I know what some URW veterans might think: "You should hunt or trap animals on a more regular basis, and then it will be easier to trade for more expensive items. Especially if you also tan skins and hides into useful fur or leather items."
Of course, I know this, and I use this approach as well. However, none of my characters to date were huge hunters or trappers, even with all the traps I've prepared and the animals I've hunted and caught. It also needs to be said that many of my characters have the bad luck of rarely getting adequate hunting weapons at the start, aside from tools like hunting knives. It might sound embarassing, but most of my successful ranged hunting to date involved throwing rocks and javelins. I almost never have enough rope or tying material to make myself a bow, nevermind even home-made arrows. Often, rope or any tying material is hard to come by in trade, and if I need any cord, I'm not going to destroy the few good clothes my character owns, for little return. For example, my current character only has a shirt, trousers, and footwear. I only recently made him a decent fur cap from the smaller animals I caught, and stored it at the cellar of his homestead, since winter is still far away.
Therefore, since I still need most of the leather-related resources for my character (at least earlier into the game, while I am still building up my supplies of warm clothes for the winter, and so on), I usually can't spare leather to make rope or cord, and I also can't sell my leather and fur products for profit. This is where my character's (and characters') woodworking skills come in handy.
Unfortunately, even if I craft entire piles of decent to excellent quality wooden bowls and put them aside (I tend to use the rougher quality ones for myself and burn the bad ones that I made while my skills were lower), I know it takes quite a while until I have enough of them to buy anything from locals. Having an extra amount of freshly caught and prepared fish helps as well. But some items, such as better hunting weapons, or just plentiful enough supply of tying materials, always seem completely off-limits to me. The character I'm currently playing found a very nice crossbow at the village he lives next to (even sharing the field with the locals, since he's partly a farmer) and I'd like to "save up" to eventually buy it for his needs. Aside from me being fond of crossbows in real life, they have decent stats as ranged hunting weapon, even if they are expensive and rare. Since I doubt I'll find another crossbow in an eastern culture village anytime soon, I'm hatching this scheme of manufacturing as many goods as I can (relatively on the cheap, but with good quality) and then trying to barter with locals until they accept my payment.
Is this a bit of a silly approach, or is it a good enough way to buy some basic tools and weapons in the early days, before the player character is comfortably supplied for all of the year's seasons ?
I know boards, stakes, paw-boards, bowls and fish only garner a certain amount of interest. Every villager seems to be more interested in taking all of my meagre but invaluable tools and clothes in "fair exchange" for the cheapest of items they offer. But is it possible to use large quantities of simple goods to barter adequately for pricier items ?
Topic: Buying expensive items by selling boards, paw-boards, stakes and wooden bowls ? (Read 11183 times)