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Trade Runs
Ok the basic main feature for Archeage is Trade Runs !
To start off with, I just want to remind people that ArcheAge is partial loot PVP. The main slots in your inventory are safe(so is your money), but if you want to carry more loot, you need to bring backpacks or resource packs to carry heavy loads. The more load you carry the slower your walking speed gets (and your mount speed if your carrying a pack on a mount), and it is these items that can be looted from dead corpses.
Trade Runs
Trade Runs are essentially dailies that you need to do in order to get special coins called Delphi Coins. Delphi coins are used to buy blueprints. Houses, Boats, Castle segments, pretty much all crafted items and pets require Delphi coins.
When you talk to a Trade Run NPC, they will give you an item of goods, the item of goods will be too big and heavy to place in your inventory. So you will need to carry a resource pack on your back. Then the Trade Run NPC will instruct you to give that item to another NPC somewhere in the world.
If you want to build a boat, house, castle or even buy baby animals to train, then you will need to do these dailies to get Delphi coins.
The Journey
You will need to haul that item of goods to a NPC somewhere in the world. You can actually trade it to any Trade Run NPC, but the closer the NPCS are to the quest giver the less credit you get.
The ultimate Trade Run NPC's are on a small island in the middle of the northern ocean, so if you are able to trade the good to them you get the most coins. The trick is that all factions, and guilds use these same NPCs to turn in their packages. So most of these trade in spots are highly contested, and major wars break out between guilds to see who can control the flow of resources.
But the Journey is a dangerous one, because you have to carry a trade package, it can be looted by anyone. If anyone kills you and loots your corpse, they can turn it the package themselves, and they get the quest credit. If you die and get looted then you will have to go to another city where they have a Trade Run NPC and get the daily from there.
Pirates are red to all NPC's except for the guild npcs. So for a pirate to get the Delphi coins he needs, he is going to have to kill other players to get their loot, and turn it in to get the credit.
Examples
Here is someone going on their first Trade Run
Here are Pirates that are camping a turn in point,camping the ultimate Trade NPC's. They are ganking players stealing their packages and getting the credit when turning them in...lol
Pirates stealing a cargo ship full of goods. Apparently some idiot thought they could do all their dailies at once and solo them..lol
This twitch stream shows a pirate guild stealing tons of trade packages in just 30 mins.
Comments
So I bet your wondering, what to do against all these pirates? Well there are mercenary guilds that you can hire to offer protection. Or if you are in a large guild, gather up all the players who need to do the trade run dailies and protect them. Or if you don't want to walk on the wild side, you can always hover around the safe areas and do your Trade run there.
Examples
Here is a large guild that gathers up all the players in the guild that need to do trade runs while other members offer protection.
http://youtu.be/NLftLtgzZFs
http://youtu.be/p_9P2dtO2FQ
http://youtu.be/Queum4LIgUQ
Yes you have to spend gold in the first place to get trade goods. These cost 5 gold each. There are 29 different kinds of trade goods, 27 of which need to be crafted (so this will cost even more gold or time depending if you are a crafter). The other 2 trade goods are the starter ones (the cheapest and most accessible) you get from the largest cities on each continent.
Every day at exactly 12:00 server time, each Trade NPC's on both the western and eastern continents will spawn exactly 50 trade goods. For players it's first come first serve. IF you can get all 50 from a npc, and trade them in, then lucky you.
When you turn in your trade goods you are actually selling them to a npc. So the npc will give you your money back and a tip (gold), as well as Delphi coins.
Like you said being a pirate does have it's downsides. Because pirates are red to almost every npc, it's next to impossible to build a farm. They also can't siege or conquer land on the Northern continent.