How to Play Tradewind

Tradewind is a nautical trade-route strategy game set on a hand-drawn island atlas. You start in Portmere with 50 gold sovereigns, a cargo hold with room for 10 units, and 12 wind tokens to spend on sailing. The goal is to profit from price differences between the six island ports by buying goods low and selling them high before returning home to bank your earnings.

Each voyage begins in the market panel at your current port. You will see four goods — Timber, Spice, Cloth and Metals — each with a buy price unique to that port. The map rings every port connected to your current one — amber if you can afford the lane, red if you cannot — and hovering brightens the ring you are over. Each lane carries a small label with its base wind cost; Rigging discounts come off when you actually sail, not off that label. Sail to a port where the goods you carry sell for more than you paid, trade, then plan your next hop. Wind tokens do not replenish mid-voyage, so every route decision is a trade-off between profit and getting home again.

The voyage ends when you arrive in Portmere with four or fewer wind tokens left, or whenever you click End Voyage at home port. Your score is the gold you are holding at that moment, so unsold cargo is worth nothing — sell the hold down before you bank. Each new voyage seeds a fresh price table, so no two runs are identical, but the underlying price matrix is fixed: a port that is structurally cheap for Timber is cheap on every run, and learning that matrix is the skill the game rewards.

Prices swing roughly thirty per cent either side of each port's base value, which is enough to turn a marginal trade good or bad but never enough to reverse a large structural gap. A route worth ten gold a unit on paper will always be worth trading; a two-gold edge is the one you should check the market panel for before committing your hold to it.

The Six Ports and What They Trade

The atlas is a sparse network, not a full mesh — only nine sea lanes connect the six ports, so the cheapest source of a good is often not adjacent to its best buyer. Knowing which port is the natural producer of each cargo is what turns a wandering voyage into a circuit.

• Portmere (home). Cheap Timber and Metals, dear Spice. Connects to Kelp Bay and Marrow Cove for 2 wind each, and to Ironshoal for 4. Every voyage starts and ends here.
• Kelp Bay. The cheapest Timber and Cloth on the map, and by far the most expensive Spice — carry Spice in, never out.
• Ironshoal. The cheapest Metals and the best Timber buyer. It is the busiest junction on the atlas, with lanes to four other ports.
• Dustwick. The cheapest Spice and the best Cloth buyer, tucked away with no direct lane home.
• Marrow Cove. The best Metals buyer on the map and, behind Kelp Bay, the second-best for Spice — and only two wind from Portmere, which makes it the ideal last stop before you bank.
• Sunhaven. Cheap Spice and dear Cloth, but like Dustwick it has no lane home, which makes it the easiest place on the map to strand yourself.

Route and Cargo Strategy

Because the network is sparse you often cannot go straight from your cheapest source to your best buyer. The strongest opening is not a there-and-back trade at all but a full loop: Portmere to Kelp Bay, on to Ironshoal, down to Dustwick, across to Marrow Cove and home. That circuit costs exactly 12 wind — your entire starting allowance — and every leg has a trade waiting on it. Carry Metals out of Portmere to sell at Kelp Bay, load Timber and Cloth there, dump the Timber on Ironshoal at roughly triple what you paid, pick up Ironshoal's cheap Metals for Dustwick, swap them for Dustwick's cheap Spice, and sell that Spice into Marrow Cove at around three times cost before the short hop home.

Running the loop leaves you no margin for a mistake, which is exactly what the Rigging upgrades are for. Lateen Rig takes a wind token off every leg and turns the same circuit into a seven-token trip, leaving room for a detour to Sunhaven; Storm Rigging simply hands you three extra tokens at the start of each voyage. Note that no route can ever be discounted below a single wind token, so stacking Canvas Sails on top of Lateen Rig on a 2-wind lane is wasted gold.

• Learn the staple runs. Three of them are a single three-wind lane: Timber from Kelp Bay to Ironshoal, which averages about three and a half times your money; Spice from Dustwick to Marrow Cove, about three times; and Cloth from Kelp Bay to Sunhaven, about double. Two more pay just as well but need a hop in between, because the atlas has no lane for them — Kelp Bay's cheap Cloth reaches its best buyer at Dustwick only through Ironshoal, and Ironshoal's cheap Metals reach Marrow Cove through Dustwick. All five turn a profit on every voyage, whichever way the prices roll.
• Fill the hold. An empty cargo slot earns nothing. If you have spare gold and spare space, take any good you expect to sell up, even for a thin margin, rather than sailing with the hold half empty.
• Check wind before you spend gold. Sinking your last coins into cargo is pointless if you cannot afford the lane to the port that buys it. Reachable destinations are ringed on the map — read them first, buy second.
• Never end a hop at Sunhaven or Dustwick on fumes. Neither has a lane home. If you get becalmed there, a passing trader will tow you back to Portmere, but the fee is a fifth of everything in your purse.
• Sell before you bank. Score counts gold, not cargo. If you are one hop from home with a full hold, it is usually worth selling at a mediocre price rather than carrying goods across the finish line for nothing.

Upgrades Between Voyages

Banking a voyage opens the Between Voyages screen, where your gold carries forward and can be spent across three upgrade branches. Each branch unlocks in order, so the cheap node is always the gateway to the expensive one, and everything you buy is permanent for the rest of the run.

• Hull raises cargo capacity from 10 up to 30 units. It is the most reliable first purchase, because every other advantage in the game scales with how much you can carry.
• Charts buys information. Tide Tables mark whether each price has risen or fallen since your last voyage, Merchant Guild prints the previous price beside the current one, and Master Cartographer opens a panel showing what a chosen good is fetching at all six ports at once — enough to plan a whole circuit before you cast off.
• Rigging buys range. Canvas Sails shaves a token off the short 2-wind lanes, Lateen Rig off every lane, and Storm Rigging adds three tokens to the start of every voyage.

Choosing End Run instead of Next Voyage wipes your upgrades and your purse and starts a clean run from 50 gold, so treat it as a deliberate reset rather than a way back to the map.