What to know
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Visit Tortuga’s market square and talk to faction Provisioners after reaching Reputation Level 2
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Buy three merchant contracts for 100 Piastre each: Food, Natural Resources, and Animal Products
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Build merchant stalls in your base under a roof within bonfire range from the Crafting & Utilities menu
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Place orders for 1, 2, 5, or 10 boxes of resources and wait 70 real-world minutes for delivery
Gathering resources manually in Windrose quickly becomes tedious, especially when building a new base or crafting endgame gear. Instead of traveling across multiple biomes to collect materials by hand, you can set up shopkeepers directly at your base. These merchants let you buy unlimited supplies using silver coins, with orders arriving in about an hour. This method works best in the late game when you have a surplus of Piastre from boarding enemy ships and completing quests.
Merchants for Unlimited Supplies details
Tortuga Location
Tortuga serves as the main trading hub and final major settlement in Windrose. It sits southwest of most starting bases and becomes accessible through the main quest “How My Sea Adventure Began.” The procedurally generated map means Tortuga’s exact position changes each playthrough, so use the quest waypoint to find it reliably.
Pirate patrols guard the route, so repair your ship before heading there. The market square houses all faction Provisioners with a fast travel campfire nearby for easy returns.
How to unlock merchant contracts
Step 1: Travel to Tortuga
Sail or fast travel to Tortuga using the main quest marker. Once you arrive, dock at the pier and walk toward the market square in the town center. You’ll see multiple faction banners and NPCs standing near vendor stalls.
Step 2: Check your faction reputation
Interact with any Provisioner NPC. You start at Level 1 reputation with every faction. If you haven’t reached Level 2 yet, you’ll need to earn more reputation first.
Complete side quests like the Buccaneers’ temporary island chain, turn in faction-specific Insignias and Letters of Favor at bounty agents, or loot pirate camps for insignia drops. Avoid using Insignias on the wrong faction since reputation gains are permanent and faction-locked.
Step 3: Purchase the three contracts
Once at Reputation Level 2, browse the Provisioner’s inventory.
The People of Tortuga Provisioner sells two contracts: Merchant Contract: Food and Merchant Contract: Natural Resources, both for 100 Piastre each.
The Rogue Buccaneers Provisioner sells Merchant Contract: Animal Products.
Also for 100 Piastre.
Stock up on all three if you have surplus silver from ship boarding.
Step 4: Return to your base
Head back to your settlement. Open the build menu by pressing B, navigate to the Crafting & Utilities section at the bottom, and select your purchased merchant contracts.
Place all three merchant stalls in your base, positioning them like a little settlement.
Make sure they’re built under a roof and within range of a bonfire.
Step 5: Unlock full merchant inventory
Clear regional threats in each zone to expand what merchants sell. Defeat Thomas Richards in the Coastal Jungle and Hands in the Foothills. This unlocks advanced resources like hardwood, sulfur, rare animal products, and all seed types. Defeating the High Priestess in Cursed Swamp currently does not add new materials.
What each merchant sells
Natural Resources merchant
This shop handles building and crafting essentials. You can buy clay, plant fiber, stone, wood, tree bark, hardwood, and sulfur. The table below shows what unlocks at each stage:
Food merchant
This vendor sells crops and seeds for farming. You get access to coconuts, sweet potatoes, cayenne peppers, limes, aloe leaves, corn, tomatoes, and flax fiber. Seeds let you set up infinite farming at your base:
Animal Products merchant
This shop provides meat, hides, and creature drops used for tanning leather, crafting weapons, and upgrading ship gear.
How to place orders with merchants
Interact with any constructed merchant to open the trading menu.
Select “Place an Order” and choose to buy 1x, 2x, 5x, or 10x boxes of resources. Each box contains a fixed quantity depending on the item, as shown in the tables above.
After confirming your order, a 70-minute real-time timer starts. You cannot place another order from that merchant while an order is active. When the timer expires, collect the goods directly from the merchant’s inventory.
Ordering costs up to 500 Piastre for large batches, so you need a steady silver income. Boarding enemy ships, selling loot, and completing faction quests generate enough Piastre for regular bulk purchases.
Best resources to buy for maximum value
Not all merchant items give equal value for your Piastre. Some resources save far more time than others:
Rough hide becomes essential once you reach the tanning rack for leather crafting, and it’s time-consuming to farm manually. Flax seeds let you build an infinite flax fiber farm at your base. Sulfur disappears from most zones after the Cursed Swamp, making merchant purchases critical for gunpowder. Hardwood requirements skyrocket in the mid-to-late game, so buying hundreds at once saves hours of gathering.
Maximize your infinite resource setup
Pair your merchants with hired crew NPCs for efficiency bonuses. Buy seeds from the food merchant and farm endlessly at your base. Use crew bonuses like Jasper’s resource recovery or Rosalinda’s crafting speed. Silver from boarding enemy ships sustains your orders indefinitely. Your base becomes a self-sufficient settlement that fuels progression, decoration, and crafting without leaving home. This setup shines in the late game when you accumulate silver surpluses and want to focus on ship upgrades, armor crafting, or exploring rather than grinding materials manually.
