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11 Merchant Contracts are the items that turn the abstract idea of a settlement economy into a real base feature in Windrose. The current live contract pages show three contract items, and each one builds a merchant station that sells goods for Piastres inside your base.
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33 Current Contract Items
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55 ContractCurrent Buy SourceCurrent PriceBuildsMerchant Contract: Natural ResourcesCivilians - Level 2100 PiastresMerchant: Natural ResourcesMerchant Contract: FoodCivilians - Level 2100 PiastresMerchant: FoodMerchant Contract: Animal ProductsBuccaneers - Level 2100 PiastresMerchant: Animal Products
66 What the Built Stations Need
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88 A roofBonfire rangePiastres to actually buy goods once the station is built
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1111 That last point matters. Buying the contract does not stockpile resources by itself. It unlocks a merchant station, and then you still spend Piastres on the actual goods.
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1313 Current Stock by Contract
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1515 ContractCurrent Stock SummaryNatural ResourcesBaseline supply starts with Wood, Stone, Clay, and Plant Fiber. After local threats are cleared, the station adds Sulfur, Hardwood, and Tree BarkFoodBaseline supply starts with Coconut. After Coastal Jungle threats are cleared, the station adds Banana, Sweet Potato, Cayenne Pepper, and the seeds for those crops. After Foothills threats are cleared, it adds Lime, Aloe, Corn, Tomato, Flax, and their seedsAnimal ProductsBaseline supply starts with Crab Meat, Dodo Egg, Feather, and a starter bird-meat entry. Later stock expands into larger meat, hide, tusk, fat, fang, horn, and bezoar materials as threats are cleared
1616 Community-Reported Example Prices
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1818 ImageStationItemCurrent PriceMerchant: Natural ResourcesWood25 Piastres for 1Merchant: Natural ResourcesStone25 Piastres for 1Merchant: Natural ResourcesSulfur40 Piastres for 1Merchant: Natural ResourcesHardwood50 Piastres for 1Merchant: FoodCoconut10 Piastres for 1Merchant: Animal ProductsAnimal Fat20 Piastres for 1
1919 Why These Contracts Matter
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2121 They smooth out shortage management once your base is established.They reduce the pain of basic resupply on long-running worlds, especially shared worlds.They are separate from ordinary vendor listings on raw item pages, so it is normal for a raw item page to say ordinary vendors do not trade that item while a contract station still sells a matching supply version.
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2323 See Also
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2525 Trading and Merchants - the larger money and vendor framework around contractsSettlement Building - where merchant stations fit into a real baseResources - the material shortages Merchant Contracts can help solveFood and Potions - why the Food contract matters once cooking expands
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2727 Real-Time Delivery Cycles
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2929 Merchant contracts are passive logistics tools, not instant panic buttons. Once the merchant station is built at your base, each order runs on a long real-time timer. Launch-week community testing put the cycle at roughly 70 minutes (community-reported; verify in-game) per delivery, so the contract system works best when you queue it before a long exploration session and come back later to collect the crate.
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3131 ContractWhat It SolvesTranscript-Backed ExampleAnimal ProductsHide and leather bottlenecks for armor, bags, and base upgradesRough Hide orders arrive as bulk crates. Community testing reported 20 Rough Hide per crate, which is why this contract smooths the tanning chain so aggressively.Natural ResourcesLate basic-material shortages once chopping and mining become dead timeHardwood crates arrive in large batches, with community testing reporting 50 Hardwood per crate after the relevant region unlocks.FoodCrop and seed stability once cooking becomes part of your regular buff routineSeed crates can hand out planting stock such as Flax Seeds, letting one unlocked crop snowball into a self-sustaining farm.
3232 Why Animal Products Usually Comes First
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3434 Most players get the Animal Products contract first because rough hide sits in the middle of too many early progression chains. It feeds bags, leather crafts, armor pieces, and several station-side recipes. If your camp always feels one material short, hide is usually the culprit before hardwood or cooked food are.
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3636 The Natural Resources contract catches up once the Foothills are open and hardwood becomes a recurring tax. The Food contract matters most once you already have seedbeds, cooking ambitions, and enough garden space to turn delivered seeds into a permanent crop loop.
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3838 Buying and Building Merchant Stations
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4040 Merchant Contracts are buyable items that you pick up from a Provisioner at one of the four faction port hubs. The contract itself does not deliver any resources. What it actually unlocks is a buildable merchant station that you place inside your base, and that station is what lets you queue crates of a specific resource family directly from your camp. The full loop, from a quiet evening at port to a freshly built station feeding Hardwood into your storage, takes only a few minutes once you know the steps.
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4242 Sail to a faction port and find the Provisioner stall. Each major hub has one, and Tortuga carries the full set of currently available contracts in a single stop.Open the Provisioner's wares and buy the contract you want. Each contract is a flat 100 Piastres at the time these notes were taken, which sounds steep on a fresh save but pays itself back across one or two productive base sessions.Fast travel back to your base. The contract sits in your inventory as a one-time-use crafting item until the matching station is placed.Open the build menu, find the corresponding Merchant station entry under crafting and utilities, drop it inside your buildable area, and pay the construction materials. The station also wants a roof and bonfire range to count as fully set up.Walk up to the finished station, open its order panel, and pick a 1x, 2x, 5x, or 10x crate. The station charges the matching Piastres cost up front and starts a real-time delivery timer. Come back after a long session to collect the crate from the station.
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4444 Contracts currently buyable in the live game:
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4646 Merchant: Natural Resources - bought from the Civilians Provisioner. Builds a station that delivers wood, stone, and Hardwood once the relevant region threats are cleared. The first contract most builders prioritize because hardwood becomes a recurring tax on ship upgrades.Merchant: Food - bought from the Civilians Provisioner. Delivers crops and seeds, including the planting stock you need for a self-sustaining garden once cooking buffs become part of your routine.Merchant: Animal Products - bought from the Buccaneers Provisioner. Delivers hide, meat, and tanning materials in bulk crates, which is why many players grab this one first when leather bottlenecks slow down armor and bag crafting.
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4848 Funding the contract loop is where Boarding raids carry their weight. A single golden-text freighter at level 12 to 15 typically nets around 1,000 to 1,500 Piastres in coins plus consumables that you can resell at any port, which more than covers a 100-Piastre contract and several 10x crate orders. Build the contract loop on top of an existing Naval Combat routine: sail out, hit two or three freighters, dump the contraband, then queue your next crate of Hardwood or rough hide before logging off. The unlock order most settled players land on is Natural Resources first when ship-tier upgrades are the bottleneck, Food second once you have seedbeds and a kitchen, and Animal Products either last or first depending on whether hide shortages are slowing down your armor and bag chain.