I'm surprised Soul Gems haven't been mentioned. A single filled gem sells to a vendor for 30 gold at minimum. There's no cap on how many you can sell, unlike thieving, and you can fill them through normal gameplay just by keeping Soul Trap on your bar and remembering to cast it and kill the enemies while it's active. You get Soul Trap from either completing the beginning tutorial quest "Soul Shriven in Coldharbour" (or from skipping the tutorial, which you can if you've done it on another character already), so basically every player who's actually played the game has it. I have the Soul Splitting Trap morph because I use it entirely for filling as many gems as possible, as quickly as possible.

It's not worth trying to sell filled Soul Gems in guilds, at least for me on PC/NA, because you have to price them so low that you end up making less than 30 gold per gem after taxes, and that's if they sell at all. Which they usually don't, not for me.

Where to farm gems....Aside from buying empty ones from guild traders (not regular NPC vendors; they're usually much more expensive), you can steal a whole bunch from Mathon Nosebreaker's area in Belkarth, Craglon. There are a few that don't count as stealing at the writ turn-in the Hollow City, Coldharbour. And my personal favorite spot is inside the Daedric braziers atop the high point at Moonhenge, Greenshade. This is my favorite because they're not marked as stolen goods, and you can get a ton of empty gems there.

The number of gems is always random at these locations (sometimes the Hollow City has zero gems; usually about 1-3), but I've gotten up to twelve in one go at Moonhenge without having to steal like in Belkarth. Loot, teleport to the preview mode of a player house you don't own, leave it, and you're back at your original spot with the gem spawns reset. There are enemies near the braziers you can attack to fill the gems without leaving the area, if you want to farm for a bit. If you don't have access to a merchant assistant, there are two wandering merchants on the main road near Moonhenge: Ferlion to the east, and Shausa to the north.

I also like to dig up antiquity loot and do daily crafting writs, but that gets old after a bit. I prefer to play as normal on my main character, filling up gems as I fight, and park my alts that I'm not doing anything with in Moonhenge to farm the empty gems.

UESP wiki has a few more sample locations of gems. There are other places that I'm not thinking of, I'm sure. I just stick to my personal favorite spots. It's not a ton of gold all at once, but it adds up, and it's pretty steady money since you're frequently getting gem drops as you play. If you have any Crown Soul Gems, go into your settings and make those the priority gem to be used for resurrecting and recharging weapons. Save the basic gems to sell for gold.

MrGlad8 wrote: »

Heya! I Just hit level 50 (PC/EU)
I’m used to WoW-style AH trading where you list stuff and make gold over time. In ESO it seems like selling “properly” is mostly through trading guilds with a good trader spot (and many have dues/requirements).

If I’m a casual player and don’t want to commit hard to a trade guild, what’s the best way to make gold?
Are there reliable casual methods, or is it mostly farming/quests/dungeons + vendor gold?

Thanks!

Before ESO became my every-day game, I would go to the ships in Glenumbra (Daggerfall Harbor) and loot only green and blue quality items from those ships, and then I would use the helm of the ship to travel to Davons Watch in Stonefalls and do the same thing in that ship, and then travel back to Daggerfall, which resets both ships in the harbor. You can do this easily until your character is at capacity, and then you can fence all the items and make 15-20k per day (assuming you have maxed out your fenced goods sales at 140/140). This is actually a great way to level your ledgerman as well.

The thieving is easy, and some of the stolen items will stack if they are the same, so you can really fill out your character and just have it ready to sell on your daily fenced goods reset. That way, you just log in, sell the items, deposit the gold, and move on to whatever else you want to do.

Now this WILL make your inventory a problem for that character, so I recommend you not do this on what you consider your "main" character.

Kill a few Daedra with One Stone. Farm Public Dungeons.

Kill trash mobs, and bosses you need, until your bags are full. Then Vendor all the loot you hoover up. You get Exp, Gold, Leads, Fragments. If you drag around a Companion you will level them up too.

Of course having a Merchant or Banker assistant makes this activity efficient. If you don't have one, the Public Dungeon in Shadowfen has a Vendor in the main bar to offload swag.

I’ve been reluctant to post here as there have been lots of good replies.

I think it might depend on what your goals are for the game. If you just like questing, you don’t need a lot of gold, so just vendoring items to an npc works fine. If you want to be a crafter, then you’re going to be researching and deconning those items instead. If you want to do housing, then you will definitely want to seek out a donation-based guild with minimal requirements (basically just logging in and being active) so you can get more for the items you sell and be able to pick up motifs and furnishing plans that many players give away for free.

Sell everything to the vendor. Sell 200 mats for 800 gold to the vendor or fight and undercut others to try to just get 1200. There are a few things you can make good gold on but you're really going to need to have a trade guild. I have four trade guilds, one is more pvp than trade. Three are casual guilds that do random group content as well. None require dues, just that you at least try to sell and remain active.

People do cheesy stuff like carries and selling curated stickerbook items too, I mean there are many ways to hustle the gamers. Figure out your hustle