The trade skill guide. Or, how do I raise my trade skill enough to buy a settlement for the banner quest?

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staticgrazer

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After a ten in game year run as a caravaner, I am now confident that I understand how raising the trade skill and its mechanics work. Using this guide, I believe it’s possible to get your first settlement without the need to join an existing kingdom, or risk going at war with a minor faction, just to get your first settlement.
This has been edited April 29 to reflect some changes on what I've seen on a playthrough of beta 1.3.0.

There’s an important distinction that needs to be made between trading for profit, and trading for skill gain. It will also have some style and formatting changes as well.

-Trading for profit, is something you’re likely already doing, buy low sell high.

-Trading for skill, is using the mechanics of the game, for the trade skill, specifically to increase the skill.

Why is this needed?

1)
My goal with this guide is to provide a (mostly) peaceful way to complete the banner quest within the 10 year time frame, without needing to join a kingdom or risking everything in a rush to take out a minor clan and rush to finish the banner quest.
2)
The current major bug with trade skill prevents the "purchase table" as I refer to it, from being saved, when the game is loaded.

Digging through the forums I was able to find a post by Captain_Octavius that fixes this bug until the game developers can fix it in the vanilla game.

NOTE!
Did some testing for 1.2.1 full release, and it worked for a time and then failed. I've informed the mod creator.
Sad face.


I’ll be breaking this information into sections.
  • General Tips for Trading
  • Tips on trading for profit.
  • Tips on trading for skill gain.
  • Building your trade for profit.
  • Starting your trade for skill.
  • Ending trade for skill (AKA BUY ALL THE THINGS!™).
I’d also like to note that this is not a guide that includes any exploits (that I’m aware of), this is pure game mechanics as of this posting.

General Tips for Trading.
  • Generally speaking, BEFORE purchasing goods from a city, make sure you purchase from the villages tied to the city. (Hover the mouse over the city to see the list of villages.) This is because if you purchase all of any goods from a city first, it drives up the purchase price of the surrounding villages, and any caravans that are traveling through. Thus raising the price and lowering your total profit when you purchase from villages or caravans.
  • ALWAYS buy mules. The only exception is early on in your early caravanning (see before you have at least 70k set aside). It's also worth noting that as of beta 1.3.0 there isn't much trade off for being over-burdened. Even if you're 3 or 4 times over your limit.
  • NEVER sell mules. For the last section of this walk through you will need EVERY POSSIBLE mule. Just trust me for now.
  • In this guide, “goods” will refer to any consumable you can purchase. This includes horses, mules, foods, “craftable” items (wood, iron, silver, wool…etc), jewelry and livestock.
  • In this guide, “purchase table” just refers to how the game tracks the purchase price of a good in your current session. Mainly because I don’t know what it’s actually called and I just made something up that sounds good. K? K.
  • Set your character to the quartermaster of the clan as soon as possible. This will raise your steward skill while you’re running around the world trading. Really all you need is a small variety of food in your inventory and to fight small time NPCs occasionally to keep moral around 55. (More variety and even livestock a boost to moral, which helps with skill gain.)
  • Get a spouse early on. Helps with the main quest, gives you SPAWNLINGS, and helps with your dynasty early.
  • Gather your companions and a caravan going when you can afford it. I’d suggest having around 20k-30k(or double if you buy a caravan with extra security) saved before you send one out as it can take some time for the caravan to generate funds to equalize your daily income from troops.
  • WATCH YOUR CARAVAN(s)! I went from 300k down to ~50k in a relatively short time because my caravan was captured and I didn’t catch it, despite trading for profit. You CAN lose it all if you don’t make sure your caravan(s) are at lease turning a ‘0’ profit every day. No change is better than losing funds, and even a small loss is acceptable in some cases.
  • Starting out you should have around 20 troops, any kind it really doesn’t matter.
  • As your income grows (and your daily income as well) you can seek to shift to 50 troops, all calvary (for map travel speed). This is mostly needed as there were several areas at the edges of the map that were riddled with large numbers of bandits. I found that if you get enough 10-15 groups of any bandit NPC in a close enough proximity to you, they will think they can take you if you have below 50 troops. At 50 however, the likely hood of enough bandit NPCs getting together in a general area is drastically reduced.
I while doing some digging on the forums, I was able to find some great information originally posted by Dezako. Some of the exact prices mentioned are no longer accurate, but the methodology holds up.

I'll add some of their tips here.
  • Livestock doesn't count against your capacity and can fetch a pretty penny, keep an eye out for good deals in villages! Do be careful of the "Herd" speed penalty.
  • Buy workshops in those cities with villages that produce the raw materials needed for the production of goods. For example, a linen weavery in a city with two flax producing villages. You can check what trade good need what raw materials here. (Not affiliated to that website)

General Tips on Trading for Profit.
  • Maintain a list of the prices that you were able to find a good at its lowest price. There are a lot of goods, and a lot of time you may forget just what a good price for, let’s say, velvet is. I highly recommend a spreadsheet application as you're able to sort based on the name of the good(s).
  • I'm posted a cleaned up version of the table I use for reference. I've removed the prices displayed as there seems to be a little fluctuation in the prices between build releases. Think of this is a template, you can change it however you like.
  • ""
  • When able, try to keep your selling price around double your purchase price. (This doesn’t apply so much in the last section.)
  • FISH! There are a lot of places that want fish, and not many that sell it. I’ve seen fish sell between 9-14 in one area, but most places will want to buy it from 15-27 each.
  • Generally speaking, I don’t sell to caravans. However, the caravans goods prices and what they offer depend on their proximity to the nearest city or castle you start trade with them in. Best to find an area that has a good you want to buy, find a nice choke point where multiple trades are in and out of, then stop them all one at a time to buy just that good. It's a fairly easy way to stock up on cheap goods.

General Tips on Trading for Skill.

  • As a reminder, the skill mechanic (at least as of the time of this writing) resets your recent purchase table when you load any save. So to get the best out of trading for skill, you either need to have already been trading during the active session of play (make sure to track your purchase prices for goods), or start working on building the purchase table.
  • In this portion, trading skill profit trumps actual profit. You should have 70k-200k saved up. There are conditions where buying higher than normal can work in your favor later. This is covered later.
  • When any good is sold for profit that count towards skill gain, in your inventory the sale number will be a BRIGHT green (you need the either of the perks in the very first skill choice for trading). I would suggest sticking to selling for x2 your purchase price, but some profit is better than no profit.
  • From what I can tell, the mechanic for trade skill works like this. Let’s say you buy 100 hardwood for 13 each. You sell all of that hardwood for 40 each. Unless I’m bad at math (very possible) that should mean you have a profit of 2,700 toward the trade skill.
  • (Sell Price – Buy price X # Of Goods = trade skill increase)
  • THIS ONLY COUNTS IF THE BUY PRICE IS ON YOUR CURRENT PLAY SESSION.
  • Maintain a list of the prices of the goods you’ve purchased during THIS SESSION. (See the IMGUR link above for quick reference) If building your purchase table after loading, you can reference the trading for profit table you’ve built to make sure that you’re not buying something way overpriced.
  • Let’s assume you have 3k grain that you’ve purchased at 10 each previously. If you find grain that is selling for 8, buy it even if it’s only 1. Purchasing any amount of a good at <price> resets the profit price for all of the goods you currently have.
  • If you sell all of a single good that’s on your list for the purchase table, I suggest removing your noted price on the current session list. You’re not often going to find grain for sale at 8, for example. So if you sell all of your grain, then find it somewhere else at 11, buy it. You will likely find it for 10 later.
  • Trading for Skill includes (best for when you have above about 100k) buying a new good for an over marked price. Jewelry is a good example. I’ve seen jewelry sell from 400 to 600. If you’re (re?)building your purchase table, you could buy something like 10 jewelry well overpriced, find a place that sells 1 for 300. This sets your purchase table for all of your jewelry to 300. Later you can find somewhere that is buying for 900, netting you 600 in profit that goes towards your skill gain.
  • When buying from a village, instead of paying with coin, you can trade goods (reference your purchase table, or the BRIGHT GREEN number from your inventory) that the village wants. Try to stick with the x2 buy to sale ratio when you can, but less is acceptable. The benefit is twofold here. 1: you can get all of the coin that the village has. 2: trading this way counts towards raising your trade skill.
  • This trading method works great, until you start getting around 160-200 (kind of a guess on my part as I didn’t realize myself until I was around 205) level in the trade skill. You’ll start seeing your skill gains become less frequent (because you need have a higher amount of total XP gained from profit to reach the next level). And then…..


BUY ALL THE THINGS™!

BEFORE you proceed into this section, make sure that you have the following. You will need ALL of it.

-400-500k in coins

-Every donkey possible (you can’t have enough, I had around 1.5k and still maxed my inventory)

-One working caravan (read, at LEAST one)



The problem when you reach around 160-200 in trading skill, is that the profit margin needed to reach the next level starts to creep over 10k. At this point, at least for me, this became a burden AND most of the regional economy was stable. AKA, there were a lot of even prices for goods in several regions, and not many places to make a profit. So there is one solution to help improve the amount of skill gained to accommodate the new gap in experienced needed for the higher levels.

BUY

ALL

THE

THINGS

The concept is simple, purchase all the things (see GOODS) from cities, and villages, then buy everything from the city. Remember that buying from a city raises the prices in the village, so buy from the villages first.

Buy all of the goods. Literally. Your goal is to crash the economy of a region by having everything. With around 1.5k donkies I had near 200k storage capacity, and it STILL WASN’T ENOUGH. (Mind, I didn’t start buying all of the donkies until AFTER I lost all of my coin the first time around year 3 or 4 of that character, so you can possibly get way more donkies than I. I stand by my statement, however.)

Once you’re at your max capacity, go to a CITY you haven’t followed the BUY ALL THE THINGS™ method, and sell everything you that’s marked as a profit. Remember, profit towards the trade skill of goods in your inventory the sale number will be a BRIGHT green.

Earlier I mentioned trying to keep a x2 buy to sell profit margin. FORGET IT. As long as your sale is bright green, it counts.

Repeat until you have the trade skill required to purchase a settlement. Which I believe is 225, but I could miss remember.

With your trade skill at 225, buy a settlement (from anyone with the right amount of coin, so take your pick), then finish the banner quest in any way you see fit. I’d suggest stowing a good portion of your goods into the settlements stash before heading out to finish the banner quest. If nothing else it gives you room to buy more things later.

At this point you should have:
  • A lot of monies
  • A lot of donkies
  • A lot of horses
  • A lot of food stuffs (good for sieging later in the game)
  • A spouse and around TEN MILLION children
  • 50-ish calvery (possible at max rank)
  • Your own kingdom and your own settlement
  • NOT at war with any faction
  • The rest of your dynasty and the game to handle.
 
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Why do you say you need children?
Do you use them for Caravans or sth?

Any mod that makes them not useless but isnt overpowered?
 
CyberianK said:
Why do you say you need children?
Do you use them for Caravans or sth?

Any mod that makes them not useless but isnt overpowered?
Click to expand...
Because your character will eventually die, if you have children the age of 18, or a spouse who is still alive I'd guess, you would then play at them for your dynasty. Kids take a long time to get 18 in the first place.

Also I'm not using any mods. Yet.
 
CyberianK said:
Why do you say you need children?
Do you use them for Caravans or sth?

Any mod that makes them not useless but isnt overpowered?
Click to expand...

Probably not required in the current game. But, leveling trade this high takes so long that if you've married someone, you or your spouse will be pumping out enough children to start a Kindergarten in Chaikand (where the game will probably throw all of them.)

I ended up doing something similar to this guide, but I got fed up around trade 175 because of how grindy it became and used a mod to multiply my experience gains from trades.

Also, I don't think massive single trades are necessarily required. From my experience you still get trade experience normally, it's just that the requirement for each level is so massive. The mod I used multiplied experience gains, so even my normal trade patterns still pushed the XP bar.
 
Great and helpful guide, clarified some for me! But wait, ten ingame years?! For peaceful merchant RP it is ok, but for time management it is not. As maxed steward grinding warmonger you can take your castle about 1087 by catching and releasing lords with 3-4 tier clan, plenty denars from loot and elite army about of 300 soldiers with your companions parties, capable to take city and snowball further, by persuading lords, who like you because you always released them after battle.
 
corvinth said:
Also, I don't think massive single trades are necessarily required. From my experience you still get trade experience normally, it's just that the requirement for each level is so massive. The mod I used multiplied experience gains, so even my normal trade patterns still pushed the XP bar.
Click to expand...
BUY ALL THE THINGS™! does become nessassry around 175 skill (I believe, didn't conceive it until around ~205 keep in mind), because the amount needed of profitable skill is at a point where you start needing skill profits in the tens of thousands.

At ~205 skill, I was hitting five to ten villages (where before that one or two would get me the a skill point) before I saw a single gain. And it slowly got worse.

The first time I did BUY ALL THE THINGS™!, I got a good 4 skill gains, then 3, then 2, then eventually 1, and after I got the settlement skill, I was down to multiple citities before I was getting a single skill gain, despite selling at a profit skill around 30K at each city.

Again, yes you could mod the game.
 
Razdv said:
Great and helpful guide, clarified some for me! But wait, ten ingame years?! For peaceful merchant RP it is ok, but for time management it is not.
Click to expand...
I'd like to point out, this was 10 years on these conditions.
-I started the banner quest early, it may be possible that if you don't start the quest until later, the timer may not start. I cannot confirm this.
-There was a LOT of learning involved. Including the time where I lost 300k because I lost my caravan and didn't notice until much later. Theoretically, I could have moved into BUY ALL THE THINGS™! and shaved many years off. Sadly, I haven't gone back to try again to confirm 100%.
 
Two more questions:

How did you loose 300k by loosing a Caravan?

BUY ALL THE THINGS
Do you also mean 200 warbows at 10k each or dozens of armors and weapons at 100k+ each? Or just everything from the tradegood category?
 
It's unfortunate that your companions running around in caravans do not level in the same way companions in charge of independent parties level, nor do they level their trading skill while trading. @mexxico recently seemed to indicate that, while they may not level their trading skill (which must be a bug) they do however benefit from the reduction in trade penalty.

That said, install the Bannerlord AutoTrader mod. Set it to buy at 80% of value (green) and sell when 120% value (red). Just run around to different cities and it'll do most of the work for you without you having to stress.

Or don't. A lot of people get a kick out of finding this stuff out for themselves. I enjoy finding where the margins are (i.e. which cites) and then having the mod do the work for me.
 
CyberianK said:
Two more questions:

How did you loose 300k by loosing a Caravan?

BUY ALL THE THINGS
Do you also mean 200 warbows at 10k each or dozens of armors and weapons at 100k+ each? Or just everything from the tradegood category?
Click to expand...

-not paying enough attention to the right things

-I don't see where I mentioned warbows. Can you quote what you're looking at?
Do you mean "is that the profit margin needed to reach the next level starts to creep over 10k." If so, that would be the profit for skill gain.
 
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Jiet said:
Or don't. A lot of people get a kick out of finding this stuff out for themselves. I enjoy finding where the margins are (i.e. which cites) and then having the mod do the work for me.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if this is true, as my caravan ran around more the fluxuations of daily funds generally went up. If I remember right, by the time I was done he was generating a high of 3.2k a day, and a low of around -100.
But that could be due to the improved general economy I was generating, or skill, or something else?
 
staticgrazer said:
BUY ALL THE THINGS™! does become nessassry around 175 skill (I believe, didn't conceive it until around ~205 keep in mind), because the amount needed of profitable skill is at a point where you start needing skill profits in the tens of thousands.

At ~205 skill, I was hitting five to ten villages (where before that one or two would get me the a skill point) before I saw a single gain. And it slowly got worse.
Click to expand...

I still don't think there's a threshold. The xp require vs gain is just minuscule if you're trading normally.

Since I already had all of my mods disabled due to debugging a crash (of which I recently verified is actually purely the game and not my mods.) I loaded up my current save and bought ~100 flax at 15. And sold it at ~20 the next town over.

Went from 22749 -> 23723 xp at Trade 230.
Took before/after screenshots.
 
corvinth said:
Since I already had all of my mods disabled due to debugging a crash. I loaded up my current save and bought ~100 flax at 15. And sold it at ~20 the next town over.

Went from 22749 -> 23723 xp at Trade 230.
Click to expand...

Edit#1
That's actually really interesting.
Your skill increased by 974.
At the prices you quoted (and assuming my math on the skill is correct), you had a profit skill gain of 500.
So: 20 - 15 X 100 = 500.

Edit#3
Also, when selling to a city, the price usually drops as you buy/sell more goods. How bad was the decrease when you sold that 100? Did it stay bright green?

Edit#2
But I wouldn't call it a threshold. Instead I would wager the amount of XP needed for the next level is what increases. So maybe at level 10, the same sale might net a skill point or two.
Needs science to be sure though.
 
staticgrazer said:
That's actually really interesting.
Your skill increased by 974.
At the prices you quoted (and assuming my math on the skill is correct), you had a profit skill gain of 500.
So: 20 - 15 X 100 = 500.

But I wouldn't call it a threshold. Instead I would wager the amount of XP needed for the next level is what increases. So maybe at level 10, the same sale might net a skill point or two.
Needs science to be sure though.
Click to expand...

2012 - 1657 = 355, income vs paid
355 / 5.49 = ~64.66 xp gained divided by skill multiplier
unsure how accurate that may be, as the flax fluctuated slightly (like 1 or 2 gold.)

And yes, the XP needed for the next level increases significantly, just look at the XP requirement of a high skill you have vs a lower one. At sub 30 you're talking maybe a couple hundred per level. What I was saying is that I do not think there is a threshold, which is what I thought you were implying. I am asserting that the trade xp for small trades is so low in comparison to what is needed for the next level when you trading is very high, that it feels like trades have no effect.
 
corvinth said:
And yes, the XP needed for the next level increases significantly, just look at the XP requirement of a high skill you have vs a lower one. At sub 30 you're talking maybe a couple hundred per level. What I was saying is that I do not think there is a threshold, which is what I thought you were implying. I am asserting that the trade xp for small trades is so low in comparison to what is needed for the next level when you trading is very high, that it feels like trades have no effect.
Click to expand...

I agree, that's why I started doing BUY ALL THE THINGS™!, to increase the XP gained so get a single skill point faster. When selling for skill after buying everything, I was pulling in around 30k a city, which did the whole 4 down to 1 skill pop thing.

I'd love to hear how I can improve the wording, so it less implies a threshold. I'll update the guide with it.
 
Kinda strange guide.
I made my trading to 225 just selling Aserai horses.
You can buy them for like 1800 and sell them for 7000.

And you forget one main thing DONT EVER RELOAD MID WAY
 
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