v0.31:Stonegears/Caravans

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Sometime in late Template:L of your first year, the dwarven Template:L from your parent civilization will come to your fortress for Template:L, so you should have things set up for them before then.

Trade depot

To trade with a caravan you need a Template:L in a place that has a clear path to the edge of your site's map. To place a depot use b-D, press Enter when positioned properly, and choose three items of raw material to make it from. Building it will require a dwarf with the Template:L labor enabled, and then another dwarf with a labor appropriate for the material it's made from (Template:L for stone, Template:L for wood, and one of the four Template:L related labors for metal). A depot is a 5x5 tile square, so if placing it outside you might need to Template:L down some Template:Ls to make room for it.

Once the depot is placed you can use D to check if the depot is accessible to Template:Ls. However, since caravans don't yet use wagons, but instead use only pack animals, it will often falsely tell you that you depot is not accessible: a pack animal can go anywhere your dwarves can go, but a wagon needs a three tile wide path (since a wagon is three tiles wide) of Template:Ls, Template:Ls and Template:Ls (wagons can't use stairs), clear of obstructions like Template:Ls, Template:Ls and installed Template:L.

Do not have more than one depot at once, since this will confuse the caravans about which one to go to. If you're playing a mod where several different caravans can show up at once they'll all share the same depot without a problem.

Arrival of the caravan and liaison

At some point in late autumn the dwarven Template:L and Template:L will arrive, pausing the game, Template:L by:

The outpost liaison _____ from ______ has arrived.

A caravan from _____ has arrived.

Though they'll arrive at the same instant, they'll appear at different points along the edge of your site. The caravan will head straight for your Template:L, and the liaison will head straight for your Template:L. If you have no depot yet the caravan will wait at the edge of the site, in which case you build one to get them to come it. If they remain at the edge even if you have a depot it's because there's no open path from them to the depot, likely because of a locked Template:L or raised Template:L; opening up the path will let them come in.

Trading with the caravan

Note that you might have your meeting with the Template:L before you get to trade with the caravan. If that happens, skip to the meeting with the liason‡ section.

Getting a dwarf to the depot

You need to get one of your dwarves to the depot to be able to trade. By default, if you've appointed a dwarf to be the Template:L then s/he'll be the one to do the trading; this lets you control exactly who does the Template:L, so that a dwarf with the right skills will do it. Use n to go to the Template:L screen and appoint‡ your Template:L, since he'll have the highest Template:L skill, which is useful in trading.

Once you have a broker, go to the depot and use q to interact with it. This will tell you who your broker is, what job (if any) the broker currently has, and if he can access the depot. Use r to request that the broker go to the depot for trading. (If your broker is indisposed, or if you have no broker, you can use b to get any random dwarf to be the trader instead)

Finally, go to your expedition leader (probably via the units screen‡), use v-p-l to manipulate his Template:Ls, and turn them all off‡ to make sure that he goes to the depot, since going to the depot has a low priority compared to the other labors; when he's doing training you can turn his labors back on.

Moving trade goods to the depot

You can only sell items to the caravan which are inside the depot. To move goods to the depot use q to interact with the depot, then g to enter "move trade goods" mode. Down the left side of the screen will be a list of item categories, while down the middle will be the list of available items, with the items closest to the depot being listed first. Rather than scrolling through the whole list, you can filter for only the items you want. Use s to enter the word you want to search for, type in "FINI" to search for "finished goods", and press Enter. This will cause all of the finished goods Template:Ls containing your rock Template:Ls to be listed (note that items inside of containers can't be individually listed/select for moving to the depot, so typing "MUG" won't show anything). Use ← or → to move from the left column to the middle column, ↑ and ↓ to highlight a particular bin, and Enter to select it to be moved to the depot. Once selected the far right column will show a [PENDING], indicating that it's been selected for trading at the depot but hasn't been moved there yet. When the item arrives at the depot it will change to [TRADING].

Press Esc twice to exit to the main menu and unpause to wait for the caravan to get to the depot and unload, and for your broker to get to the depot.

Actual trading

Once the caravan has reached the depot and unloaded its goods, and your broker is at the depot, you can enter the trading screen by interacting with the depot (q) and then pressing t. The trading screen will show you the caravan's goods on the left side and your good on the right. The Template:L of each item will be indicated by a number followed by Template:L, and the Template:L in kilograms by a number followed by Γ. You can switch which side you want to select from with ← or →, scroll with ↑ and ↓, and select an item for trading with Enter, which will cause a [T] to appear next to it, marking it as part of the deal you're planning to make; pressing Enter a second time will remove it from the planned deal. Marking a caravan item for trade means you're buying it from the caravan, and marking one of your items for trade means you're selling it to the caravan. If you mark a Template:L for trading then you'll buy/sell the bin and everything inside of it, which can be convenient if you want to buy/sell a lot of items at once, but can be bad if you want to sell a lot of stuff at once but keep the bin. If you want to sell many items in a bin without selling the bin itself, but don't want to tediously do ↓-Enter over and over, you can set up a Template:L to take care of the tedious typing.

In the far lower left-hand corner the screen is one number indicating the Trader Profit for the planned deal, and to its right the total Value of everything that the caravan is selling for that planned deal. To guarantee that the merchants accept your deal you should give them at least a 50% profit (for example, if the Value on the left is 1,000☼, then the Trader Profit should be at least 500☼). To get away with giving the merchants less profit on a deal, see Template:L.

In the far lower right-hand corner is Allowed Weight, which shows how many more kilograms of weight the caravan can take on. If the planned deal would give the caravan too much weight to carry, it will become Excess Weight. If a deal would lead to excess weight, you'll have to expand the deal to buy heavy items from the caravan until there's no more excess weight. Low cost but heavy things to buy are lumps of Template:L and Template:Ls of Template:L (at the very top of the list of caravan items) and metal Template:Ls (several pages down from the top of the list of caravan items). You might also want to buy some of the Template:Ls (at the very top of the list), since they're cheap and you can always use more logs.

Once you have a planned deal with a large enough trader profit and no excess weight, use t to propose the deal to the merchant. If the profit is large enough the trader will accept the deal, his Template:L will improve, and ownership of the marked items will change hands. If the profit is too small (or gives the trader a loss) then he'll reject the deal and his mood will worsen; if his mood gets bad enough then he'll refuse to trade at all. If the profit isn't large enough but isn't too small then he'll make a counter offer, marking more of your items for trade ([T]). If you get a counter offer you can press t again to accept it, but since the counter offer will give the merchant a larger profit margin than the minimum necessary for an acceptable deal you should probably unselect some of your marked items with Enter until you get a profit margin larger than you first offer but smaller than the counter offer, then press t.

If you want to start a planned deal over from scratch, simply leave the trading screen with Esc and re-enter it with t.

Item quality, decorations and containers

Some of the caravan items will have a higher than base Template:L, indicated by the item name being bracketed with -, +, *, or ≡. Item quality only increases the effectiveness of Template:L, Template:Ls and Template:Ls, and otherwise just increases the value of the item. Thus unless you're buying one of those types of items you should ignore the quality and just go for whatever is cheapest.

Some of the caravan items will be Template:L, indicated by the item name being bracketed with « ». The only thing decoration does is increase the value of the item, so ignore decorations and just buy whatever is cheapest.

Pieces of Template:L can be Template:L, which is similar to an item being decorated in that it increases the value of the cloth, but dyed pieces of cloth aren't bracketed by any symbols; the only immediate indication that a piece of cloth is dyed or not is that different pieces of the same type of cloth will have different costs.

If you buy something that's in a container you have to pay for both the contained item and the container. If, for example, you buy a Template:L which is in a superior quality Template:L which is decorated with diamonds, rubies and sapphires then the vast majority of the cost is going to be for the cage; there's no way to buy just the cow but not the cage.

What should I buy?

For the very first caravan you should buy Template:L and Template:L, for several reasons:

• You can use them to make Template:Ls, which are needed to process Template:Les into leaves, to hold Template:L and Template:L (if you ever plan on making any), and to gather Template:L for making Template:L.
• Cloth is needed to Template:L wounds at a Template:L.
• Leather is needed to make Template:Ls, which are needed if you want to make a Template:L which uses Template:Ls.
• If a dwarf goes into a strange mood‡ and demands leather or a certain type of cloth, but there isn't any available, s/he'll eventually go Template:L. Thus you should try to always keep on hand at least a few pieces of leather, a few pieces of Template:L cloth, a few pieces of plant fiber cloth and a few pieces of animal fiber cloth.

If there's any animals in cages you could buy the grazing animals in an effort to get a Template:L pair to start a meat industry, which can also let you get Template:L and Template:L if the animals are of the right types; however, this requires having enough Template:L to feed all those animals. If there's female birds in cages you can use them to get a steady supply of Template:Ls, which is easy to do since tame birds don't need to be fed. Even if you don't want eggs you can buy the birds and put them into your Template:L to give your dwarves happy Template:L; you can not do the same with the grazing animals, since they do need to be fed and will starve to death if kept in a cage.

Removing items from the depot (or leaving them there)

When you buy an item from the caravan your dwarves will move it from the depot to the appropriate stockpile‡, if there's a stockpile which accepts that item and has empty space. Otherwise the bought item will stay in the depot until space opens up in an appropriate stockpile. The depot can hold a limitless number of items, which can be Template:L in a manner similar to Template:L. Note that the depot does not have the Template:L preserving properties of a food stockpile, so if you buy any food from the caravan you should make sure that your food stockpiles have enough empty room in them for the bought food. You should also immediately Template:L any Template:L or Template:L you bought to prevent it from spoiling.

Items which you brought to the depot for trading but you haven't sold will remain there for as long as they're marked for trading. They'll lose the "marked for trading" status either when the caravan leaves the depot, or if you enter the depot's "goods for trading" screen (q-g) and manually unmark them. At that point your dwarves will move those items from the depot to stockpiles like they would for bought items. If you remove your stockpiles for trade goods before this happens then your unsold trade goods will remain in the depot, saving you the trouble of hauling them back there for the next caravan (though note that this is an Template:L).

The appraisal skill and item value

The first dwarf to get a look at a caravan's good's (via q-t on the trade depot) will gain experience at the Template:L skill. Since the dwarf to do this was your Template:L examining an item will now show you the item's Template:L, where before this information was missing.

Liasion

Begin discussion (white)

Import agreement