Check a transport run before buying cargo
Compare net sale proceeds, cargo size, route assumptions, and the cost of a failed trip with a reproducible market-to-map workflow.
A price gap between cities is only the start of a transport decision. You need a matching item, enough buyers, an executable route, and a cargo value you can afford to lose. Use this workflow to turn a market comparison into a small trip you can evaluate afterwards.
Match the exact item and server
Open Market prices and select your server. Compare the same tier, enchantment, and quality in the origin and destination. A cheap normal-quality item and an expensive excellent-quality item are different goods, so their displayed gap is not an executable trade.
Choose how you intend to buy and sell. Buying immediately and placing a buy order have different waiting times, quantities, and fees. A sale order can wait behind other sellers. Check the recorded observation time and inspect the actual orders in game before committing Silver.
Work through one cargo batch
Suppose you can buy 100 units at 240 Silver each. The cargo purchase costs 24,000 Silver. Suppose the destination would pay 30,000 Silver for the batch before charges, and your chosen selling method and assumptions leave 27,000 Silver after fees. These are illustrative totals, not current prices or a claim about the game's fee rate.
The margin before travel costs is 27,000 minus 24,000, or 3,000 Silver. If travel, repairs, and consumables cost another 1,000, the trip leaves 2,000. If the purchase required a buy order, include its setup cost too. Value materials you already own at their available sale value instead of treating them as free.
Now check quantity. A quote for one unit does not prove that 100 units are available at that price, or that buyers want 100 at the destination. The public community feed does not expose full order depth. Reduce the batch until you can verify both sides in game, or reject the apparent opportunity.
Use the map to inspect assumptions
Open the map, select the continent, and set the origin and destination with the A and B route controls. Inspect the zones along the proposed path. The route planner uses a pinned connection graph and stored travel distances. It does not know hostile player positions, your mount speed, your load, or the state of changing activity connections.
The avoid-red-zones option excludes red zones in the graph. It does not turn black zones into safe travel or determine whether a particular portal is available to your character. Check each actual exit and boundary warning in game. If the map cannot connect your endpoints, do not fill the gap with an assumed safe shortcut.
For a first run, carry a small batch and record the trip time. A route you have personally travelled with the intended equipment gives you better timing evidence than counting map transitions. A shorter line on the atlas is not a guarantee of a faster or safer journey.
Keep margin and loss exposure separate
The example's 3,000 Silver margin is small compared with its 24,000 Silver cargo value. On a lethal trip, also account for equipment and mount replacement. Repeating a profitable sale does not make a single large loss affordable.
As a deliberately simplified sensitivity check, ignore equipment and travel costs. A successful trip earns 3,000 Silver and a complete cargo loss costs 24,000. An assumed loss probability p gives an expected result of 3,000 times (1 minus p) minus 24,000 times p. This reaches zero at about 11.1%. At an assumed 10% it leaves only 300 Silver before the costs we excluded.
The website does not measure that probability. The calculation shows how fragile a narrow margin can be; it is not a recommendation that a route is worth taking. Set a cargo cap from your own replacement budget and keep the Silver needed for your next activity outside that cargo.
Compare the finished trip with the plan
After the sale, record actual purchase cost, sale proceeds after fees, travel expenses, unsold quantity, and total time. Separate Silver already received from goods still listed on an order. If only half the cargo sells, the original full-batch margin has not been realized.
Use those results to decide whether to repeat, shrink the batch, change destination, or stop. Recheck the market before each purchase because an observed spread can disappear. If a route or item record is wrong, send the page URL, server, exact item variant, and your observation through the site's correction links.
Sources and freshness
Structured facts are kept separate from community-written explanations.
Guidance updated 2026-11-02. Examples use illustrative prices. An update date does not claim in-game verification.