Item Profitability (early - mid game)

[billthebad]

I've done some number crunching and have determined the most profitable items to farm or craft for selling to merchants. At this point I am only including items that can be made in hand or in the Sewing 1, Smith 1 and Tavern 2. Nor am I including anything made from domestic animals (wool) as I personally have not progressed that far yet. For farming, I assume that workers are doing the work and so am not considering fertilizer, tool or seed purchase costs.

My method was to take the price that the player can sell an item for and subtract the cost of materials to determine the profit. I then divided the profit by the cost to find the profitability as a percentage. This allowed me to compare items made with similar materials to determine which crafted items return the most coin.

The selling price of any item seems to be 35% of the base value rounded up to the nearest whole number. For example a bow worth 100g would sell for 35g (100 * 0.35) but a feather worth 5g would sell for 2g (5 * 0.35 = 1.75 rounded up to 2).

For my calculations I determined the "cost" of an item to be the total of the selling price of all of the ingredients. For example Shoes cost 20 leather which could be sold for 40g instead therefore the "cost" of making Shoes is 40g.

The profit is then the sell price minus the cost. For example Shoes sell for 35g (100 * 0.35) and "cost" 40g to make, therefore they have a -5g profit (you're better off just selling the leather).

Then the profit percentage is the cost divided by the profit to get a percentage. Example: Shoes cost 40 and profit -5 and have a profit percentage of -12.5%.

So given those definitions here are my conclusions for the most profitable items:

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Rocks:
Rocks individually sell for 1g each.
Throwing Rocks sell for 2g each and 1 rock makes 5 for 10g total at a profit of 900%.

Rocks + Sticks:
Sticks sell for 1g each.
Stone Hoe costs 14g and sells for 32g for a profit of 18g or 129%.
The stone axe requires two less rocks but only has a 17% profit and the stone knife profits at 57%.

Logs:
Logs sell for 1g each.
The Wooden Shovel costs 2g but sells for 18g for 16g profit or 800%.
The next are Fire Wood at 700% and wood spears and cudgels at 600%.

Feathers:
Feathers sell for 2g each.
The only thing that currently uses feathers are stone arrows. Stone arrows are made in batches of 50 and sell individually for 2g each or 100g per batch. The batch costs 115g for a profit of -15g (-13%). Unless you need stone arrows for use in hunting you are best off just selling your feathers until you can unlock iron bolts at which point make those instead.

Iron:
Iron sells for 4g each.
The Iron Hammer costs 9g and sells for 70g for a profit of 61g (678%).
Iron arrows are a close second at 600%. Both work out to be 30g per iron so take your choice between number of iron per item vs weight of each item.
The Scythe (483%) and Iron Ax (418%) are next.

Linen:
Flax stalks sell for 2g and Flax Seeds for 4g.
Linen Thread sells for 18g and costs 20g for -2g (-10%) profit.
Linen Fabric sells for 28g costs 20g for 8g (40%) profit.
But for 1 thread and 1 log you can make a bow that sells for 35g and costs 22g for 13g (62%) profit. Long bows are also profitable but only 52%.
So if you are making linen don't sell the threads, sell fabric, or better yet make bows.
From what I can tell no linen clothing is profitable. For example the Linen Shirt sells for 44g but costs 448g (16 fabric at 28g each). If you sell a shirt instead of just the 16 fabric you just lost 404g. That trend looks true for all linen based clothing. That might be different for top tier (noble) or wool items but I haven't got that far yet to know their base values.

Leather:
Leather sells for 2g each.
The Simple Bag sells for 11g and costs 6g for 5g (83%) profit. Against all other leather items the simple bag has the highest profit per leather.
Fur boots (22%) and Boots (17%) are profitable but not as much as the bag. Shoes sell at a loss.
The larger Bag and Waterskin both sell at large losses due to the linen requirements.

Food:
Meat and Cabbage sell for 2g each.
Wheat Grain sells for 4g.
Rye Grain sells for 2g.
Flour sells for 4g but costs 20g (5 wheat grain) or 16g (8 rye grain) for a loss of -16g and -12g respectively.
Potage sells for 14g and costs 4g for 10g (250%) profit.
Soup and stew are also profitable but not has much because of the increased carrot and beet requirements. All breads take a huge loss. For example flatbread sells for 4g but costs 12g for -8g (-66%) profit. The other breads become even less profitable once you count in eggs.

* Of course all of this is subject to change in future updates.

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Conclusions:
Throwing Rocks and Stone Knife are the best starting money makers. Next are stone hoes and wooden shovels. Do not just sell the rocks and sticks, you're losing money and missing out on skill progression.
Having a hunter active and planting cabbage for potage is the best option for food. Cabbage can be harvested twice per year by hand and potage can be made in the simple small house and is a filling food source. One 10 plot cabbage field plus enough meat to match (hunted by the player or from a worker in a hunting lodge) will solve your food needs and make 1000g+ per year. Berries sell for 1g each and it only takes a few minutes to collect 100's of them but in my opinion they are better for feeding your workers than selling. A few minutes at the end of summer (4-5 berry patches) can feed six workers for the fall and most of winter.
Flax is far more profitable than any of the grains. For every 10 flax harvested plus 1 log you can make a bow and 10 flax seeds for a total of 75g whereas 10 wheat will only get you 50g (40g grain + 10g straw). I make 1000's every year just from selling flax seeds. However, I have not counted how much of each is harvested per field square so it might be different if you are calculating profit per field. Do not refine grain into flour in order to bake bread unless you plan to eat it (even then potage is more efficient). You make much more if you just sell the grain.
Sell all of your feathers unless you need stone arrows or can make iron bolts. Fur is currently not used (probably unintentional) so should just be sold. *Fur clothing recipes have been fixed to require fur.
Bows are the best use of Linen thread and Simple Bags are the best use of leather. Only make clothing for yourself to wear, there is no profit in clothing better than just selling the raw materials.

It was surprising to me to find that the more complex or material expensive items rapidly became significantly unprofitable. I strongly recommend to the devs that they adjust the selling percentage based on item tier or types so that items that require a lot of materials or time to produce are still profitable over simply selling the raw materials. For example keep the base materials at 35% of the base value but increase that to ~45% for leather/fur/feather items, ~50+ for pot cooked food / sewing 1 / smith 1 items and ~65+ clothing / baked / iron goods, etc.

[billthebad]

Thanks, SumEdd. I started out with this analysis just to see if it was more or less profitable to sell crafted items or just the raw ingredients, which items returned the most coin and if the game's economy really made any sense. As such I decided not to worry too much about the logistics of transporting the good to market and focused on just the raw numbers in order to set a baseline.
I kept having a bad feeling about selling clothing but what really hurt my head was when I unlocked the Tavern 2 and tried baking bread. The numbers seemed so lopsided that I just had to sit down and do the math.

[Neyreyan_Youtube]

Sadly the best way to make money in the game is to sell berries, you get 200-300 out of a nice big bush. Next...it's sticks because you can also sell the stuff near the village, same with straw.

The really funny part is that with 2 woodcutters you can empty your inventory and gather berries near the first village and then make 1-2 more trips with the sticks your woodcutters get and maybe a few more with other basic items.

The devs need to fix the economy very fast because you hit a massive blockade once you expanded your village to 16 buildings....too many things not working

[Urth Torin]

I posted this to a different Discussion the other day. This is how I make a bit of Coin atleast 1 Season out of the Year. I try for no less than 2, but time contsraints prevent me fom getting anymore than 1 Season. (Usually the last day of Winter to Pay taxes in the Spring)

Another good way to make decent money starting out is to harvest trees & sticks at night near villages, craft a few stacks of wooden hoes and sell em in the morning. Each sell for about 17 gold each (or 12 gold each, don't remember atm), while harvesting the sticks and trees increases the survival and extraction skills, among the crafting skill from the tools. Then when you get the smithy utilize the last day of the season to mine Iron til around 23:00 at night, then make sure all your gear & items are in your inventory along with the Iron and wait to get Teleported back to your House at midnight. Then craft Iron Hammers at 1 stick + 2 Iron each (I craft about 40) then use the "Unstuck" feature to tele close to the starting village, drop half of the hammers on the ground, run into town sell the hammers you have on you, then "Unstuck" again, pick up the hammers and sell them. Be sure to have your inventory empty when crafting and selling the hammers. (all except your clothes of course) After all the hammers are sold you should have made a fairly easy 3k. I try to do this at the end of every season. most seasons I only get about half the day to mine Iron, but still am able to get about 120+ pieces of iron in half a day. Hope this helps...

[DeadMechGaming]

You kind of have to factor in crafting time, and how much time you'll spend looking for the materials. Time will always eat at your profit.

[Espindola]

To bake bread, with that buckets issue... I pass.

All values in this game are very unbalanced, let's face it.
The buy and sell price is astronomically distant from each other, even putting all the points in the seller's talent.
The work you have to create certain things, so that in the end they are not worth half the value of just the resources needed in creation, leaving the value of your REAL work non-existent....

In addition to having to fix these details, they should also create a way for the player to be able to sell their stuff in their own store. Because selling everything for 1/3 of what the game sellers charge for the same things, it's too sad.

[billthebad]

DeadMechGaming の投稿を引用：

You kind of have to factor in crafting time, and how much time you'll spend looking for the materials. Time will always eat at your profit.

I didn't consider resource gathering and crafting time in this analysis since gathering effort changes as you automate with workers and my original goal was to simply determine which items were even worth crafting over simply selling their ingredients.

[billthebad]

Espindola の投稿を引用：

To bake bread, with that buckets issue... I pass.

Each bucket holds 10 water for baking, but still, I agree.
Even ignoring the hassle of the water requirement, baking is a huge losing proposition just on material cost (both in coin and time to grow and process grain).

[DeadMechGaming]

billthebad の投稿を引用：

DeadMechGaming の投稿を引用：

You kind of have to factor in crafting time, and how much time you'll spend looking for the materials. Time will always eat at your profit.

I didn't consider resource gathering and crafting time in this analysis since gathering effort changes as you automate with workers and my original goal was to simply determine which items were even worth crafting over simply selling their ingredients.

I get that, but I'm just saying that if someone wanted to get the true profit of each item based on time invested then this list would be different. And it's a lot easier to calculate then people think.

Just need to decide on a common overall time for all items (lets just say how many of each item could you create in 1 minute if you had all of the materials and only did the work yourself). After that you calculate the profit of each item from the stock made in that one minute.

[WesternDevil]

Urth Torin の投稿を引用：

I posted this to a different Discussion the other day. This is how I make a bit of Coin atleast 1 Season out of the Year. I try for no less than 2, but time contsraints prevent me fom getting anymore than 1 Season. (Usually the last day of Winter to Pay taxes in the Spring)

Another good way to make decent money starting out is to harvest trees & sticks at night near villages, craft a few stacks of wooden hoes and sell em in the morning. Each sell for about 17 gold each (or 12 gold each, don't remember atm), while harvesting the sticks and trees increases the survival and extraction skills, among the crafting skill from the tools. Then when you get the smithy utilize the last day of the season to mine Iron til around 23:00 at night, then make sure all your gear & items are in your inventory along with the Iron and wait to get Teleported back to your House at midnight. Then craft Iron Hammers at 1 stick + 2 Iron each (I craft about 40) then use the "Unstuck" feature to tele close to the starting village, drop half of the hammers on the ground, run into town sell the hammers you have on you, then "Unstuck" again, pick up the hammers and sell them. Be sure to have your inventory empty when crafting and selling the hammers. (all except your clothes of course) After all the hammers are sold you should have made a fairly easy 3k. I try to do this at the end of every season. most seasons I only get about half the day to mine Iron, but still am able to get about 120+ pieces of iron in half a day. Hope this helps...

Instead of making hammers. Make iron arrows. You can carry SOOOO many of them and it is 10 iron and 10 stick for 50 arrows. No feathers needed. Much faster. Much lighter. Same price/cost as iron hammers. Best way to make money hands down.

[arcanumveritas]

I built a smithy next to the mine for that very reason.

Iron Arrows, 30 iron, 3 stacks, clears out a merchant's 1000g
And I second/third the iron bolts. 10 Feathers/1 iron/5 sticks ... and feathers are in mass supply from bird trap (x4). 5 times the clicks as Iron bolts, but half the iron. Again easier transportable.

As far as crops
Spring Harvest Rye, Plant Flax / Onions, though could/should be Flax and Cabbages, or just Flax
Summer Harvest Flax/Onion/Cabbages, Plant Cabbages
Autumn Harvest Cabbages, Plant Rye
Winter - Rye grows, no work

[Symbiote]

Really great advice here, thanks for this. Had a feeling that flax was profitable. Would like to see this posted as a guide so it can be favorited.

[SumEdd]

Another tip I picked up in the discord:

Build a resource storage right near the starting town, and near that bridge to the other town.

That way you can dump everything you want to sell in it, and then just go to the four vendors in the starting town and the two in the town across the river, with every little effort (and no need to "cheat" with unstuck, haha, that won't be around forever!).

The other good thing about this, is it takes care of the resource storage upgrade problem (and could similarly take care of the food storage upgrade problem), which is how to upgrade your storage without issue. I've read various things on how to do it, but the obvious thing to do for no problem is just build two.

But I also really like the idea of just making iron arrows or iron bolts too. Then I won't bother with mass potage crafting, only what I need to feed myself and my town.

[Urth Torin]

@ WesternDevil

Instead of making hammers. Make iron arrows. You can carry SOOOO many of them and it is 10 iron and 10 stick for 50 arrows. No feathers needed. Much faster. Much lighter. Same price/cost as iron hammers. Best way to make money hands down.

I'll have to give this a try. Thanks for the Tip...

[jshepler]

Early game, I like st. johns and ... the flower that heals 10 hp (forget the name). They weigh .01 kg and sell for 2 coins each. They show up with survival sense, they're everywhere, don't need to hold E, and you get survival skill points for picking them. First night of new game and I was 6/10 points in survival and got around 1200 coins in the morning. Having spear equipped makes picking things up even faster.

[Talon]

Iron bolts need feathers- seems iron arrows do not last I checked. Wood bolts need feathers as well.