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[Oddible]

New player here, my first Trade Caravan arrived.  I've watched quite a few LPs and have read a bunch of guides but I could use some tips for dealing with the trade caravan.  Specifically I'm curious about the following:

- What should I be making early in the game to trade? I quickly rustled up some rock statues, traded some wine, gold nuggets (probably a really bad idea) for my first caravan.  I imagine that different caravans will have different needs but are there some good stock items I should have on hand for when caravans show up?

- What do you find that you usually buy from the first couple caravans? What do new fortresses usually need? (I really liked the idea of getting some animal breeding up and running so I bought a male and a female animal to breed - only after I purchased them did I read on the wiki that you can't use a Cavy for anything but a pet lol, tribbles anyone?  I bought another pick, some rope, some cloth, and a chicken. Oh and some meat.)

- How long do caravans usually stay? Do I get notifications before they leave?

[VerdantSF]

As a beginner, stone crafts are simple and also help get rid of excess stone.  Anything works, though, really.  Once I got more comfortable with infrastructure, I started concentrating on lavish meals for trade.  In my current fort, I've also traded war grizzlies.  Cages of 4-6 would bring several thousand dorf bucks.

What I buy from the first caravan depends on what I need.  My current fort has no native iron ore, so my transactions have always been weighted toward ore and iron items for melting.  Caravans stay for a few months.  You get a notification before they leave.

[Laurin]

Everything depends on your specific embark conditions to a degree.
I usually make tons of stone crafts early on, because I do quite a lot of exploratory mining.

Later on I throw in some spare prepared food (lavish meals). Depending on the level of your cook and the ingredients, meals can get ridiculous expensive.

I buy everything I lack and need, some ropes, cages, any bags, some food, all logs, some armor and weapons for a start and any thread, cloth, and leather I can get, to make more bags and clothing. The food goes to the kitchen and is turned into lavish meals to be sold to the next caravan.

The caravans may stay roughly for a few months, depending on how many goods they have; you will get a message when they are about to leave. It's ususally time enough to start some quick trading even then.

[Hetairos]

I've seen many people produce rock mechanisms early on, due to their large value multiplier - 10 times that of the stone boulder they are made out of, and that's without any quality modifiers: a boulder is worth 3☼, a standard quality mechanism 30☼, and a masterwork one 360☼. You could also try to make some stone crafts or mugs (3 out of a single boulder), if there is plenty of loose stone lying around. Selling gold nuggets, or any metal ore, is in general a bad idea. Better process it yourself into something valuable. Or maybe avoid using gold altogether early on, since it will increase the fortress wealth quickly, and that attracts enemies. Metal mechanisms are also a possibility, though I'm not sure how profitable.

You can sell anything to any caravan, except that elves will refuse trade if you offer them anything made of wood or with wooden decorations, and the dwarven liaison will give you a list of items the next caravan will "pay" more for. Cavies are useless - all you can get from them is a skull that can be used to make a totem, and they multiply quickly. I had to quell a cavysplosion once. As for the needs of an early fortress... I don't really know. Anything you have a shortage of and you won't start producing soon? Food? Seeds? Animals? Or maybe weapons and armour?

From what I've observed, they will trade for about a month. There is a "The merchants from X will be leaving soon" notification about a week before the end of this period. They may stay on the depot for longer than that, to pack up things, but not trade.

[Snaake]

Using the nuggets for stone crafts would've been good, yea, although ofc not as good as metal crafts after smelting them into bars (you'd have to enable gold in the stock(z) - stone screen first). Just stone crafts (no need to make big, heavy statues) are ok too, you get loads of stones just digging out your fort initially. I tend to do a a lot of bone/hoof/horn crafts + totems (from skulls) for quite a while, and after that there's usually already some worn clothes to buy stuff with. Prepared lavish meals are a really easy export good too.

I should add that I usually buy quite little, preferring to make my own mats etc if it's at all possible. I have a tiny bit of OCD about trying to get rid of all (items) whenever I can. Usual items I DO buy are wood and ores (iron, cassiterite, maybe bismuthinite - copper is quite common to find by mining, what with 3 possible ores) if they're not plentiful on the embark, flux if I don't have it, seeds (especially for underground plants that I didn't bring or somehow don't have any left), animals I want (especially giant and/or predatory ones from the elves). Food and booze if necessary, of course. Leather, which I might phase out now that I did the raw mods to make animals give more than 1 skin (although I'll be balancing it a bit by making tanning use 3 skin for 1 leather: 14 leather off a camel is too much - 4 would be ok). If I've been slow at getting fiber farming started, I'll often buy a bit of cloth and thread for medical emergencies + bags.

#1 buy is an anvil though, if I forgot that

I usually only worry about specifically making expensive stuff for export if I intend to buy metal scrap (toys etc) in bulk to melt down.

[Button]

The highest ROI items are wooden or glass trap components. Enormous corkscrews, spiked balls, that sort of thing. But I usually go for mechanisms, because my playstyle uses a lot of them, so I want my mechanic creating exceptional and masterwork mechanisms ASAP. (Trap accuracy.)

[Urist McDwarfFortress]

Gold nuggets isn't a terrible thing to trade. Gold anything has a pretty nice base value of 30. So, gold ore (being a stone, which has a value multiplier of 3) is worth 90☼. Not bad at all for something you'll just have lying around from digging out your base!

For a noobie, early in the game, (assuming you're not on a volcano) the best thing to trade is probably rock crafts. You'll have tons of rocks lying around, and you can pump out mountains of crafts, since you get 3 per boulder. You can also encrust them with gems if you want to boost the value even more.

(If you are on a volcano, just make a few gold crafts right away! A few boxes of gold crafts can easily buy everything you want from a caravan. But make sure not to overdo it; extra wealth brings extra Fun!)

[itg]

I'll echo Button in suggesting wooden spiked balls. You can even buy logs off the caravan for 3☼ each, carve them up, then sell them back for hundreds of dwarfbucks profit per unit.

As for what I buy, I always buy all the wood they bring since it's really cheap and it saves my woodcutters a lot of time, and I always buy gypsum plaster for casts. Early on, I buy a lot of leather since it's also ridiculously cheap and it gives me something to use for bags, quivers, and maybe some early-game armor. A bit later, I tend to buy anvils to melt down, especially if I don't have iron on my map, and gems, because after the first couple years I tend to have so much crap to sell I might as well pick up some luxury items.

[chris_strain]

I'll echo the advice for any trap component, especially wooden ones for the first caravan. I usually snag any metal ores/meltable items I can afford. I usually put in orders for large amount of of leather and cloth the first caravan or two simple because I take a few years to get around to getting a self-sustaining clothing industry going. Once I have my glass industry going, green glass trap parts easily buy out caravans.

[TheDarkStar]

Since it reduces the number of items I have to select, I usually use any silver or iron I find to make serrated <material> discs and spiked balls. I also make sure to bring a good weaponsmith with me. Silver/iron trap components go for up to 15120, and steel ones go for up to three times that much.

[WanderingKid]

My early forts have a bit of a different experience than the others above, but that may have more to do with my construction style.  I don't typically do exploratory digs early, limiting my digs to exactly what I need.  Even with a pair of level 10 miners they're usually still digging out living spaces and the like when the first caravan arrives, so I have some different approaches... mostly because that stone is usually converting to blocks for the walls.

I almost always embark with a hunter and cats.  These two items tend to bring in a LOT of bone/skulls.  My usual primary early trading goods are bonecrafts.  Depending on the terrain, either my woodcutter is bored (not enough trees) and is fishing, my farmer is bored due to lack of dirt, or my mason is bored while I try to drill into an aquifer.  Whoever is bored becomes my bonecarver, and he gets to work with a vengeance.

The only time that really didn't work was when I forgot to bring some cats.

As to what I get, it varies.  I'll almost always buy out whatever animals the caravan brings, and usually butcher anything that requires grazing.  I'll buy out almost all their leather/cloth, just to make bags and replacement clothing from until I get some migrants to convert into weavers/clothmakers/leathersmiths.  Also quivers/backpacks/waterflasks for the early marksdwarf squad I try to create.

I constantly buy out all seeds from the caravans as well.  It saves me from trouble later.  I usually embark with splints/crutches, but a few extra never hurt.  Thread too.   Then I start digging into what I need.  I rarely get to find coal, so I usually order bituminous coal and lignite from the caravans.  Cloth too, until I've got a serious farming industry going.  I'll buy up some early and cheap metal bars and glass blocks to handle moods before I've got those industries going.  Spare picks and another anvil just in case, too.  After that, it depends on what I need.

Unlike some others, I concentrate on turtling first, then getting my military up, so I don't usually buy armors.  The caravan is more of a dump for me, using them as a seasonal chance to clean out the trash.  Overstocked prepared foods, worn clothing, craft goods, whatever.  All of it goes.  The more profit the trader makes, the bigger the caravan can get and the more chances for stuff you get when they come back.

[Bludulukus]

A few copper serrated discs and you can buy the entire caravan

[Urist Da Vinci]

Make a bunch of green glass vials. When the elven/human caravans arrive, first buy any valley herbs (value 50 for 5) that they have. Convert the valley herbs into golden salve[25] and sell back to caravans for value 2500! You can run an entire fort on this exploit.

[Dangerous Beans]

Make a bunch of green glass vials. When the elven/human caravans arrive, first buy any valley herbs (value 50 for 5) that they have. Convert the valley herbs into golden salve[25] and sell back to caravans for value 2500! You can run an entire fort on this exploit.

surely importing raw materials and exporting finished goods isn't an exploit. is it any worse than importing 1xmagnetite, 4xmarble, 10xwood for 78 and selling 4x☼steel battle axe☼ for 4,896?
now using the steel to make menacing spikes, and melting down the spikes to get more steel is an exploit (also a good way to keep your peasants busy). i agree that item values in relation to the effort to make them are probably a bit messed up.

[edgefigaro]

Or you can be lazy like me and just deconstruct depot under the first wagon.

I usually embark with a cook, and get farming going asap, so I usually do the food thing if I want to actually trade.

Finally, bear in mind that the caravan isn't always about what is most valuable to trade. Anything caravan after my second year is my garbage trucks coming to take my trash away.