A good trade route for beginners.

[Volsem]

Hello people, so here, I just wanted to share what I found to be a very effective trade route, at least in the beginning. What are the trade routes that you would advice for starters?

-So, first, go to Norway, there, buy cheap iron (around 30 penings), soapstones (30-50 penings) and tar (30-80 penings) from villages, cheap wood (under 150 penings) from the lumber mill and villages, and tar (~40-60 penings) from Tunsberg. At first, wood at the lumber mill will be expensive, but the more you buy, the lower the prices in the next batches.
-take a boat to Dorestad, there sell these ressources (iron : 600-500 P, lumber : 300-200 P, tar : 400-300 P, soapstone : ~300 P)
-buy wine (under 250 P) and jewellery (under 600 P)
-and back at Tunsberg, sell that wine (~600 P) and jewellery (+900 P)
-repeat, and you will quickly become rich.

[FourGreenFields]

Add some wool to that. Sells for 600 and more in Dorestad.

[Pode]

Yeah, the real money is in buying wool in Wessex villages for less than 100 and selling it in Dorestad for 700 plus, then running jewels and wine to the English towns on the return trip

[Bucketsmith]

Originally posted by Pode:

Yeah, the real money is in buying wool in Wessex villages for less than 100 and selling it in Dorestad for 700 plus, then running jewels and wine to the English towns on the return trip

You can easily expand that trade-route by taking the jewels, wine and salt to Ribe and Tunsberg.
In the village around Tunsberg, buy soapstone, iron, furs, tar and anything else you find cheap. Sometimes they'll sell walrus ivory for cheap.
THEN bring all that back to the English mainland, starting at Eddinburgh and going along the coast line until you reach Dunwic or Lundenwic, sell any remaining things you have.
Start your next trade route by going out to the villages and buying wool again.

In my playthrough, an iron foundry was really profitable in both Lundenwic and Dunwic.
The villages in that area sometimes carry iron, and sell it for under 500. That's still less than what your farmsteads would pay for the iron, so when you do your wool trade-run, you also pick up the iron and drop it off at your farmsteads prior to sailing to Dorestad.
It increases the weekly profit of your farmsteads. :)

I find it didn't make too much of a difference by keeping the wool and dumping that in a weavery farmstead. Better to sell it in Dorestad. Goes for over 700.

What the game is lacking is the ability to hire a fleet captain, put sailors on there, then go to the port at Eddinburgh after doing the Norwegian part of your trade route, and tell that captain to sail down to Lundenwic and meet you there.
This would allow you to walk from north to south and pick up wool and other stuff, whilst not having to walk back up to get back to your ships.