Updated from Ingolif's excellent trading guide: http://forums.taleworlds.com/viewtopic.php?t=1711
Red arrows indicate direction of shipment. Yellow labels indicate the item bought at the city. Legend:
Item Name
Buy Price/Sell Price
Profit / percent profit
Buy/sell prices based on trading score of 3-4 (slight discrepancies may exist).
Newbie's Trading Guide
Helpful hints
A horse is a horse, of course, of course: On the overland map all horses are the same. Riding or owning a lame sumpter horse has the same effect as a spirited courser. This means that the cheapest horses make the most economical pack-horses. Also you don't have to worry about getting a fast horse to speed up your overland travel; all horses are the same.
Your horse is my horse, my horse is your horse: In terms of speeding up the party when carrying a load of goods, it doesn't matter which party member is holding the pack-horses. To free up valuable space in my main inventory, I allocate all packhorses to Borcha or Marnid.
Party members give a fair deal but don't take IOUs: Party members will happily trade items back and forth with you for equal sell/buy prices. This means that if a party member has a sufficient purse of gold, their inventory can be freely accessed as much as you wish, effectively becoming an extension of your own, which is significant since Marnid typically starts out with Inventory Management 2, giving him 24 slots. Unfortunately you're going to have to pay for this buffer of gold yourself.
Newbie's Trading Walkthrough
I typically start my character with Inventory Management 1, since I can't be bothered trading back and forth with Marnid and I'll eventually need the slots for looting anyway.
Early in the game, cash is the restricting factor, so we want to hit the cheapest, highest percentage profit commodities: salt, wheat and fish.
Starting from Zendar, sell off all your extraneous equipment (e.g. gloves, weapons). Don't worry, you'll make enough money to buy much better stuff than that, and you'll need the capital to start out with. If your skills are good enough to win consistently at the arena you could do that a few times to kickstart your cash flow, but I'm expecting most newbies not to be able to do this. Try to get a cheap packhorse right away.
If you manage to buy a cheap (i.e. lame/swayback sumpter) at Zendar, make your way to the salt mine. If not, head to Wercheg.
The inital trade route is as follows:
Salt Mine: Buy Salt
Zendar: Sell Salt
Wercheg: Buy Fish
Uxkhal: Sell Fish, Buy Grain
Tulga: Sell Grain
return to Salt Mine, repeat.
Evade any enemies encountered. Watch out for Black Khergits near Tulga: they move very fast.
Visit the smithies of all nearby cities and keep an eye out for Padded Cloth Armour.
During the sequence you'll want to slowly build up your pack-horse collection each time you have over 120 gold or so. Buy only cheap horses, ideally lame or swaybacked ones. Make sure you have at least 1 horse for every 5 units of goods carried: this will keep your overland speed above that of most nasties.
Once you have 3 pack-horses and around 200 gold you can head to Rivacheg to free Borcha. Give him all but one of your pack-horses, saving one for Marnid. His pathfinding will boost your overland speed and his spotting will allow you to see enemies from further away.
Eventually you can buy a padded cloth armour (costs around 238 gold). Then head on over to Zendar to pick up Marnid. Marnid has Trading 3 (or 4) and so will help you get a marginally better deal for your trades. Don't forget to give him a horse.
Eventually you'll find that you're rich enough to buy up the entire inventories of the merchants. Now money is no longer a constraint, so the next time you're at Tulga offloading your grain, buy as many bags of spice as you can afford and head to Praven. Sell the spice for a little profit.
Now your new trade route can look like this:
Praven: Buy Ale
Rivacheg: Sell Oil, Buy Meat
Khudan: Sell Ale, buy Furs
Curaw: Sell Meat, buy Iron
Suno: Sell Furs, buy Oil
Sargoth: Sell Iron
back to Praven.
For variety you can add Reyvadin->Tihr (Wool) or Tulga->Praven (spice) into the sequence. Eventually you should have so many packhorses that you can pretty much outrun even the Black Khergits and Dark Hunters under a full load, so you can add Sargoth->Halmar->Jelkala->Reyvadin to complete the sequence.
Good Trading, and Good Luck!
Also, Please let me know if I can improve it!
Red arrows indicate direction of shipment. Yellow labels indicate the item bought at the city. Legend:
Item Name
Buy Price/Sell Price
Profit / percent profit
Buy/sell prices based on trading score of 3-4 (slight discrepancies may exist).
Newbie's Trading Guide
Helpful hints
A horse is a horse, of course, of course: On the overland map all horses are the same. Riding or owning a lame sumpter horse has the same effect as a spirited courser. This means that the cheapest horses make the most economical pack-horses. Also you don't have to worry about getting a fast horse to speed up your overland travel; all horses are the same.
Your horse is my horse, my horse is your horse: In terms of speeding up the party when carrying a load of goods, it doesn't matter which party member is holding the pack-horses. To free up valuable space in my main inventory, I allocate all packhorses to Borcha or Marnid.
Party members give a fair deal but don't take IOUs: Party members will happily trade items back and forth with you for equal sell/buy prices. This means that if a party member has a sufficient purse of gold, their inventory can be freely accessed as much as you wish, effectively becoming an extension of your own, which is significant since Marnid typically starts out with Inventory Management 2, giving him 24 slots. Unfortunately you're going to have to pay for this buffer of gold yourself.
Newbie's Trading Walkthrough
I typically start my character with Inventory Management 1, since I can't be bothered trading back and forth with Marnid and I'll eventually need the slots for looting anyway.
Early in the game, cash is the restricting factor, so we want to hit the cheapest, highest percentage profit commodities: salt, wheat and fish.
Starting from Zendar, sell off all your extraneous equipment (e.g. gloves, weapons). Don't worry, you'll make enough money to buy much better stuff than that, and you'll need the capital to start out with. If your skills are good enough to win consistently at the arena you could do that a few times to kickstart your cash flow, but I'm expecting most newbies not to be able to do this. Try to get a cheap packhorse right away.
If you manage to buy a cheap (i.e. lame/swayback sumpter) at Zendar, make your way to the salt mine. If not, head to Wercheg.
The inital trade route is as follows:
Salt Mine: Buy Salt
Zendar: Sell Salt
Wercheg: Buy Fish
Uxkhal: Sell Fish, Buy Grain
Tulga: Sell Grain
return to Salt Mine, repeat.
Evade any enemies encountered. Watch out for Black Khergits near Tulga: they move very fast.
Visit the smithies of all nearby cities and keep an eye out for Padded Cloth Armour.
During the sequence you'll want to slowly build up your pack-horse collection each time you have over 120 gold or so. Buy only cheap horses, ideally lame or swaybacked ones. Make sure you have at least 1 horse for every 5 units of goods carried: this will keep your overland speed above that of most nasties.
Once you have 3 pack-horses and around 200 gold you can head to Rivacheg to free Borcha. Give him all but one of your pack-horses, saving one for Marnid. His pathfinding will boost your overland speed and his spotting will allow you to see enemies from further away.
Eventually you can buy a padded cloth armour (costs around 238 gold). Then head on over to Zendar to pick up Marnid. Marnid has Trading 3 (or 4) and so will help you get a marginally better deal for your trades. Don't forget to give him a horse.
Eventually you'll find that you're rich enough to buy up the entire inventories of the merchants. Now money is no longer a constraint, so the next time you're at Tulga offloading your grain, buy as many bags of spice as you can afford and head to Praven. Sell the spice for a little profit.
Now your new trade route can look like this:
Praven: Buy Ale
Rivacheg: Sell Oil, Buy Meat
Khudan: Sell Ale, buy Furs
Curaw: Sell Meat, buy Iron
Suno: Sell Furs, buy Oil
Sargoth: Sell Iron
back to Praven.
For variety you can add Reyvadin->Tihr (Wool) or Tulga->Praven (spice) into the sequence. Eventually you should have so many packhorses that you can pretty much outrun even the Black Khergits and Dark Hunters under a full load, so you can add Sargoth->Halmar->Jelkala->Reyvadin to complete the sequence.
Good Trading, and Good Luck!
Also, Please let me know if I can improve it!
