World of Pirates/Trading

How To Trade? Easy, Buy Cheap Sell High. (See End for an Example)

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

Some people say that Fluyts are good also but they aren't effectively enough. When you sell goods you receive 1 point for 20 goods. That means if you sell 1000 goods with profit you will get 50 points.
 * 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 not warships.
 * 1) 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!!!).
 * 1) 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.

To raise your trading skill fast, you should Use towns which are close together to trade between. Here some examples:


 * All nation home areas
 * Lesser Antilles – Anguilla <> Sint Maarten / St John’s <> St Thomas <> Road Town (Fort) / Nevis <> St Kitts / even Saba <> St Eustatius

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 any 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.

Example Of Trading
For this example we will use Sint Maarten and Anguilla. Food will be our goods
 * Sint Maarten (Plenty) Buy Price is 5 – Sell Price is 2
 * Anguilla (Lack) Buy Price is 35 – Sell Price is 25
 * Our Fleet will be based on 10 fully upped Spanish Galleons – each ship capable of carrying 342 goods = TOTAL 3420 goods
 * Trading EATS gold so make sure you have a good supply

So Lets Go Trading
 * At (P) buy 3420 goods and sail to (L)
 * At (L) visit merchant to check sell price of food. This is at 25. Sell all 3420 cargo and buy it back and sail back to (P)
 * Be careful when selling at (L) especially when prices are rising still or u will lose some of your cargo, wait till port produces a small amount then sell/buy back.
 * At (P) sell and buy back goods. That’s how to trade. You sold at a profit and made 171 points
 * (points made will depend on the cargo you carry – 20 goods = 1 point)
 * Now you just repeat all the above over and over again till you reach to trade level you need

Now you have experience at trading – lets explore the possiblilty of making EXTRA points from your TOTAL cargo
 * At (P) buy 3420 goods and sail to (L)
 * At (L) visit merchant to check sell price. This is at 25. This time we sell 1000 goods and buy back. You have now just made 50 points
 * Now we need to check the price of the goods on our fleet – right click Fleet Goods – look at food. This has now risen to 10
 * Repeat the above steps till the price on the ship is nearing the sell price
 * Now the price of goods on our fleet is at 20 and the sell price is 25
 * At (L) visit merchant to check sell price. This is at 25. Sell all 3420 cargo and buy it back and sail back to (P)
 * Now you just repeat all the above over and over again till you reach to trade level you need

So lets look at whats happened
 * We sold 1000 goods 3 times before we sold our TOTAL 3420 cargo
 * That’s 50+50+50+171 = 321 points
 * And That’s The SECRET to making Extra Points
 * Remember this is just an example. The ammount of goods you will sell depends on your cargo capacity

Notes
 * As you become more confident and proficient at trading you will recognise how/when the prices are behaving (going up or down) and you will learn when you can "push the envelope" to make those few extra points by selling small ammount. Sometimes u will push it a bit "too far" and you wont be able to sell you TOTAL cargo, so be warned!!!!