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The Poor Adventurer's Guide to Making Money in Tamriel
ookami007
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I’ve seen numerous requests by players lately on how to make money, whether because of the Homestead release or just to buy gear. I’ve replied to some of these threads with some ideas but I wanted to consolidate them for anyone who might be interested.
So, without further ado, here are my top ways to make money in Elder Scrolls Online.
Prelude
If you are serious about making money, the first thing you need to do is get the right add-ons. Make sure you get Master Merchant, which will give you prices for items based off the sales in your guilds and Tamriel Trade Center, which gives you listing prices based off user data from users of the plugin. Used together you can get a much clearer picture of the worth of an item and what you should ask for it. Without this, you are stuck guessing or worse, wasting time researching it - and that means you’re NOT making money.
A Guild A Day, Keep Poverty Away
Once you have your plugins, start thinking guild. As soon as you can, join a trade guild THAT HAS A TRADER. These are advertised in nearly any zone but you can go to Deeshan, Stormhaven or Craglorn and watch zone chat for recruiting. Most have minimum sales quotas, but not to worry, we gotcha covered.
Without a trade guild, you will effectively be halving your time between getting sellable materials and spamming zone chat to sell, or if you guild doesn’t have a trader, hoping someone in your guild needs your stuff. Get in a trade guild as soon as possible and make sure it’s one that has a trader.
In The Beginning… there was Money
Let’s start out with how you can make money as a newbie. As a new character, there are numerous ways to make money. I’ll outline them below:
1 - The Devil Dances In Empty Pockets
Thievery is one of the easiest ways to make money when you are new. Pickpocketing can be risky, but at low levels your bounty is small and quickly dissipates. As soon as you can, invest in the Legerdemain passives to increase pickpocket chances. A white item can be fenced (sold) at a outlaw refuge for 40gp and a green item goes for 100gp.
Note: There is a daily limit to how much you can fence and launder and this can be increased through legerdemain passives. I recommending putting at least one point into the passive to double your daily allotment.
2 - Rob Them Blind
In addition to pickpocketing, which initially carries some risk, there is straight out thievery. Open every container but be selective in what you steal, knowing your daily limit. Remember, white items are 40gp while green and blue items offer much better rewards for the same daily “slot”. In addition, you can get recipes which can be sold for 20-30gp for a green, 100-500gp for a blue and 1000gp+ after they have been laundered. Since homestead, you can get blueprints, etc. as well which can sell for 200-2000gp depending on the blueprint, etc. You can also get blue or purple motifs occasionally. Blue motifs generally sell for around 100gp, while purples can sell for 1000gp.
3 - Make Me A Bicycle Clown!
Crafting is a good way to make some honest cash. Each writ rewards both money and items which depend on your crafting level. Occasionally, you get things like intricate items, which sell for 100-200gp each or yellow tempers, which can sell for 5000-7000 each. This is also a good way to level up your crafting.
4 - Here We Go Gathering Nuts in May
Harvesting can make money in several ways. First, go out and harvest raw materials (wood, metal, pelts, etc.). You can then directly sell those raw materials in lots of 100 or 200 so crafters can buy them and refine them - and possibly get useful items like tempers. OR, you can invest in crafting passives and refine them yourself and possibly get the tempers, and then sell the refined items as well. Selling raw is the quickest way and requires less investment in crafting, whereas in the long run refining them yourself will probably yield more money.
5 - Wipe Them Out… All of Them
Killing things can also yield sellable items. From foul hides to other items, you can get various items that you can sale to vendors. This and questing are actually the least effective ways to make coin. The one exception is undead. Undead seem to drop glyphs, which can be sold or broken down (with an investment in enchanting).
6 - You need people of intelligence on this sort of... mission... quest... thing.
Questing is another way to earn money. Most quests reward items - which you can sell - or money or both. The problem is, most are time consuming. So this is a very inefficient way to make money.
We’re A Movin On Up!
As you get up in level, you will have access to more zones and more mobility - and maybe more trade guilds. It opens up more options, especially once you hit CP160. Why CP160? Because at that point, everything that drops will be usable endgame and there are tons of end game players. You can still do the things above, but being CP160 opens up additional possibilities.
1 - Daily Quests
There are good daily quests in Craglorn, Gold Coast and Wrothgar to name three. Most of the dailies reward you with containers that sometime contain motifs. These motifs sell for anywhere from 7000-28000gp each. Some are time consuming, others are just World Boss kills and they are usually popular enough that there are people doing them that you can join in with 24 hours a day.
2 - Farming
No, I don’t mean agriculture. I mean farming World Bosses or Public dungeons for highly sought after Overland sets, such as Spinner and Spriggans. A Spinner sharpened Staff or Spriggans sharpened dagger can get you 200K-300K (yeah, that’s THOUSAND) gold per pop. They’re rare, so in the meantime you can sell the impenetrable (PvP) or Divines (PvE) misc drops. They sell from the hundreds to the thousands.
3 - Crafting
You can become a crafter and hawk your wares on the trader. Selling blue or purple food can be a consistent form of income, as can tri-pots (healing, melee or spell) or even certain armor sets. You have to experiment with this as things come and go depending on the latest nerfs - yah, I said it! I recommend this more as a supplemental form rather than your main form of making money.
4 - Buy Low, Sell High
You can also spend the time to visit the lesser known traders and buy things low and then take them back to your (hopefully) much more prominent merchant and sell them for a profit. This makes some people a lot of money but does carry some risk so you really have to have your ear to the market.
5- Cheat!
No, I don’t mean cheat at the game. I mean, more like Insider Trading. Get yourself to the Public Test Server and play around with the big updates. Often, you will find that certain things will become MUCH more valuable with certain updates because they’re needed for quest, needed for writs, etc. For instance, the price of certain crafting items went up after Homestead. If you bought a ton right before and then slowly fed it into the system, you could have made good money.
6 - Be Creative
There are many more ways to make money - from renting yourself out to help someone power level - to something no one’s thought of. There are plenty of ways to make money - if you want to.
I hope this helps you or at least gives you some ideas and good luck on your financial success!
Cheers!
So, without further ado, here are my top ways to make money in Elder Scrolls Online.
Prelude
If you are serious about making money, the first thing you need to do is get the right add-ons. Make sure you get Master Merchant, which will give you prices for items based off the sales in your guilds and Tamriel Trade Center, which gives you listing prices based off user data from users of the plugin. Used together you can get a much clearer picture of the worth of an item and what you should ask for it. Without this, you are stuck guessing or worse, wasting time researching it - and that means you’re NOT making money.
A Guild A Day, Keep Poverty Away
Once you have your plugins, start thinking guild. As soon as you can, join a trade guild THAT HAS A TRADER. These are advertised in nearly any zone but you can go to Deeshan, Stormhaven or Craglorn and watch zone chat for recruiting. Most have minimum sales quotas, but not to worry, we gotcha covered.
Without a trade guild, you will effectively be halving your time between getting sellable materials and spamming zone chat to sell, or if you guild doesn’t have a trader, hoping someone in your guild needs your stuff. Get in a trade guild as soon as possible and make sure it’s one that has a trader.
In The Beginning… there was Money
Let’s start out with how you can make money as a newbie. As a new character, there are numerous ways to make money. I’ll outline them below:
1 - The Devil Dances In Empty Pockets
Thievery is one of the easiest ways to make money when you are new. Pickpocketing can be risky, but at low levels your bounty is small and quickly dissipates. As soon as you can, invest in the Legerdemain passives to increase pickpocket chances. A white item can be fenced (sold) at a outlaw refuge for 40gp and a green item goes for 100gp.
Note: There is a daily limit to how much you can fence and launder and this can be increased through legerdemain passives. I recommending putting at least one point into the passive to double your daily allotment.
2 - Rob Them Blind
In addition to pickpocketing, which initially carries some risk, there is straight out thievery. Open every container but be selective in what you steal, knowing your daily limit. Remember, white items are 40gp while green and blue items offer much better rewards for the same daily “slot”. In addition, you can get recipes which can be sold for 20-30gp for a green, 100-500gp for a blue and 1000gp+ after they have been laundered. Since homestead, you can get blueprints, etc. as well which can sell for 200-2000gp depending on the blueprint, etc. You can also get blue or purple motifs occasionally. Blue motifs generally sell for around 100gp, while purples can sell for 1000gp.
3 - Make Me A Bicycle Clown!
Crafting is a good way to make some honest cash. Each writ rewards both money and items which depend on your crafting level. Occasionally, you get things like intricate items, which sell for 100-200gp each or yellow tempers, which can sell for 5000-7000 each. This is also a good way to level up your crafting.
4 - Here We Go Gathering Nuts in May
Harvesting can make money in several ways. First, go out and harvest raw materials (wood, metal, pelts, etc.). You can then directly sell those raw materials in lots of 100 or 200 so crafters can buy them and refine them - and possibly get useful items like tempers. OR, you can invest in crafting passives and refine them yourself and possibly get the tempers, and then sell the refined items as well. Selling raw is the quickest way and requires less investment in crafting, whereas in the long run refining them yourself will probably yield more money.
5 - Wipe Them Out… All of Them
Killing things can also yield sellable items. From foul hides to other items, you can get various items that you can sale to vendors. This and questing are actually the least effective ways to make coin. The one exception is undead. Undead seem to drop glyphs, which can be sold or broken down (with an investment in enchanting).
6 - You need people of intelligence on this sort of... mission... quest... thing.
Questing is another way to earn money. Most quests reward items - which you can sell - or money or both. The problem is, most are time consuming. So this is a very inefficient way to make money.
We’re A Movin On Up!
As you get up in level, you will have access to more zones and more mobility - and maybe more trade guilds. It opens up more options, especially once you hit CP160. Why CP160? Because at that point, everything that drops will be usable endgame and there are tons of end game players. You can still do the things above, but being CP160 opens up additional possibilities.
1 - Daily Quests
There are good daily quests in Craglorn, Gold Coast and Wrothgar to name three. Most of the dailies reward you with containers that sometime contain motifs. These motifs sell for anywhere from 7000-28000gp each. Some are time consuming, others are just World Boss kills and they are usually popular enough that there are people doing them that you can join in with 24 hours a day.
2 - Farming
No, I don’t mean agriculture. I mean farming World Bosses or Public dungeons for highly sought after Overland sets, such as Spinner and Spriggans. A Spinner sharpened Staff or Spriggans sharpened dagger can get you 200K-300K (yeah, that’s THOUSAND) gold per pop. They’re rare, so in the meantime you can sell the impenetrable (PvP) or Divines (PvE) misc drops. They sell from the hundreds to the thousands.
3 - Crafting
You can become a crafter and hawk your wares on the trader. Selling blue or purple food can be a consistent form of income, as can tri-pots (healing, melee or spell) or even certain armor sets. You have to experiment with this as things come and go depending on the latest nerfs - yah, I said it! I recommend this more as a supplemental form rather than your main form of making money.
4 - Buy Low, Sell High
You can also spend the time to visit the lesser known traders and buy things low and then take them back to your (hopefully) much more prominent merchant and sell them for a profit. This makes some people a lot of money but does carry some risk so you really have to have your ear to the market.
5- Cheat!
No, I don’t mean cheat at the game. I mean, more like Insider Trading. Get yourself to the Public Test Server and play around with the big updates. Often, you will find that certain things will become MUCH more valuable with certain updates because they’re needed for quest, needed for writs, etc. For instance, the price of certain crafting items went up after Homestead. If you bought a ton right before and then slowly fed it into the system, you could have made good money.
6 - Be Creative
There are many more ways to make money - from renting yourself out to help someone power level - to something no one’s thought of. There are plenty of ways to make money - if you want to.
I hope this helps you or at least gives you some ideas and good luck on your financial success!
Cheers!
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Morvane✭✭✭✭1) join trade guild from Craglorn or Rawlkha, or at least any capital (and install Master MerchNT).
2) donate 2k to guild bank
3) go to daily quests
4) go to bank
5) sell al ur loot in guild store:
- intricate items for 200g each
- grey, green, blue for deconstruct too: 150-200g each
- some blue and purple items from bad sets for 250-400g
6) go eat food, work and love ur girlfriend
7) log in next day and take ur profit.
ariphmetic is simple. usually u sell 1 item for 50-60g for vendor, if it isnt ornate. Now every item in ur bag is like ornate and u dont think how fullfill ur slots in trade guilds if u play 2-3 hours a day. month profit from such sales is amazingEdited by Morvane on February 28, 2017 10:13PMDC Dunmer Sorcerer since 2014
@morvayn54, PC/EU0 -
ookami007✭✭✭✭✭
✭Thieves Guild Event... get out there and double harvest and kill World Bosses and sell your proceeds!
Also, blueprints are still selling along with crafting mats!0 -
Molydeus✭✭✭✭✭
✭Very nice advice. These are some of the best and most fundamental tips all players should know of when getting into the $$$ side of ESO. Thanks OP.0 -
kalarro✭✭✭You talk a lot about selling. How do I sell? There is no auction house, right?. I only play solo, so no guild vendor.0
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malicia✭✭✭✭You talk a lot about selling. How do I sell? There is no auction house, right?. I only play solo, so no guild vendor.
You can either use zone chat as a advertising platform, or join a trading guild. I'm also playing solo, but have joined a trading guild to be able to sell my goods. You'll find many advertising on the forums, and you'll often find ones advertising in zone chat.
My trading guild expects you to either sell "enough" (with no clear defined definition of "enough") or to donate 1k per week. No requirements other than that. No forced group events, no external forum registration. They're basically leaving me to play my solo playstyle. I gladly contribute 1k per week - it's a pittance compared to my income from sales.PC, EU
Not elite, not the best. Just enjoying ESO.
Not the worst either. "Casual" != "totally ignorant"
@taciti0 -
malicia✭✭✭✭
I play about 1-2 hours each evening. I start off doing equipment writs (blacksmithing, clothing and woodworking), then I do the solo Undaunted daily, and then I'll start looking for delves that I haven't cleared, or for Public Dungeons where I haven't killed all the bosses. I harvest all resource nodes that I see, and I'll occasionally trawl Craglorn to farm resource nodes.
I keep all tempers, rosins and wax, as I need them for my own equipment.
Delves and Public Dungeons probably account for the bulk of my income. I kill all mobs I find and loot them. Things with the Intricate trait I generally keep to sell on the guild store - you currently look at 170-180 gold per item (PC EU). Then you'll find the occasional set item with the Divines trait that might be worth something - that also goes to the guild store. Mobs are also a great source of glyhps, which, depending on what MM and TTC says, might also go onto the guild store. Everything that doesn't have at least 150 gold value on the guild store goes to the NPC vendors.
Outside, I try to be a bit more discerning. Nirnroot currently sells for about 100 gold each, so I pick all I find. Then I also sell all housing resources that I find. Housing for me will happen in the far distant feature, and I'm not going to hoard resources (capital) while I have better use for the funds on something else.
All my sales are little things, but they do add up faster than you'd think.
PC, EU
Not elite, not the best. Just enjoying ESO.
Not the worst either. "Casual" != "totally ignorant"
@taciti1 -
kalarro✭✭✭...
Thanks a lot for the explanations. Im likeing the game a lot, but I got a baby and dont want to team up since I may need to leave at any moment. So Im searching for content to do alone, and your tips are very good.
What is the solo undaunted? I wasnt doing anything thinking it was all team content.
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malicia✭✭✭✭
At the back left of the Undaunted tent just outside Elden Root there's an NPC that gives daily solo Undaunted quests. He's standing in the corner, so it is easy to miss him. All the quests from him that I've done were to kill a specific boss in one of the normal delves. It is probably a very slow way of leveling Undaunted, but for me it is better than being dependent on group content.
PC, EU
Not elite, not the best. Just enjoying ESO.
Not the worst either. "Casual" != "totally ignorant"
@taciti0 -
ookami007✭✭✭✭✭
✭Just an update, I got a new account that has no subscription and started a character from scratch. In a few hours, I made about 10,000. Basically, I'm re-investing the money into backpack and bank space - so I can loot more and hold more stuff for selling. And this is without joining a trade guild, since this is just a proof of concept. If I had, I found several purple paintings that sell for about 4K-5K each and several treasure maps that would sell for about another 1K together.
The toon is currently level 8 and right now it's all chest hunting and stealing. Make sure you invest that extra point in Legerdemain to get the bonus sell slots. I wasn't even being very selective and only looting greens, I actually looted about 60% whites so there's more money that could have been made.
So it does work.
Edit - After two days of playing, I'm up to about 30,000 gold that I've made so far. And that's doing crafting writs, the two daily WB quests in Gold Coast, looting chests in the starter zone and stealing everything I can get my hands on. Right now, it's all going into bank and backpack slots but once those are maxed that will be going into savings.
Edited by ookami007 on March 12, 2017 7:01PM0 -
RapidUrsa✭✭✭✭Honestly the best way I have made money is either joining a guild and doing end game stuff for Motifs and gear or doing the Fighters Guild, Mages Guild and Undaunted dailies for Draugr motifs as they sell for 40k each.About MeXbox One - EU
Gamertag - RapidUrsa
Overall CP - 5000 -
ookami007✭✭✭✭✭
✭New Update - It's been 8 days and I'm at about 130,000 and currently level 22. I could have been much higher but I took some time to do Cyrodil for the last few days and you don't really make much money there, but I like to get my toons at least to level 6 for caltrops, so better sooner than later.
I joined two guilds with traders, but one is too obscure to really sell much, so it's just 1 really. It's an easy place to dump motifs for sale.
Inventory management is unfortunately a big part of playing with a free account. Nearly all of my money is going towards bank and backpack upgrades due to a lack of a crafting bag. And since I also want to level up his crafting and other skills, much of that inventory is for crafting items that I might otherwise sale.
More updates later.0
