Trading madness

[Shurp]

Well this got me aggravated today.  Because it's so easy to grow stuff to sell and make money I thought I would make it more challenging for myself by insisting on selling finished products rather than raw materials.  So I made a bunch of parkas and hauled them off to the nearest outpost to sell.

I had some scrap bear skin to sell.  Market Value $2.10, sale price $0.98.  Not great but I can live with that.

Then I have a nice normal cotton parka to sell.  Market Value $265.  Sale price $86.33.  What???

So I dig deeper; "item sell price multiplier 0.70".  The game is applying a 30% penalty for manufacturing something instead of just selling the raw material -- I assume to deter people from selling clothing of raid victims (which is now pretty irrelavent since most have the Deadman tag and are nearly worthless).

So much for that plan.

So how does everyone else making raising money more challenging/interesting?  Smokeleaf is way too easy.  Drugs take some work but then some experimenter pawn will show up and consume your stockpile.  Animals take way too long to breed (I'm still waiting for my first yorkie puppies to pop out, let alone grow up). 

What else should I be manufacturing to sell instead?  It doesn't have to be particularly profitable (in fact I prefer that it isn't) but it should be at least more profitable than selling the raw materials to make it.

[FalconBR]

Taming muffalos, with a 30+ in swamp, I get a lot of money from milk, wool and selling the breeds, lost all chickens to a Frostbite, so muffalos is the money making I am using, also, perfect defense.

[Dashthechinchilla]

Is furniture and sculpture still viable? I doubt weapons and armor would give a good rate of return. What else is there to manufacture, mortar shells maybe?

I think I got a bad trade offer the other day. They wanted me to bring them 1 shock lance for about 550 silver. Otherwise, those are a good place to sell manufactured.

[Canute]

You forget, resources got a fixed value.
While manufactured items got a quality.
When you craft good quality items out of the recources you got an enormous increase of the profit.

[Shurp]

Sculptures and furniture are *heavy*.  There's no way my colonists could carry two dozen to an outpost... also, growing trees in my tundra greenhouses would take a while.  I'm looking for something that will keep my growers busy... rice and cotton seemed like the obvious choices but aren't working out so well in practice

As for item quality, yes, if you have fantastic producers that works in your favor.  But my tailors are only at skill 10, so they're putting out fairly ordinary stuff.  I'm not getting much bonus yet.

I did notice that I don't have any chemical interest pawns this playthrough, so maybe it's time for me to get in touch with my inner drug lord again.

[Dashthechinchilla]

You could try herbal meds. Advanced meds would not work because of the neutroamine. If you have friendly tribals nearby, they will take the herbal off you.

[Albion]

I personally go with sculptures. Lots and lots of sculptures sold to any passing trader who is willing to buy them and any exotic goods trader I can call to pick them up.
But since you said that's not an option for you: Drugs! They are just crazy effective. Yayo and flake weigh next to nothing but are worth a shitload. Beer is also very good but heavier and not worth as much.
These are the two goods I mostly export from my colony. Except for weapons and apperal that are <50% or not up to my standards of quality.

Bonus tip: not sure if it's still possible but at least back in A16 when you had a level 20 artist you were able to make large silver statues and if they were of quality excellent or better you were able to sell them at a profit. Basically turning money into more money.

[Canute]

Personaly i play mosttimes with Vegetable garden mod.
And i made Grilled steak out of Insect/human meat to sell to visitors. And VG meals stack upto 75.

[Shurp]

Hmmm, looking for a mod that provides something worth selling is an option.  And yes, I think cranking out Yayo will be entertaining so long as no chemically interested pawns show up.

It would be nice if Rimworld came up with some non-addictive psychoactives for my colonists to play with -- whatever the local equivalent of LSD or peyote is could be entertaining.

"Minor Break: Engie is tripping!"

[Albion]

The benefit of yayo is weirdly enough that a chemically interested pawn can't use too much of it. Sure, he'll sort away up to 6 units per mental break but they don't happen THAT often and you can spare the equivalent of 100 silver if you have like 400 yayo stockpiled. He'll probably get addicted though so he'll continue to consume yayo but this will also keep him happy and you'll never need to worry about his mental health again.

[Shurp]

Yeah, I won't have to worry about him again until he snorts too much and his heart explodes.

Hmmm, actually, I'll admit I don't have much in-game experience with this.  What is the actual average long term impact of drug addiction in Rimworld?  How long can I expect a Yayo addict to survive?

[Panzer]

I tried it with a go juice addict once, didnt go very well, even with just enough to not go into withdrawal he built up tolerance pretty quickly and then got braindamage once the tolerance was high enough.

Go juice is kind of a special case though, potent drugs always have strong drawbacks. It might just work out with yayo if you schedule his drug use instead of letting him snort when the game prompts him to, usually theres some time left before he goes into withdrawal.

[Albion]

Hm. I didn't have too many yayo addicts but the ones I had survived for at least 3 years. I never had one die due to overdose because even on binges there is enough downtime for the overdose do go down again.
Brain damage also didn't happen but I think that's a go juice specific thing anyway.
What might happen but I didn't get is liver damage/failure.
In conclusion: I had 2 yayo addicts on joy schedule and they both survived fine for at least 2 years.

[khun_poo]

Slave trading is very good profit to me.

It need to invest a lot and need to plan your base. You need to build a very very large maze and a sandbag every 2 step to slow the raider down. Try to make a huge maze that take about 1-2 day for raider to reach your base so that they will all down from starving. Try to make a secret hallway to reach any part of your maze to fix those damaged wall and to quickly get out of your base too.

Just in case you get a visit from mechanoid whose don't need to eat. build a kill box at the end of your maze would handle them.

Next is your prison and farm to sustain those hungry prisoner. Using a nutrient paste dispenser is a good way to save cost for your food. If your prisoner get too moody, tame a lot of wolf, warg, snake or whatever that is dangerous you can find in your map and let them inside your prison. Hope they can be friend...

You can check their worth inside the info panel. If their worth is too low because they're old or drug addict, it's better to "uninstall" their used part like lung and kidney for fix price. Don't forget to install peg leg and remove it both just in case of riot.

[Dashthechinchilla]

I know smoke leaf addiction results in asthma. I don't know for the other drugs, except luciferm. My ambrosia addict had a heart attack at a young age, but he was also a smokeleaf addict.