Trading
From The Skybrary
Each skyland in Skytopia offers the same commodities, but different quantities of each. Commodity quantities are listed on the map as purple, blue, green, yellow, or red. These colors indicate how much of a commodity is at each skyland. A "purple" commodity is very abundant at that skyland, for example. If a commodity is "red", then it is scarce at that skyland. You will earn the most profit if you buy at "purple" and sell at "red".
[edit] Tips
New to Skyrates and still wondering how this game works? Maybe you're frustrated that you just can't seem to make any "real progress" in the game.
Here are a few secrets that some of the older players probably don't want you to know. Most of what's here can be learned on your own: by digging through the current manual, the old one (from the Skyrates 1 days) or by playing for a few days.
[edit] Tired of minuscule profits?
Here's a secret: not all Purples (or Blues, Greens, Yellows or Reds) are created equal (and we're not talking about Factions here). Some goods are simply more profitable to move than others. Goods are categorized into three groups: light green, light yellow and pink. For simplicity, let's call these distinctions Mild, Medium and Hot. Hot goods yield the largest per unit profit, but they are very dangerous to move. A cargo bay full of Hot goods will draw pirate attacks like moth to flame. Mild goods are safer to move. They attract fewer pirate attacks, but they offer smaller per unit profit margins. By design, most beginning players traffic entirely in Mild goods. Medium goods, however, are the happy middle ground. If you buy a Medium good at Purple and sell it at Green (2 "steps" down), you may find yourself with a larger ROI (that's "return on investment" for those yet to take Econ 101) than if you were to buy a Mild good at Purple and sell it at Yellow (3 "steps" down).
[edit] Want a (fairly) sure-fire way to "make bank" on (most) trades?
Only sell goods when their supply levels are at Red. This means that the supply of that good is scarce and therefore very profitable (per unit) to sell. Buy and Sell Taxes can play a significant role as well (and can be mitigated with the help of a few Skill Tree items and a Trader), but as long as you bought that good at any other color, you should make money.
[edit] Hauling a good purchased at "Purple" to a skyland and suddenly find that your destination skyland is flooded with that good?
Let's suppose someone has just landed a Leviathan (an upper-tier blimp designed to haul ridiculous amounts of cargo) at the skyland you're headed to and floods the market there with the good you were intending to sell. Hey, no sweat. If you notice it in time, delay the sale by sitting on the skyland for a short while or hop to an adjacent skyland. If the skyland was short on that good, it's fairly likely that the nearby Skylands are also lacking that good. Shake your fist as you buzz by the ol' dirigible and divert to a different skyland.
[edit] Taxes
Each time you buy or sell goods you are taxed. Each good is taxed by a different amount.[1] Taxes can be reduced by Skills and Traders. Because a max level trader can only give a max discount of 33% (or 66% for paper and steel) off taxes of 15-30%, Navigators actually make a better first crew member for traders as a Level 8 Navigator will reduce flight times by 30%).
| Resource | Tax % |
|---|---|
| Wood | 20% |
| Food | 20% |
| Fish | 18% |
| Paper | 18% |
| Ore | 15% |
| Tools | 15% |
| Oil | 20% |
| Steel | 20% |
| Grog | 25% |
| Catnip | 30% |
| Diamonds | 25% |
| Unobtanium | 25% |
[edit] Infra-Red Prices
Each color indicates a different price range. However, due to a hyperbolic price curve, a red good may sell for 1000Ģ to over 400,000Ģ depending on how many are left on the skyland. Skylands that are higher Tiers/Flight Licenses have a chance to go deeper in red. This means that red prices at Grottopolis and Uurwerk can sometimes be worth many times as much as those in the inner skylands (aka the "core"). Note that each color still indicates the same price range regardless of skyland, it's just that red prices often go deeper.
While these "infra-red" prices will usually only be found outside of the core, they can occasionally be found in the core when a lucrative trade route collapses and players continue to buy goods (typically due to queued trades that may have started out purple, but have since turned red).
[edit] Factories
The production and consumption of goods on skylands are controlled by factories. A factory may either be a consumer or producer of goods and will consume or produce goods at varying rates (usually every 10-60 minutes). It is unknown whether the quantity of goods are reset to a certain amount or only consumed or produced to a specified limit. Each factory can last from a few days to a week (or more) before disappearing.
At Grottopolis and Uurwerk where infra-red prices can become quite high, it is often more profitable to split sells apart than to sell them all at once. For a Leviathan with (potentially) 1300+ units of cargo, this can be the difference between making 2 million Ģ and 7 million Ģ (at the cost of a few hours). So, if you are present at your computer you can manually sell immediately after a skyland has consumed a good and net a much higher price (switching tabs in the flash game refreshes the prices (ie: clicking the mechanic tab and then the trading tab)). Sells can also be split apart via queuing with waypoints or servicing, although this is much less reliable and can take more time.
[edit] Luxury Goods
The last 3 levels of the Trade License skill allow you to trade in luxury goods. Normally luxury goods are red at all skylands. However, every few days a luxury good will spawn at a skyland with a set quantity available (these are not produced by factories). Depending on how many players are nearby, these goods will usually last between 12 hours to a few days. Catnip tends to last a bit longer than Diamonds. Unobtanium lasts the shortest amount of time. Due to the number of players trading these goods they also tend to crash with players frequently losing lots of Ģ from queued trades. These goods are generally ignored by top traders unless these players are nearby when they "pop-up" as they tend to be less profitable than infra-red prices found along the rim. Luxury goods are also not consumed like other goods. Every 1-2 hours, skylands will consume a certain amount of these goods if there are any available above the normal amounts.
