This guide will help you to understand how the trading, crafting, and province growth systems in Windward Horizon work. All three of these systems are interconnected, and it would be nearly impossible to explain any one of them without referencing the others. Hopefully by the end of the guide you'll have a solid understanding of how to make plenty of money trading in the game, as well as keep your provinces growing steadily.

The changes to trading from the original Windward game have quite a few people a bit frustrated and confused. In the original windward game, you simply bought any goods from a town that they were producing, and cart that item directly over to a different town that specifically needed it. Trading done! The towns also grew based on a set number of tasks being completed. Either selling a desired trade item to a town, or completing a quest for the town.

In Windward Horizon, towns have a growth progress bar, and trading is broken up into 6 categories (actually 7, but I'll cover that 7th one last, as it functions as a kind of "catch-all" for anything that doesn't fit into the first 6). Food, drink, and clothing govern town growth, and masonry, lumber, and metal govern industry growth. Towns will always either need or produce each of the 6 categories.

Provinces are the general civilization "groupings" in Windward Horizon.
Almost everything within a province is shared, and for the most part the individual towns don't have any features that distinguish themselves from the other towns in the same province.
For example, all of the towns within a province have the same pool of goods to trade, and accept goods into the same pool of goods. They also ALL provide the same access to any workshops of the province. So with that established, it isn't town growth that you work towards in Windward Horizon, but PROVINCE growth.

To check and track a province's growth status and needs, sail into any town in the province and open up the town screen. The top tab on the left of the window that comes up (and also the default tab that the window opens to) has the information for the province size and needs.
There is also a handy "quick-reference" bar at the top to show what the town has, and what it needs:

Those first 3 icons at the top are Food, Drink, and Clothing. Those determine whether or not the province will grow on its own as the days pass in Windward Horizon. As you can see in the above image, my province has enough clothing, but needs more food and drink. The province consumes 3 food, 3 drink, and 2 clothing per Windward Horizon day (about 6 minutes). If I bring the province some more food and drink, it will continue growing (you could get the same information by hovering your mouse over the word "Growth" at the top of that screen).

The next 3 icons are Lumber, Metal, and Masonry. Those determine how well the various workshops in the province produce on a day to day basis, and their progression to more advanced, more efficient workshops (you can see the Stonecutter in the province is at apprentice level, and the farm is novice level. Higher levels produce more per day and have access to better quality goods and recipes). Workshops need any of those 3 resources that they don't already produce. So a farm will need all three, but a stonecutter will only need Lumber and Metal, since it produces masonry. That stonecutter also produces enough masonry that it will tend to cover the other workshop masonry needs. Odds are pretty good that the masonry icon at the top of this province will always be green since it continually produces masonry.

Provinces will "reserve" up to 5 days of each of their needs. If they use 3 food per day, they will keep 15 food on hand. It will show up in their market screen, but not be available for you to buy. If you stock up MORE than 5 days of a given need to a town, any excess will be listed for sale in that province (albeit at a high price, since the province doesn't produce it themselves), and so it is possible for another player or an NPC trader to go and buy it up and ship it to a different province. If left alone, those excess items will be used by the town, so overstocking a town can be useful, but is not foolproof.

If you were an avid player of the original Windward, or even a player brand new to Windward Horizon and just saw the market screen and made some assumptions, you probably saw this:

and assumed that you should buy up this province's Granite and Hematite and go looking for a place to sell them. The problem is that no one WANTS granite or hematite. No province is going to accept them, unless they have a stonecutter (granite) or a smith workshop (hematite) AND don't already produce those. In a young world, before you establish a bunch of new provinces or have provinces grow and get new industries, your options for unloading those particular commodities will be slim, or possibly even nonexistent.

Instead, use what you learned in the above section about town growth. You want to bring commodities to provinces that fall under one of the 6 categories from earlier: food, drink, clothing, lumber, metal, masonry. This province has a stonecutter, so it produces plenty of masonry, and masonry will be in demand at EVERY province that doesn't already produce masonry itself.

Thanks to the farm in this province, it also produces Flax and Wheat. While neither of those satisfy one of the 6 needs, a province with a cookhouse can use the wheat to make bread. A province with a brewery can use the wheat plus some hops to make ale. A province with a clothier's workshop can use the flax to make linen, and then that to make linen shirts. IF a province exists that has those workshops, and that province doesn't already produce flax or wheat, that could also be a valuable commodity to transport and trade (check first, or you'll have a cargo hold full of useless goods that no one wants). That 7th category of commodities, the game refers to as "goods." Goods are basically what the other 6 categories of commodities are before they're refined into food, drink, clothing, lumber, masonry, and metal. They include raw plants, animals, logs, minerals, and more. Transporting goods is riskier than transporting the 6 needed categories (although crafting can fix that, more on that in the next section). In general, unless you're trying to get a specific type of resource produced (like the high value steel, which needs coal and iron), and need to get two different ingredients to one specific workshop, you should aim to always be selling food (not raw), drink, clothing (not cloth), lumber (not logs), metal (refined), and masonry.

Provinces have a stat called "Prosperity." This stat is visible on the very first screen when entering a town, near the top. Prosperity can range from -100% to 100%. Prosperity can be raised by buying items from the marketplace (goods, food, drink...not ship equipment), by fulfilling the needs of a province (food, clothing, metal, etc.), and by completing quests for a province. Prosperity is lowered by not meeting needs, and by selling marketplace items to the province. Prosperity will affect the price at which you buy AND sell marketplace items. Low prosperity makes items cheap to buy, but also makes them worth less to sell. High prosperity does the opposite.

Important tidbits:
- Food, Drink, Clothing, Lumber, Metal, and Masonry will generally always be in demand in any province that does not already produce that particular item type.
- The farther you transport goods on the world map, the bigger the profit. To the extent of even getting more than double what you'd get dropping it off next door.
- The higher a province's "Prosperity" stat is, the more that goods will sell AND cost.

Crafting is how those raw goods in the game become what the provinces need. Some workshops, like the cookhouse, brewery, smith workshop, clothier, and lumber mill will steadily produce the province needs from raw goods (or in some cases, from nothing at all. A brewery will still produce some water, even without access to any other brewing materials). They produce these things over time, churning out a set amount per day.

You don't have to wait for workshops to create the items you want. You can craft anything a workshop can craft, and you can craft it instantly - provided you have the raw goods required to make the item. To do so, you must be in a town, in a province that can produce the item you want. Open your inventory while in town and click the bottom tab on the left of your inventory. This tab opens up the crafting menu.
Once you have the crafting menu open, you can select the workshop you want to use (this is the same province from the above examples. In this case, the stonecutter is selected), and select the recipe you want to use to craft. Not every recipe is available at every workshop. You can't make steel at a novice smith's workshop, for example. Provided I have 4 granite in my inventory, and 4 free spaces, I can hit the "Combine" button at the bottom of the window and turn those 4 granite into 4 artisan masonry. I can do so instantly, and as many times as I have resources for, with no delay.

With this tool, you're free to grab goods from provinces that produce them, which is particularly useful for workshops like the farm and fishery, which produce almost nothing but goods, and somewhat useful for some other workshops like the ranch and stonecutter, which produce a surplus of various useful goods. So long as you have a province on your map with a workshop of the appropriate type and level, and you can get all the goods needed for a recipe, you can use crafting to create the end product with it. When you look at the world map, you can see which workshops a given province has on the top of a province, and which natural resources a province has underneath the province. Farnaval here has a clothier's workshop and a cookhouse, and the location it is in has access to cows, so a ranch would be a useful workshop here.

Note that all qualities of a particular category satisfy town needs are not the same. Low quality is the baseline for the units the game is looking for. If a town needs 2 units of clothing, 2 burlap hats (baseline quality) will give those two points, or one linen shirt (quality level 1, light green) will give the two points. The higher qualities generally cost more to make or have more complicated recipes, but they sell for more and are worth more "points" of a town's needs. You'll make more selling artisan masonry crafted from granite than you will selling basic masonry crafted from limestone, but the province workshops you sell it don't care what quality their needs are being met with, you'll just need MORE of a lower quality item to get the same effect.

Sometimes, an established province will give you a quest to found a new province. This is a great opportunity for you to exercise some more direct control over the world, and has a number of perks not available in the provinces that exist on world creation (or in provinces founded by a different player). A "Settle a New Province" quest can only be offered from an existing province that is size 5 or higher, and has a "Prosperity" of 25% or higher (visible right on the first screen when looking at town information). There is also a range limit, from the issuing province, on how far away you can found a new province. When you first found a new province, it will have the "Under Construction" status and you won't be able to make any decisions or do anything there for until the province has been grown to at least level 1 via supplying them with "Town supplies". Town supplies can be earned from quests, bought (for a 1000% markup) from provinces in the world, or bought (without a markup) from the towns in "Team domination" or "Team survival" map instances (only after the instance has been completed).
As the province founder, you have the ability to use the "excavate" ability in the province, which can remove land, allowing for easier travel around the province. More importantly, all provinces get to establish a workshop at province level 1, 4, 8, 12, etc. If you show up to a province that YOU founded when it hits one of those levels, you get to choose which workshop is created there. If the dialogue doesn't appear on its own, you can click this button in the town to bring it up:


If you missed the opportunity to select a workshop (say the province levelled up to 5 without you noticing, or it was an online world and you were offline when it happened), then the computer will pick the workshop for you (likely very poorly...). You can right click on the workshop and "trash" it, and select a new workshop if you'd rather change workshops from an earlier choice or from a computer auto pick.

When settling a new province, take your time. You want to find a location with access to multiple useful natural resources. Either resources that your world doesn't have access to yet, so that you can key needs met (or higher quality needs commodities for more profit), or resources that complement each other. Maybe a province that has access to both wheat and hops for ale, or hematite and coal for steel. Or maybe just a province with a huge variety of natural resources to have lots of access to lots of goods. The workshop selection will also remind you which natural resources your province has, and which workshops utilize them.

The trading, crafting, and province growth systems in Windward Horizon are certainly more complex and in-depth than in the original Windward, but they don't take too much to learn, and they work well. To summarize everything in a few bullet points and tips:

- Aim to transport Food, Drink, Clothing, Lumber, Masonry, and Metal. Use crafting to turn goods into those items, but generally you always want to be trying to be SELLING the 6 needs.

- Transport goods long distances for best profit (you can hold shift on the world map to sail faster, provided you're in a single player world or no one else is on).

- Grow your player-founded provinces. They are the ones you have the most control over, so you can make them develop the workshops you want. You also choose their locations so you can set up long-distance trading.

- The bigger your ship's cargo hold, the easier and more lucrative trading will be, as you can buy and sell more at once.

- Just because a province only needs 2 clothing to grow for a day doesn't mean they'll only buy 2 clothing. You can sell them 40 at once if you've got the cargo space for it, and they'll all be bought at the "in demand" price. Use this to stockpile multiple days growth in provinces you want to grow.



Hope this helps you!