Elite: Dangerous/Material Trader
From Elite Wiki
Material Traders allow you to exchange materials and data to other types of materials and data, such as exchanging Iron to Zinc.
They have three types: Raw, Manufactured, and Data.
Material Trade Costs
Materials can be traded to go up grades, down grades, and across categories:
- Going up one grade costs 6 for each grade, multiplicatively
- Doing down one grade gives 3 for each grade, multiplicatively
- Changing category costs 6, no matter how many categories you jump
Shown below is a table of trade costs and results.
| In:Out | Down 4 | Down 3 | Down 2 | Down 1 | Same Grade | Up 1 | Up 2 | Up 3 | Up 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Same Category | 1296:1* | 216:1* | 36:1 | 6:1 | 1:1 | 1:3 | 1:9 | 1:27 | 1:81 |
| Different Category | 7776:1* | 1291:1* | 216:1* | 36:1 | 6:1 | 2:1 | 2:3 | 2:9 | 2:27 |
Trades marked with an asterisk are normally not possible, since materials have a storage cap of 100 per material.
In some cases, it may be possible to trade materials up grades despite this, since 2.4 has an overall material cap of 1000 for raw + manufactured and 500 for data.
Material Trader Types
Different material trader types offer different trading possibilities.
The tables below show what materials each type of trader works with.
Raw
| Category 1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carbon | Vanadium | Niobium | Yttrium | |
| Category 2 | ||||
| Phosphorus | Chromium | Molybdenum | Technetium | |
| Category 3 | ||||
| Sulphur | Manganese | Cadmium | Ruthenium | |
| Category 4 | ||||
| Iron | Zinc | Tin | Selenium | Antimony |
| Category 5 | ||||
| Nickel | Germanium | Tungsten | Tellurium | Polonium |
| Category 6 | ||||
| Rhenium | Arsenic | Mercury | Zirconium | |
