What It Is
The Travelling Vendor (added in the Road Renegades update) is a roaming shop on wheels -- a rusty, turret-defended ice cream truck that drives the map's roads with three lit vending machines on its rear and sides, selling a randomised pool of goods for scrap. It plays a distinctive musical tune you can hear before you see it.
It's a default server EVENT, like Cargo Ship -- not a permanent monument. You can't damage, raid, or loot the truck itself; the only thing to gain from it is what you BUY. Think of it as a mobile Outpost shelf that comes to the road instead of you going to a safe zone.
Finding It
The Travelling Vendor only spawns on maps with a Ring Road -- the outer loop that exists on maps of 4250 size or larger (and custom maps). On smaller maps it never appears.
When it's active: - It shows on your map as a small armoured-truck icon. Unlike a static vending machine, it does NOT show its stock on the map -- you have to drive or run out to it to see what's for sale. - It spawns at roughly the same rate as Cargo Ship and roams the ring road for about 30 minutes before despawning. - It follows a pre-set route around the ring road automatically.
So treat it like a timed event: when the truck icon appears, decide whether the detour is worth it before it cycles off.
Shopping & the Turret Rules
The truck makes its own pit stops, and you can also flag it down -- stand at the roadside in its path and it'll pull over as best it can so you can shop. Walk up to the vending machines on the truck and buy with scrap, exactly like an Outpost machine.
The hard rule: DON'T be hostile near it. Two miniature Outpost Peacekeeper Turrets sit on top and will open fire on anyone who shoots the truck or acts hostile within about an 8-metre radius -- the same peacekeeper behaviour as Outpost. You can't destroy the turrets or the truck, so aggression only gets you killed. Approach calmly, buy, and leave; it won't wait forever.
Dynamic Pricing
The Travelling Vendor introduced a demand-based pricing system that now runs across the wider NPC vending economy -- the more an item sells, the more it costs, and vice versa.
The formula: the game tracks the average number of each item sold every 6 in-game hours. Each 6-hour tick, if an item sold BELOW its average, its price drops 5% for the next window (down to a floor of 50% of base); if it sold ABOVE average, the price rises 10% (up to a ceiling of 200%, i.e. double). Prices start high (200%) and generally fall until they settle at the real "market" rate.
The practical takeaway: unpopular items drift to a discount and hot items get expensive. The same logic applies to other map vendors too, so it pays to watch what's cheap rather than always buying the obvious meta item.
Tips & the AI Quirk
A few things to know before you make the trip:
- The stock is random guns, tools, resources, and components -- it's a gamble what's aboard, so don't count on a specific item being there.
- The navigation AI is new and can get HUNG UP on terrain or objects, stalling the truck until it despawns or veers off the road. A stalled vendor is a magnet -- other players know exactly where it (and its shoppers) are, so it's a prime ambush spot. Watch your back at a stop.
- You can hear its tune from a distance; use that as your cue to approach carefully rather than running in blind.
- Bring scrap, not guns-out aggression: the peacekeeper turrets make it one of the few safe-ish trading spots out on the open road -- as long as you behave.