How to work workshops?

[Endar Croz]

Hello, after updating the game (version 1.2.7) I started a new game (clear game without mods), I bought a workshop (Wool Weavery), but it is NOT profitable - zero action, nothing happens.
That is, the workshop does NOT buy raw materials and does NOT produce items.
Why so? This should be automatic.

I bought a Wool Weavery in the city of Baltakhand, the cheapest wool here, logically something must happen, but a week has passed and the workshop does NOT buy wool from the store and does NOT produce clothes.

What needs to be done to make it work and bring gold?

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

It's complicated. This YouTuber has a guide that breaks down the essential components to making money via workshops as of the current version of the game:



In short, it's not just a matter of securing cheap raw materials but also avoiding inflation of the sold product--and I've not been able to figure out how to avoid the latter until the Warehouse update provided a means of stockpiling a percentage of produced-for-market goods.

I can't give concrete advice because I'm still figuring it out as well. At the moment, I've got 3 Velvet Dyeworks producing Velvet out of very cheaply imported Raw Silk (~10 silvers per unit, each having ~100 units in storage and consumes 1 unit per day to make several Velvets) and I've messed with the option to hold produced goods between 25% and 75% depending on whether I'm making more money (lower it) or less money (raise it) since it's a cheap method of deflating the market while also providing me cheap Velvet to pick up and sell abroad on my own. As it stands, I've made a high of ~150 silvers per workshop and a low of ~30 with the occasional dip into "Halted" and have managed to avoid going under 10,000 Capital for too long (you do not make money when Capital is below 10,000--all profits go straight into replenishing investment capital and then you get a 20% cut once Capital is over 10,000). This means, when I bi-annually (once every 2 seasons, give or take) swing by to pick up the stored Velvets I'm easily getting ~50 per shop since they're hoarding about 1-4 per day depending on the settings. Even if I sell the Velvets at a low, low price of 100 per unit it's a profit of 90 compared to the cost of Raw Silk (probably much higher since I'm pretty sure 1 Silk equals about 5 Velvets if you were to hoard 100% of the final product, but I'm not sure yet since I didn't pay enough attention and assumed a 1-1 Silk-to-Velvet ratio).

I'll post more if I learn more. Until then, my advice is to try lowering output to market by hoarding the finished product and then go abroad to sell it for either a premium (longer travel time but more money) or a quick cash-out (brief travel time but still profitable compared to investment). Importing the Wool yourself (by putting it into the Warehouse and setting the shop to use only raw materials in the Warehouse) is highly recommended to reduce costs of production and remove dependency on local surpluses.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

It was worse when last I played at the start of the year; workshops just periodically stopped producing/made no money and you'd be lucky to break 100 gold and typically made nothing for days at a time. I wasted a ridiculous amount of money buying up to my workshop limit in my first/complete playthrough and don't believe I ever recouped those investments; at least it's possible to make your money back and profit via stockpiling excess production, selling abroad, and local economic manipulation.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

There's a logic to it--I and the guy in the video spelled it out. It's just highly punishing if you're going into it blind (like I did) and the yield isn't as high as it could be considering the alternative is the simpler (and potentially lower risk, especially if you're good at the game) joining of a faction (mercenary or vassal) and beating up the weaker noble warbands for their lunch money.

I've only got a few hundred hours, so I don't know how it worked before December/January 12 months ago, but I can say it's less bad now than it was back then.

I like the theory behind the design but the execution is lacking. It'd be better if you got decent passive income for simply maintaining it and micromanagement was an optional way to make lots of money faster instead of being necessary to recoup your investment and profit at all.

 

[JunKeteer]

Just buy a workshop with an input a connected village provides. Even then, sometimes it sticks at 0 denars; sell and pick another location, there's tons of them. Frankly, don't care enough to delve into the 'depth' those new warehouse settings do if they do much.

It's passive income, treat it like paying for a 5% wage reduction perk. Caravans is where you make the easy money (and how much loot you get too now).

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

In my own discovery, which I haven't played enough to call conclusive so it's just a working theory, you can get steady income if you buy out and convert to something else your competition. You won't make money owning 1 of 7 or so Velvet Weaveries, for example, but you will if it's 1 of 4 or one of 3.

Until/unless a patch changes it up, you have to commit to the monopolist lifestyle to make money with Workshops since they're only good for mass-producing processed goods on the cheap and not passive income at the moment.

I'll copy/paste my findings I posted about on another thread since they're more relevant here...

I've found that being (potentially) the sole owner of Velvet Dyeworks (of which I own 3) resulted in a massive increase of revenue both passively and actively.

Passively, I managed to stabilize the issue with halting and going under 10,000 Capital by setting the hold rate to 50% but the income was a measly 0-50, averaging ~25 per shop with the real income being the Velvets (about 2-3 per day per shop) that could be sold for ~200 each with little trouble. As I started buying out and then converting (and then selling) the other dyeworks in Calradia, the passive income gradually skyrocketed to the present time of averaging 200 gold per day with a range of ~150-300, sometimes shooting into 400+ territory. The cost of buying out/selling dyeworks became increasingly trivial in light of the income made both passively and actively.

Actively, as I said, the going rate for a single unit of Velvet without looking for where it's scarce is about 200 by the time 200 days have passed and the economy more or less stabilizes, but as I bought out the competition and emptied the market of Velvet the going rate likewise skyrocketed so that ~400 is the new average and ~600 can be found in remote areas very far from any dyeworks. Considering you can make hundreds of Velvets per shop per year, the potential revenue goes from ~16,800 (84*200) to ~32,400 (84*400) at the end of this process--assuming 1 Velvet per day as a minimum. Actual revenue should be at least twice the stated numbers if not more depending on how much Velvet you collect in the Warehouse when hoarding outputs. Note that I'm not entirely certain I've monopolized the Velvet Dyeworks industry but, if I haven't, it's just one more in Aserai lands before I have since every city in Calradia proper and the remote frontiers have been checked by this point.

As it stands, unless Workshops have their passive income potential buffed it's necessary to become a monopolist if you want to make real money passively and highly encouraged to use them as means of mass-producing cheap goods for sale abroad at any rate.

Caravans have been rather simple and stable, in contrast, with an average income of 300 per day per caravan (with difficult to discern difference between Trade mattering versus Scout) with a high degree of variation per day (rarely as high as 1,000 or as low as negative 500). I haven't been paying them as much attention due to their consistency, though.

Note that I've only very recently started documenting anything, so take this will a grain of salt but the trends indicate the underlying issue is that NPC consumers simply don't have as much demand as they ought to have to make Workshops a viable source of passive income without doing what I describe above.

Ideally, what I describe above should be an optional way to become stupidly rich rather than necessary to break even and profit for real. Until/unless TaleWorlds adjusts the economy under the hood, I theorize you have to monopolize and shrink the market to drive up demand for the goods being produced.

EDITED to add: Apparently this person on Reddit has done exactly what I'm doing and THIS is the result:

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fworkshop-isnt-giving-income-v0-nott59ovz33c1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D1920%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dea8c6a98f152eb0fa919fad0692fca378a162d28

Yeah, if being the owner of the only XYZ in Calradia results in that kind of money even without Warehouses factored in then I think I've found a good way to make the mercantile play style work without being an implicit exercise in futility.

 

[Aedwin]

I have a smith and tannery. I put stuff in the warehouse for production and set the other setting to 100%. (only sell if warehouse is full)
They produce and I sell the stuff myself. Since most of the time the production was haltet, because it was not profitable.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

I have a smith and tannery. I put stuff in the warehouse for production and set the other setting to 100%. (only sell if warehouse is full)
They produce and I sell the stuff myself. Since most of the time the production was haltet, because it was not profitable.

I don't recommend this because the workers need to be paid and they derive income from sales made. Your shop will go bankrupt if your Capital zeroes out. I'd recommend setting your input holding to 50% since that lets you sell a large chunk abroad while making just enough money to keep it going.

 

[Aedwin]

I don't recommend this because the workers need to be paid and they derive income from sales made. Your shop will go bankrupt if your Capital zeroes out. I'd recommend setting your input holding to 50% since that lets you sell a large chunk abroad while making just enough money to keep it going.

Hah, thanks. You're right. My smithery was almost at 0.

 

[Generaljoebear]

Hello, after updating the game (version 1.2.7) I started a new game (clear game without mods), I bought a workshop (Wool Weavery), but it is NOT profitable - zero action, nothing happens.
That is, the workshop does NOT buy raw materials and does NOT produce items.
Why so? This should be automatic.

I bought a Wool Weavery in the city of Baltakhand, the cheapest wool here, logically something must happen, but a week has passed and the workshop does NOT buy wool from the store and does NOT produce clothes.

What needs to be done to make it work and bring gold?

Wool weaveries are currently bugged. I've tested it, and they will just eat up supplies without producing anything even if you store 100% of the output in your warehouse.

 

[Hero07911010]

This is a great way to run your shops. This strategy plus a monopoly is better.

 

[veronicaaltoids]

Hello, after updating the game (version 1.2.7) I started a new game (clear game without mods), I bought a workshop (Wool Weavery), but it is NOT profitable - zero action, nothing happens.
That is, the workshop does NOT buy raw materials and does NOT produce items.
Why so? This should be automatic.

I bought a Wool Weavery in the city of Baltakhand, the cheapest wool here, logically something must happen, but a week has passed and the workshop does NOT buy wool from the store and does NOT produce clothes.

What needs to be done to make it work and bring gold?

my advice is to avoid any kuzait town, they are the poorest town in the whole world

As I have tested many times, Aserai has the richest town in the map, especially the town Sanala
I also found the roots equipments from Aserai is more expensive than any other kingdoms

 

[Generaljoebear]

my advice is to avoid any kuzait town, they are the poorest town in the whole world

As I have tested many times, Aserai has the richest town in the map, especially the town Sanala
I also found the roots equipments from Aserai is more expensive than any other kingdoms

My Chakland brewery makes more passive income than my Sanala brewery in my Khuzait playthrough. Even though Chaik has had more time to develop, Sanala prosperity is still much higher. I even took the time to buy out and switch breweries close by to either city, so they are both doing very well, but surprisingly Sanala is behind.

But anyway, you might be missing the fact that there is a known wool weavery bug rn. Look at the other replies in this thread and search the internet if you're curious. TW is looking into it.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

This is a great way to run your shops. This strategy plus a monopoly is better.

I had no idea that, once a shop goes below (5000?) Capital it just has YOU pay the workers' wages. That's very useful to know since it opens up the possibility of selling 100% of the stock made abroad as you show in the video.

I'm uncertain if it's a good idea if you plan on monopolizing and going into multiple industries, though, since you'll likely have more stock than you can sell at some point so you'd have to either sell stuff (personally) at a lower price to clear out your inventory or sell off 50-75% of the merchandise passively (via the Workshop).

 

[Ser_Pain]

It's complicated. This YouTuber has a guide that breaks down the essential components to making money via workshops as of the current version of the game:



In short, it's not just a matter of securing cheap raw materials but also avoiding inflation of the sold product--and I've not been able to figure out how to avoid the latter until the Warehouse update provided a means of stockpiling a percentage of produced-for-market goods.

I can't give concrete advice because I'm still figuring it out as well. At the moment, I've got 3 Velvet Dyeworks producing Velvet out of very cheaply imported Raw Silk (~10 silvers per unit, each having ~100 units in storage and consumes 1 unit per day to make several Velvets) and I've messed with the option to hold produced goods between 25% and 75% depending on whether I'm making more money (lower it) or less money (raise it) since it's a cheap method of deflating the market while also providing me cheap Velvet to pick up and sell abroad on my own. As it stands, I've made a high of ~150 silvers per workshop and a low of ~30 with the occasional dip into "Halted" and have managed to avoid going under 10,000 Capital for too long (you do not make money when Capital is below 10,000--all profits go straight into replenishing investment capital and then you get a 20% cut once Capital is over 10,000). This means, when I bi-annually (once every 2 seasons, give or take) swing by to pick up the stored Velvets I'm easily getting ~50 per shop since they're hoarding about 1-4 per day depending on the settings. Even if I sell the Velvets at a low, low price of 100 per unit it's a profit of 90 compared to the cost of Raw Silk (probably much higher since I'm pretty sure 1 Silk equals about 5 Velvets if you were to hoard 100% of the final product, but I'm not sure yet since I didn't pay enough attention and assumed a 1-1 Silk-to-Velvet ratio).

I'll post more if I learn more. Until then, my advice is to try lowering output to market by hoarding the finished product and then go abroad to sell it for either a premium (longer travel time but more money) or a quick cash-out (brief travel time but still profitable compared to investment). Importing the Wool yourself (by putting it into the Warehouse and setting the shop to use only raw materials in the Warehouse) is highly recommended to reduce costs of production and remove dependency on local surpluses.

Thank you for your perspective and contribution to my run's economy!