Trade
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In RimWorld, colonists can trade with passing trade vessels to buy and sell resources, gear, slaves/prisoners, and other valuable items.
Trading vessels will often pass within comms range, and stay there for a limited time. A blue notification will appear at the right of your screen to announce the trade ship and its type. A simple notice at the top of the screen will declare when the trading vessel has left comms range and can no longer be traded with.
Each type of trade ship will buy and sell only certain types of items. Selection varies with each passing ship, as they typically don't carry every item that they deal in at any given time.
Bulk Goods Trader - Trades in general building resources such as wood and steel. Also sells beer, chocolate, and medicine. Sometimes carries animals including pets and farm animals.
Exotic Goods Trader - Trades in rare and valuable items such as sculptures, televisions, telescopes, apparel, bionic body parts, neurotrainers, AI persona cores, gold, uranium, and glitterworld medicine. May also carry animals of the wilder variety.
Pirate Merchant - Trades in slaves/prisoners, weapons, body parts, medicine, and beer.
Combat Supplier - Trades in weapons, armor, artillery shells, and medicine.
To enable trading, a colony must have a powered comms console, and at least one orbital trade beacon with access to outdoor tiles (to receive any drop-pod shipments of goods you buy, or silver for the things you sell). Prisoners can be sold directly from their cell. The trade value of a prisoner/slave is based on their skills, capacities, and injuries. Any goods the player wishes to trade must be within an orbital trade beacon's area of influence, which is displayed when selecting the beacon itself, and also when placing one to be built. Any colonist can be ordered to trade with available vessels by selecting them and right-clicking on the comms console. The higher the social skill of the selected colonist, the better the trade prices will be. After selecting the trading vessel, the trade interface opens.
The trade interface shows what commodities are available to trade, the colony's stock, trader's stock, and the prices to buy and sell. To trade, simply click and hold the number listed under "Drag to trade" next to the appropriate item, and drag it either to the left to buy, or to the right to sell.
Note that prices listed in green are cheap, and prices listed in red are expensive.
In RimWorld, silver is used as currency, so 1 silver = $1.00 on the trade interface.
Trading tips
- Colonists with a higher social skill using the comms console will negotiate lower buying prices for everything but the commodities (0.5% per social skill point).
- Likewise, colonists with a higher social skill will negotiate for higher selling prices for everything but the commodities (0.5% per social skill point).
- Selling a prisoner is profitable, but has a negative impact on the happiness of all colonists (excludes psychopaths).
- Food and textiles can be quickly grown on hydroponics tables, which makes farming a viable income source, provided there's enough manpower to tend to the crops.
- It is recommended to put your comms console in or near the bedroom of the colonist with the highest social skill for convenient trading.
- Trade ships carry a limited amount of silver, so they may not be able to buy everything you wish to sell.
- Sculptures can be created with a sculptor's table and sold to traders. Since trade ships carry a limited amount of silver, though, you may find that you cannot sell a very expensive sculpture.
- Mass-producing an item with varying levels of quality and selling them in a bunch can make a great deal. For example, if you have 5 low quality longswords and a legendary one, they can be shown as 6 low quality swords or 6 legendary ones in the trading window. Try selling 1 item at a time until the legendary quality one shows up. Then trade all of them with everything they have (you can call this trick "sell in bunch"). This tip doesn't work for sculptures.
- You can trade your expensive items (weapons, sculptures) for other desirable items if the trade ship doesn't have enough silver to complete the transaction. Of course, the amount of silver you can gain is lower, but it is usually better to have a lot of cheap items than an expensive one in your store (sometimes you have items so expensive that no trader can buy them, or when you try the sell bunch tip above).