Trading

*"Trading can be a good source of additional resource income. For each completed trade, you will also receive one cheese."*

Trading must be unlocked from the BLC Shop by purchasing the Trading Certificate.

## Strategy

By default, you are presented with 2 trades that refresh every 5 minutes. You can unlock more trades in the BLC Shop and can speed up the refresh rate in the  Gems Shop Gem Shop. Trades can be manually refreshed for the price of  2 Cheese 2.

The idea behind trading is converting one type of resource into another at a favorable rate. For example,  Gold Leaves might be easier to come by than Strange flasks, so trading one into the other can be beneficial.

Other uses for trading come in the form of trading for  Gems or  Cheese. Cheese can be used to refresh trades and operate the Slot Machine. Gems are more valuable due to the power of the upgrades in the Gem Shop and should be considered when selecting trades.

In the later game, the amount of resources being traded becomes inconsequential due to the amount resources the player quickly creates. To solve this, the Trading Education upgrade can be purchased in the BLC Shop allowing for trades to use much higher amounts in trades.

Lastly, one strategy that can be used in trading is acquiring leaves before their area is unlocked. If the leaf is unlocked, it will show up in trades. Once you have gotten the first leaves of a type, many of them can be printed, meaning you can purchase upgrades in that leaf's shop before you can afford the area to collect the leaf normally.

## Trade Level

A higher trade level allows for higher level trades to appear, which can offer better rewards but can also have a higher input cost.

Trade levels are increased with the **Trading Education** upgrades, which are only available from the BLC and MLC shops. The BLC upgrade only increases the max level, while the MLC upgrade increases your max *and* min levels, ensuring you always get higher quality trades.

* BLC - Trading Education (max: 50) — Increases max trade level by 1 per upgrade level.
* MLC - Advanced Trading Education (max: 50) — Increases **min and** **max** trade level by 1 per upgrade level.

You need to reach a certain trade level to get better rewards for some special resources, mainly  Beer and  Gems. See Special Resource (below) for more details.

## Trade Global Multiplier

Trade Global Multiplier (most commonly called *TGM*) multiplies your trade rewards (all except gems). It's mainly increased through crafting, but can be given one-time bonuses from two Challenges, and a temporary bonus from a scroll:

* Crafting - Craft leaves with the *Trade Global Multiplier* property. Requires level 2+ leaves. Rarer leaves give a larger bonus.
* Challenges - Complete **Bingo** (+300%) and **Bingo++** (+500%).
* Trading Scroll - Increases global trade multiplier by 25% for 1 minute.

The formula for TGM is:

`( 1 + ChallengeBonusMultiplier ) * ( 1 + GlobalBonusMultiplier ) * ( 1 + ScrollMultiplier )`

## Trade Delivery Time

Trade delivery time (aka *trade delivery duration*) determines how long trades take to finish. It starts at 2 hours, but can be reduced down to a minimum of 2 minutes.

### 2 Minute Trades

To reach a 2 minute trading time, you'll need the following. Stats shown are at level 10 (with level 1 in brackets):

* Level 10  Penguino - Delivery time: -50% (-25% at level 1)
* Level 10  Water Leaf - Delivery time: -20% (-10% at level 1)
* Level 10  Butterflyo - Buffs pets and unique leaves by 40% (20% at level 1)
* Trader's Crunch challenge - Delivery time: -15%

If you do everything above *except* the Trader's Crunch challenge, your trade delivery time will be 20 minutes. This can still be temporarily reduced to 2 minutes with both the Pet Scroll and Unique Leaves Scroll activated.

You can also buy the  Gems Shop Gem Shop upgrades **Better Pets** and **Better Leaves**, which increase the bonuses of pets/unique leaves by 30%, making some of the points above unnecessary.

## Special Resources

Certain resources require high Trade Levels before they can be bought in larger amounts (this affects  Beer and  Gems most).

### Beer

Requires very high trade levels:

* 1x Beer (Trade level 1 or higher)
* 1x TGM Beer (Trade level 17 or higher)
* 2x TGM Beer (Trade level 33 or higher)
* 3x TGM Beer (Trade level 50 or higher)

TGM x (1/2/3) % 100

### Gems

Maximum gem rewards are calculated as `TradeLevel / 5` *(rounded down)*. This means that after trade level 10, every +5 trade levels increases the max gem rewards by 1.

Note that a trade with a level of 50 doesn't guarantee 10 gems, as the actual reward is a random value between the min and the max, rounded down (*eg. at level 50, which has a min/max of 5/10, you could get anything from 5 to 10 gems)*. This means that even if you're only using trading to acquire gems, it's still worth upgrading your Trade Level past 50, as it will increase your min gems amount by +1 every 10 levels.

The maximum number of gem rewards is **10**, at level 50. Gem rewards are **not** affected by TGM.

1. ↑ Rounded down to the nearest whole number. This means that the highest possible amount of min gems is 7 (as the highest possible trade level is 70).

## Upgrades & Bonuses

There are several upgrades available that will improve Trading. These are available at various stages of the game's progression.

### Crafting

Crafted leaves have a chance to include Trade Modifier properties, which will increase the earnings you receive from trading by a percentage. In the later stages of the game, it's useful to craft and upgrade leaves which have high TGM percentage values, as this will largely increase the amount you earn from each trade.