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As you progress in the game orders start asking for higher level items. These items are worth more coins than lower level items. Deliveries typically pay out around 50% of what you can get from the newspaper. This becomes much more noticeable as item prices increase. The trade-off is that deliveries offer a small chance of getting a rare item drop in addition to gaining experience. It's really up to you whether you want to go for deliveries or sales in the market. A few points to keep in mind when choosing your strategy:
- You will still receive XP from producing items. So deliveries are not required to progress to the next level.
- Airplane deliveries offer one chance at a rare drop per delivery (which may drop multiple items), while the train offers a chance at a rare drop for each item loaded. Train deliveries seem to be easier to fill for rare item drops, but once it takes off it takes 12 hours to return.
- The newspaper is a great place to find rare items, but you must look at it quite frequently to have a shot at finding something useful. The newspaper claims to refresh every 5 minutes (currently), but rare items can appear at any time. Purchase these quickly because they go fast.
My current strategy is:
1. Produce the most expensive goods possible in all crafting buildings (keep all crafting buildings busy with something at all times.
2. Discard all deliveries that call for a high value item (including iron and anything that requires iron). A 50% hit on a ruby at $199 potential value is a lot more significant than 50% hit on a piece of cheese.
3. If I am short on an item (usually bacon, apples, anchovies, catfish, and lemons) I will buy them at any price from the market (profit is still positive when buying small things at a high price to make a big thing).
4. Sell all items near the highest price allowed (some items will not sell fast and you may need to adjust for this to not fill up your stall with lots of the same thing). If your market stall is always full you should consider lowering prices to keep goods from backing up.
5. If a required item cannot be found in the newspaper (e.g. lemons) then I will produce a lesser item in my crafting building (e.g. stuffed peppers or egg toast in the fryer if I'm out of lemons for breaded catfish).
6. Slowly acquire lesser items in step 5 and fill orders if you happen to have the required items and your stall is already full of good things to sell (remember to discard expensive orders).
Lastly, buy everything in the newspaper that you can make a profit from. I happen to know that linen flowers and bass (among other things) sell quickly at their max price, so I almost always buy those when they come up for sale for anything less. Buy every expansion item and tool, so long as you have room. You can always resell (though I have a hard time with that - I currently have 55 expansion permits).
Using this method, I am able to make over $20,000 per day. If I want to level up quickly or desperately need a certain rare item I will frequently check the newspaper for any required items and fill as many orders as possible. You will likely lose money buying items to fill orders, so try to only fill cheap orders and buy anything that looks like a good deal. I can easily lose $10,000 an hour buying items only to fill orders. I eventually get what I needed as a drop, but it seems a lot smarter to just be patient and keep checking the newspaper.
In summary, my advice is to buy everything that's cheap, produce the best stuff you can, keep your buildings busy 24/7, keep your market stall full, and if you happen to have the required items for a delivery and you don't see yourself selling them in the market any time soon, go for the delivery. Otherwise, stick to sales.