Introduction
Trading is currently not in its best state. You may have heard about the Desert Trading buff and Crate trading, but this method is not as profitable as it used to be in 2017 and 2018. It requires high-level Trading life skill and a lot of time investment. It also ties up big sums of silver, as well as Contribution points and workers, which could be making you passive money anyway. All of this is worth noting if you are looking to seriously get into the Trading life skill. This post on reddit explains why Trade Crates aren’t as good as they used to be.
Trading also does not have any Life Skill Mastery equipment or benefits.
That being said, this guide will go over everything you need to know about Crate trading for profit, as well as the basics for anyone completely new to Trading.
Trading Basics
How and Where to buy Trade Goods
To buy trade goods, go to a Trade Manager NPC and press “R” to talk to them. Then, click the “Trade” option to view the goods they sell.
It is advisable to buy goods that are lower than their regular price (less than 100%) so that you can “buy low and sell high”. You can view the value of the goods in each town by pressing “Market Price”, this will consume one energy.
Once you have found something you want to buy, click “Take” and enter the amount you would like to buy. At the bottom, you will see the cost, weight, and space this will take up. When you are ready, click “Purchase All” in the bottom-right corner.
Transporting Goods
There are 5 ways of transporting trade goods:
- Carrying goods on your back
- This method is very slow and will slow your character’s movement speed.
- The trade pack will go into your inventory and you can delete the item in your inventory to remove it.
- The one benefit of this method is that you train your strength while carrying the goods.
- Using a mount
- You can place trade goods on a donkey, camel, miniature elephant, or horse.
- Put the trade goods onto your mount by pressing “F2” to put it into your mount’s inventory, or you can put your mount next to the trade manager and you will be asked whether you would like the goods to be put onto the mount.
- You can also “overstack” a horse’s weight to put many trade items on it at once and then have the horse follow you as you run in front.
- This method is the fastest way to transport a large number of trade crates (4000+) but only because the items stack.
- Using a wagon
- This is the best way of transferring a low amount of goods that do not stack in your inventory.
- It can carry a high quantity of goods and has a high weight capacity.
- To put trade goods onto a wagon put the wagon next to the trade manager and you will be asked whether you would like the goods to be put onto the vehicle.
- Using the transport wagon
- This method allows you to put up to 20 trade goods (or up to 30,000 LT) onto an NPC wagon and the goods will be delivered to the town/city warehouse you choose, to sell them later on.
- To put the goods onto an NPC trading wagon, put the goods into your warehouse then click the “Transport” option at the warehouse NPC.
- Click “Send” at the top and then move the item from your warehouse into the transport window then select the town/city and the “Trade Wagon” option from the drop-down boxes.
- Once you are ready, click “Send”. To receive the goods from the delivery, go to the town it was delivered to and go the Warehouse NPC.
- Then click “Transport”, “Status” and “Receive”, you can then sell the goods yourself to the Trade Manager.
- Using the NPC trading wagon does cost silver and can really cut into your profits. It is not advised because of the amount of profit you will lose.
- Using a boat
- You can store trade goods onto a boat by going to the Wharf Manager, and then transport them across the sea.
- The Epheria ships are often used to transport trade items to Port Ratt for Imperial Trading.
- More information can be found further in the guide.
Bandits
Along trade routes, there may be bandits that may attack you and they can kill you if you are AFK and get stuck in the road. You cannot attack the bandits and should be able to easily outrun them but watch out if you are AFK or semi-AFK. You can see bandits on your map with this icon.
How to Sell and Bargain
Once you have arrived at a town/city you can sell the goods by going to the Trade Administrator and pressing “R”. On the right, you will see a window that lists all of the goods you have.
Click “Sell All” to sell the goods for the standard price, or click “Bargain” to spend 5 energy and try to increase your profit. If you fail to bargain it will not affect the price but you will have to spend 5 energy to try again.
Once you have clicked “Bargain” a window will pop up in the center of your screen. Underneath the scales, you will see 2 buttons. The button on the left has a chance of slightly moving the scales and the button on the right has a chance of greatly moving the scales. The idea is to move the scales up to 3 times and try to get them to balance perfectly. If you manage to balance the scales on your third turn, you will achieve “Bargain Success” and can then sell your goods for a higher price.
You can get more tries to move the scale by wearing the trading costume, the better the costume, the more extra tries you receive.
Trading for Profit – Crate Trading
Most players make a profit from Trading by creating Trading Crates. These crates have to be “packed” by a worker in a city and then once you have a large number of crates you transport them to Valencia and use the Desert Trading Buff to sell for billions of silver.
However, to start making income you must have at least Artisan 2 Trading level. This will unlock the Desert Trading buff mentioned above and when used, this buff gives you +100% income from trading to Valencia city.
To make the crates, you will need a Wood Workbench or a Mineral Workbench and a worker to pack the materials into the crates. I recommend using this Crate Calculator to view all the crates you should be making more profit and how much you can earn.
You want to use Artisan Goblin workers so you can pack crates as quickly as possible. If you are away from your computer a lot and can’t feed your workers often, then it may be better to use Giants. You also want to get the best skills for packing crates, which are: Ore/Timber Packing Skill, Thrifty Skill, and any other movement speed or work speed skills.
You can also send a worker from one town to another to pack a crate at the workshop and the crate’s origin will be from the same town the worker is from. Since you will be selling the crates in Valencia, it is best to pack crates with an origin of Grana, Old Wisdom Tree, Trent or Calpheon, for the trading distance bonus. Old Wisdom Tree doesn’t have any lodging available but you can buy lodging from the Pearl Store and then send the workers to workshops in calpheon and the crates will have an origin of Old Wisdom Tree and will be stored at the warehouse there.
The crates take a long time to collect and you will probably only transport them once a month, but it can be a good way of making passive income. Make sure to have your nodes connected to Valencia if you are going to be doing crate trading.
Reaching Trading Artisan 2
When leveling your Trading, you should try to use as many Life Skill EXP buffs as possible.
You can obtain the Trader’s Clothing Costume by using a Equipment Tailoring Coupon on a base Silver Embroidered Trader’s Clothing. This allows you to equip it in the costume slot and wear another Silver Embroidered Trader’s Clothes at the same time.
| Icon | Item Name | EXP Buff |
|---|---|---|
 |
Silver Embroidered Trader’s Clothing | 0% – 25% (depending on Enhancement) |
|
Trader’s Clothing Costume | 10% |
There are 3 ways of leveling your Trading:
- AFK Fishing
- This is my personal favorite method and what I would recommend unless you really want to reach Artisan 2 as soon as possible. You can AFK fish at the pond in Duvencrune (do not throw away any fish) and then trade the fish as far away as possible for a high amount of trading EXP.
- “Trash Crates”
- Also known as “Junk Crates”. These are crates that are easier to make than the ones you will be selling for profit.
- For example, you use workers to create “Ash Timber Crates” at a Wood Workbench (level 1) and then you transport these to Valencia using the transport method explained further down in the guide. You then sell all the crates with as many Life EXP buffs as possible. Just like the money crates, these will take a long time for you to collect and you need a lot of them to reach Artisan 2. I recommend using this Trash Crates calculator to work out exactly how many you will need.
- Another issue with this method is that you will be sacrificing and investing a lot of materials into the crates and the crates are worth less than the materials you used to make them.
- Important: When selling your crates to the Trade Manager, make sure not to sell them all at once or you will lose a lot of EXP. Sell the crates in smaller batches instead.
- Container Method
- I recommend using this method if you want to reach Artisan 2 as soon as possible. The container method requires you to actively trade though and may take you one or two days to reach your goal. It can be very boring and will also require quite a lot of spare contribution points and inventory/storage space.
- I recommend checking out this video guide if you are planning to use the container method.
How to transport the crates
Transporting Crates to Valencia:
- The best way to transport the crates to Valencia is to stack as many crates as possible on a horse.
- You can cheap T1 horses for this. Simply park the horse next to your storage then move the crates into the horse inventory.
- The amount of crates you can overstack on your horse depends on the weight of the crate:
- Crates with 30LT: total of 7,157 crates
- Crates with 20LT: total of 10,736 crates
- Crates with 15LT: total of 14,315 crates
- After stacking the crates on your horse, set up an autopath to Sand Grain Bazaar, then move away from your horse and whistle it. As the horse starts to walk towards you, start auto-running and your horse will continue to follow you. Make sure to check the horse is still following and you will also need to watch out for bandits along the road so you don’t get stuck. You can also ride the horse and autorun it to sand grain bazaar but it can be faster to use the whistle method.
- Once you get to Sand Grain Bazaar, you will need to run across the desert manually. You can also use a Musa/Maehwa and dash the entire way, but this can be more tedious.
- I recommend using a character under level 50 because some players may try to kill you and if your horse dies it will lose a large number of crates. Also, make sure not to remote collect your horse or it will lose a large number of crates.
Transporting Crates to Port Ratt:
- First, you will need to transport the crates to Port Epheria using the horse stacking method listed above.
- You will also need a fishing boat or Cog at Port Epheria and ideally a better ship located at Port Ratt to save you some time sailing back.
- Whistle the over-stacked horse onto your fishing boat or cog then head to Port Ratt.
- Once you are at Port Ratt, remote collect your fishing boat/cog and then transport it back to Port Epheria for your next run.
- Take your crates to the trade manager and turn them in.
- Go to the wharf manager and use your Sailboat/Frigate/Caravel, etc. to sail back.
- Remote collect your horse then transport your ship back to Port Ratt for the next run.
How and Where to get the Desert Buff
After reaching Artisan 2, you will need to complete two questlines to unlock the Desert Trading buff. The only other requirement is that you are level 55+.
- Peaceful Oasis
- Pre-requiste questline
- Starts at Ashim at Ibellab Oasis in Valencia Desert
- Mostly speaking to NPCs, requires energy to complete and requires you to kill some monsters
- Rest Area on the Barren Sand
- Questline to unlock the desert trading buff
- Starts at Atui Balacs at Sand Grain Bazaar
- Mostly speaking to NPCs, requires energy to complete
After completing the questline you will be given a +50% Trading buff for 1 hour.
To get the 100% buff you need to go and collect it from the node manager at Pilgrim’s Sanctum: Sharing. This will cost 100 energy. You cannot get the buff whilst you have the +50% buff from the questline and the buff only applies when selling trade goods at Valencia (not Arehaza or any other location).
Other Types of Trading
Illegal Trading (Black Rat League Trading)
Illegal trading is the riskiest form of trading and an interesting concept that could have made Trading more interesting. Unfortunately, it has not been updated since the launch of the game, so it is definitely not worth doing, and many players don’t even know it exists.
The following restrictions apply:
- Must be at least a professional trader to purchase the items.
- It must be nighttime (10 pm to 7 am)
- This only applies to specific items.
The NPCs that sell illegal trade items only appear at night in main towns. They can usually be found behind buildings and in more obscure places. They are labeled as “<Black Rat League> Mysterious Man”.
Pssst, hey you.. Yes, you! Fancy a blast from the past? Check out the old image from in 2015.
Unlike the items sold by Trade Administers, the items sold by the Mysterious Man comes in quantities of 1. Each of the items is 30 000 to 100 000 silver and weighs about 300.00 LT.
After buying the items, you are labeled with a bright red icon above your head indicating that you are carrying illegitimate goods and you can be tagged in PvP. Note: if you put it on a horse or a coach, they will be labeled instead of you.
To sell the items, bring the item to any Trade Administer other than the one in the city that it was bought in. Like regular trading, the farther you go, the higher it will sell for. However, due to potential player killers it may be better to travel a shorter or more obsolete route. Once sold to the Trade Administer, you lose 5000 karma per item sold.
Imperial Trading
Imperial trading items reset every 4 hours and only a set amount of items can be sold. The trade items are regular trading goods you can purchase in main towns, but will sell for 250% of their price when taken to the target NPC listed. Each main town differs and the easiest way to figure out which trading goods are currently up for Imperial Trading is to check the Trade Info by going to your ESC menu and then the Life Tab.
Once you’ve arrived to the indicated town, talk to the Imperial Delivery NPC and NOT the Trade Administer. Sell all the imperial goods to the Imperial Delivery NPC for 250% profit. If you have any left over then you can sell these to the regular Trade Manager NPC.
Hot-time Trading
Every once in a while, there will be a global announcement indicating that a town is buying goods for 200% of its value. This form of trading is rather simple. Before the allotted time or quantity runs out, sell any trade goods to the indicated town. Like any other form of trading, a node must be connected to that town to profit from it. Due to the irregularity and random placement of these events, it is not wise to actively seek this trading method out unless it happily falls under a specific happenstance where the town is already connected in your node setup.
