This will go over the three area’s of places you can purchase things through the Trading post. Me personally I use the VIP store and the Market Stall but I have never really used the regular store to much.
VIP Store: Every time you spend money or log in you get VIP points. The more often you log in the more you get every day maxing out at 500 a day. Every time you spend and buy a pack you get VIP packs as well that you can use to upgrade your VIP rank. Upping the VIP rank opens different options of things to buy in the VIP store including speedups and Hero XP (both things I buy every time). At later levels of VIP it also offers 12 hour settlement buffs for cheaper than the 8 hour ones in your settlement HQ. As for the speedups and Hero XP it is both cheaper to buy here then anywhere else and cheaper then using caps for these items without buying them. Take a look and see what items you choose to buy.
Store: The store offers the same 14 items always for purchase. These are regular things that you may need and you can buy them usually in multiple places. Many of these items are for sale in your alliance store using your alliance currency that you should be building up rapidly by donating so don’t waste your caps unless you see no other option.
Market Stall: To me this is the hidden gem of the game. I am sure most people have clicked into this and seen some speedups for some resources or an advance port occasionally and chosen to spend the resources on these items whenever you come across them. This is how almost everyone i talk to uses this tool. However, Me I use it very differently. I realized that resources are free i can get millions of them and if your a spender you probably have billions of them in packs. The way I use the market stall is I buy everything that uses resources no matter what. If its resources for resources i buy it if its resources for speedups i don’t need i buy it. Every single item. I also buy all the items for caps under 100 caps at a time (note: this can still use a lot of caps but normally not more than 1000) the exception to my 100 cap rule is when i see hour long speedups for 600 caps (that’s a great deal) and i buy those always. Once all 6 spots fill with things that are for higher cap amounts i hit the button to refresh the stall. First two times the refresh is free, then it starts charging caps to refresh. I normally do this same process on every refresh up to when it costs 500 or 1000 caps to refresh. But, you can stop at any point i suggest at bare minimum going through the free ones. Using this method I get about 4-7 advanced ports a day and between 15 and 40 hours of speedups a day. It is a great method.
My disclaimer about this process is it only is really viable for people who are already HQ 30 and don’t need resources to upgrade buildings any longer. As until thats the case its a struggle just to have enough to do your upgrades. But if your HQ 30 try it you will be happy.
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