Move trading from walkthrough to tutorial

tutorials/trading.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,245 @@
+.. _tutorial-trading:
+
+##########################
+Trading for Fun and Profit
+##########################
+
+This will be a bit shorter, but we’re going to cover some important
+information, none-the-less. So stay tuned for more dwarfy goodness!
+
+Blankets, beads, muskets and cat skull totems!
+==============================================
+Trading is very important for your fortress. Every few months you’re
+likely to get a trade caravan and envoy arrive at your fortress looking
+to trade with you. They offer a wide range of goods and one of the most
+common things we trade back to them is crafts made from the
+craftsdwarf’s workshop. And the easiest crafts to trade are rock ones.
+Rock mugs and instruments are popular as well, so get a bunch made of
+all of the above when you’ve got the time.
+
+But for the traders to visit properly they need a trade depot. This is
+a big structure which requires a 3-wide corridor for the trader wagons
+to access. Often people build them close to the fortress entrance, but
+there’s no reason you couldn’t build a trade depot deep inside your
+fortress to keep it nice and safe.
+
+For now, we’re going to enlarge the space we have upstairs with a
+little digging and get this depot set up. Here’s what I’ve set to be
+dug out:
+
+.. image:: images/dftutorial50.png
+   :align: center
+
+Once the space is dug out, hit “b” and then “D” for “Trade Depot”,
+note, that’s a capital-d, not the usual lower case “d”. Place it near
+the back. Here’s mine:
+
+.. image:: images/dftutorial51.png
+   :align: center
+
+Now that we have the depot up we can expect to see traders turn up to
+unload their goods here now and then. To trade with them you :kbd:`q` over
+the building and follow the options: :kbd:`g` to move goods to the trade
+depot, and :kbd:`r` to request your boss dwarf to go do the trading. Once he
+turns up you hit :kbd:`t` and then enter the trade screens. Note again, do
+not trade anything wooden to the elves, including wooden barrels and
+bins! They will get pissy, leave, and attack you some years later!
+Trading is beyond the scope of this current tutorial as there’s quite a
+lot to it, but you can read a lot more about it on the Dwarf Fortress
+Wiki. I suggest you make an effort to trade as trading encourages new
+immigrants to come to your fortress and provides you with items you
+can’t make or find yourself. Speaking of which…
+
+Trading for fun and profit
+==========================
+At some point you’re going to get some traders turn up and with your
+depot up, they’ll soon make themselves at home in your depot. They’ll
+unload all their goods and stand around waiting for something to
+happen. This is how it will look when traders have arrived and unloaded:
+
+.. image:: images/dftutorial61.png
+   :align: center
+
+Look at them, filling our trade depot with their mess! Lets get trading
+so they’ll bugger off and we can make the place all tidy again. Yes, I
+like things tidy in my fortress, it helps my fortress run like a
+well-oiled machine! So how do we gouge the visitors, I mean, trade with
+our friends?
+
+Essentially, trading is a five step process:
+
+#. Set goods to be moved to the trade depot for us to trade with.
+#. Call the trader dwarf to the depot.
+#. Engage in trade.
+#. Deal with the trade liaison and his questions.
+#. Wave goodbye to the traders and enjoy your loot!
+
+So lets get through these stages! First up, move goods. Go “q” over the
+trade depot, and with traders in there, the options will be quite
+different to what you see when it’s empty. What we’re looking for is
+hitting “g” for “Move goods to/from the depot”. Do it and you’ll get
+this screen:
+
+.. image:: images/dftutorial62.png
+   :align: center
+
+This is a list of everything in our fortress. On the left we have item
+categories. In the middle, we’ve got the items themselves, and on the
+right, the distance from the trade depot. Looking at the distance
+measure you now know why some people prefer to put the depot all the
+way inside – remembering the 3-wide corridor or ramp all the way to the
+depot, of course.
+
+Don’t worry about all of this detail for now, just scroll down to
+“Crafts” using the down arrow key. Once you’re there, this is what
+you’ll see:
+
+.. image:: images/dftutorial63.png
+   :align: center
+
+What do you see? All of the crafts we’ve been making listed on the
+right! You’ll also notice weird symbols to the left and right of each
+named item, these are the quality symbols. Don’t worry about what they
+mean as the only one worth remembering is the “masterwork” quality
+symbol, which looks like a pile of metal bars. Later on you may want to
+manage the quality of goods your dwarfs use, especially weapons, so
+knowing that the pile of bars = much good item, is worth remembering.
+
+Now we want to move these goods to the trade depot so we can trade them
+away. I mean really, how many “Limestone earrings” do we really need?
+So, hit the “right arrow” to move to the item list (rather than the
+category list) and then hit enter. On the right you’ll see “Pending”
+next to the item we’ve selected. Scroll down and set most of the items
+to “Pending”.
+
+At the bottom of the list you’ll see some “Finished Goods” bins. This
+is good! Moving a single bin full of stuff is much better than moving
+dozens of items one by one! How do I know there’s heaps of stuff in
+those bins? Because I am your god of course! Or perhaps I hit “v” with
+a bin highlighted…
+
+.. image:: images/dftutorial64.png
+   :align: center
+
+You don’t need to select those individual items to move, selecting the
+bin in the menu above will move the bin and everything it contains.
+
+Right! One we “space” back out we need to hit “F9” to get back to the
+game, confirming our move orders. From here the trade depot is still
+selected so lets take the chance to hit “r” which cycles the trader
+status. It now says “Trader requested at depot”, which is what we’re
+aiming for. The trader should now consider heading up to talk to the
+traders.
+
+With the game resumed goods are tagged to be moved and pretty soon
+dwarfs will start hauling goods to your trade depot. The hauling of
+trade goods seems to be set at quite a high priority, so it shouldn’t
+take long for them all to be offloaded. Of course, it would be much
+quicker if I had more bins, that way a dwarf isn’t wasted carrying a
+single earring, and we’ll have lots of wasted time with this hauling!
+More bins are on my “to do” list.
+
+After a minute, hit “q” again and move over the trade depot, you’ll see
+the status of the depot. If “t: Trade” is grey, then the trader hasn’t
+got there yet. Below the menu field it tells me my trader is “On
+break”.. oh no, I lie, now he’s asleep! Hurry up dood, I’ve got crap to
+offload to the visitors!
+
+While you’re waiting, why not go and set a bunch of barrels and bins
+and booze to be made. You can never, ever have too much of any of that
+stuff!
+
+Oh, look! Trader dood finally bothered to turn up to trade! See, it
+says “Trade at Depot” for his current job, and the “Trade” option is
+white and therefore, usable.
+
+.. image:: images/dftutorial65.png
+   :align: center
+
+Now hit “t” and we’ll be taken to the trade screen, which looks like
+this:
+
+.. image:: images/dftutorial66.png
+   :align: center
+
+On the left, we have what the traders are offering. On the right, we
+have our stuff. At this point you can start selecting stuff to trade
+away. Left and right arrows move between the panels and up and down
+through the list. Remember, don’t trade bins or wooden items to elves!
+Not sure if they’re elves? Look at the top of the screen and you’ll see
+who you’re trading with, in my case I’m trading with traders from
+“Riseilime”. If I “space” back out of the trading to the main menu and
+hit “c” I will see a list of  in this world civilisations. I see that
+Riseilime is an elf civilisation. I can hit “enter” and learn more
+about it and then “Tab” through more info. Interesting.
+
+In case you’re wondering you can actually read all of the history of
+each of those civilisations in :wiki:`legends` mode. There’s some crazy
+stuff that the game auto-generates and the detail is remarkable (like
+stories about dwarf children, kidnapped by goblins, who go native and
+in adulthood lead goblin raiding parties against dwarf cities!). But
+don’t worry about that for now, lets get back to trading.
+
+Go through your list of items, and being careful not to select the
+wooden bins, hit enter on all those crafts.
+
+.. image:: images/dftutorial67.png
+   :align: center
+
+As you can see, I’ve got lots of stuff up for trade (marked with a
+“T”). On the left bottom there it tells me how much my junk is worth,
+4980! That’s a lot of loot I can get off the elves! On the right,
+allowed weight is 14. This number starts much higher and drops as you
+add goods and represents the amount of weight the traders can take away
+with them.
+
+So now we’ve set a huge pile of junk for us to sell, lets pick a bunch
+of junk off the elves! I suggest buying food, booze, animals in cages,
+weapons (but not the very best ones) like steel crossbows, chainmail
+(steel and iron), shields, etc. But don’t stress, buy what amuses you!
+Oh, definitely buy a few cloth or leather bags (what seeds get stored
+in) and some rope (for setting up animals as guards). Type of rope or
+bags doesn’t really matter. So much shopping to do!
+
+One important point! Your dwarfs can’t wear anything “Narrow” or
+“Large”, so don’t buy it.
+
+Once you’ve chosen all that’s useful you should have a look at the
+bottom left, “Trader Profit”. If it’s more than a token tip you will
+want to un-select some of your own trade goods. No point in giving away
+lots of junk for free!
+
+When you’re happy with your trading, hit “t”, the trade will either go
+through, or you’ll get a counter offer. “Enter” lets you consider the
+counter offer, which you can adjust down more in your favour. Hit “t”
+again and hopefully the trade completes. Keep working at it until it
+pans out. Until your trader is experienced your “tip” could be quite
+large.
+
+If the trade completes you will see the message “[name] seems pleased
+with the trading”. Job done! Hit “space” to go back to the local map
+and let the game resume. You don’t need to do anything else now, dwarfs
+will come and haul your spoils and the traders will leave happy with
+their trinkets. Even better, they will take news of your awesome
+limestone mugs, earrings and bracelets back to the world and that will
+attract even more immigrants. Super!
+
+The next likely thing to happen is that the trade liaison will want to
+talk to you about what goods you want. Feel free to suggest to the
+trader items you’d like (using the arrow keys to scroll and upgrade the
+“Want” of an item). Note, the more you want the item, the higher the
+price they will charge when they bring it, so mild suggestions for
+preferred items are probably better than setting the “want” meter all
+the way over to the right.
+
+The trader will also tell you what they’re interested in getting in
+trade goods. The higher the priority the more they will pay for the
+good. I largely ignore this as, frankly, if you churn out a ton of good
+crafts, and trade regularly, you should have plenty of junk to trade
+for most things you want, let alone junk from dead invading goblins
+etc. If/when you do get those screens, read the screen prompts
+carefully, and experiment! It can’t hurt!
+
+That’s all for now folks. Next time we’ll cover managing your dwarfs,
+which is an interesting challenge of immense potential depth. But don’t
+worry it’s not that hard, really!