Trade Goods

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.

Buyer Factions and Payouts

Values below are the sale price per crate at the preferred faction's Trade Goods Merchant, verified against the in-game item database.

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.

Packed Commodities

Four packed crates carry raw materials and sell for flat Piastre sums to any trader. Unlike the faction crates, they have no preferred buyer.

How to Obtain

• 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.

Tips

• 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.

See Also

• Factions

• Faction Reputation

• Tortuga

Finding Faction Bases

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.

Secondary Trophy and Salvage Buyers

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.

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.

Reputation Items Versus Trade Goods

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.

Faction Provisioner Inventory

The Trade Goods system handles what factions buy from you. The other half of the faction economy is what each faction's Provisioner sells back. Every Provisioner stocks its own slate of Piastre priced consumables and plans, plus a smaller Guinea-priced tier of cosmetic and base-building content. Stock rotates behind Faction Reputation rank gates, so higher-ranked items only appear once the Bounty Agent hand-ins push the player past the corresponding threshold.

Rogue Buccaneers Provisioner

The Rogue Buccaneers Provisioner leans agility armor, heavy cannon schematics, and outdoor structural sets. Cannon plans cover the 12, 24, and 36 pounder lines, each offered in three modifier variants (tempered, perfectly ordered, and devastating).

People of Tortuga Provisioner

The Tortuga People Provisioner focuses on ranged and critical-hit armor (Privateer and Marksman sets) and a luxury tier of interior base-building plans. Players building out a permanent home base tend to return here for columns, stairs, tile roofs, and elegant furniture rather than for combat gear.

Brethren of the Coast Provisioner

The Brethren of the Coast Provisioner handles the shipping side of the market: consumable trade goods bought cheaply in bulk, plus the largest selection of ship-cosmetic Style Books in Tortuga. The vessel design blueprints sold here are covered on the Brethren of the Coast page rather than inlined below, because their price and reputation-rank gating are still being reconciled between in-game vendor prices and external write-ups.

The consumable rows (salt, coffee beans, the four spirit rows) double as Brethren-preferred trade crate ingredients and as cheap flip stock: buy at 2 to 10 Piastre here, then resell the matched crate to another faction's Trade Goods Merchant at Tortuga for a modest Piastre margin.

Smugglers of Port Royal Provisioner

The Smugglers of Port Royal Provisioner fills the gap the other three faction vendors leave open: heavy plate armor, Hull Bracing plans, the complete Naval Tactics catalog, and Smithing Flux. The inventory is gated behind the Smugglers' reputation ranks, so higher-tier hull plans and the later Naval Tactics (III through V) only appear once the bounty-agent hand-ins push the player past each rank threshold.

The Smugglers Provisioner is also the only vendor in the game that runs a currency exchange between Piastres and Guineas. One Guinea costs 50 Piastre at the stall; the reverse conversion pays 1 Guinea for every 20 Piastre handed in, which is the unfavorable rate the Smugglers' flavor text warns about. Building reputation with the Smugglers does not improve the rate, so the exchange is most useful as a one-time top-up when a specific Guinea-priced blueprint is one purchase away.