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[nimbus25]

For me elves are usually the most useful trading partner honestly. The animals are awesome (I got a breeding pair of giant tigers once, and my current fort got a unicorn from them), and by like year 3-4 most forts I run have enough raw materials that buying supplies isn't super useful. They also bring a whole bunch of various fruits & plants to make diverse kinds of booze which helps a lot too

[Sarmatian123]

What every fortress need is not buying metal items from merchants for smelting (usually you can get magma and adamantine on every single embark in like around 2nd year, even if you dig through aquifer), but selling the never ending dwarf fortress's master quality products. Non-master quality items can end under bridge safely. Here even Elves (trade goods never are master quality) can take some of the master quality garbage out, which helps combating dropping constantly fps. So personally, I've never seen much reason for wars with Elves happily consuming dwarven roasts.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

I usually buy some fruits and animals. Somtimes I buy clothes, before my textile industry is up and running.
I don't know if the musical instruments are useful, they sometimes bring some really expensive ones.

[PatrikLundell]

Instruments are hit and miss. DF music is tied to specific instruments, and instruments are tied to civilizations, but it seems the tunes known by dorfs (and bards) aren't tied to their civs, so it's not uncommon for the dorfs to only know music they can't make the instruments for, in which case imports might work, if you're very lucky.

[Starver]

I have occasionally bought every musical instrument and every musical component, as a matter of course, from every source that brings them. Not that this is actually useful, but I think my grand plan was more to fully catalogue the current procedural set to that world than to hope for terpsichorean completeness.

[PatrikLundell]

Musical instrument parts are completely useless practically as dorfs don't have the knowledge to assemble instruments other than the ones belonging to their own culture. However, role playing/completionism, ... are valid reasons to collect them, of course.