Navigation
Introduction
Buying Trade Goods
Transporting Goods
Bandits
How to Sell & Bargain
Illegal Trading
Imperial Delivery
Hot-time Trading
Extra
Introduction
Trading has the potential to be very profitable once you improve the level of your profession. Don’t fret if it may seem very arduous in the beginning, the profits will gradually increase with time.
Tips before commencing:
- Beginning traders cannot purchase trade goods in most of the towns or cities due to the profession level restriction. Begin your trading journey by buying goods from Hidel or the Balenos area.
- You can sell the goods to any Trade Administer regardless of the city, however make sure to link the nodes to gain more profit. If you don’t link the nodes, you will lose 70% of your spending’s. If you don’t know how to link nodes, click here to view our Nodes guide.
- Your profits are proportional to the distanced traveled. The farther you go, the more silver you receive.
- Use a trading costume to boost your profit.
Buying Trade Goods
To buy trade goods, go to a Trade Administrator and press “R” to talk to them. Then, click “Commerce” to view the goods they sell. It is advisable to buy goods that are lower than their regular price (less than 100%) so to say; ‘buy low sell high’. You can view the value of the goods at each town by pressing “Show Value”, this will consume one energy. Once you have found something you want to buy, click “Add” and enter the amount wanted. At the bottom you will see the cost, weight and and space this will take up. When you are ready, click “Purchase all” in to the bottom-right corner.
Transporting Goods
There are 5 ways of transporting trade goods across land:
- Carry them on your back – This method is very slow but you do not have to spend any additional money. However, you will be much more limited by how many you can buy. The trade pack will go into your inventory and you can drop them at any time to remove it. By carrying it on your pack, you automatically move slower, as usually, once you go over your weight limit, you slow down accordingly. The one benefit of this method is that you train your strength while carrying the goods.
- Use a donkey or horse – A donkey is recommended as it can hold more weight than a horse. However, if the overall weight is light, a horse can carry it quickly. 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 administrator and you will be asked whether you would like the goods to be put onto the mount.
- Use your own wagon – This is by far the best way of transferring goods by yourself. It can carry a high quantity of goods and has a high weight capacity. The downside is that it can be quite expensive to buy. To put trade goods onto a wagon put the wagon next to the trade administrator and you will be asked whether you would like the goods to be put onto the vehicle. A great benefit to this method is that you can attach your own horses to a wagon and train several of them at once.
- Use the NPC trading wagon/boat – This method allows you to put up to 40 trade goods onto a wagon and the goods will be delivered to the town/city warehouse for you to sell later. Using the NPC trading wagon does cost some money as you pay the wagon driver, and the amount you have to pay is based on the trade goods you deliver. To put the goods onto an NPC trading wagon or boat, put the goods into your warehouse then click the “Transport” option at the warehouse NPC then “Dispatch” at the top. Move the item from your warehouse into the delivery window then select the town/city and the shipping method from the drop-down boxes. Once you are ready, click “Dispatch”. To cancel the delivery, go to the warehouse NPC in the town you bought the goods then click “Transport” then “Transport Status”. You will not be able to cancel the delivery once the NPC has picked it up. To receive the goods from the delivery, go to the town it was delivered to and go the Warehouse NPC. Then click “Transport”, “Transport Status” and “Receive”, you can then sell the goods yourself to the Trade Administrator.
- Use a boat – You can store trade goods onto a boat and bring them across bodies of water. It functions similarly to that of a horse or donkey.
Bandits
Along trade routes there may be bandits that may attack you and they will kill you if you are afk. You cannot attack while carrying trade goods so it is best to avoid the roads the bandits are on. If you are using a full hp wagon, this should not be a problem for a single trade run. However players may also attack you and this results in a more disastrous outcome. You can see bandits on your map with this icon.
How to Sell & 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 try and increase your profit. Bargaining will not decrease the amount of money you can sell it for, but it will take up 5 energy each time you try to bargain.
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 3 times and try to get them level. If you manage to level the scales on your third turn, you will achieve “Bargain Success” and can then sell your goods for a higher price. You get more tries to move the scale with trading costumes, the better the costumes, the more extra tries you receive.
Advanced Trading Systems
This part of the guide is written for experienced traders who seek to broaden their trading skills. Knowing the basics of trading will be assumed for this guide.
Trading is quite an extensive and complex system. On top of the regular trading system, there are a couple of other forms of trading, all of which are much more profitable than their more known counterpart. Their profits are proportional to its risk and time restrictions. These two time-gated forms of trading are known as ‘Illegal Trading’ and ‘Imperial Delivery/Trading’.
A quick reminder: NODES MUST BE CONNECTED TO PROFIT
Illegal Trading
Illegal trading is the most risky form of trading. The following restrictions apply:
- Must be at least a professional trader to purchase the items.
- It must be night time (10 pm to 7 am)
- 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 they are identifiable by their small light source. They are labeled as “<Black rat top> Mysterious Man” (May vary with different English patches or updates).
Unlike the items sold by Trade Administers, the items sold by the Mysterious Man comes in quantities of
1. Each of the items are 30 000 to 100 000 silver and weigh 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 it 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. The loss in karma will not be a hindrance due to the low volume of trading goods sold.
Though the overall profit percentage may not seem to increase much, due to their original high price, the trading goods can net you over 50 000 – 100 000 silver in one transaction.
Black Market Merchants
Though this is not related to the trading profession, the merchants are similar to the Illegal Traders as they only appear at night. From 10 pm to 7 am, a black market trader appears in all the main towns. They reveal random buy-able items for 50 energy a piece. They sell these items at set prices. The items can either be greatly overpriced or lower than the current market values. They sell anything from crystals to Ogre Rings. Beware, the items that the merchant sells are random so use it at your own risk (not that you need much energy anyways).
Imperial Delivery
Imperial delivery is a broad term covering all the imperial NPCs. Each main city has a group of imperial NPCs, each of them buying certain items for a high price. Each NPC has a specific profession they are catered to. To determine what items they buy, simply talk to them to determine what items they want and the quantity that they are still willing to buy. These NPCs buy all sorts of things from boxed food to packed elixirs. The NPCs buy the items at 250% of their original price making it very profitable. Imperial trading falls into the category of imperial delivery, but is slightly more complex than the other imperial NPCs. It will be expanded upon under the following sub-header.
Imperial Trading
Imperial trading also highly resembles the standard method of trading. Like illegal trading, imperial trading is time gated. The trading times are not specified and depend on the current trading status of the game.
Imperial trading only occurs with certain items at a given time. These items are just your regular trading goods in main towns. Each main town differs and the easiest way to figure out if imperial trading is occurring within the main town you are currently residing in is to visit the local Trade Administer.
Oftentimes, when talking to a Trade Administer, you may have noticed a crown and a bracketed domain (ie. Serendia) beside the trading goods. These goods are ‘marked’ indicating that the item is up for imperial trading. To partake in imperial trading, purchase these said items and deliver it to the main town of the indicated domain.
- [Balenos] – Veila/Velia
- [Serendia] – Hidel
- [Calpheon] – Calpheon
- [Media] – Alti Nova
THIS IS IMPORTANT! Once you’ve arrived to the indicated town, talk to the Imperial Deliverer and NOT the Trade Administer. Sell all the imperial goods to the Imperial Deliverer for 250% profit. If you have any non imperial items remaining, feel free to sell them to the Trade Administer.
Hot-time Trading
Every once in a while, there will be a global announcement indicating that a town is buying goods for 200% of their value. This form of trading is rather simple. Before the allotted time or quantity runs out, sell any trade goods into the indicated town. Like any other forms 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.
Extra
Suggested Node Chain for trading
Side note: for better image clarity Imgur Album
This guide was written by Japtem. Full credit goes to him for this amazing guide. If you are interested in writing guides to be featured on our website, send an email to contact@blackdesertfoundry.com
