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Trade Goods
April 17, 2026 at 08:34 PM
Append guidance on finding each faction's home base through its questline and a short reference for trophy heads and salvage items that sell outside the main crate system.
Trade Goods are sealed shipping crates that function as the archipelago's intended-for-sale cargo system. Each crate is tagged with a buyer faction in its tooltip, and that faction's Trade Goods Merchant on Tortuga pays a better price than anyone else. Smuggling the crate to the wrong buyer either halves the payout or refuses the trade altogether.
Every crate's flavor text carries the same warning, scratched into the wood with a nail: "Open it and you're out of the cut." Crates destroyed or opened before delivery lose all trade value, so captains move them unopened from loot source to buyer.
Values below are the sale price per crate at the preferred faction's Trade Goods Merchant, verified against the in-game item database.
Image | Crate | Rarity | Preferred Buyer | Best Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contraband | Rare | 150 Piastre | |
| Luxuries | Epic | 250 Piastre | |
| Medicine | Rare | 100 Piastre | |
| Munitions | Rare | 200 Piastre | |
| Naval Supplies | Rare | 150 Piastre | |
| Provisions | Uncommon | 50 Piastre | |
| Specialized Tools | Epic | 250 Piastre | |
| Spirits | Uncommon | 100 Piastre |
Every other Trade Goods Merchant on Tortuga will still accept the crate, but pays roughly the standard 100 Piastre rate regardless of rarity. Delivering to the preferred faction is worth the extra sailing time for the Epic-tier crates (Luxuries, Specialized Tools) where the spread is largest.
Four packed crates carry raw materials and sell for flat Piastre sums to any trader. Unlike the faction crates, they have no preferred buyer.
Image | Packed Crate | Rarity | Contents |
|---|---|---|---|
Packed Wood | Common | Bundled raw wood. | |
Packed Hardwood | Uncommon | Bundled hardwood planks. | |
Packed Copper Ingots | Uncommon | Copper ingots ready for shipment. | |
Packed Iron Ingots | Rare | Iron ingots ready for shipment. |
Loot from faction-aligned ship wrecks and boarding engagements. A sunk Buccaneer sloop tends to drop Munitions or Spirits; a Brethren warship drops Naval Supplies or Specialized Tools.
Seized during port raids on rival faction outposts.
Purchased cheaply from one faction and resold to the crate's preferred buyer for a small arbitrage profit.
Crate stack size is 3, so a small cargo hold can move a handful of Epic crates at once for a quick 500 to 750 Piastre run.
Check the tooltip before sailing. Delivering a crate labeled for Buccaneers to the Smugglers booth will leave Piastre on the table.
Crates are legitimate cargo. They do not count as stolen goods and can be carried in open ports without reputation penalty.
Trade Goods only pay out at the correct faction's home base, not at the Tortuga market hub. Since each save generates islands differently, there are no fixed coordinates for any faction base. The reliable approach is to follow the questline attached to each faction, which always marks the base on the world map the first time the player approaches it.
Smugglers of Port Royal: the Underground Network questline introduces the Smugglers' hidden coastal cave and unlocks their Trade Goods Merchant.
Buccaneers: the Rogue Buccaneers Main Base is uncovered during the main-story sequence that escorts the player toward the Buccaneer camp. Bringing trophy heads during that step doubles as the introduction to the buyer NPC.
Brethren of the Coast: the Brethren base is revealed through a mix of sailing discovery and faction-quest markers. Charting uncharted water past the second biome usually reveals the icon within a handful of sailing trips.
Tortuga People of Tortuga: the People of Tortuga keep a separate faction base distinct from the main Tortuga market hub. The quest marker from their introductory contract points directly at it once accepted.
Delivering a crate to the right buyer produces the payouts listed in the earlier table. Other Trade Goods Merchants at Tortuga still accept the crate but default to roughly the 100 Piastre baseline regardless of rarity, which is why the Epic-tier crates, Luxuries and Specialized Tools, repay the extra sailing time most clearly.
A few non-crate loot items still have clear preferred buyers. These items do not stack with the main faction crates and come from hunts and shipwreck scavenging rather than boarding or port raiding, but they route to the same faction hubs for sale.
Item | Preferred Buyer | Source |
|---|---|---|
Hunted from Crocodile kills in swamp and coastal biomes | ||
Hunted from Dodo kills on beaches and coastal flats | ||
Harvested from crab kills along the shoreline | ||
Ruin chests and shipwreck loot | ||
Buried treasure and late-game cave loot |
Since trophy items travel outside the crate stacking limit, they are best gathered during dedicated hunting runs rather than smuggling sweeps. A cargo trip that mixes crates with trophy heads tends to overfill the hold before either source is properly optimized; keeping the two loops separate returns more total Piastre per trip.
Not every drop labeled as faction loot is a trade good. Reputation items like
Insignias: turn in at each faction's Bounty Agent, not a Trade Goods Merchant.
Letters of Favor: higher-tier reputation rewards, also handled by the Bounty Agent.
The Bounty Agent and the Trade Goods Merchant can both sit inside the same faction base, which is why these items are easy to confuse at first. Check the item tooltip before handing anything in. Reputation items increase faction rank and unlock higher-tier shop stock, while Trade Goods pay Piastre and do not affect reputation at all.
