Are caravans worth it? [EDIT: THEY ARE]

[stevehoos]

No.

 

[Nick_Of_Tim3]

CARAVAN SYNOPSIS:
-Takes about 7-10 days before it begins to be profitable (it loses about 200/day until then)
-Limited by how many companions you have, as you must assign a companion to lead each caravan
-After a few weeks it will bring in between 600-1200 / day (minus the expenses of operation, which will remain around 200 / day)

 

[Robbotjam]

If you have a expensive party, around 1k dennars, I wouldn't stop building caravans until I had at least 3, currently I'm capped at caravans because I managed to catch and beat up a noble that had an army of around 140 that carried 120k dennars on him. I don't know how often this can happen, but if every big noble carries a treasure with them they are the most reliable source of income right now.

Alright that's what I'll try to do in my next save. I misspoke a bit in my first post though. Ignoring my party's wages I was losing on average ten deners a day on the caravan, and some days I would loose up to 200 deners on the caravan. It was much less common for me to profit off of it. Do you know what I can do to make sure that my caravan is actually worth building?

edit: The wages and profits were both around 330 deners a day, which seems to be both more expensive to run and less profitable than others have experienced. I don't want to try to spec into trade since I'm trying to rp a bit with my character. Should I just give up on caravans if I don't have specs in trade or is there something else I can try to get profit.

 

[Pejot]

Does the trading skill of companion running your caravan influence the profit?

 

[Astran]

Alright that's what I'll try to do in my next save. I misspoke a bit in my first post though. Ignoring my party's wages I was losing on average ten deners a day on the caravan, and some days I would loose up to 200 deners on the caravan. It was much less common for me to profit off of it. Do you know what I can do to make sure that my caravan is actually worth building?

edit: The wages and profits were both around 330 deners a day, which seems to be both more expensive to run and less profitable than others have experienced. I don't want to try to spec into trade since I'm trying to rp a bit with my character. Should I just give up on caravans if I don't have specs in trade or is there something else I can try to get profit.

Does the trading skill of companion running your caravan influence the profit?

I don't think trade skill matters at all with caravans, unless there's a specific perk you can acquire, and if it turns out that it does actually affect caravans, you can definitely profit from them without levelling up trade. I have been getting 1k dennars from just one caravan with low trade skill but they take time to get there.

 

[Robbotjam]

I don't think trade skill matters at all with caravans, unless there's a specific perk you can acquire, and if it turns out that it does actually affect caravans, you can definitely profit from them without levelling up trade. I have been getting 1k dennars from just one caravan with low trade skill but they take time to get there.

There is a trade skill that reduces the wages for caravans, IDK about anything else though. And to clarify when you say they take time to get there are you saying that the caravan profits increase over time, or are you talking about the first couple of weeks where the caravans make no money?

 

[TiberiusWelf]

So I have had a caravan for...probably a few months at this point and I'm still losing money on it. It's about even most of the time, but overall I'm still probably losing on average around 10 deners a day. Aside from leveling trade is there anything I can do to make my caravan profitable? Or should I just disband it and accept the 25k dener loss that I have suffered.
In the future what can I do to maximize caravan profits? I just created a caravan in a random city but I imagine that that may be part of my problem.

Same here. Had a caravan for many months. In the first weeks it made small profit or was break even, But for several months I just made a loss of -100 to -500 per day. I checked the caravan regularly and it was never attacked (always at full troop strength) After several months when I finally disbanded the caravan when I had made a total loss of over 30.000 dennars.

I wonder if the trade skill of your companion affects the profit of a caravan, since it's him and not you who is leading i.

 

[bantad87]

I wonder if the trade skill of your companion affects the profit of a caravan, since it's him and not you who is leading i.

I'm guessing this is how it works, since in Warband companions could be your trader for you.