by Mashadar » Tue May 26, 2020 6:38 pm
If you have entire barrels of tar, cave slime, milk, wine, vinegar, most people will gladly buy that from you.
Nearly everything creepy and crawly has a bit of value, like grubs, centipedes, fireflies, stag beetles, etc. ant soldiers and ant queens. People need them for bug collections or specific recipes.
Mushrooms also have some value, but mainly morels and giant puffballs.
Villages that don't have entire arrays of garden pots yet might be happy about blueberries, chives, stalagooms, cavebulbs, bloodstern or even yarrow.
Some meat types are in demand, like bear, hedgehog, adder, even chicken. Seals if you want to mess with them. Some fish types like eel and perch or just random piles of fish.
Once you have farm animals, wool, raw mutton and suckling's maws can be potential trading goods (other than milk).
Silk is probably the most effective way to acquire some useful trading goods, since you can really produce a lot of it per day if you focus on it. It's just that hauling leaves and silkworms is a pain in the ass. But that is precisely why there is demand for it.
So honestly, trading is currently in a good spot. There's a lot of things that you can get without being super advanced.
As for safe trading practices... well, basically try to use barter stand for trade for things that aren't tamed animals and don't come in barrels. Besides the bigger markets, some villages also have barter stands and there are smaller private markets around the map. When you trade with your neighbours, make only smaller trades at first. If they seem to be good people, you can make bigger trades later.