World of Pirates/Trading

How to trade? Easy, buy cheap sell high.

That is so simple. So simply? Well not really, there are some things which make it a little bit harder:


 * 1) Often you may think you brought very cheap but mostly everywhere its as cheap as you got your goods.
 * 2) There are many other players who want to get your cargo and ships during you trade.
 * 3) If you want to raise your trading skill fast, you need merchants or Spanish Galleons. Both ship types are slow and no warships. Some people say that Fluyts are good also but they aren't effectively enough.
 * 4) A further obstacle to reach a good trading level is the high jump from level to level (from 3 to 4 9600, from 4 to 5 19200 points!!!). In contrast you get relatively few trading points. If you sell goods at port of your own nation, you receive 1 point for 20 goods. If you sell at another nation you will get 1 point for 13 goods. That means if you sell 1000 goods with profit you will get 50 and/or 76 points.
 * 5) Each port has only limited storage and produced also only certain goods. Take a look at City-Information->Industries

The ports only produce goods if there is a player in or close to port.

Some things you should remember: If you buy goods you should always know where to sell. In addition there are different possibilities:


 * Goods delivery jobs: These kinds of jobs only available if there is a lack of goods at destination city. Look which goods are needed and then get job and goods. Take as much as you can carry and deliver the goods at city. This kind of job will gain you some extra trading points.


 * Take always a look at Messages of lack of goods.
 * You should take a look at merchants prices at different towns to get a better overview then buy goods.

If you will raise your trading skill fast, you should go to towns which are close to trade. Here some examples:


 * All nation home areas
 * Lesser Antilles

How can I compare prices?
You can change your transparency of the windows, 70% should be good. Then you go to port where you will buy the goods. Visit the merchant and now you click right mouse button -> logbook-> cities-> trading prices of destination town (the barrels). So you can see if you would buy cheaper as town demands. With "alt" and "left click" you can shift the windows.

Some tricks: If you found a port with lack of goods (especially food is good to trade), you sail to the nearest port and you buy all available goods for destination port. There you sell all and you get trading points. Now buy all goods from port (where you sold) and sell them back to other port.

If you found a trading route then take only 1 ton of food and fill up your cargo space with the goods you want to trade. You need enough fishers to feed your crew during your tour.

Personally I don't upgrade speed if i build up a trading fleet. Merchants and Spanish Galleons are slow with and without speedups. So its better to upgrade 3 more cargo space.

For some extra money during trading you can take letter jobs for destination town and/ or a sloop with two cabins to take also passengers. So you can earn some more money. Attention, if you take cargo/goods-(?) jobs they will take away from the loading space!! Goods deliveries bring extra trading points.

You raise your trading skill with…

 * 1 point per 20 goods at same nation

if you can sell the goods with profit and above the minimum good-price. Take a look into loading space of your ship. There you can find the average price you paid for the goods. It should be the minimum price at least, otherwise you wouldn't get any trading points, even if you sold with "profit".

Another important advantage of a high trading skill is selling ships, especially war galleons. As approximate value is considered thereby: each skill point increase ship value by 10.000 gold. I.e. with a trade skill 4 and a specialist +2 you get between 80,000 - 95,000 gold per WG (with condition of 90%). The value depends on armoring of the WG, more armor more money.