Guide Easy Money

[Olav_]

Just thought I could post it here just in case:

If you go to any lighthouse, the chances are that there's a guy who lives there who will sell you random cargo at insane prices. No matter what your trading skill is, you should be able to make a pretty penny on it.

For example: I bought 111 units of ebony for 50 peso a piece and 217 leather for 10 peso a piece.

The lighthouse keepers of Guadeloupe and Santiago are a bit special as they can take an order for amulets for 15.000 pesos. For those who want to make sure they have most of the amulets for the Pirate Saga questline, if not all, can order them from these guys. Only setback is that it takes two months for them to arrive at their place.

 

[Nelsonliang]

Light house keeper always offer to buy rum (bottle of rum) for 1000+ pesos so save or buy rum from stall to sell to him. He also sells pearls (big and small) at cheap price so buy the pearls and sell to banker.
Also there may be a chance encounter with Indian trader wandering around. Buy precious stone or ore from him and sell to bankers for profit.

 

[Nelsonliang]

Another aggressive way to make money is smuggling slaves. Get a ship with good speed (it is essential since you want to catch smaller ship and run from bigger, better armed ship), big cargo hold and big crew. My tactic is no cannon on board since i don't want to engage in cannonade or kill the crew. Chase down small ship and board it. Since it has smaller crew, it will surrender and let you plunder it. Capture the captain and enslave the crew. Sell the slave to smugglers and hand over captain to the authorities. If the captain is a pirate, any nation authority will do. If the captain has nationality (exp Spanish), hand him over to his own nation get the best price. If you have a hard time catching smaller ship, arm your ship with the cannon that has the lightest and longest range. Shoot down your target mast and the ship will be reduced to minimum speed. Whether you want to take the ship as prize or not is entirely up to you. You can get around several hundred thousand of pesos per month if you do good.

 

[ad5ian]

Too complicated. It's easier to just use two fat merchant ships like flutes, buy a trading license for a month and trade between Maracaibo, Cumana, Caracas, (and the other Spanish cities close to Curacao) and Willemstad. Hundreds of thousands to a half a million profit in a month.

 

[Nelsonliang]

Not really complicated as it sound since the hardest part is to obtain your own ideal ship. The rest is up to the player style. For me, i got an Indian Men with 302 crew with a speed of 15, cargo weight at 6527. I simply go around the Main and prey on Spanish ship (South of Curacao) . I don't take ship as prize so i simply go back to Holland (Willemstad on Curacao for i rent the warehouse there to store rare good) or English colony to sell my loots when the ship is full. On average i took around 500 or more slave with several captain. The slaves net me around 150k, captains net me 10k each. And each month i have about 5 to 6 raids so i get around 700k at least.

Let's see a comparison:

To get started, i simply attack and capture ship until i get a ship that i think qualify, this also earn my money and exp. After i got my ideal ship, i sail to my favorite hunting spot and operate there. Each month i only have to pay around 50k to pay crew wages, repair for ship and warehouse rent, but i have nearly 1 mil income. So i have 1mil - 50k = 950k without further investment. Easy to track your profit and minimum risk from fighting and storm.

Now if i want to trade, i must have money to buy good to sell. This mean i need further investment. And the profit is net income minus investment. Also each month i have to minus the cost for operating the ship. Prices are vary and keep changing so the profit is harder to track, and i don't think players are going to write down the amount of money they invested in so it's hard to say whether the trade is more profitable than raid. You may encounter storm or pirate attack on the way so the risk is quite higher, a full loaded trade ship, too slow to run, not enough gun or crew to fight isn't very safe, especially on higher difficulty.

Trading goods are varied in weight, prices and amount available in different port. But slave are acquired through enslaving the crew so as long as you attack and the enemy surrender, you have a steady supply. Ignore other good beside essential supply (food, medicine and rum are the only supply for my ship) and just take slaves, since 1 slave is 343 (in my game), 100 slaves means 34300 pesos (i got around 100+ slaves on each raid). And i have 5 raids per month. If you want to take other good with you, just remember to take the package and weight of the good into consideration when compare to 1 slave.

Finally this is a pirate action game, not a trading simulation like Port Royal or EIC so it's more enjoyable to raid for money, either to claim trading good or slaves.

 

[Korvius]

Another source is to sail to different ports and "take a break" with the governor. Play dice/cards with him and be sure to save before. He will offer you 500 or 2000 per card/die. I've made 7,000-15,000 by gambling with the gov at each port I go to. If he refuses to play try the other game and keep reloading. Easy way to get to 100K early in the game without any risk, just reload til you win