If raw materials are the ingredients waiting in the pantry, then products are the finished dishes coming out of the kitchen, plated and ready. This is the rewarding side of the ledger - the tab where you see the results of all that clearing, building and producing. Products are the completed goods that come out of your production buildings, the things you actually sell on the market for profit. They are, in a real sense, what the whole game has been working toward: raw potential turned into something with value. Some of them you can also put to use yourself rather than selling, which we will explore in loving detail over the next couple of lessons. For now, just picture the shelf of finished goods, neatly packaged and ready to go, and know that the game sorts everything on it into six families so it stays easy to read.
The six families
- Cigars: from the small Cigarillo up to the large Gordo.
- Drinks: beer and a range of cocktails.
- Food: from simple soup and hot dogs up to hearty steaks.
- Clothes: scarves, gloves, coats and the rest of the wardrobe.
- Jewelry: rings, bracelets, watches and necklaces.
- Wine: a bottle that matures in your cellar, gaining energy every day it is held and never expiring.
Each family runs from humbler items to grander ones - a small Cigarillo at one end and a large Gordo at the other, a simple bowl of soup climbing all the way up to a hearty steak. You do not need to learn the whole catalogue to begin, and you certainly should not feel you must. Knowing the six families exist, and that each one contains a range stretching from modest to premium, is plenty to start trading and using your stock sensibly. The finer items tend to be worth more and to do more, but that is something you discover naturally as you play rather than a list to cram now. Begin with the families, and the individual items will sort themselves out in your mind over time.
What a product can be for you
Here is a simple framing that makes the whole tab click into place. Almost every product you hold is one of three things to you, depending entirely on what you decide to do with it. It is something you SELL for profit, something you CONSUME for an instant burst of energy, or something you WEAR for a slow, steady energy bonus. Cigars, drinks, food and wine are the kind you can eat or drink to restore energy on the spot. Clothes and jewelry are the kind you wear for a gentle, ongoing boost. And, importantly, any of them can also be sold whenever you would rather have the money. We give consuming its own full lesson and wearing its own full lesson, so please do not worry about the mechanics of any of it yet - for now just hold the comforting idea that a finished good is always sellable, and that most are quietly useful to you personally as well. Nothing on this shelf is ever a dead end.
It is worth seeing how those roles map onto the six families, because it tidies the whole picture in your head. The four consumable families - cigars, drinks, food and wine - are the ones you can eat or drink for an immediate lift to your energy. The two wearable families - clothes and jewelry - are the ones you put on for a slow ongoing benefit. Every family, without exception, can be sold on the market when you would rather have the money. So a coat is never "only" a coat: it is both something you could wear and something you could sell, and you decide which depending on what you need at the time. That flexibility is part of what makes finished goods satisfying to own.
What keeps, and the one thing that does not
Here is an important detail that takes real pressure off a new player, with just one exception worth knowing up front. Most of your finished goods keep forever: food, drinks, cigars, wine and jewelry never rot, spoil or expire. Once they are in your stock they stay exactly as they are until YOU decide to sell, give away or use them - there is no clock ticking down on your steaks or your rings, no spoilage to race against. The one exception is clothing. Each garment expires 30 days after you acquire it; when that month is up it is removed from your town, and a small event lands in your feed to let you know. So treat clothing as the one thing on the shelf with a shelf life - wear it for its energy, or sell it well before the 30 days are up - while everything else you can stockpile for as long as you like. Wine, in fact, does the very opposite of spoiling: the longer you keep a bottle, the more energy it is worth, as we will see in a moment.
Think about what that frees you to do with everything that keeps. If the market price for your food looks low today, you can simply hold the stock and wait, knowing not a single unit will go bad while you do. If you like to keep a reserve of consumables or jewelry on hand, you can build it up at your leisure - nothing punishes patience there, and with wine patience is actively rewarded. Only clothing asks you to keep an eye on the calendar, since each garment expires 30 days after you acquire it. The other thing to watch, for everything alike, is whether you have room to store it all - and storage is exactly where we go next.
Most goods keep - clothing is the one exception
Food, drinks, cigars, wine and jewelry never expire. Clothing does: each garment is removed from your town exactly 30 days after you acquire it, with an event posted to your feed. Wine is the opposite of perishable - it matures and grows more valuable the longer you hold it. Apart from that one clothing clock, the only real limit on how much you can hold is storage space, which is exactly what we cover next.
Wine: a cellar that matures into gold
Wine deserves a word of its own, because it behaves like nothing else on the shelf. You still drink it for energy - but instead of a fixed amount, a bottle is worth its base energy plus one extra point for every day you have held it, and it never expires. There is no once-a-day limit on wine either: drink whenever you like and you receive the bottle's full matured value at that moment. So a bottle laid down for weeks is worth far more than one opened the day you bought it. And if you let a bottle mature all the way to 1000 energy, it turns into a permanent Golden Bottle - a trophy that never spoils and holds its worth forever. Wine, in short, is the one good that pays you to be patient.
Wine: the longer you keep it, the more it gives
Wine never expires. Every bottle gains +1 energy for each day you hold it, on top of its base value, and you can drink it anytime with no once-a-day limit. Mature a bottle all the way to 1000 energy and it becomes a permanent Golden Bottle.
So products are your output and your reward all at once: six families of finished goods, every one of them sellable, several of them useful to you directly. Most of them sit on the shelf forever; only clothing carries a 30-day life, after which it is removed from your town - and wine, far from expiring, grows more valuable the longer you keep it. Apart from watching that one clothing clock, the only thing that ever bounds how much you can keep is room to store it. So the next lesson is all about warehouses: how much they hold, how their capacities add up, and exactly why storage is not a building you can airily leave for "later" without it biting you. Once you have storage handled, nothing on this lovely shelf will ever go to waste.