A21 Dukes/Trader Economy is bad

[Nihiladrem]

Starting on about day 9, I started buying out the traders magazine stock because I didn't really have anything else to spend money on. Before long I'm hitting multiple traders each stock reset and I'm still rolling in Dukes, if I see anything I could possibly use I buy it. Military fiber, traps (not using them yet), whatever.

But most of the time their stock is really, really bad.

I'm jamming through missions on Warrior difficulty, and the rewards are good enough that except for a few rare cases they are far outpacing anything I can buy or craft. Now on day 33, I have most of the crafting perks maxed or near to it (for the ones I care about). I've got a motorcycle and gyro, multiple storage boxes FULL of ammo, and 140k Dukes I have nothing to spend on.

I feel like the traders need a few higher tier items each reset (above your lootstage) to give people stuff to spend their Dukes on. Hell they could even price them 3-4x their normal value and I would have bought them simply because I always, always had way more Dukes then I could spend.

[leadmecca]

It's super easy to outpace crafting with the tons of stuff that you loot. Makes magazines 99% useless when what you want are special recipes and skill books.

[Grumpy Old Guy]

Yeah on Day 6 I bought a Tier 5 Steel Spear.

Day 6.

The best I could make was a tier 4 STONE spear.

[Alucard †]

Yea i noticed i kept finding Tier 5 , Tier 6 tools , weapons and armors from loot and trader quest rewards LONG before i could even craft T5 of those.

I started playing with "Delete all items on death" because of this to make crafting somewhat still important in case i mess up.

[LostME]

Maybe it's made for people who don't invest in crafting skills. You need to buy steel and ammo etc. I do not know if it is possible to buy a car or a drone. But I would like to do it.

[Alucard †]

Originally posted by LostME:

Maybe it's made for people who don't invest in crafting skills. You need to buy steel and ammo etc. I do not know if it is possible to buy a car or a drone. But I would like to do it.

I seen assembled 4x4 and Drones in trader inventories.
Gyrocopter too but in very late game stage tho. I think i was at 280~ ish when i started seeing those.

They are pretty rare tho not as rare as Solar Cells for example (these things piss me off traders almost always have solar banks but ONE Solar cell appears once in a blue moon when stars align and when i find 77 four leaf clovers)

[Razorfish]

ur doing it wrong..... if it takes being at over 280 to see drones and copters...

[ShuFlngPu]

Originally posted by Nihiladrem:

Starting on about day 9, I started buying out the traders magazine stock because I didn't really have anything else to spend money on. Before long I'm hitting multiple traders each stock reset and I'm still rolling in Dukes, if I see anything I could possibly use I buy it. Military fiber, traps (not using them yet), whatever.

But most of the time their stock is really, really bad.

I'm jamming through missions on Warrior difficulty, and the rewards are good enough that except for a few rare cases they are far outpacing anything I can buy or craft. Now on day 33, I have most of the crafting perks maxed or near to it (for the ones I care about). I've got a motorcycle and gyro, multiple storage boxes FULL of ammo, and 140k Dukes I have nothing to spend on.

I feel like the traders need a few higher tier items each reset (above your lootstage) to give people stuff to spend their Dukes on. Hell they could even price them 3-4x their normal value and I would have bought them simply because I always, always had way more Dukes then I could spend.

Actually, trader books restock every 3 days or so. :D

[Alucard †]

Originally posted by Razorfish:

ur doing it wrong..... if it takes being at over 280 to see drones and copters...

I have no control over what exactly appears in Trader's stock each reset. (not without editing the xml's i mean)

Even with traders maxed to T6 i very rarely seen fully assembled vehicles or drones being sold. And usually much much later in the game stage.

Typical RNG being RNG i suppose..

[KAObserver]

How is everyone making Dukes? I never have enough to buy the yellow baseball bat that he sells for 5k.

[Pain Weasel]

Trader inventory is based on traderstage, and the day count has nothing to do with that, not directly. It is NOT the same as gamestage. Player level, yes, the day, no.

Traderstage is based on your level, a quest tier modifier, and any Daring Adventurer levels.

Traderstage = player Level * ( 1 + quest_tier_mod) + (Daring Adventurer * 10)

The quest tier mod is based on the current quest tier from 0 up to 0.3 at t6.

At low levels, and low quest tier DA has a huge impact and is worth up to 40 player levels. At high levels and quest tiers the impact isn't as huge, but it pretty much breaks the game if you dump points into it at low levels.

As far as the traders' inventory, there are certain tiers for each type of item, based on traderstage, that are available in the trader's inventory.

For example: t0 tools & weapons (stone) only show up until traderstage 20, Iron tools and T1 weapons (AK-47, Baseball Bat etc) show up between 15 and 70 traderstage and steel tools & t2 weapons (Tactical Assault Rifle, Steel Clubs etc) start showing up at a traderstage of 50 and have no max.

With regards to fully assembled vehicles:
Full Bikes may be available between 25 and 75
Full Minibikes between 50 and 100
Full Motorcycles are 75+
Full Gyros are 150+

They are still very rare, but they will only have a chance of being in a trader's inventory between those traderstages, and once again the day number means nothing for that calculation.

Additionally, when leveling up DA new items will immediately appear in the trader's inventory. You don't have to wait 3 days. It seems like those items are always there, just not visible. At least that how it seemed when I tested it out with respec elixirs.


If you ever want to play a totally screwed up game, dump every point you get into INT & DA. If you get a pair of Nerd Glasses you can max out INT & DA before level 15. At that point your traderstage will be over 55, which is over the minimum for T2 items. With 1 or 2 levels of DA (which you can have on day 1) traders will start selling concrete mix, buy that and upgrade your base. All that extra XP will give you 5 or so levels for free. Take forged steel for T2 quest rewards, upgrade your base again for more free levels. You should easily be able to max out INT & DA in 2 days at which point you can buy things with Tactical ARs, Steel Tools & weapons. Plus, once you get DA 4 you get 2 quest rewards which is just game breakingly OP, particularly since it works on tier completion rewards. Can't decide whether or not to take the armor crate or the chemistry station? Take both. All of that in only 2 days.

[Alucard †]

Originally posted by Pain Weasel:

Trader inventory is based on traderstage, and the day count has nothing to do with that, not directly. It is NOT the same as gamestage. Player level, yes, the day, no.

Traderstage is based on your level, a quest tier modifier, and any Daring Adventurer levels.

Traderstage = player Level * ( 1 + quest_tier_mod) + (Daring Adventurer * 10)

The quest tier mod is based on the current quest tier from 0 up to 0.3 at t6.

At low levels, and low quest tier DA has a huge impact and is worth up to 40 player levels. At high levels and quest tiers the impact isn't as huge, but it pretty much breaks the game if you dump points into it at low levels.

As far as the traders' inventory, there are certain tiers for each type of item, based on traderstage, that are available in the trader's inventory.

For example: t0 tools & weapons (stone) only show up until traderstage 20, Iron tools and T1 weapons (AK-47, Baseball Bat etc) show up between 15 and 70 traderstage and steel tools & t2 weapons (Tactical Assault Rifle, Steel Clubs etc) start showing up at a traderstage of 50 and have no max.

With regards to fully assembled vehicles:
Full Bikes may be available between 25 and 75
Full Minibikes between 50 and 100
Full Motorcycles are 75+
Full Gyros are 150+

They are still very rare, but they will only have a chance of being in a trader's inventory between those traderstages, and once again the day number means nothing for that calculation.

Additionally, when leveling up DA new items will immediately appear in the trader's inventory. You don't have to wait 3 days. It seems like those items are always there, just not visible. At least that how it seemed when I tested it out with respec elixirs.


If you ever want to play a totally screwed up game, dump every point you get into INT & DA. If you get a pair of Nerd Glasses you can max out INT & DA before level 15. At that point your traderstage will be over 55, which is over the minimum for T2 items. With 1 or 2 levels of DA (which you can have on day 1) traders will start selling concrete mix, buy that and upgrade your base. All that extra XP will give you 5 or so levels for free. Take forged steel for T2 quest rewards, upgrade your base again for more free levels. You should easily be able to max out INT & DA in 2 days at which point you can buy things with Tactical ARs, Steel Tools & weapons. Plus, once you get DA 4 you get 2 quest rewards which is just game breakingly OP, particularly since it works on tier completion rewards. Can't decide whether or not to take the armor crate or the chemistry station? Take both. All of that in only 2 days.

Well if high level and INT build are factors then i should be seeing good stuff in Trader inventory (assembled vehicles , solar cells , T6 tools and weapons etc) more often but i aint.

They are extremely rare despite my chars high level , Daring Adventurer maxed and T6 completed traders.

On my last world my RNG was just not good with the trades. Solar cells especially might aswell not exist they are that rare. Managed to buy only single one for entirety of that playthrough (138 days in total)

[Alucard †]

Originally posted by KAObserver:

How is everyone making Dukes? I never have enough to buy the yellow baseball bat that he sells for 5k.

Selling excess ammo from loot , weapons you don't use (put random mods you found in loot to greatly increase sell price) and later farming and selling super corn for tons of dukes.

Oh and doing quests.

[Jonnson]

Originally posted by Pain Weasel:

Trader inventory is based on traderstage, and the day count has nothing to do with that, not directly. It is NOT the same as gamestage. Player level, yes, the day, no.

Traderstage is based on your level, a quest tier modifier, and any Daring Adventurer levels.

Traderstage = player Level * ( 1 + quest_tier_mod) + (Daring Adventurer * 10)

The quest tier mod is based on the current quest tier from 0 up to 0.3 at t6.

At low levels, and low quest tier DA has a huge impact and is worth up to 40 player levels. At high levels and quest tiers the impact isn't as huge, but it pretty much breaks the game if you dump points into it at low levels.

As far as the traders' inventory, there are certain tiers for each type of item, based on traderstage, that are available in the trader's inventory.

For example: t0 tools & weapons (stone) only show up until traderstage 20, Iron tools and T1 weapons (AK-47, Baseball Bat etc) show up between 15 and 70 traderstage and steel tools & t2 weapons (Tactical Assault Rifle, Steel Clubs etc) start showing up at a traderstage of 50 and have no max.

With regards to fully assembled vehicles:
Full Bikes may be available between 25 and 75
Full Minibikes between 50 and 100
Full Motorcycles are 75+
Full Gyros are 150+

They are still very rare, but they will only have a chance of being in a trader's inventory between those traderstages, and once again the day number means nothing for that calculation.

Additionally, when leveling up DA new items will immediately appear in the trader's inventory. You don't have to wait 3 days. It seems like those items are always there, just not visible. At least that how it seemed when I tested it out with respec elixirs.


If you ever want to play a totally screwed up game, dump every point you get into INT & DA. If you get a pair of Nerd Glasses you can max out INT & DA before level 15. At that point your traderstage will be over 55, which is over the minimum for T2 items. With 1 or 2 levels of DA (which you can have on day 1) traders will start selling concrete mix, buy that and upgrade your base. All that extra XP will give you 5 or so levels for free. Take forged steel for T2 quest rewards, upgrade your base again for more free levels. You should easily be able to max out INT & DA in 2 days at which point you can buy things with Tactical ARs, Steel Tools & weapons. Plus, once you get DA 4 you get 2 quest rewards which is just game breakingly OP, particularly since it works on tier completion rewards. Can't decide whether or not to take the armor crate or the chemistry station? Take both. All of that in only 2 days.

This does not make sense, "You should easily be able to max out INT & DA in 2 days." That is 20 levels. Even playing on 2 hr days, and focusing on building, I cannot get 20 levels in 2 days. Please elaborate.

...and your talking about doing missions at the same time? Just hammering on a stone mound will give more experience than a mission, in the same time period.

I mean, I can see this happening (level 20, not all these other things you say) IF everything RNG'ed perfectly, including the location of trees and stone vs. your spawn entry...all fetch quests within 100 meters, and so on. But you say, "easily?"

Not to mention, the trader would not reset until day 4, meaning your trader stage is meaningless, you'd be dealing with only the initial trader list, revealing what you couldn't see with DA would not change that yet. Also, you cant do more than 5 missions per day. So, you'd get 3 t2 missions by end of day 2, best case.

Something ain't right here.

Heh, I mean are you saying you are getting chem stations as t1 mission rewards? Morning of day 2? And you'd have to of had DA maxed by then to get 2 rewards. So, one day....

I think your mixing day 15 in with day 2. You are talking about over the course of some time...but then you say, "All of that in 2 days..."

What am I missing here?

[thestile]

I usually end up turning dukes into bullet casings. They really don't have much use other than getting a crucible or bench/mixer.
I'm fine with the trader not having too many useful items though because I don't want progress to come easy and take away the reward of finally getting that thing you've been working for.

[Pain Weasel]

Originally posted by Jonnson:

This does not make sense, "You should easily be able to max out INT & DA in 2 days." That is 20 levels. Even playing on 2 hr days, and focusing on building, I cannot get 20 levels in 2 days. Please elaborate.

I think you are forgetting the 4 tutorial completion points.

Also, you need to be level 14 with nerdy glasses because you only need to get to INT 9, 17 without since it you have to get to 10 naturally.. Since you start at level 1 that means you only need to gain 13 levels, or 16 if you are unlucky.

...and your talking about doing missions at the same time? Just hammering on a stone mound will give more experience than a mission, in the same time period.

I didn't focus on building, I focused on quests. Run quests all day, build all night. I didn't waste time mining anything, no stone, no clay, no wood.

How did I upgrade my base? 1500 wood and 500 cobblestone are t1 quest rewards. I just took those when they popped up. I also bought about 500 more cobblestone for a whole 150 dukes. By the way, buying cobblestone is essentially free it is so cheap, but that is another story. Once I hit DA 2 I could buy concrete mix. The vendor sold 650 of it, so I took it. That was enough to upgrade my starter base and grab a few free levels. Particularly with the Nerdy Glasses. If you also happen to get some Learnin' Elixir from a trader or loot pop it then for even more xp, but that is up to RNG.

meaningless, you'd be dealing with only the initial trader list, revealing what you couldn't see with DA would not change that yet.

Not true. Test it out if you don't believe me.

I just did again to make sure I wasn't crazy.

I started a new game, did the tutorial, visited a trader, searched for concrete mix, nothing.

I was at 4 INT, 1 DA. Giveselfxp to level up. Put new point in DA 2. Opened same trader, searched for concrete mix. Yep, there it is, 250 for sale. Same day, no reset.

I then spawned a respec elixir, used it, opened the trader and searched for concrete mix. Nope, gone again. Spent the points again, boom the concrete mix is instantly back.

The same is true with other items as well. Getting to DA 4 instantly added Machete, Steel Spear and a Pump Shotgun to the inventory. Using the Elixir removed those items, spending the points back again and they all returned.

No waiting on a reset.

Give it a try.

Maybe it is a bug, but that is how it works right now.

And you'd have to of had DA maxed by then to get 2 rewards.

Yep, 13 levels in 2 days. That isn't hard early on. Simply upgrading my base to all the way concrete got me 4 or 5 in one night.

With regards to the chemistry station, I wasn't saying I got it in the first 2 days, it was just an example of a tier reward. My bad if I wasn't clear