Alternate trade goods worth specializing/trading?

[Reno Story]

Rimworld is a game that often requires players to develop an industry of sorts in order to provide them the funds needed to allow their colony to purchase supplies whenever the situation demands it. As we all know, The narcotic and organ market are some of the more infamous forms of industry (to the point of becoming rimworld memes), and a textile industry is a very easy way to make lots of money converting excess skins and furs into fine clothes. And of course, there is always churning out art due to its natural trade value.

But what if I don't wanna keep doing the same thing over and over? What other industries (vanilla wise) could be possible?

I know I dabbled a little in exporting furniture for awhile, but as it turns out, you'd have to have some really damn good builders for it to ensure you make at least a decent return on your profits due to the 30% deduction traders give you for selling furniture, which could be wasteful if the stuff you putting out is of average or lesser quality (let alone that only outlanders will buy furniture). I might experiment with that again using what I understand, though. But what other ventures could one attempt to spice up their economic experience?

[Astasia]

Raw crops are easy. Traders also buy packaged survival meals and from what I've been told pemmican. I always like turning stuff into chemfuel and selling that.

[Hoki]

you can categorize trading into 4 different groups of items:

produced goods
quality influenced goods
materials
livestock

produced goods usually nets the most income and is the easiest to set up. many things are worth a lot and usually they dont go bad. downside is they take time.

quality influenced goods and high effort and relativly low result. you need a good pawn to produce the goods you want to sell or risk making a loss. as you already mentioned yourself some goods come with a penalty as well.

materials are quick cash but low result and heavy. not really suited for bringing it to settlements. RP-wise adding the mods 'set up camp' + 'encounter map ressources' allow for an immsersive option to mine things outside your colony.

livestock can synergize with the other types of goods depending on the type of animal you try to breed. if they are big they can haul the goods you want to sell and then you can just go and sell them as well. downside is its time consuming. in cases of slave you have a high price variation due to afflictions and skills. if played modded there are a handful of mods that could be used to train prisoners.
livestock best to be done alongside the other types IMO

[Razor 2.3]

I'll point out that all buildings have a sell modifier of 70%. That means you'll ever get 70% of what you should selling chairs and tables. The only exception to this is art, which has a modifier of 110%. Art is the only thing on the rim allowed to have a markup. Art's also the only thing every trader will accept. Tynan spent time on his important event history system, and wants you to see it.

[Azrak]

Originally posted by Razor 2.3:

I'll point out that all buildings have a sell modifier of 70%. That means you'll ever get 70% of what you should selling chairs and tables. The only exception to this is art, which has a modifier of 110%. Art is the only thing on the rim allowed to have a markup. Art's also the only thing every trader will accept. Tynan spent time on his important event history system, and wants you to see it.

He literally wrote about the modifier in the OP...

[ambi]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Raw crops are easy. Traders also buy packaged survival meals and from what I've been told pemmican. I always like turning stuff into chemfuel and selling that.

yah, chemfuel is good. it stacks nicely and doesn't take any skill to make.

i don't have much experience with the long-range scanner, but i assume you can set it to find gold and become a gold-exporting colony.

[Flotch]

You could even skip a step, long-range scan only for silver, and get money for trading only through mining. Expect to make a lot of caravan trips if that's your only income, though you do get about 2500 silver per trip.

[Reno Story]

While you only do get 70% of the value of furniture, you still gotta remember the value of the materials used to make it. It takes some math, but if you do it right and you utilize your best builders, you could make a profit off of them still.

Shame that the gun market is never going to be viable, though... The fact that weapons are worth so little outside of special trade jobs is a real lost opportunity. Not sure about armor, though.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by Reno Story:

...
I know I dabbled a little in exporting furniture for awhile, but as it turns out, you'd have to have some really damn good builders for it to ensure you make at least a decent return on your profits due to the 30% deduction traders give you for selling furniture, which could be wasteful if the stuff you putting out is of average or lesser quality (let alone that only outlanders will buy furniture). I might experiment with that again using what I understand, though. But what other ventures could one attempt to spice up their economic experience?

For all crafted items like that, you get a quality modifier. So, that's a bonus. BUT, what you also get is an increase in the crafter's related "Skill." That's a value added bonus that's going to continue to build up to give you a better chance of higher quality crafted items.

I don't generally sell drugs and never sell organs. When I have sold "drugs" it's always been Joints and Beer, nothing harsher. Everyone will buy Joints and Beer, IIRC. That's important and one of the more attractive reasons to craft those.

I generally dump all my Uninstalled furniture and Buildings in a "Shopping" area for Hospitality and sell that whenever a caravan trader will buy it, too. Some very expensive Building items I'll store somewhere else if they're not immediately Reinstalled.

Crafting Cothing and other items out of easily replaced raw materials is always A Good Thing ™. Cloth and even Devilstrand should be raw materials the player ends up having a good bit of, eventually. I crank out a lot of Cloth Tribalware to sell to Hospitality Guests as "Souvenirs" and it sells just fine to Traders. When I have a lot of a raw supply ready and the time to dedicate at the right moment, I'll sell off a good bit of my inventory of clothing so that my Tailor(s) can skill up replacing it. I do this constantly, every time the chance presents itself. No Tailor gets much rest from Tailoring in my Colonies until late game.

I sell food, too, when I get the chance. I always, always, end up with far too much of it and will sell raw foods as I can, usually exchanging them for meat unless I've got decent hunting going on. My freezers are usually overflowing at some point.

Everyone should know about Wooden Sculptures. If they don't, they should - Wooden Sculptures are the only one that should be sold and represent huge profits as well as great "Skillups." Seriously, though - Why do some players recognize the advantage of skilling up an Artist but don't think about Tailors and/or other Crafters and their Skills and sales potential? Dunno... Maybe their anime-hair gundam armor manga schoolskirt titanium breasticular mods are too distracting? :) (Don't care about any of that, but the obvious is obvious - Crafting creates Skillups which means it is a "value-added" activity.)

There's no such thing as "one way." If one isn't selling everything one has a chance to sell, why would one be worried about trading at all? Go big or... /spaceship home.

PS: Gone are the days of getting rich from selling Hay... :/ :)

[Reno Story]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

PS: Gone are the days of getting rich from selling Hay... :/ :)

Well, there are still trade deals involving hay.

But every time I took them, I swear... Always came back to bite me later.

[ichifish]

I too am sick of the “ha ha ha I run a meth lab” shtick.

The way I think about the economy is “train, don’t do.” Think about the skills you want to develop and the money will come. Whatever you can do that raises skills will put off. Hunt, ranch, cook, and craft.

Meat sells for $2.00+. Look in your freezer and you probably have a grand of meat just kicking around from training your shooters. Milk also sells well, so raise as much livestock as your map will support. Handlers will level up quickly and then be able to tame whatever walks onto the map, which you can either slaughter, sell, or use for a meat shield. Slaughtered animals give more resources than hunted ones, btw. You’re not going to get rich overnight, but these are byproducts of training your pawns while maintaining your food security.

Psychite tea and coffee sell well (if you have a mod that allows for coffee). These are byproducts of training up cooks (as is non-stop butchering). PSMs sell pretty well. Some people say you can make them out of insect meat, but I haven’t tried that as I’m sure to get the stacks messed up. Still, the point is keep training up those cooks.

Crafters should be making clothes non-stop to level up anyway, so just keep making shirts and pants. Keep the higher armor value stuff for yourself and sell the rest. Royal attire like top hats and corsets made from high-value leathers can sell for more than $200 and they don’t weigh much. By the time you’ve researched precision rifling and recon armor you should be consistently cranking out excellent quality stuff.

Once I have decent constructors I make bedrolls from whatever textile I have extra of. $100 a pop isn’t bad while I build up a set of masterwork sleeping bags for my caravaners.

If you want the big bucks, though, change the settings to allow for two colonies and settle tiles to just raid the ancient dangers. Lots of valuable stuff in those.

EDIT: I feel obligated to mention that I use a storage mod that allows for shelves that hold ten stacks, without which doing the above is more difficult.

[apud.harald]

Smithing, crafting, tailoring all are the same skill.
Early on, I grind out harps, enough harps for Heaven. The required crafting skill level is 3.
Some I keep, most I sell.
Anyone listening to or playing the harp receives a +2 thought for as long as the harp is being played.

As furniture, you can store harps outside before selling them.
Harps weigh 2 kg, so a single muffalo or buffalo can carry 36 harps for you as you go to the market. ( 18 for a lama, 26 or so for a donkey ) They sell for around 250 silver each.
Harps are made from plentiful (150) wood, grind up your planters at the same time.

No mods required but you will need Royalty DLC.

With low skill requirements, naturally regrowing resources needed to make them and a relatively high value density, harps are awesome!

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by ichifish:

PSMs sell pretty well. Some people say you can make them out of insect meat, but I haven’t tried that as I’m sure to get the stacks messed up.

Yes, you can. You can sell PSMs, pemmican, and kibble made out of human or insect meat at the same price as those foods made out of regular meat.
Cooked insect meat also really isn't that bad. It's only -3.

[Iskander]

In the early game, with a good planter, I always grow and sell herbal medicines. This is before I set up the usual suspects of manufactured trade goods.

But if you want something really different and fun, you'll have to download the "hospitality" mod. With this mod, you can set guest beds and charge a fee for guests to use them. You can also set up a "commercial area", where your guests and take any items in that area, and pay for it with silver. In essence: you are setting up a hotel-and-giftshop type of business. There is also the newer "gastronomy" mod, which adds a "waiter" job that lets your pawns wait on others and serve them food. I haven't tried that one yet, but it sounds like it would work nicely with the "hospitality" mod.

[andrewjonjones]

I make my money selling tables, wooden tables. aside from putting to use a quick to use renewable resource it also trains my colonies plant cutting and construction skills (the benefit that better quality items are more common and more expensive).

[kevinshow]

you can make many things and just focus on that as your sale goods.

eg, i did one time where i just sold smokeleaf joints. that was new to me because previously, i often sold off art for money.

it worked fine, just need to continually make them, have a lot ot sell when you get a chance to sell, and then use the profits to buy other things. it may be an artificial slow-down on your progress but that's something you can do in rimworld, challenging yourself with challenges that you make up for yourself.


i'm also a hoarder of meat and veggies, in case something bad goes wrong with the colony food supply...but that means at some point, my fridge will get full. at that time, i just sell off a portion of the foods. having so much food brings in a nice chunk now and then also.