TRADE · RIMWORLD 1.6

RimWorld Trading: Prices, Ships, and Why Nobody Shows Up

PC 1.6.4871 · Vanilla Core · Odyssey Traders Guild marked separately · Updated September 23, 2026

RimWorld trading is three deals: talk to the visitor with the yellow question mark, walk a caravan to a settlement, or hail an orbital ship from a powered comms console with goods inside a powered orbital trade beacon. Base rates are sell at 60% of market value and buy at 140%. Social skill, difficulty, and the item’s sell-price factor then move both numbers. Cassandra and Phoebe schedule one orbital trader in each 15-day cycle. With Odyssey, those four core ships belong to the Traders Guild.

Why your RimWorld trade is not happening

1. No letter. A ship may already be overhead. An orbital trader still arrives during a solar flare or with the comms console unpowered. The arrival letter only fires if a comms console is on. Restore power and open the console immediately; the ship may still be inside its 16-hour window.
2. The beacon is on and the stockpile is still gray. Only items in a powered beacon’s 7.9-tile circle, in the same open floor, are listed. A door or wall cuts the circle. Prisoners, slaves, and animals can sell from anywhere on the map.
3. They do not have enough silver. An orbital bulk goods ship carries 2,000–4,000 silver. A visiting caravan bulk trader carries 750–1,200. A visitor often has 50–250. Anything past their silver is given away unless you take goods back.
4. You are not an ally, or the temperature is wrong. Calling a caravan needs Ally status (goodwill 75 or more), not Neutral. Extreme seasonal heat or cold greys the request. Hostile factions do not send traders.
5. Odyssey: the Traders Guild is hostile. With Odyssey, the four core orbital kinds belong to the guild. If nobody in the colony can trade with that faction, those ships do not spawn. Royalty Empire ships are a separate list.

How to open the trade window

The visitor with the question mark

Select a colonist who can do Social, right-click the pawn with the yellow ?, and choose Trade. Visitors without that mark are not selling. Purchases drop at the trader’s feet and need hauling. If the map is dangerously hot or cold, the group can leave with the “dangerous temperature” message.

Your caravan at a settlement

Form a caravan, walk to a faction base that is not hostile, and trade there. Settlements restock every 30 days. They carry more silver than a visiting caravan (an outlander base holds 800–3,000) and they add a +2% settlement bonus that sits outside the 39.5% Trade Price Improvement cap. Check “Show what will buy” on the world object for the restock timer.

Comms console and orbital trade beacon

Research microelectronics (needs Electricity; base cost 3,000). Build a comms console (120 steel, 4 components, 200 W, Construction 5) and at least one orbital trade beacon (40 steel, 1 component, 40 W). Both sit under Architect → Misc. The console shorts in rain if unroofed. A pawn who cannot talk, or whose Social skill is fully disabled, cannot run the console.

A ship stays 16 hours (40,000 ticks). Up to five ships can sit overhead at once. The comms menu is tied to that map: a ship announced at one colony cannot be hailed from another.

What silver you actually get

Hover a price in the trade window. The tooltip is the real breakdown. Vanilla 1.6 uses this base:

• You sell at market value × 0.60 × the item’s sell-price factor × (1 − difficulty loss) × (1 + Trade Price Improvement + extras).
• You buy at market value × 1.40 × (1 + difficulty loss) × (1 − Trade Price Improvement − settlement bonus).
• Prices at or above 99.5 silver round to a whole number. A sale never pays more than the buy price of the same item.

Trade Price Improvement

The negotiator’s Social skill adds 1.5% per level from a base of 0. Talking and hearing both scale it (90% weight). A Social 20 pawn with full speech and hearing sits at 30% before other bonuses. The stat then hard-caps at 39.5%.

Inspired Trade adds +18% for up to 8 days, or until one deal closes, and still hits that cap. The colony leader adds +2% inside the same cap. A settlement’s +2% is added after the cap, so a maxed negotiator at a base can go a little past 39.5%.

Difficulty

Strive to Survive and easier presets do not add a trade disadvantage. Blood and Dust applies 10% worse prices both ways. Losing is Fun applies 20%. That is a multiplier on the 60/140 base, not a replacement for it.

Item sell-price factors

Item type	Sell-price factor	What that means at Social 0, Strive to Survive
Most resources, apparel, drugs	1.00	Sell 60% · buy 140% of market value
Sculptures / art buildings	1.10	Sell 66% of market value
Minifiable buildings / furniture	0.70	Sell 42% of market value
Weapons (melee and guns)	0.20	Sell 12% of market value
Techprints (Royalty)	0.10	Sell 6% of market value

Vanilla stock uses a Normal price type when you sell. An “expensive” tag on the buy side is a separate 2× (or worse) on that purchase only. Ideology Drug Use: Essential and Ranching: Central add a small extra on drug or meat/leather/wool sales; those sit outside the 39.5% cap.

Who buys what

Gray rows at the bottom of the trade list are items this trader will not take. A settlement buys almost everything in its tech level. A passing caravan does not.

Kind	Sells / carries	Usually wants from you	Silver
Bulk goods	Steel, wood, cloth, food, furniture, clothing, animals, components	Art, instruments, plus expensive simple goods (insect jelly, packaged meals, gold, components…)	Orbital 2,000–4,000 · caravan 750–1,200
Combat supplier	Guns, armor, shells, medicine, techprints	Art, drugs, hi-tech armor	Same silver bands
Exotic goods / shaman	Bionics, glitterworld medicine, artifacts, plasteel, skill trainers	Art, implants, exotic buildings. They skip raw plants	Same silver bands
Slaver / slave ship	Prisoners, weapons, medicine, drugs	Art, instruments; slavers get rarer as the colony grows	Same silver bands
Visitor	A thin random mix	Art and instruments, plus expensive simple goods	50–250
Faction settlement	Most things at that tech level	Almost everything they can use	800–3,000 · 30-day restock

Hard unsellable: rotten food, tainted apparel, biocoded gear, downed animals, and animals outside their comfortable temperature. Short-life meals (paste, simple, fine, lavish) can be bought from traders but you cannot sell them back. Packaged survival meals and pemmican can sell. Silver, gold, components, insect jelly, and packaged survival meals are the usual “almost everyone takes this” pile. Confirm the row is not gray before you haul a stack across the map.

A healthy slave or prisoner is often worth around a thousand silver before injuries. Selling a prisoner gives every non-psychopath colonist a −3 mood thought for 4 days (stacks to 5). Do not sell someone and try to buy them back as a recruit; the game blocks that.

Calling allies, and the Traders Guild

Goodwill −75 or lower is Hostile. 75 or higher is Ally. Calling help uses Ally, not Neutral.

• Request a trade caravan: Ally, −15 goodwill, 4-day cooldown per faction, arrives in 2 days. Seasonal temperature must sit inside that faction’s arrival range.
• Request an orbital trader (factions that allow it, including Odyssey’s guild and Royalty’s Empire): Ally, −30 goodwill, 15-day cooldown, 1–2 hour delay. Ships already overhead are sent away first.
• A completed sale with a faction that has goodwill awards about 1 goodwill per 600 silver of goods you sold them. Gifts use a different curve: sale price ÷ 40, then a drop-off as you approach 75 goodwill.

With Odyssey, bulk goods, combat supplier, exotic goods, and slave ship orbital traders are Traders Guild ships. The guild lives in orbit, does not send ground caravans, and starts Neutral. If you make them Hostile, those four kinds stop appearing until someone in the colony can trade with them again. Royalty’s imperial orbital trader is separate and needs the matching royal permit.

Randy Random does not use the 7-on / 8-off orbital cycle. He rolls orbital visitors inside a mixed random pool. Do not plan a year of ships from Cassandra’s schedule if you are on Randy.

What is worth selling

Sell surplus food that keeps, drugs, textiles, components you can spare, and art. A good sculpture is one of the few crafted goods the sell-price factor actually likes (1.10). Weapons pay poorly: the 0.20 factor means a 400-market-value rifle sells for 48 silver before Social. Furniture sits at 0.70. Raid loot is better worn or smelted than sold unless you need the silver today.

Trade when you have a Social pawn, a stockpile the next trader actually wants, and a problem silver can solve (components, medicine, a missing animal). Skip the trip when every gun on the map is your profit plan, or when the walk would send your only doctor through a manhunter zone for a visitor with 80 silver.

Calculate a buy and sell price

This matches vanilla 1.6 prices for a Normal-priced item. Hearing, talking, Ideology precept extras, and “expensive” buy tags are not in the sliders. Use the in-game tooltip if those apply.

Sell = MV × 0.60 × sell-factor × (1 − difficulty) × (1 + TPI + settlement)
Buy = MV × 1.40 × (1 + difficulty) × (1 − TPI − settlement)
TPI = min(39.5%, Social × 1.5% + leader 2% + Inspired Trade 18%)

DLC, console, and mods

• Royalty: Empire traders can require a title or permit. Tribute collectors take gold and slaves for honor, not a normal silver deal.
• Ideology: A slaver kind is skipped if that faction’s ideo rejects slavery. Drug and ranching precepts slightly raise some sell prices.
• Biotech: Genepacks inside a gene bank in beacon range can sell. Children scale Social stats with biological age.
• Odyssey: Guild ships, gravship upgrade tags, and orbit-layer maps. Orbital trader incidents can fire on any planet layer.
• Console: Use the same on-screen tooltip. Do not assume this PC 1.6.4871 build or Odyssey is on the console you own.
• Mods: Trading Spot changes where visitors stand. Frequency mods change the schedule above. If a caravan arrives with no trader and no goods, check the mod first.

Common questions

Related colony pages

When ships stay rare · Visitors walking into traps · Which traders carry components · Components without a trader · Buying plasteel · Neutroamine from ships · Luciferium restocks · Pods gift; they do not finish a trade request · The meal most traders take · Food for the settlement trip · Before Microelectronics

PC Core reference build: 1.6.4871 rev595. Odyssey / Royalty trader defs also checked on 1.6.4871 rev590. Further reading: Trade, Orbital trade beacon, Comms console, Trade Price Improvement, Traders guild. Game artwork © Ludeon Studios.