Welcome to this short guide about trading. Its purpose is to give a few tips for trading goods in Raven's Cry aswell as giving a quick look-up method where to buy which items and where to sell them, so players can plan their routes efficiently.

I hope I could help.

The idea behind trading is pretty basic and obviously not limited to Raven's Cry. The player tries to make profit by claiming as many goods as possible for a low price and selling them for a higher one. There are several things the player has to keep in mind though:

• Don't buy or sell too much of one item in the same port. As a product gets less common or rare its price adjusts, having its buying price increased and selling price lowered and therefore lowers your profit.
  
• Every good is either common or uncommon on each island, however, as mentioned above, prices may stagnate. Visit multiple ports so goods can resplenish or supply shorten's over time. This time is calculated by the days spent traveling on sea.
  
• Watch your cargo space. It is limited and randomly buying cheap goods can quickly fill it. Try to plan your routes ahead so you always have enough space for a quick raid on an enemy ship.
  
• Reputation directly impacts the prices for buying and selling items. It seems that only the overall reputation of all factions matter. Having a low repution for a single faction impacts prices in every port, not just in faction specific ones. Therefore it is the best to have high reputation for all factions. (thanks br3n065)
  
• When buying or selling large amounts of items, holding the "ctrl"-button speeds up the process, as it allows the player to buy or sell ten units of an item at once.

In this section the optimal buying and selling price aswell as the weight of each tradable item is listed. Keep inmind though, that the price for goods is directly linked to reputation, therefore the listed price can differ to the actual ingame price. It is handy to know those prices to get a quick view where it pays off to buy or sell which goods and additionally makes it obvious when one is purchasing or selling too much of one item.

While traveling the vast ocean and buying goods for a bargain or simply stealing them from your foes before burning their ships (or releasing them ... oh, who am I kidding? Nobody does that.) one might notice that there is little cargo space left. Now, which items are worth buying, keeping or leaving on the ship? For one it is important to keep an eye on the next port on the player's route, so one can get rid of as much goods as possible, cleaning out the cargo bay for the next trip. However, it might also seem useful to know the actual worth of a specific item. Since items vary in pricing the efficency for some of them depends on how the player acquires them. Doing some basic math reveals the profit per ton for each item:

All towns in Raven's Cry have either supply or demand for the items. However, getting a quick overview over the market proves difficult, as the information the game offers on the map is lacking. Further information can be gathered by talking to the barkeepers in the taverns, but these aren't too accurate either. The best way to get a good idea is to glance at the prices of each item in every town. But who got the time for that? Also one probably might want to know where to sell goods before setting sail. Therefore this guide provides a short and handy chart for each item and town.

"+" indicates that an item is cheap to buy in that specific town
"-" indicates that an item can be sold for a high price in that specific town

Thanks for taking the time and reading my guide. I hope I could provide information and save someone's time.

If I made any mistakes feel free to correct me.
If you know further tips or think this guide is lacking please leave input in the comments so I might update this guide if necessary.

The picture for the guide was taken from:
http://www.topware.com/de/inc/picturenews.inc.php?foto=../RC_Icon_1Layer_BlackBkg.jpg&w=600