Revision - faction merchants - Windrose Wiki

How Faction Merchants Work

Every major faction in Windrose runs the same four-stall merchant footprint. Each faction operates a Buyer, a Provisioner, a Trade Goods Merchant, and a Bounty Agent. The roles are consistent across factions and are the engine that turns combat loot, Insignias, and Senkamati Artifacts into faction reputation, gear plans, and Piastres or Guineas. Reputation is earned by handing Insignias to the Bounty Agent and by selling trade-flagged goods to the matching faction Buyer; spending only happens at the Provisioner.

The Four Roles

Buyer: the only NPC type that purchases trade-flagged loot. Each faction's Buyer accepts that faction's flagged Naval Supplies, Medical Crates, contraband, and luxuries; they do not accept other factions' goods. Selling at a Buyer pays Piastres and contributes a small reputation bonus on the side.
Provisioner: the gear vendor. Sells armor plans, weapon plans, ship plans, building plans, naval tactics, and consumables. Stock is reputation-gated: Rank 1 unlocks the basic catalogue, Rank 2 adds armor and ship plans, Rank 3 and 4 open the highest-tier purchases. Plans must be learned in the player's journal at base before they appear as craftable recipes.
Trade Goods Merchant: sells trade-flagged goods to ferry to other factions. Buy a stack here at one faction's hub, then sell it at the matching Buyer of the destination faction for a profit. The Trade Goods Merchant is the engine of the faction-trade arbitrage loop; the Buyer is the cash-out side of the same chain.
Bounty Agent: the reputation NPC. Hand in faction-flagged Insignias to raise that faction's reputation. Reputation tiers (1, 2, 3, 4) unlock the Provisioner's higher-tier inventory at 0, 100, 300, and 600 cumulative reputation points. The Bounty Agent does not pay Piastres for Insignias; the trade is one-way Insignia for reputation.

Where Each Faction's Stalls Live

Tortuga is the four-faction hub for front-of-house interactions, but every faction's full merchant footprint is split between Tortuga town and a separate faction main base. The following table lists the canonical location of each stall as documented on the per-NPC articles. The Tortuga article carries the most detailed walkthrough of which districts each Tortuga stall lives in.

Brethren of the Coast: Provisioner at the Tortuga waterfront alongside the Brethren Bounty Agent; the Brethren Buyer and Trade Goods Merchant are at the Brethren of the Coast Main Base on the faction's island.
Rogue Buccaneers: Bounty Agent at the Tortuga Market with a Buccaneers presence stall; the full Buccaneers Provisioner, Buyer, and Trade Goods Merchant operate from the Rogue Buccaneers Main Base reached via the faction's side quest.
People of Tortuga: Provisioner and Recruitment Vendor in the Tortuga town center; the People of Tortuga Buyer and a second Bounty Agent live at the People of Tortuga Main Base on the refugee island reached via the Buccaneers questline second delivery step.
Smugglers of Port Royal: no stall in Tortuga town. The full four-stall Smuggler footprint lives at the Smugglers Main Base on the hidden archipelago, reached via the follow-up quest after the first Tortuga visit.

The People of Tortuga Buyer Trap

The most common merchant question players ask is some variant of "where do I sell my Naval Supplies?". The People of Tortuga Provisioner sells gear and accepts Insignias for reputation in Tortuga town, but does not buy trade goods. The actual People of Tortuga Buyer is at the People of Tortuga Main Base, on a separate refugee island. To pin that camp to the world map, complete the Buccaneers questline through Henri Boucher's first two delivery steps; the second step (50 bags of Gunpowder, then a Bale of Tanned Hides to Charlie Sharpe) is the trigger that surfaces the Main Base on the map. From that point on, every People of Tortuga-flagged trade good sells for Piastres at the Main Base Buyer rather than at any Tortuga stall.

Reputation Tiers and What They Unlock

Rank 1 (0 to 99 points): basic Provisioner catalogue: Sewing Tools, Shipwright's Tools, basic ammunition recipes.
Rank 2 (100 to 299 points): first armor and ship plans become available. Brethren Provisioner sells the Ship Design: Brig at this tier (1,000 Piastre).
Rank 3 (300 to 599 points): mid-tier weapon and naval tactic plans open up.
Rank 4 (600+ points): highest-tier plans, including the Brethren-only Ship Design: Frigate (3,000 Piastre) and the late-game faction-locked accessory recipes.

Tortuga Town Vendors Are Different

Tortuga also hosts three reputation-neutral town vendors that operate outside the four-faction merchant system: the Tortuga Buyer (sell-only), the Tortuga Food Seller (buy-only), and the Tortuga Goods Seller (buy-only). These three are documented separately because their stock does not change with reputation rank and their prices are fixed and bulk-friendly. The Tortuga Buyer in particular is the only town vendor that purchases goods from the player, and its catalogue is limited to relics, raw hides, heads, ingots, and Rum rather than the trade-flagged cargo handled by the faction Buyers.

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