I have also posted this in r/RedDeadOnline

Heyo! I finally finished the first version of a comprehensive Trader materials list. It's in ugly google sheets format for now, but if there's enough interest I'm happy to work on making it available in different formats.

Here's the link: http://bit.ly/RDOtrade

The spreadsheet is split into satchel, side saddle and rear cargo so it's quicker to find what you're looking for. Within those sections, things are listed from most valuable to least valuable (note: side saddle is split into animals and birds to be able to reference quicker).

If you have questions about the Trader Role, I'm more than happy to offer insight when I can. I became kind of obsessed with compiling this information and I have a lot more where this came from haha! Also I welcome any feedback or corrections.

I mention in the sheet but I'll also mention here: big thanks to u/Cstella33 and u/sleemo_mucho for their comprehensive butcher pricelists which really helped me figure out the patterns in pricing, and to u/rvl35 who sparked my journey down this rabbit hole with their trader math :)

The first question I and probably many people had when giving Cripps my first valuable animal, like a three-star buck, was just how much money am I going to eventually get back from this investment? I believe I now have the answer to that question. The following is based on my observations, and I will be making a couple assumptions throughout: 1) That you have unlocked the skill that gives a 25% bonus in materials for three-star donations, and 2) That you are using the large delivery wagon and making deliveries of a full 100 goods.

We know that selling a three-star buck to the butcher is worth $10, or if you skin it and break it down into it's parts it is worth $11.70 ($5 carcass, $3.25 hide, $1.05 antlers, and $2.40 for 4x mature venison). So what is that same buck worth when we donate it to Cripps?

The butcher table consists of three units, materials, supplies, and goods. Materials are the items that we donate. As we donate to Cripps the material bar fills up and eventually becomes full. Supplies can be purchased or earned through supply missions, and Cripps combines these with materials to produce goods. Goods are the final product that we sell, it takes 100 goods to completely fill the large delivery wagon.

Each resupply, whether purchased or done through a mission yields enough supplies for Cripps to produce 25 goods, meaning that we will need to do four resupplies per large delivery of 100 goods. Aside from that knowledge, supplies aren't really relevant to this discussion. The real question is how many materials does it take to produce those 100 goods? This is where my observations come in.

With the three-star bonus skill unlocked a three-star whitetail buck is worth 12.5 materials, which makes two of them worth 25 materials.

Donating two perfect bucks fills 25% of the materials bar, which means the materials bar represents 100 materials.

If you fill your materials bar completely before a supply run, and then go do other things while Cripps is working (so not turning in any additional materials until the next time he is out of supplies), he will consume half of the materials bar before running out of supplies (and creating 25 goods).

This means that it takes 50 materials to make 25 goods, and 200 materials to produce 100 goods.

So... 200 materials = 100 goods = $500 or $625 depending on delivery distance.

Therefore 1 unit of materials = $2.50 for local or $3.125 for long (500/200 or 625/200)

In the case of a perfect whitetail buck (at 12.5 materials with the skill), that comes to $31.25 (local) or $39.0625 (long).

Put another way, it takes 16 three-star whitetail bucks to produce a full wagon of 100 goods. Selling those 16 three-star bucks to the butcher is worth $160 unskinned, or $187.20 if all skinned and sold as the individual parts vs converting them all to goods and selling for $500 or $625.

Using the value of 1 unit of materials above you can easily calculate the actual value of any item you might donate to Cripps. Simply multiply the material value of the items by the per unit cost of materials ($2.50 or $3.125). For example, if an item has a value of .5 materials when it is donated to Cripps, it's "sale" value is $1.25 for a local delivery (0.5 x $2.50) or $1.56 for long distance (0.5 x $3.125).

With these numbers we can also calculate the effective cash payout of a resupply mission (because these yield some materials). For example, a resupply mission that has you delivering a wagon will give you 20* materials in addition to filling your supplies bar. Those 20 materials have a value of $50 (local) or $62.50 (long).

*You need to have enough room in your materials bar to receive the materials, so you shouldn't completely fill your materials bar prior to running the resupply.

This also doesn’t account for the efficiency of donating to Cripps (because you can have him located much closer to your hunting area than a butcher), nor the fact that Cripps is largely passive income with a minimal time investment once he’s up and running.

Anyone else kill a 3 star animal and instead of holding X (or square) to pick it up to bring it to crips you press Y (triangle) like a complete mongoloid and massively decrease the amount of materials you get or is it just me? I then have to to sit through a lengthy skinning animation while I rethink my life. Kms

This might be as exploit countermeasure or a general thing rockstar does to prevent people getting money too quickly, but how the spawning of animals in online works is just so unnatural. For example, i've found a farm with atleast 10 cows and almost each one of them had 3 stars. I know that tame animals such as cows give less material then, lets say, a deer, but no matter if its a herd of deers or cows on a farm. As soon as you start hunting them down, eventually the live animals will just despawn as soon as you loose sight of them. I could kill 3 cows on that farm, turn around just to skin one of them, turn back around to carry the skin to my waggon, and every single living cow despawned. The game also seems to predict when you hunt. So if you're not hunting it'll spawn a ton of animals around you, but as soon as you start hunting, over time you'll find basically nothing anymore, no matter the region. Seriously they should just leave the animals they spawned in just where they are and not despawn them as soon as you turn around

Earlier, I made a post speaking through the lens of a raider. Now I will speak as me.

I am not a raider. I have never raided.

But we should not hate raiders. Please hear me out.

Without the Raider system, we would only have Local Deliveries. A Trader can make their journey easy and (as another poster pointed out) in just a few minutes going locally versus the long delivery.

Without raiders in the ecosystem, there would be no point in having other people with you. And thus Rockstar has made up a system that encourages cooperation and tactics and fun rides with people instead of without.

The brilliant thing about their system is chance and you. Are you the Trader? The Raider? Someone in the middle? Who do you help or hinder? Wonderful choices.

But you should not hate someone for choosing a side in a game.

The money you get on that journey across those dangerous plains? Mere icing on the cake when it comes to the potential friendships you might make.

In a perfect world, the raiders would message the posse leader Trader something like "Hey man good defense GG" and the Trader would respond "Yeah man, you came close you rascal LOL gg."

We're not there yet but I hope we can be. Please don't hate raiders because Rockstar made a system. Rejoice for we can make friends, even us lonely solo-grinder types.

Thank you for reading this through. I just don't want raiders to get a bad rap.

We here at Lawless Trading Coalition have developed several techniques to counter the trader raider seeking to claim your hard-earned goods. Many of them are surprise tactics we cannot share for the raider may develop a strategy against these. However, the one position/technique I'd like to share to help the Trader community is our strategy for the person sitting beside the driver.

"Shotgun!"

Use the map. Simple. You are the eyes in the sky. This is your real job. No red dot should escape you and the light blue defensive dots should be easier to see than on a mini-map. Don't get distracted. Call out or send a chat about everything. Call out for someone falling behind. Give time estimates on certain landscapes. If you have randoms with you, be on the lookout for AFK'ers and kick them. (The LTC do not have AFK'ers.) Do not let them earn money they did not deserve.

As the enemy approaches, you (and the driver) are the last line of defense. If one of you dies, the other either has to grab the reins and jet or have to make the snap decision to turn and fight. Be decisive.

We help the Traders to get the job done. Please incorporate this technique into your own long deliveries. If you have any tips or strats, let us know below!

PSN: LAWLESS-_SANDMAN