Direct answer
Treat community price tables as reference points, not permanent answers. Selling guidance reflects neighborhood values and assumes full satisfaction and trained employees; purchase guidance assumes normal difficulty and fully trained Purchasing Agents. Dynamic pricing, shortages, backorders, and later balance changes can alter results. Test a small change, wait a day, and inspect your own price satisfaction before expanding it.
Why a Reference Table Is Not the Live Market
The community selling and purchasing pages explicitly call their figures guidelines and warn that pricing became more dynamic with EA 0.5. That makes a table useful for choosing a starting range, but not authoritative for a particular save, day, or later game version. Avoid copying an entire static table into a plan and assuming every row remains current.
The selling reference separates a lowest market price from neighborhood figures. Official Steam news also describes a Pricing Manager who can update all item prices across a neighborhood and, at higher skill, suggest prices each day. Those daily suggestions and your current in-game indicators are better evidence of live conditions than a frozen community snapshot.
- Use tables to choose a starting point
- Prefer current in-game feedback for live decisions
- Evaluate each neighborhood separately
- Recheck after patches or balance changes
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Keep Purchase Costs and Selling Prices Separate
The selling table concerns what customers pay for goods or services. Its figures assume 100 percent satisfaction and trained employees, and it provides neighborhood-specific guidance. It also states that a backorder raises the market price by 50 percent, a shortage by 25 percent, and monopoly status allows 30 percent more maximum price-increase margin. These statements belong to the selling reference.
The purchasing table concerns what your business pays through wholesale or import channels and shows amounts and suppliers separately. Its figures assume fully trained Purchasing Agents and normal difficulty; it warns that harder difficulties produce higher buy prices. It also says shortages and backorders increase product purchasing costs, without giving those purchase-side effects a fixed percentage in the supplied text.
- Selling data describes customer-facing prices
- Purchase data describes sourcing costs
- Selling assumptions include satisfaction and training
- Purchase assumptions include agent training and normal difficulty
- Do not transfer selling percentages to purchase costs
A Safe One-Day Price Test
Choose one product or service in one neighborhood. Note its current selling price, your cost basis, and the current price-satisfaction reading. Use the relevant community value only as a starting reference, make one modest adjustment, and leave unrelated prices unchanged. This limits the number of variables affecting what you observe.
Let the business operate for a day, then follow the selling source's explicit instruction to check your own price satisfaction. Keep, reverse, or refine the change based on that in-game result, and record any active shortage or backorder before comparing tests. Repeat gradually rather than applying a neighborhood-wide change until the small test behaves as expected.
- Test one item in one neighborhood
- Record price, cost, and satisfaction first
- Change only one price variable
- Wait one operating day
- Review shortages or backorders before scaling
Frequently asked questions
Are community price tables exact for my current save?
No. The pages label them as guidelines and warn about dynamic pricing. Use them to select a starting point, then verify the result through current in-game price satisfaction and conditions.
Does difficulty change every price in the supplied references?
The purchasing source specifically says its buy prices are for normal difficulty and will be higher on harder difficulty. The supplied selling source does not state the same difficulty rule, so it should not be extended to selling prices without further evidence.
How long should I wait before checking a selling-price change?
The selling reference instructs players to check their own price satisfaction after a day when applying prices. Keep the test narrow so that reading can be associated with the change you made.
Sources
Open the original references for surrounding context. Community mechanics are cross-checked against the current interface where possible.
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