Deciding what to drop

[Lonewolf]

You just robbed a merchant. Now you need to get rid of 1000 lbs of stuff. How do you decide what to drop? I usually drop the stuff with base cost under 100. Then I drop everything thats real heavy but the base cost is low. What do you do?

[Libourc]

Well, after I get rid of all of the heavy stuff that doesn't pay well...wood and stone, and the things I don't collect that add up, like mummy fragments (holy smokes there must be a lot of really broken up mummies out there lol).. I look at what will bring the best prices in the City that I'm nearest to and try to keep that stuff. Choosing to drop the real heavy stuff with low base cost is a good plan. I also try to see how far I am from the City, and consider having my workers walk and lowering my speed a bit if its not too far, they can travel overloaded for a ways. Or if its not far, sometimes it even helps to drop part of your food and water rather than well paying luxuries, the animals can go a ways on meager supplies, but if you do this, always be aware of how many miles you normally make in a turn and don't push them to where you loose them.

[Undean The Second]

When I played I always only carry 1 foor and 1 water because My hunting and dowsing are 15 and 14 with +8 from goodies so its like I have 23 hunting and 22 doswing making me find 100s of food and water each stop. Also when I would get lots of items i would drop based on cost/wieght, generally dropping it if its cost/weight was below 20. I would only drop items until I was at (My #two key is broken and wont work now!) 150% of what my animals could carry and the travil once and then camp and do that until I got to a city.

[Andalib]

I just look at the cost/weight ratio (7th column over) and drop things with the lowest number.

...I know that's not entirely accurate, and if I really wanted to I could figure out what things would make the most money in the city I'm traveling to, but it's really not worth the extra effort for a couple thousand coins. I use the cost/weight as a rule of thumb, and it's served me pretty well thus far.

[Isildor Ravenclaw]

Always check your food and water supplies before you do anything else. There's been so many times when I've dropped luxuries, only to realise later that I could have just as easily dropped food or water instead. If your caravan runs short on supplies until it gets to the nearest town its not the end of the world. You may find you'll just have to camp more often, but that's it.

If reducing food and water hasn't helped enough, the next things to look at are all those items picked up by your gatherers. These typically get very little money and often weigh quite a bit. The only reason you'd keep them is if you need them for a crafter. Dump all the non-essential gathered items, starting with things like stone and wood, followed by some ores, furs, hides, and so on.

Then ask yourself whether it's worth keeping the essential gathered items. Do they weight a lot? Are they common enough that you'll pick more up fairly quickly? If so, you might want to consider dumping at least some of them as well.

And if all that still isn't enough for you to unburden your caravan enough to allow it to move, then you can start dumping the luxuries. If you're willing to spend the extra time on it, look up the sell costs of these items in the next city you'll get to and drop the ones that will get you the least profit. If you think that will take up too much time (such as when you have many different types of luxuries in your caravan) then your best bet is to do as Andalib suggested start dumping all the ones with the lower cost/weight ratios, and work your way up from there. I've also found that most of the time this is a fairly accurate way to judge what's best to dump, and it will have very little effect on your profits when you get to the next city.