It is a question of wanting your players to enjoy the game. You don't need to describe where they get the magic item, it is like downtime, they say they are going shopping for X you tell them to subtract Y amount of gold. Then move on to something that matters, what something that is depends on the story you are telling, they should know which npc's to go talk to from the previous bits of the story, you should never have the players going around town clicking on random people like some video game hoping to find the right conversation. You as a DM guide them to the next important npc.
Paraxis, over and over again, in thread after thread, I see you making these absolute statements about how D&D should run, how "you should never" this and how that is unfun.
I know I'm repeating basically what others have said in this thread, but
your way is not the objectively correct, proper, One True Way to play D&D. It isn't; it's a playstyle choice. In fact, there was a huge amount of discussion about a passage in the 4e DMG that said, basically, "Skip talking to the guards and the city gates and get to the fun stuff"- a lot of people said, "Wait, what? Talking to the guards
is fun." Which sounds a lot to me like some of the exchanges you're involved in in this thread- you're insisting that certain things simply aren't fun, but they are to some groups. I wish you'd try to understand that you aren't doing it right and they aren't doing it wrong, but you are both just doing it different.
I understand people don't like ACME Magic Artifact Co or Spellmart, but you don't have to have those in your world to handwave shopping. The characters still get the items from commissioning wizards, thieves guilds, general stores, alchemists, dwarven smiths, temples, etc... you just don't need to spend time talking about all of that.
But a lot of groups enjoy that. And a lot of DMs don't want to handwave that kind of thing; it's important or fun enough that they do want it as part of the game.
There is a story, running around clicking on every npc in the village seems more like a video game to me than going and talking to just the few that move that story forward.
Nope. Not all games have a 'story' at all, at least not until the players are recounting what happened in the game. And your description of pcs interacting with npcs is pretty insulting to the camp that likes roleplaying out those interactions.
Look, you might not know who's important in a given town. The people who are important might be different depending on what you want to do, so if you decide to enter politics, the town council is the important group, but if you decide to go seek out the missing horses, maybe the local stabler, groom and farrier. On the other hand, if you're looking to connect with the local fey, maybe you need to talk to the town's kids or the local druid. Heck, the important ones might end up being the farmer who you were nice to (he hides you when the assassins come looking for you!) and the traveling merchant. And exploring that community is tons of fun for some of us.
That underlined part is the important bit. A couple of session? Sure, suck it up and move on. But, that's not the case here. We're talking about multiple sessions. And, clerics limited to only third level and lower spells? Yeah, that's a limitation, sure, but, hardly on the same level as having disadvantage on EVERY action and everyone else having advantage on you.
But he doesn't. He only has disadvantage/grants advantage if he insists on sticking to the darkness without anything to compensate his senses.
Sure, that means that in this situation he can't go scout very far ahead of the party. Well, maybe the solution is not to count on his scouting skills in situations where he can't really make use of them. IMHO a pc that is so much of a one-trick pony that he or she can't deal with
one of the most common situations in the game - darkness - needs to either plan better or find a secondary set of skills/tools to fall back on. "Let's throw magic shoppes into the game!" is a poor solution for someone who isn't the DM and whose DM isn't interested in doing that; all that leads to is an extended period of being unhappy.
My advice to the pc in question? "Stay just ahead of the light. Accept that, instead of being the bitchin' scout you wanna be, you're a bitchin' scout with light and a poor one in the dark, and stick to things you can be good at. Or take any of the many, many, MANY solutions that people have offered in this thread- things like multiclassing, friendly spellcasters using darkvision, etc.- instead of either throwing a fit or continuing to attempt your works-in-the-light shtick when you don't have light."