Guide/Trading

Last updated for version `1.8.0-BETA-7`

🌀 *The content below transcludes to Special:WhatLinksHere/Guide/Trading.*
Trading in Horizon has undergone major changes. It's important to know that you can't buff charisma with items and that every trade is influenced by skill that you first have to get by unlocking more character levels. Furthermore, vendors, merchants, traders or whatever you like to call them have been designed for certain categories of items such as junk, food, weapons etc. Thus not every vendor accepts every item:

* Crops: Farmers and occasionally e.g. Trudy and others.
* Food: Takahashi, Polly, bar keepers, etc.
* Junk: Carla, Trudy, DC surplus and many more (general) vendors

It is also possible to reach vendors through settlement objects:

* Mailbox: Nuka Colas, Gwinnett Beers and Magazines for Vendor Credits
* Resource Station > Courier Trading Service: merchants that are reached by cargo bots (invisible eyebots) and depending on the Workshop Trading level more merchants can be reached.
* Market Trading Terminal: unique vendors only available in there, who all accept a new, special currency "Vendor Credits".

Bottlecaps might be a problem right at the beginning. Here are a few ways to neutralize it;

1. Craft/call Wilson which can automatically grab all items in the area (which is some kind of revolution in FO4). Make sure you unlock Area Scavenging (Workshop Technology Level 3) first. With the help of Wilson you get tons of items that are worth 1 bottlecap no matter trading skill. By the amount of these items you get rich! Make sure you turn Off "Auto-Transport" when trading or your inventory can disappear occasionally.
2. Very important: Mark components and allow for better junk management in your inventory. This will also highlight any junk item in the world. You should do this at soon as possible.

Sell unused junk items, these are usually all items that are exclusively and predominantly made of concrete, glass, leather, rubber, steel, wood, etc. Later, when your able to produce certain items, you can also sell junk items that consist of Basic Circuitry, Ceramic, Fertilizer, etc. It is just as easy to get money by hoarding clothes; bandanas, hats, caps, etc. are particularly suitable for this. In addition to selling junk and clothing, there is also:

* sell Weapons and (keep and) repair them if needed. Don't throw away a broken gatling laser or minigun, also hunting rifles (+scopes) are very profitable. The repair costs are extremely low.
* The trade for Food items such as noodle cups and purified water bottles is just as practical. Especially at the beginning this is a common practice in order to get on your feet quickly and to take up the game without stress.
* The sale of Wild Plants and Chems. Some food vendors accept the sale with no problem.
* Crafting specific items like Alloy Platings and/or Lock Breaching devices (Tech Lab) is also a very profitable action.
* With a lot of progress in the game you can even sell Gems, these items are particularly valuable but require huge amounts of resources until the trade or sale is worthwhile!

As soon as it is clear which items are profitable in terms of quantity and quality, Bottlecaps are absolutely relative and the process is always the same. You force a cell respawn either intentionally or unintentionally in order to enjoy an absolutely fresh vendor inventory every 5 or 7 days (depending on your Timescale setting). Then you exchange all the junk and scrap for ammo and on you go. Gather, loot, trade, fight, repeat..

With the amount of possibilities you can quickly see that bottlecaps and vendor credits are absolutely not a rarity. With the Courier Trading Service you can sell anywhere, with a lot of trading skill every vendor will practically give you all of their belongings and with the mailbox, nuka colas and magazines can easily be converted into vendor credits. Trading in the Market Trading Terminal is also interesting, but oftentimes the requirements for many items are so absurdly high, however it hols some very nice trades such as for liquid fuel and various crop bundles. The possibility of exchanging various items for vendor credits is good and with a precise tenant management you gain absurdly high amount of vendor credits which you can exchange to caps in the market trading terminal with trading skill 200.

Trading is extremely powerful, probably unbalanced and can quickly lead to boredom, especially with the tips presented here. Since tons of caps can be traded per respawn cycle this gives you an advantage over the AI in the first respawn cycle, i.e. the first 5 to 7 days, which influences the entire playthrough of the game no matter the difficulty and is especially powerful in Desolation Mode. Eventhough vendors have been redesigned and may not have a big inventar, like so often, visiting many vendors puts the vendor overhaul into perspective because you can still sell a lot. Thus, the player easily becomes very rich and breaks the game balance in just a few days.