Traveling Merchants

[Lady Neravin]

Is there any point in buying what the have to sell? I don't see any use for the wares they offer.

[TehJumpingJawa]

Profit. The travelling merchant sells stuff cheaper than the port merchants will buy it for.

I think the real question is why you'd sell anything to the travelling merchant.

[Lady Neravin]

Originally posted by TehJumpingJawa:

Profit. The travelling merchant sells stuff cheaper than the port merchants will buy it for.

I think the real question is why you'd sell anything to the travelling merchant.

So whenever I see them I should just buy all of their stock, if I have the spare wood?
Got it.

[clearbeard]

Make a note of the "base" costs of stuff at the fixed merchant. Most, but not all, of the travelling merchant's wares are cheaper. Sometimes one or more are more expensive, making it worth selling any of those items you happen to have on hand to the traveller. Notably, I saw one merchant who would buy my black pearls for 120 each, where they typically sell for 100.

[Dyziom]

Classic pirate strategy. I am your friend, swim closer, shoot, boarding, profit.
Merchants have a really good ships ;)

[VinTJ]

Originally posted by TehJumpingJawa:

Profit. The travelling merchant sells stuff cheaper than the port merchants will buy it for.

I think the real question is why you'd sell anything to the travelling merchant.

I have an answer for you friend: I've been cheesing "duplicating" my planks by using the sell feature.

Basically, if you sell everything you own to a merchant ship, and then kill the merchant boat, you get all the items you sold back.

The more planks you have, the more things you can buy from Shipshape Shops, hence the more planks you get from selling everything you own next time you see another merchant boat. Wash, Rinse, Repeat, and you basically double your "worth" every time, getting half of it in planks and half of it in items you own. You also should constantly revisit shops to buy new items of the day in conjunction if you really wanna be greedy and keep your plank count at a modest 10-30K just for repairs, but I don't do it because it would slow down my playthrough lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F53A9ZSdfmU

This is an old video from the demo days btw for frame of reference. 50K planks from one merchant ship. It definitely can go higher. Matter of fact, I am now doing a brand new playthrough and I'm clipping a video rn to post on Youtube as a better example. I went from 336K planks to 625K planks. That's 290K planks from one merchant ship. Granted, it requires around 10 minutes of clicking, but I think it's worth it.

And also, you know what? I just realized these days that you don't have to board+sink anymore (maybe you didn't back then too), since once you get up to 500 or 1K items it kinda damn lags anyways and it's annoying to collect. Sometimes things bounce really far when you have that many items and sink it, you could potentially miss some items from them landing on islands. It's happened to me before.

What you could do instead, is you choose to board, and then choose "send to dock / fleet". It also makes you own everything that is in the "merchant's Inventory" too, in an instant. At least I tested it with "Add to fleet" and it worked.

[VinTJ]

Originally posted by Dyziom:

Classic pirate strategy. I am your friend, swim closer, shoot, boarding, profit.
Merchants have a really good ships ;)

also this is just facts, too. Merchants have Pequod / Junk / Brigantine, most times. And they're basically the heavy weight ships that you should have one of.

Even though I stick with commanding Osprey most times due to speed and triple front cannons for insane Flawless Gatling offense, in Skull Clan Fleet Challenges sometimes you can't afford fighting with that low of a health. You just gotta release the Pequod from the dock.

[VinTJ]

https://youtu.be/GJ3nTv5G7pU?&t=48s

finally posted the new aforementioned clip. I was selling things from 00:48 until 7:00, then I moved inventory and boats around (to kill the other nearby ship) until 10:25, then I started actually engaging the "stuck" merchant ship :)


at 14:19 I start doing inventory checking. If you want, you can see the "before-after" and see if I was missing anything from doing this. I doubt it

[justin_cross_00]

I board/commandeer the Larger Merchant ships using a ship with 9 crew, no cannon shots ever, just the harpoon.

Brass Knuckles and Boarding crew buffs help a lot.

[VinTJ]

Originally posted by justin_cross_00:

I board/commandeer the Larger Merchant ships using a ship with 9 crew, no cannon shots ever, just the harpoon.

Brass Knuckles and Boarding crew buffs help a lot.

that's a good way of doing it for sure, I just like collecting crew members for no particular reason, so I always lower their health first lol

[avenger]

I believe we can sell items to the travelling merchants "for immersion only" (much like capturing the Tekker ships as their descriptions claim).

Also, at some point in the game you get so much inflow of resources that one may use the traveling merchant for an easier (than jettisoning) inventory cleanup.

After the first full (8-wave) Skull clan challenge completed, I never had issues with resources again, always hoarding more than spending in repairs/upgrades. For referenfce, I first won the full challenge once I got that Vikings ship (Langskip), rest of the fleet were from Sakana, maybe the Panda, and a captured Skybounty (from the deadrock-in-the-boulder quest). Mostly entry-level ships with puny random weapons.

But back to the point, on my visits (different from somebody's post here), their items were always cheaper than in port. But seems they get random prices and sometimes may be more expensive.