Bartering is a highly profitable profession capable of producing 300mil sustainably per refresh at the highest end of bartering but getting to that point requires both time and money to be invested along the journey. 

Bartering as a profession is best complemented with other life skills to maximise silver per hour during downtimes in bartering resets.

This guide is a coalition of information and recommendations for those looking to hoist the sails and set out in a career for bartering. It will provide you with both the basic information required to understand how to set goals and assist you in making appropriate choices to swiftly upgrade your boat from the average sailboat to a luxurious Carrack.

Starter info:

Before you start bartering there is a very important decision you must decide upon:

• Epheria Frigate (speed) or 

• Epheria Sailboat (weight, recommended)

• Both of which can be crafted in Port Epheria 1-4, 2F or simply purchased from the market.

These two boats will require different crafting materials to upgrade further down the line.

The upgrade path that these two boats take are as follows:

• Epheria Frigate -> Improved Epheria Frigate -> Epheria Galleas -> Epheria Carrack (Volante or Valor)

• Epheria Sailboat -> Improved Epheria Sailboat -> Epheria Caravel -> Epheria Carrack (Advance or Balance)

• Stats for each of these upgrade paths are as follows:
• 

Upon finalising which boat you would like to voyage on and have registered it at Velia or Port Epheria, I would recommend instantly purchasing the materials required to upgrade to the improved version of your boat. This upgrade will allow for easier cannoning which will be required later to kill sea monsters. Alternatively you may choose to run sailies with guildies or members of the sailing discord and skip this step.

The Materials are as follows:

• Epheria Frigate and Epheria Sailboat both require: 

• x250 Standardized timber, 
• x200 Steel, 
• x500 Pine plywood, 
• x100 Flax fabric, 
• x30 Hard pillar, 
• x10 Ultimate weapon reform stone, 
• x1 Epheria: old prow, 
• x1 Epheria: old plating,
• x1 Epheria: old cannon,
• x1 Epheria: old wind sail

Note: Most materials required can be purchased from the market. The ship gear can be purchased from Philaberto Falasi in Port Epheria.

This upgrade can be performed at the wharf manager by clicking on your boat and pressing upgrade. Your boat must be at full health and all gear must have full durability.

I also recommend placing pre-orders on these materials to assist you in reaching T4 boat as soon as possible:

• x5k Zinc ingots (you can melt zinc ore 2x) for Graphite ingot

• x5k Old tree bark and x10k Red tree lump for Timber

• x5k White cedar sap, x10k Acacia sap and x10k Elder tree sap for Adhesive

• Other half of the materials will be obtained by Ravina dailies (covered later on in the upgrade guide)

Now we may start bartering, the bartering menu is available at: 

• Old menu: esc -> barter

• New menu: esc -> life -> barter

You will be required to buy base items from the market and exchange them for level 1 barter items.

Once you buy the materials head over to the wharf manager your boat is stored at and load cargo of the base items onto your boat.

Then simply press the button in the barter menu to initiate a path to the location of your barter. 

Note: some barter locations cannot draw a path as it is in the deep sea.

Once you reach your location, lower your anchor and press barter, you have now traded your base items for a level 1 barter item.

Once you have used up all the parley available to you, you can reset and go again. Item barter resets give you the option to barter for more barter items while ship materials is the exchange option which allows you to exchange for materials required to upgrade your ship. If you're not using the instant refresh feature, you can do 3 regular refresh + 1 material or 2 regular + 2 material with VP, Without a VP it's 2 regular + 1 material at best. 

You now know the absolute basics! Congrats!

Upgrade guide:

You will require level 1 barter items for verdient black stones required to upgrade ship gear for T4 upgrade.

You will require level 2 barter items to exchange for ship upgrade materials you cannot craft such as:

• Island tree plywood (both boats)

• Tide-dyed standardized timber (both boats)

• Cobalt ore (frigate only)

• Moon scale plywood (frigate only)

• Rock salt ingot (sailboat only)

• Deep sea glue (sailboat only)

• Sea weed stalk (sailboat only, can also be obtained from Oquila eye daily in exchange for Coral Piece)

Stockpiling mats and starting Oquila’s eye sailies before caravel is essential to finish your carrack in a timely fashion.

Extra tips:

Ravina dailies - This daily quest line will provide you with half the upgrade materials and x100 verdant stones required to upgrade to a T4 boat and will provide a good amount of sailing xp.

Ocean quest lines - These quest chains will provide you with sailor slot expansions, these expansions will allow you to recruit sailors at various bars across the map eg. velia. Sailors give you extra stats such as speed and acceleration.

The pre-orders which I recommended when you first chose your boat will now be very beneficial and will allow you to quickly craft the final materials required for the upgrade.

Total upgrade materials required are:

• 
• You can expand and read more about materials required at: bdocodex.com/us/shipsupgrade

I highly recommend purchasing your T4 boat green gear and enhancing it before upgrading just so that you have a speedy boat the moment you upgrade.

Once you have obtained a T4 boat the final upgrade will be to Epheria Carrack, this upgrade requires lots of time and dedication to complete the oquilla eye dailies.

Some sailing strategies I employ are as follows:

• “Top down” - this is a profit method which maximises parley but is capped by the materials in your storage. In this method we complete baters in the reverse order, so we go from Yellow -> Blue -> Green ->  White.

• “Regional bartering” - this method is to maximise speed of bartering in a given time period. In this method we take barters by regional location on the map and complete all barters in the vicinity rather than going purely from White to Orange.

Materials required to go to your given Carrack is as follows:

• 
• Once again you can expand and read more about materials required at: bdocodex.com/us/shipsupgrade

If you are navigating in the deep sea, oasis compasses are available for a while which will allow you to see yourself on the map.

Useful discord links:

• Lifeskill discord

• Sailing discord

Congratulations sailor, I hope to see you out at sea. If you have any more questions or want help with anything you can contact me at Wolf#4216 on discord or Woifus family name ingame!

Credits:

• A big thanks to those in the LifeSkill discord who took time out to proofread and double check facts provided in this guide, Namely Zen, Gpw and Dreadspark for all the constructive criticism and suggestions you guys provided along the way.

Just stumbled upon this, always been put off by bartering and most guides were incredibly long and painfully filled with weird information.

This one is really good though and you got me wanting to actively barter sometime soon now.

And this is what puts me completely off from bartering xD

Thanks for your time helping new players getting into this profession.

To new players looking at this guide...I recommend that you don't. You're much better off focusing on season characters and grinding. Ocean content is dead and the OP wasted his and your time by putting this together. Please ignore it for you own good; you have been warned. Bartering is for suckers and it's terrible income by today's standards. The inflation of the BDO economy alone has phased bartering out. Do not waste your time reading this.