One of the many skills in Mount and Blade: Bannerlord is the trade skill. This skill will allow you to trade with the many merchants across the world of Calradia. If you plan on becoming a trader and making a lot of money in Bannerlord then you definitely need to level up your trade skill.
This guide will help you buy, sell and offer your way to success in the world of Calradia.
Contents:
How Does the Trade Skill Work in Bannerlord?
The trade skill is one of the many non-combat related skills that you can upgrade and use in Bannerlord. The trade, as you can imagine, governs how well your character can buy and sell things in Calradia. The only thing that levelling the skill does is affect the general prices your party can get when trading with towns and caravans. That being said, there are a variety of different perks within the trade skill which can expand your ability to trade within the game.
Notable Perks Within the Trade Skill
As you level up your trade you will be able to pick between two different perks, every 25 levels. Which you pick will define how you continue to play the game. You can decide to focus more on caravan profits, personal trade profits or a whole host of other options to do with trade.
One of the most notable perks that can be unlocked happens very late in the trade perk tree. The Everything Has a Price perk allows the player to trade settlements once they have unlocked it/ This way, you can barter with lords and simply buy castles and towns from them. This is an absolute game-changer and means that you can technically complete the game without ever having to take a castle by force. That being said, grinding to level 300 trade will take a very long time.
Some other great perks within the trade skill tree include;
- Caravan Master : Party can carry 30% more weight. Lvl 50
- Mercenary Connections: Workshop production are increased by 25%. (Great when coupled with the Artisan Community perk which gives you 1 renown per day for every profitable workshop.
- Insurance Plans/Rapid Development: These perks give you 5000 denars back for either your caravans being destroyed or when your workshop is captured by an enemy respectively.
The perks which you take will depend entirely on your playstyle. Personally I like to buy as many workshops as I can as caravans seem to get destroyed way too easy by bandits and the like.
How to Level Up Your Trade Skill in Bannerlord
Now that we know what we are doing with the trade skill, we can move on to how to get experience and level the skill up. There are two main ways that you can gain trade experience and level the skill up; by creating and having caravans passively trade around the world on your behalf, or by personally trading with towns to get profit on items.
While both of these skills will get your trade skill up, by managing to buy items cheap and sell them in towns for more money, you will be gaining more experience faster. That being said, it’s always good to have as many trade caravans running as you can to keep that passive trade experience coming in.
Creating Caravans to Get Trade Experience
Firstly we will go over how to start a trade caravan in Mount and Blade Bannerlord. TO create your very own trade caravan who will travel the continent finding the best deals for you, start by finding yourself a good candidate. You will need a companion in order for them to lead the caravan party. For this, you will want to find a companion with a high trade skill as they will be able to make more profit from their own trading. If you don’t know yet how to get a companion, you can find a guide on how to do that here.
The best trading companion you can get is a companion with the suffix the Spice Vendor after their name. This companion will start with 100 trade skill. In the best case, find a character with with this name, otherwise characters with the Exile or the Swift will also work well as they start with 80 skill in Trade.
Once you have an extra companion, you can create a caravan by heading to any town and speaking with one of the notable people there. Enter a town and in the town menu select one of the portraits of the townspeople there. Once you have done this, select the option to talk to them. After introducing yourself, you must select the conversation option I wish to form a caravan in this town.
Once you have done this, you will need to give the character 15,000 denars and one of your companions to lead the caravan. Once you have done this, they will start to journey from town to town, finding good buy and sell deals and (hopefully) making you money alongside trade experience. The party member will get trade experience.
Getting Trade Experience Through Buying and Selling
The best way to level up your trade skill is by personally buying items as a low price and selling them for profit. You will notice that in some towns you can purchase goods at a cheaper rate than in towns. Every town will produce certain goods. Simply buy these goods from town at a reduced price and sell them to towns.
Each town has it’s own economy as well so you can’t simply expect to sell to the town super close to you for profit. To get the best deals, buy items that are in high supply on one side of the map and sell them somewhere else.
Once of my favorite selling routes is to purchase hardwood from the forests of Battania and sell them at the Aserai deserts. This way you will be making a large amount of money due to the fact hardwood is in short supply in most major towns in the desert. You can generally get hardwood for under 10 denars in the villages in the forest and sell them for over 20 in the desert.
This method will become a lot easier once you have once of the level 25 perks in which your profits will be marked. After you reach trade level 25 and choose one of the two perks, your trade goods will have a color from bright green to red. This will show you whether you are buying and selling for a good price or not and thus gaining good trade experience. Try to buy and sell anything that is highlighted as bright green for the best experience gain.
