Trading and barter.

Marks and worth

A Wayfarer mark is the measure of value. Every item has a worth in marks. A material's worth depends on how rare and useful it is: its trade value per unit. A tool or suit part is worth its head, handle and binder, adjusted by its workmanship and by wear. A worn tool is worth less. Cooked dishes are worth two and a half times their raw value. Common blocks such as logs, stone and sand are cheap, because the Wayfarers have plenty of them. Wayfarer marks are worth their face to any trader.

Who sells

Seller	Where	What they keep
Trader	The village stall	Glass, bricks, wool, leather, clay, a wood, sandstone, cooked meat, bread, resin, charcoal, water, a gem. A grown village adds more lots.
Smith	The smithy	Copper, bronze and iron tools and ingots, coal, sometimes steel. A grown village always has a steel tool.
Farmer	Each field	Seeds of several crops, eggs, bone meal, a dish, sometimes glowcap spores and fruit saplings.
Cook	The cook's house, once it is built	Three dishes, bread, cooked meat, eggs, sometimes glowcap spores.
Outfitter	The outfitter's door, once built	Copper cooling suits, iron pressure suits, leather dive tanks, leather, wool and fibre.

The elder and the villagers do not trade. They give work instead.

What they want

Each village is keen on two kinds of goods, and it pays half again for them. Wooded villages have plenty of wood and sandy ones plenty of stone, and they pay less for those. Trade specialities add a little more:

• The smith pays 40% more for metal, and tools count as metal.
• The farmer pays 30% more for food, seeds and fibre.
• The cook pays 30% more for food and crops.
• The outfitter pays 30% more for hides and fibre.

Buying and selling

Traders buy from you at 70% of an item's worth to a stranger, and sell to you at 130%. The better your standing, the better the price, and the gap closes at the top:

Standing	Traders buy at	Traders sell at
Stranger	70% of worth	130%
Honoured (75 and up)	about 90%	about 100%

Each lot in a trader's stock has one to three portions left for the day. The stock is the same for everyone who visits on the same day and is drawn again each morning.

How to trade

1. Right click a trader to talk, then right click again to open the trade screen. The screen shows their goods at your prices beside your bag.
2. Click a lot to take it. Click a stack in your bag to offer enough of it to cover the price, or the whole stack to sell it.
3. A balance bar shows whether the deal is fair, short or over.
4. Press Trade to close the deal.

Credit

If you pay over the price, the difference is kept as credit with that trader, up to 200 marks. It is applied the next time you deal with them, so you do not lose the extra.

Standing

Every deal of ten marks or more raises your standing with the village by one to three points. Small deals count for nothing, so trading one flint at a time will not improve anything. Standing falls when you hurt a villager (-8), and killing one costs much more (-30). At -40 (Shunned) the trader will not deal with you at all, and the villagers back away.

The wandering merchant

Out in the open, away from villages, by daylight, a wandering merchant with a big pack may walk up to you. He sets his pack down a few metres from you, stays for about seven minutes and sells rarer things: a steel tool, glowcap spores, ember glands, a rarer gem, a dish, leather, and sometimes tungsten or an abyssal pearl. He always has the same name and the same stock in a world, and he keeps your credit. His standing is kept apart from every village's.

Tips

• Bring what the village wants. A trader who wants your metal pays much more for it.
• Let a trader keep the credit. It will cover your next purchase.
• Worn tools are worth less, so sell them while they are still in good shape.
• Compare two villages. The one that is keen on your goods pays best.

See also Stalls and the market for trading with other players, and Reputation for what standing gets you.

← Back to the wiki · Last updated 25 October 2026. Mantlenaut is in alpha, so things change.