A trading game in which you inherit a shop in a cozy little harbor. Items are bought at the harbor from various people who sell you more or less useful goods, including weapons, food, and everyday items such as horseshoes and rolling pins. Their value is determined by several factors, including rarity, condition, and appearance, while some information remains hidden until you improve your skills or upgrade individual workstations you can access. Equally important is the barter system, where you have a limited number of attempts to lower the price by clicking on an item's characteristics.
For instance, an axe might have a "worn out" tag, allowing you to use that flaw to negotiate a lower price. The game helps by highlighting these characteristics in red when the chance of success is high. You can only barter a limited number of times with each character, so if you waste your attempts on the first item, you will not be able to barter again if that character has more items to sell.
When checking items in your inventory, they have all sorts of tiny icons around them that reveal their meaning when you hover the mouse cursor over them. An item might have been repaired, be damaged, imbued with an element, enchanted, or have some other special property. At the beginning, many of these icons are replaced with question marks because you need more expertise to identify them.
Bought items are then sold to customers visiting your shop. They always request a specific random item but are willing to accept anything within the same category. For example, they may ask for a steel helmet but will happily buy any type of armor, or they may want honey but are willing to purchase any consumable item. Just like when buying, you can use the barter system to increase the selling price. Instead of selecting negative red characteristics, however, you should click on the positive green ones.
The characters you trade with are not random. There are around 80 unique individuals, each with their own profession, personality, preferences, dislikes, and other traits that you gradually discover through repeated interactions. All of this information can be reviewed in the Books menu at the bottom of the screen, which also contains books for items, locations, and your own journal that displays your character's statistics.
Besides buying items, your money is better spent on upgrading workstations and other locations. For example, upgrading the bed increases the number of events you can experience each day, while upgrading the warehouse expands your storage space, which is otherwise limited. However, your priority should be the trade stations. Upgrading the buying table reveals more information about items, while upgrading the selling table unlocks the Pitch option, allowing you to offer customers items they are not specifically looking for.
The number of people buying and selling items is limited each day, and you can simply sleep in the bed to advance to the next day. There is no time limit hanging over your head, so you can spend as much time trading as you like. What is limited is your Spirit level, which represents the energy required to trigger events and reveal additional information about items.
Events appear randomly around the harbor, and only a limited number can be triggered each day. These usually involve people offering unusual opportunities, free chances to obtain loot, or situations that require a specific item. For example, you might discover a buried treasure chest that can only be dug up if you have a shovel in your inventory.
Spirit is restored by sleeping, but an even better reward comes at the start of each day in the form of docking fees, which provide free income from ships entering your harbor. The amount is predetermined, but since the harbor itself can also be upgraded, each upgrade increases the docking fee. Because this source of income is guaranteed, it is impossible to lose the game. If you are willing to spend time repeatedly sleeping, you can eventually grind enough money to afford every upgrade.
New locations unlock as you progress through the game. These include a blacksmith where worn out or broken items can be repaired to increase their value, a mine and lumberyard that provide free resources, and a recruitment table where you hire raiders to venture out and return with loot in exchange for a fee.
