracle, and his three wives were a Ranger, Bard, and Druid. The Fighter/Warpriest's husband was a Noble. We never really *needed* to go shopping.

Of course, that didn't stop my character from keeping a nice supply of 10 Cloud in a Bottles, and 10 Potions of Minor Healing with him at all times.

And, being a Rapier-using Rogue, he also had a shovel just in case he needed to dig a hole, or bash some skeletons. Man, I was so happy when the DM brought out skeletons, and forgot I had a Masterwork Shovel, and a Weapons Proficiency in Shovels. Mwahahaha.