Gold coins, bounties and merchants: what to buy and what to sell in the early stage

Guide scope

Businessmen understand short-term gaps

Newbies often treat traders as dispensable, only to find themselves stuck when they need arrows, organs, food, or some small material. Merchants in small settlements and routes allow you to buy time with gold coins: if you are short of arrows, you do not have to stop and chop wood to make arrows, and if you are short of elemental organs, you do not have to immediately brush a specific Pal. This will allow for a smoother pace of exploration and crafting.

But merchants aren't the whole answer to alternative gathering. If you are short of the same material for a long time, you should go back to the base production line or the capture/drop source; merchants are suitable for filling the gap of "I can almost finish it now".

The source of gold coins in the early stage should not just rely on selling materials.

Gold can come from chests, drops, bounties, quests, and specific Pal outputs. Player discussions often mention early sources of quality of life such as Mau dropping gold coins and Vixy providing Spheres and arrows in the ranch. What these approaches have in common is that they allow gold coins and supplies to enter the circulation, instead of clearing out warehouse materials every time there is a shortage of money.

Before selling something, ask what it will be used for. Leather, organs, ores, ancient materials, blueprints, and certain drops may be used later; if you sell them just because your backpack is full, you may have to go back and buy them again soon. What is really suitable for selling are items that are clearly redundant, easy to obtain, and have no use in the short term.

What to buy depends on your card points

If you are stuck on capturing, give priority to ball materials, arrows and supplies that can support the battle; if you are stuck on equipment production, check which organs or materials are missing; if you are stuck on night and temperature, check if the merchant has equipment or consumables that can immediately solve the environmental pressure. Don't buy everything just because the merchant has the goods. The gold coins should point to the current card point.

Someone in the highly interactive forum on Reddit directly suggested buying arrows instead of making them yourself. The core is not the arrows themselves, but giving low-price, low-threshold, repetitive consumables to merchants, so that you can spend your time on more valuable captures, opening points, and base upgrades.

Bounties and human enemies assess risk first

Early bounties and human enemies may bring gold, materials, and ancient technology related benefits, but they are not free cash machines. Level, terrain, wanted risk and team status all depend on it. If you just lack a little arrow money, it may not be worth fighting a potentially fatal battle.

A better approach is to first include small settlements and safe merchants in the route, and then challenge early bounties after the equipment and Pal team are formed. This way the coin economy will grow naturally rather than relying on high-risk gambling.

Divide purchases into emergencies, expediting and stocking up

Urgent purchases are for items that are in short supply right now. Buying them can solve the problem immediately, such as missing a few arrows, missing a certain organ for equipment, or lacking food to survive a long journey. Speed ​​​​up buying is something you can do yourself, but you can save a lot of time by buying low-price items, such as commonly used consumables. Stocking up on goods means you want to buy a lot when you see what the merchant has in stock. This is the most dangerous thing for beginners because you don’t know yet which items will actually be used.

When gold coins are limited in the early stage, priority should be given to emergency relief and speed improvement, and less stockpiling. After each purchase, observe whether it really saves you from being stuck; if it just piles up in the box after purchasing, it means that this type of material should not be purchased in large quantities for the time being.

The same goes for selling. Emergency sales are acceptable, such as buying key supplies with just a few gold coins; daily clearance should be conservative, especially materials, blueprints, ancient materials and organs that you don't understand the use of. Merchants are logistics tools, not trash cans that let you exchange all unknown resources for gold coins.

final line of judgment

The value of a small settlement is not only for merchants, but also because it can become a route node. You can use the settlement as a stopping point for supplies, buying and selling, confirming nearby fast travel points, and planning the next phase of exploration. This is coupled with the independent fast travel point article: the easier it is for merchants to return visits, the more gold coins can be converted into stable supplies, instead of just thinking of buying things when passing by occasionally.

supplementary boundaries

The gold coin question is also connected to death recovery: if you want to run back to a distant place after death, it will be much easier to recover if you have some gold coins on you and spare arrows or food at your base. Don't use all your gold coins as short-term consumables; keep some of them as emergency funds so that an accident will not interrupt equipment, food, and transportation.

Version 1.0 coins and merchants

Version 1.0 increased coins from chests to roughly 2–4 times the previous amount and rebalanced item and Pal prices; more types of visiting merchants can also appear at bases. Old fixed-price and single-route tables are no longer permanent answers.

Common mistakes

• When the backpack is full, scarce materials are sold randomly, and later production gets stuck.
• If the same material is lacking for a long time, it can only be supplied by merchants without establishing sources.
• Fight high-risk bounties or campsites for a few gold coins.

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