I spent almost 15 hours farming the required resources to get the Frigate because I didn’t think the merchants would be useful at all, wrong.
I had to go to 6 different foothill biomes in order to get the required amount of hardwood in order to craft timber.
Spent a lot of time cutting down trees while being attacked by wolves and goats, searching for flax and flax seeds so I can get linen, searching for animals for their hides etc.
I built the Frigate but my armor was 6 levels behind compared to my level, I decided to spend 100 coins for a merchant, I wish I had done it before.
Hundreds of hardwood for just 500 coin, enough to build a whole Frigate from the beginning, same with the linen and the hides.
Obviously I’m not one to tell you how to play the game, I also like resource gathering but it got to a pretty grindy point where my brain was put on auto mode and I stopped enjoying the game, if you feel the same just straight up purchase the resources, the amount you get might feel like cheating but you still need to make money, either by boarding ships or selling loot, so you still put in the work.