Sea of Thieves Season Two has added a bunch of new content to sail for. Season Two incorporates Trade Routes, which allow pirates to buy and sell goods for Gold. To actually have something to trade, Rare has added commodities to the game. These special crates can be bought and sold at any time, and they make a profitable prize to take by raiding other players as well. Here are the basics of how that works.
How Trade Routes Work in Sea of Thieves
To do anything with Trade Routes in the game, you need to raise your Emissary Flag for Merchant Alliance first. Once that’s done, you can talk to the vendors that have the crates to sell. Head to the vendor NPC for the faction at any outpost and check out their wares via the Browse Resources and Commodities option.
You can get any Crates from any Merchant Alliance vendor at a given Outpost. When you do, you must then go out and trade it. Keep in mind that Crates have a respawn time, This is to prevent players from abusing the system and making one run to make huge amounts of Gold. Once you buy a Crate from an Outpost, you will have to wait a few days, it will be back in stock once the timer expires. It’s about a three-day wait for most Crates. That means three full in-game days must pass between trade runs. However, you can freely buy Commodities at other Outposts in the intervening time.
How Commodity Crates Work in Sea of Thieves
The basic premise is simple, buy a Commodity Crate at one Outpost, then sell it for a profit to another Merchant at another Outpost. Each of these can be bought and sold for Gold. And like any other ship-based items, players will try to steal them. Making merchant runs via Trade Routes in Sea of Thieves can be lucrative, but dangerous.
- Crate of Unclassified Gemstones – 2,800 Gold
- Crate of Unfiltered Minerals – 2,400 Gold
- Crate of Unrefined Spices – 2,400 Gold
- Crate of Unsorted Silks – 2,000 Gold
- Crate of Broken Stone – 1,600 Gold
- Crate of Ungraded Tea – 1,600 Gold
- Crate of Raw Sugar – 1,300 Gold
So how do you know what to trade? Each week the game world will populate a supply and demand listing for the regions and all Outposts within them. Look to the left of the Merchant Alliance Vendor to see a book that lists the current supply for each Commodity. Rarer commodities will lead to higher prices at those Outposts. Now take that list and use the old Buy Low, Sell High method to make some Gold.
These commodities are locked to the Trade Routes system, but there is another type of Crate that players can make use of in Sea of Thieves.
How Resource Crates Work in Sea of Thieves
The Resource Crates are very useful for those long journeys. Each one can be bough for the listed prices below.
Depending on the type of Resource Crate, they will contain 50 of the resource listed. So that means a Fruit Crate will contain 50 Bananas, great for healing up. These resource Crates are used to stock your ship with resources for those battles and long trade routes. They might be pretty useful if you’re going raiding on those new Fort of Fortune events.
Here are the four types of Crates that can be bought to stock your ship:
- Cannonball Crate – 5,000 Gold
- Fruit Crate – 3,500 Gold
- Storage Crate – 17,500 Gold
- Wood Crate – 3,500 Gold
The Storage Crate is a bit unique, as it’s sold empty. But it’s very useful for long-term storage. It’s an empty crate you can put stuff into. So if you find resources out while sailing, use one of these to store your extras.
