Raft Trading Post Guide: Trash Cubes, Trade Coins, and What Is Actually Worth Buying

Trading Posts sit on many large islands, the green dots on your receiver, and they are easy to spot once you know the signs: coloured lighting around the structure and satellite dishes on top. They are not a shop you build on your raft and they are not on every island, so when you spot one, treat the visit as a shopping trip and arrive with Trash Cubes already made. A post with nothing to spend is a wasted stop.

The other timing point matters just as much. The Recycler blueprint is found at the top of the Radio Tower, the first story island, and must be researched at the Research Table before you can build a Recycler. That means the trading economy only opens after you have started the story, not on day one. If you reach a post before you have a Recycler, buy nothing you cannot afford later and remember the island: you will be back with cubes.

The Recycler converts raw materials into Trash Cubes, and the exchange rate is a value system, not one item per cube. The Recycler holds 600 value, and one Trash Cube costs 150 value. Different materials carry different values, which is the whole decision: feed it things you have in bulk and almost never use, and keep the rare stuff out.

The practical rule is simple. Early on, palm leaves are the answer: they arrive in bulk from collection nets, they have almost no competing use, and pressing leaves into rope first stretches each cube further. Late in the game, wool takes over, since two wool make a cube and a llama farm produces it steadily. The one hard rule is titanium: two ingots technically make a cube, but titanium gates your best machines, so burning it for cubes is trading a late-game bottleneck for an early-game convenience.

Trash Cubes alone only buy the cheapest stock. The good stock also costs Trade Coins, and Trade Coins only come from selling rare fish at a post. The loop runs like this: buy bait at the post, fish with it from your raft, then sell the catch back at any post. Rare fish caught this way cannot be eaten or cooked, so there is no reason to hold them: sell them all. Each sale pays coins and reputation, and reputation is what unlocks the next tier and its better bait.

Do the reputation maths before you grind blindly. Tier 2 needs 300 reputation, which is 30 Tier 1 fish, and Tier 3 needs 3000, which is only 30 Tier 2 fish once you have the better bait, or 300 Tier 1 fish if you refuse to upgrade. The grind is designed to push you up the bait ladder, not to sit at Tier 1 forever. Buy the next bait the moment its tier unlocks, and spend Tier 1 fish money on bait, not on cosmetics, until Tier 3 is open.

Tier 1 is for fueling the loop, not for shopping. Buy Simple Fishing Bait first, in stacks of 4 for 1 Trash Cube, and keep restocking it. The four recipes are the only other Tier 1 buys worth early cubes: Salmon Salad raises lung capacity, Catfish Deluxe makes you run faster, Redbeet Shot adds extra hearts, and Spicy Pineberry makes you swim faster. Plastic, planks, and scrap are only worth it if you are stranded mid-build, and the hats, horns, and wardrobe are traps for early cubes.

Tier 2 is where the post starts paying for itself. The Foundation Counter, 3 cubes and 4 coins, tells you exactly how many foundations your engines must push, which decides how many engines you need. The three Advanced Crop Plot blueprints, 6 cubes and 8 coins each, unlock bigger plots that feed your farms and your biofuel chain. Hearty Stew, 1 cube and 1 coin, lets you evade death once, which is cheap insurance for story island dives. Metal ore, copper, and explosive goo are fair buys if a build is stalled, but they are farmable, so they rank below the blueprints.

Tier 3 is the late-game payoff, and the order matters. The Advanced Scarecrow, 8 cubes and 10 coins, keeps seagulls off your crops permanently, which ends the daily scarecrow-replacement chore. The Fridge, 6 cubes and 6 coins, stores food and anything else without spoilage pressure. The Canteen and Detail Plank blueprints, 8 cubes and 12 coins each, are one-time buys that unlock gear and building options you cannot get anywhere else. Titanium Ore, 3 cubes and 1 coin per stack of 3, is the honest late-game shortcut when a machine build is one ingot short. Everything else at Tier 3 is decoration: buy it when the practical list is done.

Every product has a limited number of available stacks, and the popular reading of the system, from player reports, is that a single post does not replenish its own stock while you wait. The way players restock is to sail away until the island despawns, roughly 2,000 metres by player reports, and then visit the post on the next large island, which arrives with full stock. Plan around that: when you find a post, buy the bait and the one-time blueprints first, because the bulk goods you skip may not be there when you sail back.

This is also why reputation is account-wide progress, not per-post shopping. You do not need to re-earn tiers at each new post: once Tier 3 is unlocked, every post you find sells Tier 3 stock, subject only to its own stack limits. The grind is once, the shopping is everywhere.

Late in the game, the Trading Post is best understood as a converter, not a shop. Your raft already produces palm leaves, wool, and crops faster than you consume them, and the post converts that 剩余物资 into the three things your raft cannot produce: titanium ore, exclusive blueprints, and permanent quality-of-life machines like the Fridge and the Advanced Scarecrow. It also closes the loop with the power systems in the companion guide: crop plots feed biofuel, biofuel runs engines and battery chargers, and the post sells the crop plot blueprints and the Foundation Counter that make that whole chain measurable.

On many large islands, the green dots on your receiver. Look for coloured lighting and satellite dishes on top of the structure.

Build a Recycler, researched from the blueprint at the top of the Radio Tower, and feed it raw materials. One cube costs 150 value: 30 palm leaves, 10 scrap, or 19 planks.

Buy bait at a post, catch rare fish with it, and sell the fish back at a post. Tier 1 fish pay 1 coin and 10 reputation each; Tier 2 fish pay 1 coin and 100 reputation; Tier 3 fish pay 2 coins.

Tier 2 needs 300 reputation and Tier 3 needs

3000. That is 30 Tier 1 fish for Tier 2, or 30 Tier 2 fish for Tier 3 once you have Advanced Bait.

Player reports say a single post does not restock in place. Sail away until the island despawns and visit the post on the next large island for full stock.

Bait first, always. Then Tier 1 recipes, Tier 2 crop plot blueprints and the Foundation Counter, and Tier 3 Advanced Scarecrow, Fridge, and the Canteen and Detail Plank blueprints. Cosmetics come last.