Trade

Trade with aliens is an integral part of The Long Journey Home.

The trade system is based on a base price for each item, module and resource in the game. The base price is the standard price, that most merchants will pay after bargaining in the best possible way. It also determines the shop prices and the first offers of all merchants.

The base prices can be found on the items, the modules, and the resources pages.

This page wants to give an overview on how to calculate the best prices, when selling items to a merchant and how to estimate, whether an offer at shop or shipyard is cheap or expensive.

Item prices
Price = base price • alien item category 1 (• alien item category 2) • difficulty • location The base prices of all items can be found on the Items page.

Most alien races have preferred item categories. An item can be part of two categories. K'schar and Entrope pay 100% of the base price for all items. The Vine Consensus only buys The Berry/Flower/Fruit of the Vine.

Difficulty
The prices payed for items and resources are lower in rogue mode. Shop and shipyard prices are not affected.

Location
The location affects both merchant and shop prices.

First offers
Price = first offer • bargaining factor There is a way to avoid remembering all the numbers and formulas by estimating the price of an item or a resource using the first offer that merchants make.

The amount of credits offered by merchants is proportional to the maximum price they are willing to pay.

Resource prices
Price = base price • difficulty • alien resource category • location The base prices for all resources can be found on the resource page. Each race has different favorite resource categories. Entrope pay 75% and K'schar pay 100% for all resources. The resource prices for the Vine Consensus work in a different way and can be found on the Vine Consensus page.

Shop prices
Price = base price • alien item category • location • shop multiplier All shops sell their items more expensive than the amount their merchants pay at the same location. The shop prices are also influenced by the location multipliers, but independent of the difficulty.

Module prices
Price = base price • shop multiplier

The base prices for modules can be found on the modules page.

Trading user interface
When dealing with merchants, negotiate. Don't just take the price they give you; increase it by 50% and see if they take it. If not, decrease it by 10-20 credits. Some merchants will be annoyed, but since you're encountering starports quite frequently, there should be plenty of Glukkt traders (if you have them), starports, and jump gates for you to sell to. Jump gates have two ends; if the first end won't deal with you, try the other side after you jump through.

Step by step
The merchants dialogue can look pretty confusing at first, but its fairly easy once you know what you have to do.