Trading Guide

A few people in the Steel Dragoons have expressed their interest in leveling their trading skill. I wanted to do a brief guide based on my experience in leveling trading. As I am currently Skilled 6, I think I have a few points that should help out others.

First off I have to point out that this guide is not going to be about the best way to make profit off trading, but the best way to level it. It's important to know that, especially in the beginning, you're not going to make much money at all off of this so keep that in mind so you aren't disappointed with your initial silver profits.

WAGONS
OK, on to the actual trading. The first step in your trading journey, in my opinion, is to pick up a wagon. There are 3 types that can be purchased from the stable master, Flimsy (6 Slots), Shabby (8 Slots), and Farm (14). These can also be purchased from the market but it's cheaper if you buy from the stable master so don't fall for that.

The other wagons are Strong (10), White (12), Trade (16), Merchant (18), and Noble (20). The major difference between wagons such as White and Farm is that the White has higher speed and maneuverability due to only having one horse, but it probably has lower carry weight (can't verify since I don't have one and it doesn't show in the tooltip)

Each wagon type has equipment that can be added to it to increase it's stats. Those parts are Wagon Wheel (Movement Speed), Cover (Stability), Badge (Carry Weight), Flag and Lamp. All parts except for the wheels increase the Wagon's DP and can be enhanced by enchanting it with Black Stone Armor.

As far as trading is concerned, your most important part is the Badge as it increases your carry weight by quite a bit, allowing you to trade even more. The trade cover is also good for increasing your stability. When you're moving your trade wagon around there's a chance that your goods will be damaged in transport, you'll see this as a system popup, this will result in you losing a certain number of the goods you purchased, stability reduces the chance of this happening. Currently the market isn't in a place where you're guaranteed to be able to pick up all of these mods so you may end up crafting some of them yourself.

When it comes to moving your wagon around, it's best to manually drive your wagon as your own path will be far better than that of the autopathing. However when you're initially starting to move with your wagon, it's best to use the auto path as the auto path is able to make 180 degree turns where you can't. With the larger wagons, cumbersome driving can waste a fair amount of time particularly when trying to drive past a gate. 

TRADE ROUTE
Now that you have your wagon you can start your trading. The main thing you have to keep in mind with trading is that the NPC trade merchants run out of supply on their items and it takes about 20 min for them to replenish their supply. The best way to ensure you aren't waiting on resupply is to  set up a trade route by investing contribution points in nodes with trade posts. Your objective is going to be setting up a trade route in such a way that by the time you've reached the end point, the supply of trade goods at the start of the route has been replenished.

What you're looking for when deciding on what nodes to pick is that blue wagon wheel. This indicates a trade manager exists at that node. The more nodes you can collect, the bigger the variety of trade goods you will have access to, which helps at higher skill levels.

So far it's been my experience that trade XP is based off of the amount of profit you make/item, which is affected by distance, and the skill level of the item you're trading. Meaning that if you have to choose between buying an apprentice 2 item, or a skilled 1, you should prioritize the skilled 1 item as it will give you more XP and usually much higher profit.

The biggest point of confusion for most people seems to be the idea that since you get more XP for more distance, you should trade as far as possible to level up quickly. But this is incorrect. The best way to level is to do lots of quick trades between nodes that are close to one another (which is another reason to have lots of different nodes, it allows you to do lots of small trades while the merchants replenish their goods). Think about it this way, if you're trading 10 items a long distance in order to get an extra 10% XP per item, you could have spent that time trading 50 items between nodes that are close together and made 5 times more XP.

Another point of confusion is that there seems to be an impression that the distance bonus is based on the number of connected nodes beteween the buy and sell locations. So people will connect nodes in the most indirect route possible in order to maximise the distance bonus. This is false. Distance bonus is calculated in a table based actual distance on the map. See image below.

Here is an example trade route around the city of Calpheon. This route hits 17 separate trade nodes in it's path around and avoids the Anti-Troll fortification which is a dangerous node as there are mobs surrounding the area making it a good one to avoid. As you trade you'll become familiar with the various nodes and their quirks, particularly which ways to turn your mount in order that you don't get stuck or drive it into the water. Which will immediately kill it.

Something to note about connecting nodes is that, unlike the picture above, you don't need to have the nodes connected in a circle for a trade route to be effective.

In this picture it looks as if Calpheon and Keplan are not connected, which is because they aren't. However my trade route from Calph to Olvia, to Velia to Hidel to Keplan means that even though the nodes directly between the two cities aren't connected, as long as the 2 cities are on the connected network, I'm still able to trade between them. Remembering this can save you from putting contrib points into nodes that are actually pointless. Just picture your trade route as more of a big "C" than a circle.

BUYING TRADE GOODS
So now that you have your trade route established, you can begin trading. Head to your first node and pick up whatever is available. Drive your wagon close to the trade manager so that items you purchase are deposited directly into the storage on the wagon rather than to your inventory. If the distance is too great you don't necessarily have to move your wagon as the distance is measured not between the trade manager and the wagon, but between you and the wagon. So in some cases you might just have to leave the conversation, move closer to the wagon, and talk to him/her again.

This is where you're going want to be looking when you're trading. The parts you're going to want to pay the closest attention to are the Mount Inventory, the Required Weight, and the Available Mount Weight. Each item has it's own weight and you can't purchase more than what your mount can carry. You can technically carry more than your Available Mount Weight by filling your mount, then buying goods and putting them in your inventory, then moving them manually to the wagon if it has enough open slots, but this will weigh down your wagon and you'll move slower so it's not really worth it.

SELLING TRADE GOODS
Once you've filled up your wagon, you are ready to move to the next

node and sell them. This image is an example of a trade I did between Keplan and the Marni Cave Path. A really short distance trade (as you can tell by the 3% distance bonus) but the important thing here is the silver icon with the + sign on it. This indicates your profit. Again since this guide is focusing on leveling, all you want to do here is check that you're making a profit on the goods you're trading. If this number is in the negative you're not going to make any profit therefore you're not going to make any XP.

Reasons for not making a profit are:
     - That the nodes may be a bit too close together. In which case just move another node down the line and sell it, but this has been very rare in my experience.
     - You might not have invested in the node or maybe you made changes to your nodes so that the node you're at isn't connected to the node you purchased from, in which case you're going to have to reconnect the nodes or take the item to a node that is connected.   
     - Or you purchased the item and held onto it for a long amount of time i.e. logging off for a long period of time, and when you returned the price bottomed out on the item you're selling .This is why it's always important to finish your trading day with an empty wagon. Any items left in the wagon could see you losing out on profit when you log back in.

Ignore the bargain button. I've tooled around with it a few times but I've found that the game is a waste of time and energy as the game its self makes no sense, and the benefit of actually succeeding is not noticeable at all.

TRADE QUESTS
Another aspect of trading is the trade quest. As long as you are tracking trade quests in your quest window, you'll get these from most of the traders.

The quest involves buying a specific item from the vendor that gives you the quest, selling that item anywhere in the world, and then speaking to someone else. For example a quest in Olvia could have you buy Olvia Jam, sell it anywhere, then talk to the trade vendor in Hidel.

As far as I've seen the benefit of doing these is fairly minimal. Each one gives you 10 contribution xp which is a very small amount, but they also tend to give you either tradeable goods like ancient coins or  "Trade Item Exchange Coupons" which can be exchanged with any trader for free trade goods. This is a good way to make a little extra money out of your trading. Just remember to cash these in after you sell everything but before you pick up new items for trading so you can tell how much space you'll have avaiable for purchasing.

All in all I'd say trade quests are worth doing since you're going to be trading anyways. They're a good way to suplement your income and can help you get contribution points, albeit slowly.

CONCLUSION

Once you have these steps down, all you need to do is continue trading from place to place and watch your level go up. I hope this guide will be of help to those of you who are excited to enter the dynamic world of reading the newspap.... I mean trading.


Edit (12 Mar 2017) I just came back to Black Desert Online again and I wanted to see how my old blog was doing and man did this ever surprise me. I have thousands of page views on this thing and I have no idea where all of the traffic is coming from. I hope I was able to help some people with this guide. If you feel like it, leave me a comment as to where you found this thing. Thanks XD