Primo's Guide: Making gold in ESO

xericdx

Hello all,

Wanted to write a Guide to help my guildies but hope can help others too. Am trying not to reinvent the wheel and put links to several others guides on specific topics. There indeed several good guides outside but I thought useful to have one that bring different methods things together.

Please let me know what you think and if I am missing something. I will do my best to update the Guide following suggestions but might not be able to regularly update both here and in the Website. Also, the Guide is long and the Forum is not the most format friendly place. So, if you find it useful, I suggest you bookmark the website here.

Cheers,

ps: my Guild is a housing-based one, so don't be surprised by my references to housing

INTRODUCTION

Housing is expensive! There are several ways to make Gold in ESO (and even more guides and videos on Youtube and other channels...) I firmly believe there is no such thing as “The One Method” of making gold. It depends on the time you have, which time of the day you play, and what you like the most.

Yes, there are times when a specific activity will bring you a lot of gold, but normally, once that method becomes public knowledge, it can already be less prolific. I personally advise to mix the activities as much as possible. The point of this guide is to give you an idea of the most efficient and common ways of making gold, so that you can then delve more into the ones that best match your playstyle. Even if acquiring gold is not your priority and your time is limited, you might find a few ideas here to improve your finances!

The Guide is divided in 2 parts:

1st part: In the first part I have listed the most common ways to make gold with some basic commentary.

2nd part: Advanced tips to master the various methods mentioned in the first part. In the second part I have included links to other advanced guides. I am not inventing anything here - just putting together some collective wisdom scattered around the net, and gained with some years of practice...

NB: Most of the below is applicable everywhere... However, the guide is thought mainly for PC/EU players (Sorry brothers and sisters with consoles and no add ons.)

PART I: The Basics

Guild Traders:

Guild Traders are the base of ESO economy. Almost all of the below methods revolve around Traders. Baseline is: get at least one trading guild, possibly more. Keep your 30 slots in each guild filled.

The difference between the top trading guilds and small ones is a huge one, so take the necessary time to understand the system, and find your sweet spot (and guild.) Guilds that specialize in trading normally have either a minimum weekly sales requirement or a mandatory donation system.

I prefer the former ones, but it’s up to you and your gaming time.

I suggest to get at least one of the following addons: Master Merchant (MM for short), or Akadius Trade Tools, and/or Tamriel Trade Centre (TTC.)

Flipping:

Go around Tamriel and visit the various traders, buy for low price and sell for higher.

Pros: can make loads of money and has a good time/money ratio. It also makes easier to maintain strong trading guilds which have high minimum weekly sales requirements, as you tend to move a lot of money around.

Cons: it takes time to learn and minimize costly mistakes; you need a solid initial capital; and you will need a couple of addons (Awesome Guild Store on top of MM, better with TTC too); works better if you have at least a couple of guilds in very good / top trading places.

Crafting & Writs:

Get as many crafting characters as you can. Place them in a good place for writs (Craglorn for normal areas, Vivec if you Morrowind, or Alinor if you have Summerset) and do your dailies. You can do all (7) writs in approx 5 min. More than worth your time. About writs:

Pros: simple and quick way to make gold.

Cons: limited to once a day per character, thus this won't make your rich alone; you will need to level up crafting skills first.
You can also use your crafting skills to receive commissions from others, sell items in demand to the players behind the “DLC-wall”, and craft and sell items with rare traits for research.


Thieving:

For those who like stealing stuff, this is the way to go! You can make 20-30k per hour, not counting some lucky finds (The best I got was a 200k worth Dwemer recipe.)

Pros: fun (if you like it); regular income.

Cons: limited number of stolen items you can sell every day; you will first need to invest some time in grinding the Thieves Guild and Legerdemain skill lines (and 1 skill point for Blade of Woe.)


Other Methods:

There are tons of ways to make gold, depending on what you like to do. ESO tries to give incentives for players to do different activities.

A few mentions :

- Check the dailies in various zones, including DLC, for a chance to get some nice recipes (motifs): Clockwork City, Vvardenfell, Summerset, Craglorn, etc.

- You like PvP? Transform your Alliance Points into gold by buying Militant Ordinator or other motifs. Check the Gold Vendor every weekend for some good deals.

- You like Imperial City? Grind some Tel Vars and Key Fragments there! Convert the former ones to alchemy mats or Hakejo-runes.

- You like PvE? Do not forget the 10k from the weekly Trial (Normal is enough) and gold from bosses + farm motifs in normal Trials and Group Dungeons.

- You like fishing? The new fishing-exclusive motifs are selling for lots of money, a nice addition to the fishing loot table.

xericdx

PART II: Advanced Tips and Tricks:

Trading: a Game Within the Game:

ESO does not have a central auction house. Some like it, some hate it. Fact is, ESO’s traders remain a bit different from the other MMOs and it creates “a game within the game,” if you will.

How to choose the trading guilds?

Let's look at the main selling locations, as they are a key factor for choosing the guild and a for some of the money making strategies (ie. Flipping).

Top spots for guild traders are in: Belkarth, and Mournhold;

Very good: Rawl'Kha and the alliance capitals like the Wayrest, Elden Root, and also other big cities like Ebonheart;

Very Good, but included in a Chapter/DLC: Alinor and Vivec City (Alinor is currently strong, as everybody is there enjoying the new chapter, but that can change);

Good: All other main cities with multiple guild traders clustered in one spot. You can usually find one of these cities per zone;

Poor: Isolated merchants in outskirts;

The worst : the traders in Outlaw Refugees.

With the top guild traders, you will sell much faster and at a slightly higher rate, but requirements to remain in those guilds are of course also higher. Requirements are normally either in terms of minimum sales (eg. 10k to 100k of sales per week), or weekly fees (a few thousands per week); or a mix of both. I am a strong advocate for the minimum sale strategy but it’s up to you. It may be less stressful with a minimum donation amount for some.

Selling Strategies:

If you have guilds in different categories, remember to price items accordingly. Lower tier traders should be priced lower. If you price low enough you can get a quick and almost guaranteed sale thanks to “flippers.” How low you should price your items (when comparing to MM and TTC price suggestions) depends on the rate at which you are capable of replacing the sold items, and maintaining full 30 slots in the store.

I advice to maintain a mix of quick-to-sell items (eg: crafting materials sold at a reasonable price), and some longer term shots (that Telvanni furniture recipe at 2 mil. might need a few days to find a buyer.)

Remember to look not only at the average price of the item, but also at the curve / trending of the price, (has the price either been raising or dropping) and the number of sales.

Regularly check your listings and relist items that have not sold after several days (and might have become overpriced because of a drop in the item’s market value.) Note: every time you cancel a listing you will technically lose money 1% of the item’s value. The same is true when the item has been listed for full 30 days on the trader and it doesn’t sell (at which point the item is returned to you.)

It’s not a big loss, but still something to consider while minding the possibility of overpricing items. For this reason I suggest trying of selling the most expensive items in the zone chats (writing WTS and linking the item in the zone chat.)

I could go on and on about other aspects (such as keeping items in reserve that were received during a “festival” or other special game event, and then reselling them after a few months, or about taking advantage of the new DLCs and their brand new loot tables, etc.), but for now I’m not making the guide too long. If you still want to start looking into these additional bits you will still find some chances in doing so from some bits I have included further on.

Many of our guild members are in some very good trading guilds as well, so you can also ask others for more advice!

Our own guild trader in Tamriel Homes is special too: we’re mainly focusing to a niche market: furniture related wares. This is explained on a separate topic, but if you’re a Tamriel Homes member for example, it is a good idea to have as many of the 30 store slots filled with furniture items as possible (piece of furniture, recipes, materials.)

Flipping:

As I was mentioning in the basics, Flipping has some prerequisites and it takes some time to learn. At the beginning I would not invest more than 100k on it and I would buy only items for which you have a lot of MM data for from the past few days. If you believe you will have the time, resources, and motivation, then here you go:

Which traders should I check?

The most efficient trips are to traders I previously classified as “Good” (Marbruk, Shornhelm, Wrothgar, etc.): a good number of traders per loading screen and a decent volume of goods sold per trader, without the traders being located in the top spots with their wares priced high. However, hidden gems can be found everywhere. A check in some isolated traders can sometimes give you some very good bargains!

How to utilize addons with this?

The best way is to use your Craft Store in combination with Awesome Guild Store. Access a trader and order the search by “most recent”; set minimum price (depending on your wallet, can be <300, <1000, etc.), and set the AWS specifications on item quality from White (or Green if you are in hurry) to Gold quality. Look through the results for items that were put in sale very recently. (They have still 30 days left.)

How do I calculate my margin and decide if it's worth it?

First, look at an item in a guild store and how many % MM tells the said item is being sold under its average market value. Remember to take into account a 7% tax cut that occurs when you sell the item through a guild trader (the previously mentioned 1% is only applicable if the items goes unsold.)

Thus, an item which MM tells you is being sold at 30% below its average value, will only net you 23%, assuming you resell it with the market average price.

Second thing you should consider is the actual price of the item. A 40% discount on average seems like a great deal, but if the average price of the item you are looking at is 100 gold, flipping it for its average price will only net you 60 gold in which case it isn’t really worth of one of your trade slots on the guild trader.

The third thing is a frequency at which the item is being sold at, and its price history curve. Some items (materials, top potions, etc.) tend to remain relatively stable on the price curve. Others have huge spikes in popularity (and a few players are able to influence the market and create “baits”... be careful) : an item set which a known youtuber is advising to use for example, new motifs that have just come out of the latest patch, etc. You can make high profits with those spikes, but like all speculation-like investments, they are risky.

The following video is a bit long and I do not fully agree with everything, but it can help you understand what I mean. Some things are easier when visualized! :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW2bMCGPAgc

Grinding:

I personally find grinding soul-crushing, but it can be some really good money...

Almost all of the following grinds are not (or not anymore) secrets. Meaning they might be packed and thus useless, especially during the prime hours (in late afternoon/evening and weekend). Because of this they may work better for those who’re playing at night/early morning and during working days.

Few examples of grinding locations:

Public Dungeons (and bosses): go for areas with popular zone item sets, (eg: Mother’s Sorrow & others in Deshaan) or humanoid enemies which drop gold when killed (eg: the always classic Vile Manor)

Crafting nodes: download Harvest Map addon and enjoy some running around (Craglorn for the extra chance to get Nirncrux, or Coldharbour for a chance of those shiny furniture flowers we like so much.)

Wardrobes & Urns: This is also something to note as a player housing lover: there are several famous spots full of urns and wardrobes, such as the Traitor's Vault in Artaeum (here’s the ESO forums post with a map: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/415092/summerset-furnishing-plan-farm-locations/p1), Direnni Acropolis in Summerset, and Dreloth Tomb in Vvardenfell. There are also a couple of good spots only available during specific quests (Crystal Tower towards the end of the Summerset main quest line.)

Grinding Telvar Stones / Keys in Imperial City is also liked by some. Killing zombies near the Aldmeri Dominion or Ebonheart Pact bases is a good mix of exp, Telvars, and Shards. If you don't get killed by other players that is...

How to grind:

If you need to grind enemies, you need some AoE and a damage item set, and you can go with a friend. If you are going to grind nodes or wardrobes, you go solo and you may want a mix of sets that increase your movement speed.

I won't go through the damage item set recommendations as there are tons of different builds out there. However, here is a list of sets you can mix up to increase your movement speed. ZOS introduced a cap on movement speed, but you still can attain nice results!

Cyrodil's Ward
Jailbreaker
Fiord’s legacy
Medium armor and Orcs also have speed passive. The Steed Mundus stone an additional help if you are not already at cap.

And do not forget to unlock the passive skills from Champion Point tree, such as Treasure Hunter, Master Gatherer, and Windrunning in the green tree.

Thieving:

Thieving is a classic of Elder Scrolls and already has its fair share of guides. I will simply point to those and provide a quick summary of important points here:

- Grind up to max level on Legendermain and Thieves Guild skills + the start of Dark Brotherhood for real profits.

- Follow the “pick pocket twice, then Blade of Woe kill” for best results. Focus on most difficult targets (Nobles, Mages, etc.)

- Don't bother with the white-quality loot.

- Combine sets that increase movement speed and reduce detection range: see “Grinding for speed sets + Night Terror, Night Mother, Night Silence (latter only if you are not a vampire already, which I might also suggest to look at.)

- Some classes (Nightblade) and races (sneaky Khajiits and Bosmer, money loving Imperials) are better than others at this.

- Harvest Map addoncan also be useful for thieving as it marks treasure chest locations down.

- For stealing there are many places that I like: in non-DLC zones Wayrest remains as my favorite, and Summerset (DLC) also has some good spots (Shimmerene.)

Below here you can find additional guides that are worth looking into:

A guide with a solid start, but which has unfortunately been abandoned a long time ago (but which still includes the basics, as well as map guides.) http://roguesfolio.tumblr.com/Guide (http://roguesfolio.tumblr.com/archive)

And some additional talks and guides on builds and item sets:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/296431/a-thiefs-build-guide-one-tamriel

Kevduit video guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER7BqegMnA4

Crafting:

As mentioned above, do as many crafting writs as you can with your characters. Few tricks to make your 7 crafting writs per character in less than 5 min:

Use the addon: “Dulgubon’s Lazy Writs” for equipment crafting.
Craft many of the items requested for Alchemy & Provision in advance, as the same requests will always come up later again. When you have the items on you already, you will just have to accept and return the quest and collect the rewards.

Research equipment traits on your characters as it increases the chance of getting Master Writs from completing the daily writs (from max level crafting writs only.)

Knowing more full sets of purple crafting motifs also increase the chance of acquiring Master Writs. However, the increase seems minimal, and I’m uncertain whether there is a calculation/guide to how much it influences the chance of getting Master Writs. To play safe you could start with the cheapest motifs first (Ancient Elf, Primal, Daedric, etc.)

Follow the below guides to level up crafting fast:

Alchemy: http://www.sunshine-daydream.us/ESO/alchemy.html
Provisioning: add one skill point in Recipe Improvement every time you can and always craft the items from the highest level green recipe available.
Enchanting: deconstruct glyphs created by others, (by your own alts, is also a possibility) then just combine any unknown runes you have.

Other Methods:

Here are some additional information and links that I referred to before:

Which dailies? Check this list and decide for yourself, depending on what you like! http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Repeatable_Quests

For friends of housing I would advise to start with dailies that are necessary for furniture you like (eg: Divine Magister achievement for the waterfall furniture in Summerset.)

PvP: Gold Vendor is active during the weekend. You can type !Golden in our Discord to see the items sold during a specific weekend. Be careful when buying nice jewellery that is normally only available in dungeons as they are BoP (Bind on Pickup.) Militant Ordinator motifs still sell well. The vendor is located in Vivec City, at the Battleground encampment.

IC: If you are there for grinding, do it on off-hours. Even then, remember that if you die, you will lose half of your Telvar stones and that it is a PvP zone. Staying close to your base reduces the risk, and with some luck, you can quietly farm there for some time for some good money.

If you are in a small group, you might even want to try to conquer all flags upstairs and then start killing Bosses in the various areas. Higher rewards, but higher risk too. Or you can gank/bomb the people doing the things mentioned above ☺ . Then go into your base and buy alchemy ingredients and Hakejo-runes. Sell the Fragments. Profit.

Fishing: Here’s a list to some guides and addons to help your fishing: now the fishing loot-table is not bad at all. Between fish to be filleted for Perfect Roes, the new fishing-exclusive motif (Pyandonean), and the usual useless crap you get in any grind.

Here is a couple of guides: https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Ultimate+Guide+to+fishing
https://alcasthq.com/fishing-guide-eso/

And useful addons: http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info918-VotansFisherman.html

Hope it helps…. Have fun!!!

xericdx

Space booked, just in case

Davor

Thanks for this. Seems like a lot of work to do. Almost like being on the stock market.

xericdx

eheh, yes it can be a lot of work. I consider the trading system in ESO an integral part of the game, a one I enjoy, although it misses the Central Auction House that would make it more similar to a stock market.

I like the current system of traders and traders hubs but, to avoid lyching and starting (yet another) thread on the Auction house I directly call for peace here

Alamakot

you forgot to mention maxed hireling in crafting part, on all chars. 8 basic alts gives 40 mails with free mats every 12+ hours.

LadyLethalla

Good info all in one handy guide

Also if you have a PvP character or don't mind a huge bounty there's a place in Reaper's March (Hadran's Caravan, I think?) with a lot of robbable NPCs and (if I remember correctly) few or no guards. Unlikely you'd be able to pickpocket many undetected as they're clustered in groups but just killing and looting can be worthwhile.
(I watched someone do this some time ago and within half an hour or so his bounty was more than 300k.)

xericdx

Thanks for the comments!

Alamakot wrote: »

you forgot to mention maxed hireling in crafting part, on all chars. 8 basic alts gives 40 mails with free mats every 12+ hours.

...I indeed did not put a lot of things while trying to make it not-to-long Personally, I have only 2/3 hireling on several characters as that correspond to my limit of Loading Screen and avoid making the tour of my alts twice a day. Also, this is normally a passive that all crafters notice automatically and invest point in. But agree can be useful to add and included a mention in the Guide.

LadyLethalla wrote: »

Good info all in one handy guide

Also if you have a PvP character or don't mind a huge bounty there's a place in Reaper's March (Hadran's Caravan, I think?) with a lot of robbable NPCs and (if I remember correctly) few or no guards. Unlikely you'd be able to pickpocket many undetected as they're clustered in groups but just killing and looting can be worthwhile.
(I watched someone do this some time ago and within half an hour or so his bounty was more than 300k.)

Again, thanks

I prefer not to mention all the grinding/stealing point to avoid being too long. Also, just in the 2 guides I link, there are many areas for that.

That specific place you mention was (in)famous some time ago (years?) for being full of bots just doing that. Haven't checked if still works though or they put some guard in it ?

UppGRAYxDD

Forgot about table dancing in Riften...

xericdx

Hello again!

I did not want to go too much into details. However, I noticed some confusion regarding flipping, especially as many players only look at the MM (Master Merchant) % value when doing that.

Before I put this up in the Guide, I wanted to ask your advice, to understand if it is clear enough or if should I tweak it a bit.

I made a table where I compare the % profit suggested by MM with the net gold profit you would get if re-selling at MM average.

Even if MM seems to suggest that you would make a huge profit, it might not be worth using one of your 30 selling slots for that. For example : You see an item being sold for 500g, and MM is telling you 50% potential profit if resold on average price. If you sell it for the average suggested (750g), you will only gain 197g (including taxes). There are several other things that you can sell for a better margin and takes you less time (non common traits armor pieces for example).

I made a table (attached), with 3 columns. 1st, the price that you might see on the Store, 2nd, the price you would need to sell to get the profit associated with the column), 3rd, the MM % profit that would you need to see on the item you want to buy to get that profit.

Cheers