How to find commodities

[climbingeastofwinter]

Sorry, I'm trying to play the game without referencing the wiki or EDDB.io too much, and I don't understand how I'm supposed to find commodities or markets without those tools. I recently accepted a job to source and return 36 units of the mineral cryolite, but of the 5 'EXTRACTION' economy flagged star systems I've visited, only one of them had a station/settlement that was actually an extraction economy zone, and that one particular extraction zone did not carry cryolite. Some systems are labeled 'Extraction Refinery' and have only refineries, some are 'Extraction Industrial' and are purely industrial. I don't understand how you're even supposed to find the proper economic sites to visit when they aren't present despite a system being flagged for that type of economy. Is there something I'm missing here?

[Anri of Astora]

on the galaxy map you can filter trade routes for commodities, but a) only works for visited systems b) not that much informative. only shows produced/consumed info, like in commodity market menu when you're looking for bettter prices.

Mineral routes also colored RED, so you can use it when you're looking for extraction systems.

But honestly, Inara/EDDB is a must-have for traders.

[climbingeastofwinter]

Originally posted by Mordecai:

on the galaxy map you can filter trade routes for commodities, but a) only works for visited systems b) not that much informative. only shows produced/consumed info, like in commodity market menu when you're looking for bettter prices.

Mineral routes also colored RED, so you can use it when you're looking for extraction systems.

But honestly, Inara/EDDB is a must-have for traders.

Four out of five red/extraction systems I've visited have had no stations or settlements with extraction economies, that is why I'm asking. Only finding an extraction commodity exchange in 20% of the systems flagged for extraction economies has me very confused.

[JL::Jose-Juan Kenobi]

Is a pain with in-game tools, I totally agree. Even if you pay for the trading data on nearby systems, is no guaranteed.

What "sometimes" has helped, is at the Commodities market of the station handing the mission, go to "Sell" and on your right it list system/stations showing "Produced by"/"Consumed by". I did that and usually took 2, 3 jumps until finding the commodity.

[climbingeastofwinter]

Yea, it's not actually showing up on the sell tab at any of the landing areas I'm visiting. I'm just going to use eddb.io to source the materials.

[climbingeastofwinter]

Ah, alright. So apparently the commodity is only sold on planetary landing sites, which accounts somewhat the difficulty I had finding it. That would be a nice thing to have been warned about when I took the mission.

[St0rmFury]

Originally posted by climbingeastofwinter:

Ah, alright. So apparently the commodity is only sold on planetary landing sites, which accounts somewhat the difficulty I had finding it. That would be a nice thing to have been warned about when I took the mission.

There should be a light blue symbol/logo which tells you that it's a planetary base.

http://remlok-industries.fr/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/30-Fleet-Carriers-Commodities-Market.jpg

But yes I agree it should be more intuitive.

[Erei]

Honestly, not using the tool the community provide (because the game doesn't even tho it should) is a bad move IMO. It's like having a question, but refusing to use google/wikipedia for the answer.
It's not even cheating or anything, the community site use an INGAME and OFFICIAL tool for their site. It's basically wikipedia of sort. People go around, record stuff through the official API, and the site turn it into a nice database.

[Planewalker]

Imo it's a hassle having to alt-tab / divert your attention when you just want to play.

Cryolite can only be found on planetary extraction sites; not in space.

This goes for a lot of commodities: others require zero G to manufacture etc.

It is quite the journey to learn and understand how the production industry in ED works.

[Bordric]

Originally posted by Planewalker:

Imo it's a hassle having to alt-tab / divert your attention when you just want to play.

Cryolite can only be found on planetary extraction sites; not in space.

This goes for a lot of commodities: others require zero G to manufacture etc.

It is quite the journey to learn and understand how the production industry in ED works.

Yeah should be far more tools in the game, we are talking 3307, yet they spend all their time on useless FPS side game.

[Sighman]

When you click on a commodity in the marketplace, I think it is, a descriptive panel opens up on the right. It tells you which economies will buy that item, for example. E.g. for survival shelters it says only ground-based stations will buy them. It also says which economies produce that item.

As for using 3rd-party tools, I used to try and play without but now I just pretend they're part of Galnet.

[Kevlar]

you should use the data base https://eddb.io/ there you can find

[Planewalker]

Originally posted by KanobiKevlar:

you should use the data base https://eddb.io/ there you can find

OP specifically said they would prefer not using out of game resources, which is why i said

It is quite the journey to learn and understand how the production industry in ED works.

Which in turn was answered correctly by:

Originally posted by Sighman:

When you click on a commodity in the marketplace, I think it is, a descriptive panel opens up on the right. It tells you which economies will buy that item, for example. E.g. for survival shelters it says only ground-based stations will buy them. It also says which economies produce that item.

In short: it's a really good idea to read the details everywhere ingame.

IIRC, the Pilots Handbook / CODEX also have a good amount of information that you can even have read aloud while playing.

There you go, OP =)