How do you earn gold and how to make the bear more tanky?

Deeldo

Hello, I'm playing the Warden class and often the bear is not good at holding the enemy on them. Maybe the bear is not thought as a tank?

Also, I'm level 26 and seem to always be poor. I'm around 2k-10k gold constantly which is very low. Granted, I deconstruct all the stuff and keep the mats, buy horse upgrades and change the look of my gear from time to time. Is this just the way it is until I get into trading?

VaranisArano

The best way to make gold is to find what you enjoy collecting.

Some people really enjoy stealing and fencing items.

Other people really enjoy trading. For that, you need a trading guild with a vendor or to sell in zone chat. You also need something to sell.

Since you are leveling, the easiest thing to sell to other players is fish and alchemy reagents. Alchemy reagents sell for a lot of gold, anywhere from 30 to 200 gold each depending on the reagent. Fish has a chance to drop perfect roe, which sells for around 9-10k each. You can also sell raw ore, wood, or cloth mats which other players will decon for a chance at gold improvement mats, but the price of those are better the higher level the mat is.

The Warden bear doesnt have an actual taunt, so it may not always hold aggro for you. If its similar to the sorc pets, you can direct it to enemies that you heavy attack.

NyxWrench

The way I started improving how much money I collected was to discriminate more on what I deconstructed. I'm not in a guild, so I don't do any auction sales. Instead, the only things I deconstruct are the intricate items (bonus to craft skill experience) and blue and purple gear (for the chance at upgrade materials; boost your deconstruct skills when you can). Your skill won't go up as fast, but honestly you don't need to worry about that very much. It won't be an issue until you hit CP160, where you're not outgrowing your gear every day, and researched traits are going to be more of a limitation than skill.

So that leaves all the white gear, and most the green gear to just sell to NPC. (I do sometimes deconstruct the green gear, depending on mood.) You'll average maybe 50 gold per item (varies between small cloth stuff that sells for 29, and wood items that sell for 78; the more expensive, the more likely I'll sell it), and that can easily add an extra couple thousand gold per hour or so of killing stuff. It adds up surprisingly quickly when added to the random junk drops and cloudy poisons and surplus soul gems (I sell the extras beyond one stack of 200).

The next way to improve is to find enemies that drop more than a pittance of gold. A public dungeon works best, if you can handle crowds of enemies (very easy for my sorcerer, very hard for my nightblade and dragon knight; I'm not sure where warden would fall), but you can make it work just about anywhere. Just pay attention to what the mobs are dropping. Soldiers and pirates are more likely to drop around 20 gold each, instead of maybe 5 gold from undead and other 'poor' monsters (if they drop any gold at all). That combos well with selling more gear, as well. This isn't a regular thing, but if I feel like it, I know where to go.

On top of that, get certified in all the different crafts, and do writs each day. It doesn't even matter if you're not ranking the crafts up; I get the same 664 gold per writ no matter what, even if it's just maple bows and iron helmets, and 7 writs is 4.6k. It takes about 10 minutes on a single character, including all the warping around, then sorting through the writ rewards (which will likely give you a few hundred more gold). The writ boards refresh every morning at 2AM EST.

I've also done pickpocketing. I started off getting maybe 2k per hour, and am now up to maybe 4k per hour now that I have a better handle on how it all works, and where good targets are. Plus, also leveling up pickpocketing skill and getting the right gear sets for it. I mainly only do it to get experience points in the thieves' guild and legerdemain, though, as I've not found it to be anything special on the money front.

Anyway, I'll often end up getting around 15k-25k gold per night, which doesn't seem like much (and is a complete pittance to the people in the big trading guilds), but that's perhaps a quarter million in just a couple weeks, and easily covers the stuff I'm interested in buying. I've spent well over half a million on buying and furnishing my house in the last couple months, so I don't find it to be a hindrance.

One other minor thing: I never keep more than 20k-30k gold on a character. If I get more than that, I put the extra in the bank (usually in 10k increments). The bank money is saved for deliberate, special purchases, and not random whims. Knowing that it's there kinda just helps with peace of mind.

Deeldo

Thanks guys, I've been selling mats and slowly going up, although I love designing my character too much so I sink a lot of gold at the outfit station