Fingerbob's guide to Elite Dangerous Trading, Part Three

Welcome! This is part three in my short series of posts about trading in Elite Dangerous, and today's post is all about Rare Trading.

If you'd like to read the rest of the guide, here's some links:
Part one - the basics
Part two - I think we're going to need a bigger boat
Part three - Rare trading for the win
Part four - Ahab and the whales (bigger ships, mo money)
Part five - Commodities, economies and route planning

What is rare trading?

Rare commodities trading is a fantastic way of making a huge pile of money in a small ship. It's possible to make profits in excess of 16K per ton. With a full cargo hold in an Adder, that's a nice 320K profit for a trip. If you're smart about your route, you can do that trip in under an hour. With a larger ship, you can make even more money, and even faster - a Cobra is the perfect ship for rare trading, but if you can't wait you can get started in a Hauler or an Adder.

So what is rare trading? In essence, you find goods that are only sold in one place and you cart them to the other side of known space to sell them. The further you carry the goods, the more they are worth.

Here's a list of the known rare goods in the game. 

Most of the rare goods can be bought for less than 5K a ton. They nearly all become worth around 16K more than this at a distance of 180LY from the origin system. This means to get the most profit from rare goods you need to fly one hell of a long way away.

The increase in sale price is an S-shaped curve - goods don't become worth much more at all until you hit 60LY away from where you bought them, and they tend to be worth around 8K more at 100LY, rising to 15K more at 160LY and 17K more at 200LY. the price really doesn't rise much more than that for any rare good regardless of how far you travel. Commander P2k captured a load of data to find the best fit curve, and if you're interested you can read about his research here.

This price increase is fairly common across the board, regardless of how expensive the rare good is in the first place. This means whatever rare goods you buy, you're going to make a decent profit on them if you haul them far enough. You can make 25K on a Leathery Egg from Ridley Scott in Zaonce, but most other items will net you 16-17K at max distance.

How do I make serious money from rare trading?

Buy low, sell high! It's simple!

except, it's not that easy - rare goods are rare. You will often find that you dock at a station that sells rare goods and there's only 3 or 4 tons available to buy. you could haul them to the other end of known space and make 80K, but if that takes you an hour you're not making much cash! Luckily, you're not competing with other commanders for buying rare goods - every pilot has their own allocation of rare goods at each station.

Each rare good has a maximum allocation of available items. You might see all of them available to buy straight away, in which case you're very lucky and you can load up and move on. If not, you can often wait around 10 minutes in the station and a second chunk of goods will come on the market. I have waited another 10 minutes and had a third chunk of goods arrive a couple of times, but it's rare. You'll never get more than the total allocation for the station in total.

If you look at the rare goods list above, you'll see an allocation value - this is the absolute maximum you'll ever be able to get of that item. You may get unlucky and not be able to get the whole allocation, no matter how long you wait.

Rare goods of a specific type don't respawn until you've sold them.

Assuming you're flying something larger than a Sidewinder, it's likely you'll want to visit at least two (and probably four or more) stations, buying up the rares, before you head out on your long journey to sell them. Once you get to the other end of your long journey, you'll be wanting to repeat the process for the return leg.

Let's assume you're sensible and decide to get something larger than a Sidewinder - in fact, let's assume your goal is to trade up to something classic and elegant, like ...

The Cobra

Rare trading in a Cobra is hands down the best way to be making serious money quickly before you hit the big ships (Type 6 and above). at 380K for the shipyard spec (plus another few hundred K for the beginner upgrades and cargo space) it's also a fantastic ship to explore in, fight in or just plain fly around in. You should definitely make it your goal to own one of these before you decide to go large.

Rare trading will mean you can pimp your cobra with a few hours of effort. Filling up on D rated items and a 4A FSD will get you a 20+ LY jump range and (assuming you keep your shields) 40 tons of cargo space. If you want to skip the shield you can push to 56 tons with a fuel scoop.

Of course, you might just want a big cargo bay, regardless of how ugly it looks or how well it flies, in which case ...

The Lakon Type 6 Transporter

There's an ongoing discussion as to whether it's still best to trade rare commodities in a Type 6 at 1045K for the shipyard spec, or whether to just run normal trade routes - the devil, as always, is in the details, and we're going to get to that shortly. However, whether you're grinding it out on a normal route or running a long haul rare route, a Type 6 is going to do you very nicely indeed.

Planning your journey

You have 20-40 tons of cargo space, and you have decided to trade some rare goods - now you want to know where to go to buy them, and where to go to sell them. There's some excellent tools out there that will help you plan a rare trade route, and your second stop should probably be the Elite Rare Trader Site here:

http://eliteraretrader.co.uk/

Note, that I've said this should be your second stop, because your first stop should be looking at this route map.

(and here's a link to the original, created by Tom Gidden : https://github.com/tomgidden/elite-dangerous-tools/blob/gh-pages/Rares-Circuit-1.pdf )

This route map should be enough to get anyone started trading rares. If you're not sure where to start on the loop, I'd highly recommend dropping in at Lave then following the route map via Leesti to Diso to Orerre. Keep going until you're full, then begin the trek over to Witchhaul, sell everything, and kick off your return leg.

There's plenty of other routes out there, and you can make your own using the Elite Rare Trader. Because you're not competing with other commanders, you'll find people are more than happy to discuss their favourite trade routes.

Fuel scooping on the way

The most important thing to remember about your rare trade journey is that you'll be travelling over 150 light years in a single leg. There's places to stop on the way if you look, but you need to be careful that you've got enough fuel to get to the next station and you might find yourself running on fumes with a 10 minute supercruise to a station - or worse yet, arriving at a system with no fuel and no station.

To avoid having to find stations to dock at along the way, I highly recommend getting a fuel scoop and just topping yourself up at every scoopable sun on the way. Some people like to jump until nearly empty and then fill up (ideally in a safer system) but I prefer topping right up every time I can. Bear in mind you can't scoop every star you arrive at.

You can figure out if it's better for you to carry more rares (a fuel scoop is probably going to cost you at least 4 cargo bays) and buy fuel on the way - but remember that time taken docking eats into your profit margins.

Some people prefer to use efficient routes with more jumps - this saves fuel at the cost of time. I prefer using the maximum jump range possible and spending the time scooping - the choice is yours.

(See my next linked post for more details about efficient vs fastest routes - basically, you should always go fastest!)

Buying and Selling

Visit each station in turn, and buy as many of the rare commodities as are available. Fly to the next station. Repeat. If you're doing an end-to-end run, fill up, make the long jump, and repeat the process at the other end. if you're running a ring, you'll need to know what to sell at which particular stations - either memorise it, or just watch the commodities market for a profit per ton over 15K.

If you're doing a long jump route, once you're at the other end, you can normally make a decent profit by simply selling everything in one go. You might find you make a bit more cash holding on to one or two specific items for another jump, depending on how the route is planned. Remember the price curve and decide if another 1-2K per ton is worth the wait - and worth holding in your cargo bay. The most important thing is to buy as many new rare goods as you can get at every station on the route.

If you're flying a Hauler or an Adder, you'll likely find you can fill your ship by stopping, buying what's available and then heading straight on to the next point in the route. If you're flying something with 40+ tons of space, you'll likely need to wait around for the full allocation or take in a few more stops at each end of your route.

Some people prefer just finding a couple of stations 200LY apart with a large allocation and bouncing between them. If your jump range is good enough (such that the long leg of the journey takes less time than a couple of docking hops) or your cargo hold is small enough, then this can be a viable tactic too. Bouncing between Toxandji and Zeessze or Altair is viable, making a potential 300K each way, with 10 minutes at each end plus your transit time.

Some folks, especially in larger craft like a Type 6, Asp or above, will put the effort into longer circle  routes which allow you to max out the cargo space while still running short distances between buy and sell points to avoid scooping. An example T6 route is listed here.

Fingerbob's Asp route

After flying rares for a week and getting my Asp (in preparation of some exploration) I've done a bit of number crunching and come up with a decent Asp route (and possibly Type 6 if you don't mind a bit of scooping). in an Asp, you can run this route with a 5B or 5A FSD without ever having to scoop.

I'm making around 1.2 to 1.5 Million an hour on this route.

All of the stations apart from Witchhaul(9) have at least 17 items in stock.
None of the items are illegal.
All of the stations are under 1000LS.
You'll be able to buy and go with an average of 10 items at every stop.
Running the route takes just over an hour if you don't wait at any stations.

Destination	Station	At (LS)	Dist (LY)	Jumps	Max Stock	Sell From
Leesti	George Lucas	257	109	6	21	Coquim, Wuthielo Ku
Altair	Solo Station	670	115	5	22
Zeessze	Nicollier Hangar	489	26	2	18	Karsuki Ti, Jaroua
39 Tauri	Porta	980	42	3	17
Witchhaul	Hornby Terminal	220	37	2	9	Baltah'Sine
Coquim	Hirayama Installation	600	109	6	20
Wuthielo Ku	Tarter Dock	145	120	7	17	Leesti
Karsuki Ti	West Market	28	92	5	18	Altair, Zeessze, 39 Tauri, Witchhaul
Jaroua	McCool City	143	72	4	18
Baltah'Sine	Baltha'Sine	356	91	5	18

There's plenty of additional stops you can throw in if you want to shorten some of the longer sections - Throw in Delta Phoenicis after Witchhaul and Ariel after Jaroua, for example. You can also do the whole Leesti cluster (Diso, Uszaa, Orrere) if you want a few shorter hops or you're running with a lot of spare cargo space when you arrive.

You can skip Witchhaul if you want, and sell the Baltah'Sine goods in Wuthielo - but if you're loading up at the Leesti cluster you may be over capacity at that point.


Bear in mind that 6 jumps (4 minutes) takes less time than docking and less time than waiting for a refresh. It's also more fun. However, if you want to wait (let's say you only get 4 tons of something when you arrive) you'll get a nice big chunk after another 10 minutes at all of the stations listed above.

Diso Ma Corn Community Event (get it while it's hot!)

From 11th May for a few days, you'll be able to get up to 50 units of Diso Ma Corn at Diso / Shifnalport. Make sure to fit this into your loop, or if you want to pingpong, try Rajukru or Jaroua as your other end. Good money is to be had! This event will stop at some point soon, at which point I'll try and remember to take this note out.

Acknowledgements

A huge thank you has to go to everyone who has spend time and effort researching prices, allocation caps and routes (as well as making the tools to simplify your rare trade route planning). I've found countless awesome threads on Reddit and the E:D forums filled with gems of info, and it's well worth doing a bit of your own reading and researching to find the best routes and tactics out there.

What's next?

Once you've pimped out your Cobra or Type 6, you'll likely find that your next trading ship upgrade is so big that you make more money going back to the basics - except this time at massive scale (hundreds of tons each way).

Look out for my next post, where I'll go into details of trading in the larger ships.

If you're interested in the mechanics and costs of fuel, jumping, jump ranges and scooping take a look here where hopefully you'll be demystified.

Fingerbob's guide to Elite Dangerous Trading, Part One

Hi! Welcome to my first post (hopefully of a small series) on how to trade in Elite Dangerous. I'm going to start at the beginning and detail the simplest, fastest, ways to trade goods in E:D, up to the point where you're making so much money you will have to decide for yourself what to do next.

Here's some links to the other entries in this beginner's guide. If you want to skip ahead, scroll down and find the relevant post. I'll be covering next steps, rare trading, fuel and scooping, working with the larger ships and how to find the best trade routes. If all of that sounds like random gibberish - read on!

Part one - the basics
Part two - I think we're going to need a bigger boat
Part three - Rare trading for the win
Part four - Ahab and the whales (bigger ships, mo money)
Part five - Commodities, economies and route planning


If you're interested in exploring, check out my introduction guide here.

Starting Out - buying and selling goods

Your first trade

Let's begin at the beginning! You've got a Sidewinder with four tons of cargo space. You've got a few credits in the bank. How do you make money?

You'll be sitting in a space station. If you select "Starport Services" you'll see the Commodities market pop up. Select that option and you'll see a list of goods (or Commodities) for sale and purchase.

The price and availability of goods depends on various factors. Firstly, and most importantly, is the type of economy of the system - Industrial, Agricultural, High Tech, Refinery, etc.

Here's a list of the various types of economic system and the goods that are in supply (being sold) or in demand (being bought) in those types of economy.

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Goods

And here's a more detailed list of each type of commodity available in the game.

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Commodities

So, how do you make money? Simples! Buy low, sell high.

But what should you buy? and how do you know what's low and what's high? Well, that really depends on lots of factors (time of day, how many people are trading and more) but the simplest thing is to learn some of the basics.

Agricultural economies produce things like food and drink, so they tend to be in supply (and cheap to buy). They like to buy things that help them produce food (like crop harvesters or atmospheric processors) and things that keep their farmers happy (domestic appliances, consumer tech, clothes).

Go to an Industrial economy, and you'll find them producing things like domestic appliances and consumer tech, and in need of things like food! So if you buy food in an Agricultural system, fly it to an Industrial system and sell it, you'll make a profit! Even better, if you then buy some consumer goods or clothes and fly them back to the starting Agricultural system, you'll make a profit on the return leg, and you've got yourself a trade route.

You may be thinking "that's awesome, Einstein, thanks for the economic theory - now just tell me what to buy and where to take it". Because the answer to that question is based on where you are, how much money you've got and how much cargo space you've got free, you'll need to do a little bit of work yourself to figure out the best answer. The hard way to do this is to go into the galactic map, look at the trade routes, narrow down a commodity that's leaving your system and flowing to a target, and finding a return commodity to help make profit.

The easy way is to use one of the many tools to go look up the best answer. This steps outside the fiction of the game and you might consider it bending the rules - but if you're looking for the fastest way to get cash, it's a great way to start. I've used Thrudd's trading tool a lot to begin with - this tool tracks prices in various stations and helps you to pick the best goods to buy and where to take them.

http://www.elitetradingtool.co.uk/

Go to the trade calculator, pop in your details (cargo hold size, available cash, your current system) and it'll tell you the best profit trade you can make. Fill in the destination details and reverse the route, and it'll tell you what to bring back on your return.

As an example, if you're starting in Agri and aiming for Indi, you'll probably buy grain or fruit and veg for your first purchase. Once you sell at the other end, you'll likely buy clothing and domestic appliances or even biowaste to make a buck on the return journey.

Now all you have to do is fill up on as much cargo as you can afford, fly to your target system, head to the right space station, dock, and sell it! Ker-ching! Do the same on a return leg and you'll have made some moolah, seen some sights and be ready to repeat the process. Don't forget to buy fuel!

Now you're probably thinking "holy moly, I made a couple K in profit, it's going to take me forever to get that Anaconda". True - but you're on your way.

Your first hour trading

You've made a few credits and you're on a roll. If you repeat what you've just done a few times, you'll have even more credits (probably a few thousand) and you'll be getting the hang of navigating the commodities market, docking and jumping between systems. Don't worry about getting rich until you're comfortable with the basics. Repeat that run you just made five times and then take stock.

Once you've got the basics down, what next? Well, mo money makes mo money. You can hopefully afford some of the more expensive commodities on future runs - you might have started out buying and selling food carts or grain or clothing - they were the only items you could afford 3 or 4 tons of. Now, you should be able to afford a ton or two of tea or coffee, maybe some domestic appliances. You were making 1K a run, with a couple of hundred credits per ton. Now you spend 5K and you make 2K a run, with a profit in the region of 300-400 credits per ton. You don't need to buy all the same items - you can always purchase a ton of expensive stuff and fill the rest of your space with cheap goods to round out your profit.

The simplest thing to do is to repeat this process until you are filling your hold with the most expensive goods at each station and you've still got money in the bank. You'll probably have 25-30K at this point, and you'll be buying consumer technology, tobacco, progenitor cells or superconductors at 4-7K per ton, with a profit of 1K per ton when you sell.

Working for the man

You've got the basics down and a small pile of credits - wouldn't it be awesome if you could break the monotony and pull in 20K profit once in a while? Well, you can! every time you dock at a station, even before you sell your goods, take a quick look on the bulletin board. If you're lucky, you'll see someone who wants what you're carrying and is willing to pay a premium for it. Quids in!

Even if they don't want what you've got, you'll occasionally see missions where you can carry someone else's cargo for a decent reward. You'll also see missions asking for certain goods at a decent premium and it's often worth your while going out of your way to find what they are asking for. If you spot a mission asking for 4 tons of silver or gold, take a quick look on Thrudd's trading tool and see if you can make a quick turnaround on the purchase - you might even be able to make a profit on the run out to the station that sells the silver, and make a nice 15-20K on the return. Just be sure you can afford the goods before you promise to deliver them!

This is probably the fastest way to get big chunks of starting cash, so don't forget to check every time you dock.

Onward and upward

Once you maximise your profit potential, you've got a few options. The first is probably to look for a more lucrative trade route - if you're not making 3K+ a run (round trip) then you should look to find a better pair of stations to trade between.

You should also factor in how efficient the run is - hyperspace jumps take time. Supercruise and docking take even more time. You should be able to find a route that takes less than 15 minutes round trip for a single jump and once you're practiced at navigating and flying, you can probably get a two or three jump route round trip in under 15 minutes and a single jump trip round trip in 10 minutes. Time taken is time wasted, so be mindful and practice docking fast (hopefully without blowing up!) and navigating the commodities pages.

There will be a point where you've found a good route, you're doing it as fast as you can, and you're now limited by cargo space rather than money. This is the point to decide your upgrade path.

The first, mostly obvious, upgrade is to take out your discovery scanner and replace it with a class 1 cargo bay, which gives you another two tons of cargo capacity. If you're trading, then you're likely not discovering much and you've just increased your profit potential by 50%. You might not be able to buy this in an Agricultural system but you'll likely be able to find a new cargo hold in an Industrial or High Tech system. Just browse to Outfitting, pick your discovery scanner slot and see if they have a 1C cargo bay replacement.

The second thing you should consider is upgrading your Frame Shift Drive. If you upgrade your FSD, you'll be able to jump further - that might make more lucrative routes open up to you (or reduce the amount of time it takes to run the route by reducing the number of jumps you need to take). You'll see various stats that change with this upgrade, but basically each increase in the rating of the drive will allow you to jump further. picking up a 2D drive will give you an instant boost for not much outlay. I'd not recommend going as far as a 2A drive, because (if you're trading focussed) there's better things to spend your money on coming to you very shortly!

Different rated items are better in different ways. You'd expect that as you progressed from rating E to rating A everything would improve, and that's often the case - but D rated items are nearly always much lighter than A, C and E rated items (which are normally the same mass). conversely, B rated items are nearly always much heavier than the rest. Why does this matter? Because the mass of your ship affects your maximum jump range. Because of this, you're often best getting D rated items as the first and only upgrade for any particular system unless you really need that system to be best in class - in which case the A is often the best and only choice because the B rating item ruins your jump range. You might find that you can survive with a lower class system, and the 3A is better for you than a 4D and doesn't cost much more.

If you're feeling dangerous, you can swap your shield generator for another class 2 cargo bay with 4 ton capacity. If you're a careful pilot and don't tend to crash into things, this can really help maximize your profitability. Be aware that any small scrapes and bumps will damage (or potentially destroy) your ship, leaving you back in space dock with a nasty repair bill - or even worse, giving your 10 tons of cargo to a pirate and dropping you back into a new loaner Sidewinder!

If you've maxed your ship cargo space as much as you can and you're still at your profit cap, the next step is to get a bigger ship. Congratulations, commander - you're on your way!

See part two of my guide for the next steps in trading.
See part three of my guide for details of rare trading.
See part four of my guide for information about trading in the bigger ships.
See part five of my guide for details of commodities, economies and route planning.