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[rolk112]

Booze, food, metal, seeds, animals, and anything else I feel like buying/think is interesting   

[Repseki]

Basically the same as everyone else.

Food, booze, some cloth, and a few other minor things to start.
Metals/stones I don't have or want, coke rocks, wood (even when I have thick trees half the time)

After a few years I don't usually need much, besides maybe a specific pet.

My current fort has been buying a lot of plants for booze, but that's more because my farmers seem completely unable to grow anything efficiently enough to have a stable supply. Likely due to me not bothering to actually investigate why.

[Couchmonster]

Everything and burn the what I dont need.

[mirrizin]

Depends on which stage of development I'm in. Early on, it's food, seeds, coal, wood, leather, plaster, and flux. Later on, it's thread, cloth, leather, seeds, and coal.

Really, it's whatever I'm short on based on the limitations of my site. Seeds, thread, and leather are probably the most universal items. Cloth feels like a luxury, but at a certain point in the game money isn't really a limiting factor anymore.

[Tirion]

Wood, any ore, clay and sand bags if I don't have those in local soil, raw green, clear and crystal glass for moods, any leather they have, any non-plant cloth they have, all their metal stuff for melting or use, wooden cages, all animals for breeding or butchery, all booze for variety, all plants for booze variety, all food hoping that some dwarf's favourite will be among it... about the only thing I don't buy is wooden crafts and armor, and oversized clothing.

[flameaway]

I only worry about the first couple of caravan as far as getting something from them.  Then I'm generally going for basic resources.
Later, I want the caravans to come along so that I can get rid all the crap that collects around the fort.  At that point I'm often actually trying to bring my total wealth down by buying a log for 50,000 urists or something.

[escondida]

Early on, I'll buy booze (as much for the barrel as for the booze), leather, wood, meat, thread, any seeds I'm lacking, things like glass for moods, and of course replacements for anything lost due to unforseen circumstances (anvil stolen by keas, picks lost to accidents, etc.).

I generally request a few things from the dwarves: a low-priority request for leather is enough to bury the fortress in leather for the next year; important stones that seem to be missing from the site (generally bituminous coal and lignite); and metals I don't have access to so that I can fancify the fortress even further. I'll also try and round out my farm animal collection (I generally embark with a breeding pair of pigs and some geese (low clutch size, but they reach their full size quickly (with some help from dfhack to fix the growth bug, of course) and they get big) or turkeys (even though they actually reach full growth the year after they reach adulthood)). Sheep and alpacæ are great for yarn & cheese, without needing big pastures, and goats give decent amounts of meat (and milk), again without requiring large pastures. Sand and clay are also useful, if you can't get it locally. Meltable items always come in handy, and I don't mind the exorbitant prices of finished/decorated goods later in the game when there's always a surplus of trade goods anyway.

Elves are great for getting exotic animals...when they feel like bringing them. I'm still proud of the venemous snake pit I made once by my vampire's prison for an evil mastermind feel. Also, I like to get as much above-ground farming as I can started early: can't have too much sunshine!

Humans help you get rid of stuff. And you can sometimes request coal or lignite from them!

I almost never buy cloth or dyed thread from the caravans, because it's always low-quality. I know that good clothes don't really give dwarves better thoughts than lousy clothes, but I'd like to think they'd want only the best anyway.

[mirrizin]

I usually buy raw materials instead of finished products. Seeds instead of plants, and certainly instead of booze. Thread instead of clothes, etc. until I get to the point in the game where "trading" is a joke because my need to get rid of trinkets is greater than my need to acquire stuff.

[Snaake]

I really hate (items), i.e. stuff that's brought in from outside, so generally don't buy much, and even then pretty much only raw materials that I don't have locally available. I aim to be very self-sufficient, and quite realistically for a pseudo-medieveal setting, only trade for stuff I can't produce myself. Leather isn't listed because I've done the "skin as glob" raw edit which gives you multiple pieces of leather from larger animals (and balanced it out with tanning needing 3 bits of skin for 1 "leather", so eg. water buffaloes give 4 leather for me, pigs 2, eg. cats or poultry should still be only 1).

- Might buy food/booze, or at least brewable plants, from the first caravans, if I've been slow with farming. If I end up doing the edit to lengthen growing times, this will be important/necessary for longer. The "settling in" phase.
- Seeds if I don't have the plant yet, or have used up all seeds of a type by accident (at least for underground crops).
- Initially some sand/clay for moods if the map doesn't have them
- Wood if the biome really necessitates it for beds (although I should probably just make a habit of hitting caverns quickly in such cases), or I'm using a lot of charcoal (ditto regarding caverns for wood, or even better, dig deeper for magma)
- Important ores (copper, tin, iron) or flux if it's not available locally. Other ores like gold, platinum only if I want to have it available for moods or something.
- Possibly kobold bulbs and valley herbs for refining.
- Animals, both exotic and domestic, if it's something I want.
- gypsum and/or gypsum plaster powder, until I have enough of a stockpile.

[TheDarkStar]

Early on, I buy everything except cheese (I don't need THAT much food). Later, I buy things like cloth and clothes (because I am lazy). I also buy armor, weapons, and metal crafts.

If I feel like it, I sell and then buy back coins to split stacks into stacks of 1.

[smjjames]

@escondida, don't you need to enable the guild representative or something to request specific stuff?

As for me, nothing really lately. Right now, I just grab whatever animals the elves bring, buy any gypsum plaster from the dwarves caravan, nothing really from the human caravan and I do buy booze from all of them sometimes to supplement what my fort does produce.

I'm kind of drowning in worn clothing and goblin junk right now :p I do need to reset my clothes industry so that I can properly have new clothes go into one stockpile and worn clothes/goblin junk go in another.

I pretty much sell bone/hoof/horn crafts and totems along with worn clothing and goblin junk.  I also sell whatever gets dropped by caravans that got wagons dismantled due to ambush or siege.

[Rokh]

I'm always in constant need of wood and cloth, no matter where I embarked or how I'm doing. In this regard, elven caravans are not that loathesome. Also, I buy every single metal bar, weapon and armor I'm offered (in the case of dwarven and human caravans). The thing is, when I finally establish my metal industry, I'm not in need of anything anymore...

[Drazinononda]

Wood, metal bars, small gems. Cloth and dye, if I need them. Steel equipment and instruments, iron ore and flux if either of the steel ingredients are absent from my embark.