Trading

buy low, sell high, and earn a place at the table while you're at it

Before the player market opens, gold still moves — through the ports themselves, and through the standing you build with them. Four systems carry the early economy: standing at every port and island, NPC trading between the four ports of the Shallows, the vendor who'll always buy your catch and salvage at a flat floor price, and provisioning for the captain who's about to sail further than their hold can casually cover.

Standing — the captain a port trusts

Every port and island tracks its own opinion of you, in four tiers: Stranger → Known → Trusted → Old Friend. It climbs the more you trade and dock there, sub-linearly in gold spent — so standing is earned by showing up, not bought outright by a rich captain passing through once. Higher standing unlocks real things: better prices, a wider range of goods, a small daily-cap bonus, and a rarer tavern pool at that port.

Standing also gates the better provision grades (see below) — Known at a port unlocks salted provisions there, Trusted unlocks the feast grade. There's no captain level standing between you and a longer voyage; it's entirely about the place you keep coming back to.

NPC port trading

Every port has a Trader who buys and sells goods at fixed prices — cheap where a good is produced, dear where it's wanted. Haul a hold full of Rum Casks from Gullport to The Meridian, sell, and buy something Gullport wants for the trip back: the same buy-low-sell-high loop as any trading game, just running between four familiar docks instead of a stock exchange — and it's the same Trader who buys the plunder off a hunt-focus leg's merchant raid.

Inhabited islands out in the Thousand Isles carry their own exotic goods: silks, spices, and the like that no Shallows port produces. They're worth a special trip to haul back, and they price accordingly.

Each port only restocks a modest quantity of each good per day (current design value), on both the buying and selling side, reset at the next server day. The cap is the fairness mechanic. It keeps a trade route a repeatable activity rather than a bottomless money pump that one captain, or one bot, could drain and leave empty for everyone else.

Selling to the vendor

Any fish, salvage, gear, or crafted good can be sold straight to the vendor at any port, any time, for a flat price — no stock limit, no waiting for a buyer. It's deliberately the worst price in the game: a guaranteed floor for whatever you don't want to haul or trade away. It's never the plan for anything worth real gold. Charts have their own version of this floor — the Cartographers' Guild at The Meridian will buy chart copies too, so exploration can never hard-lock a full sea chest.

Provisions: cook your own, or pay the "I-ran-out" tax

Rations fuel every voyage leg, and the cheapest grade is always free to make yourself at the Galley — no gold, no standing required, ever. But if you're standing at the dock with an empty hold and a voyage you don't want to postpone, Gullport and Saltmarsh will sell you plain rations directly for a small markup — no cooking required. Call it the I-ran-out tax. Cooking your own is still cheaper.

The two better grades — salted and feast provisions — are what let you take on tougher hunt-focus tiers or push into a longer explore-focus leg. They're never for sale at any price: they're cooked at the Galley from better fish plus Saltmarsh spice, and they only unlock once your standing at that port reaches Known (salted) or Trusted (feast).

The player market — coming in a later update

A proper player market (captains listing goods and charts for other captains to buy directly, per port) is the long-term center of IdlePiracy's economy, but it isn't open yet. With a small early population, standing and the NPC trade routes above carry the economy on their own; the order book opens once there are enough captains trading to give it real liquidity. When it does, expect a small listing fee and sale tax, both pure gold sinks rather than a house cut on your profit.

The vendor is a floor. Trading, when it opens, will always beat it. See World for how charts move between explorers and crafters, and Fairness for the rulebook that keeps all of this honest.