How to maximize nanban profit using the Red Sea

Spookles · November 2018

Max Nanban profit using the Red Sea

Written by boo.

Red is the route to EA

Orange is the route back

Stuff you need to prepare

Ships & Characters

3 characters that can enter EA.

1 Lead ship ship with a big cargo hold >900 that has the NTP skill

G1 = NTP Inherit, G3 = WR bonus

The NTP skill incase you were curious what it is

and a clermont on aide 1500 cargo (+25%)

2 alts both using clermonts (+20% so 12 WR or higher to be able to storm sail) and 2 aides with clermonts 1500 cargo (+25%)

This should make it able to get 6000-8000 wares per run!

Note if you trade with only your main character you can only trade as much as your main character carry. As example: My BTC + Clermont has a max of 2404 wares while my alts have 2900 cargo. I can only trade 2404 wares at once. Which means I lose about 992 wares since I can't trade with my alts.

Gear you should have

Since the Red Sea route uses fragrance you'll need a high fragrance trade. It is super usefull if you can leech a high rank from a friend to quickly grind it with POs. But there are good booster equipments too:

Besides these boosters it is very usefull to have a robe ex, however it isn't necessary.

Robe EX significantly increases the amount of wares you can purchase.

Now onto the trading

My trading route starts directly in Suez where you purchase your first perfume, from there you go to Massawa, then to Saylac, onwards to Aden, and next is Socotra, and we finish in Goa. Ofcourse some of these ports require disguise to enter, so make sure you have some disguise clothes on you.

After reaching Goa all your characters should have roughly around 1k perfume on them already (considering you got a good fragrance trading rank). If not you can top off with PO4s there. (There's an easy quest in Venice to farm PO4s btw look for these quests and switch between this and this quest.)

Now you're all full, so it's time to move on to EA. You can trade fragrances in every country and get good rates, that's why fragrance is so good. I prefer South China and get Gumo Ink which I can sell in the balkans, and move directly to the Red Sea again and start over.

When trading in EA make sure you got a Nanban EX

There are various variations of the Nanban EX, in my case I have the bow.

Also make sure your NTP skill is active.
Before you trade, talk with the merchant and put in all your fragrances and see what he gives for your wares. Take all the wares you put in and divide them by 3. Example: 2404/3=801. If the returned wares are near 801 I activate an NPC

An NPC triples your return rate. Aka my 801 wares are now 2404 again. These can be bought on the UWC store or from players (1 NPC = 5m atm) and very worth to purchase obviously, one ticket is worth 2404 wares which is roughly 132m (we'll get into the selling part in a bit).

If you only trade with 1 character you'll have to sail that character out of port till the port fades away, turn around and get back into the port and you should be able to do another trade.

Time to head back to Europe
Where you sell completely depends on which wares you brought back

It's very important to check where your wares sell best, for that look at Ivyro where your wares sell the best (the cash values at Ivyro are not correct, but it gives a good indication which sell very good and which you should not bring back).

It's also smart to look where your nation has control, in those ports you won't have to deal with taxes which result in more $$$. You can see which port your nation controls by looking at the charts and hovering your mouse over a port. It will tell you.

In my case I'm going to use Gumo Inks as example.

Now you're in Athens with your Gumo Inks, check what the current rates are at. If they're below 100% look at nearby ports in the balkan (which are: Athens, Candia, Salonika, Famagusta) if another port has 100% or higher go there. When you get to a port that has good rates see what the merchant has to say to you, if he says he's loaded with a specific type of wares you cannot crash the market anymore (which is good!) this means you can sell all your wares directly and keep the high %.

This is also known as a 'protected market' you can also crash a market for yourself with a different type of ware than that you are trading to the market.

Remember when I said I have 992 wasted cargo space since I can't trade those in my situation? I sell all those 992 at once and hopefully 'crash' my market with fragrances. This means I can now sell my Gumo Inks (sundries) with a 'protected market'.

To sell for a high value you need a high accounts rank and a high sociability rank. You can haggle up to 20% additional cash. (Can go up to 25% with the millionaire title) with a high accounts rank your haggles will be more powerfull, and with sociability there's less chance of a haggle failing. It's good practice to get both these skills to R4 and top it off with the following gear:

This seal gives +5 accounts for a short time, and can be bought from various ports in EU with the proper age title active, check Ivyro for more information.

With this gear equipped you can get +20% with just 2 haggles. Which mean you could get >60k per ware. And with our 7212 wares that is 7212*60000=433m!!!

Ofcourse if all ports are below 100% you can do 2 things.

1. Put all the wares in an aide bazaar and do another run and hope for better rates once you come back with even more wares.

2. Put all the wares in an aide bazaar in a popular port like Seville and sell your wares that way (more profitable but no trade experience).

I hope this learned new players/nanbanners how to effectively do it. Ofcourse there are many more good routes.

If this all went way over your head you might want to start with spice trading, it's a good place to start so you can get a good FS ship like a BTC or to get your alts/aides up to level so they can use clermonts.

Thanks for reading,

~boo

ps I'm sorry for any grammar mistakes or formatting errors, can't properly preview the post and edit it afterwards.

Spookles · November 2018

Oops! I just read that I posted the ruby earrings twice. I meant these 3 equips to boost fragrance trading:

I forgot the diadem!

My bad :o

carlalex · November 2018

Ty for the effort.

I do have a few comments though.

1. You seem to ignore backstocks - they matter A LOT.

2. Dont be a "one trick horse" - there are plenty of goods you can bring for good barters and if all bring the same the backstocks will suck. (I once traded salpetre for sake in Sakai at a brilliant rate because all the whine (h intentional) traders had driven the alcohol backstock super high). The best you can likely do is to bring something they like and that others dont bring - diversify !.

3. You dont really NEED all those NTP and nanban EX boosts to get good deals - Sure they help, but they are not essential. I usually get more goods than I bring and I dont have any such boosts (yet).

4. There are boosts from the American railroad - you can get them permanently by investing in railroads and during the great Thanksgiving festival you get maxed bonuses (all of them) for free - thats +50% on nanban trades (and +100% to train load cap) for everybody.