Making money - how are you all so rich!?

Hugie · January 3

Oh, one more great seller that's "easy" to farm is Dragon Rheum (used for heroism potions, which sweaty raiders use to crank out more ults in the game's hardest trials).

As long as you've done 20 of the Dragonguard Sanctum daily quests in Southern Elsweyr (main quest counts towards this total) + completed the "The Good Bits" quest in Tideholm (available after you hit 20/30 dailies), dragons will start having a chance to drop more valuable crafting reagents. There's almost always people running around Southern Elsewyr beating dragons up for their Rheum.

freespirit · January 3

Oh also, don't forget Perfect Roe, fishing may not be your thing but many a fortune has been built on selling it or using it to make xp pots and selling them.

I do both and would say just selling the Perfect Roe is a great place to start!

bmnoble · January 3

Daily writs, hireling mails and selling the valuable materials you don't need from them, do that for long enough and assuming your not blowing the gold the moment you get it, on something like housing, you will gradually build up a fortune.

Then it is just a question of how much gold is enough, some people just like to see their amount of gold grow, others use it to fuel their housing/fashion addiction, others use it to get stuff gifted to them from the crown store, others use it to help pay for guild trader spots.

If your not blowing on those kind of things it will build up to the point where you can go years without having to bother with daily writs if you feel like it.

Even without the craft bag, you can still make a modest income by opening all your hireling mails on one character selling those mats most once they reach full stacks to save on listing slot, make sure to refine the raw mats first then gradually sell them on a guild trader, I tested it out with my 20 characters and was making about 300K a week doing that but that was with me hoarding the gold mats from the hireling mails/refining, I could have made quite a bit more if I felt like it.

It still costs quite a bit to level the crafting skills on all your characters but once it's set up, you only logging in to each character and using an addon like mail looter to open and delete all the mails on the last character, sort stuff, refine stuff, sell stuff.

chessalavakia_ESO · January 3

Realistically you have two explanations for the economy:

Explanation #1: ESO has a boatload of people playing the game normally that spend the money they earn on the Guild Traders to get something special occasionally which gradually concentrates most of the wealth of the game in the hands of the skilled traders.

Explanation #2: ESO has a bunch of people that illegally buy gold then since they didn't work that hard to get it they'll spend it fast and wildly. Thus, the people that sell stuff of Guild Traders end up being rich because illegal gold is used to buy their goods.

Personally, I'm more of a believer in #2 than #1. The price of many goods that are in demand has tended to go upwards. However, if you look at many of the ways to make money you'll notice that a significant % of them actually remove more gold from the game in Guild Trader fees than they add to the game.

TaSheen · January 3

In the years since I started playing (mid-2017), I've done one thing and one thing only over 3 accounts on both PC megaservers: done daily writs.

To begin with, I did writs on however many alts I had - (well.... lots of them - because alts are my fun) and banked the gold. I didn't buy anything much, I crafted gear, I did surveys, I put skill points into hirelings.

A year or so later, I took the points back from the hirelings because I began to have a sufficiency of mats - I never had to buy anything because I never ran out (or if I ran out I had a survey I could run out to get). At that point, the daily writ gold got put in the bank and just kept building - because I didn't (and don't) buy anything.

I've never messed with traders - I'm not interested in that at all (it's just painful to even think about kiting around to a gazoola of different zones looking for something). At this point, if I'm desperate for something (happens about once a year) if I can't get it in Vivec, well.... I do without.

I have fun playing the game, not messing with making gold. Oh, just for info - I have around 18 mil gold spread over those 3 accounts, playing on both PC NA and EU.

[edit for typos]

Sakiri · January 3

SmellyUnlimited wrote: »

Sakiri wrote: »

My trading guild doesn't have dues that I'm aware of, but they do have raffles and auctions. The raffle tickets I tend to buy about 100k worth a week, and the auctions are usually out of my price range lol. We have a really good trader spot as well.

I don't sell a whole lot but when I do it's more mid to bigger ticket items. Rare patterns and the like. I loot everything, pulled up a few mil+ archive patterns that way.

If you’re buying 100k worth of tickets a week, how often are you winning? I wonder if I’m just throwing my money away spending 10k on tickets when others are likely doing exactly what you’re doing and buying a lot of them.

Not yet, actually, but I don't mind spending that much. Friend of mine has though, just won a house.

I make well over 500k a week so I can afford to do it. I run archive daily and get rare patterns. I farm pub dungeons for runebox parts to sell. I don't craft or do writs, but I also play several hours a day.

Lumsdenml · January 3

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

Realistically you have two explanations for the economy:

... if you look at many of the ways to make money you'll notice that a significant % of them actually remove more gold from the game in Guild Trader fees than they add to the game.

Actually, the only way to actually generate new gold in this game is via quests & selling stuff to NPCs. Anything else is just moving gold from one person to another.

Udrath · January 3

Usually go through my crafting bag once a month and sell all my dreugh wax, style mats and excess trait gems and all housing materials like heartwood and mundane stones. I only do crafting writs on one character. Pretty much sell anything and everything I don’t need.

zaria · January 3

KS_Amt38 wrote: »

Crafting daily writs.

This, add that its over many years.

vsrs_au · January 4

This event's giving me plenty of gold: I was doing the event quests on 7 characters daily***, and accumulated a lot of surplus crafting writs and style items. Selling these has increased my gold by almost a million since the event started (and the buyers got a good deal, because I set the prices to be roughly 2/3 to 3/4 of the TTC recommended minimum price).

*** until I got fed up with the mud ball trolls who ruined that for me.

TaSheen · January 4

vsrs_au wrote: »

This event's giving me plenty of gold: I was doing the event quests on 7 characters daily***, and accumulated a lot of surplus crafting writs and style items. Selling these has increased my gold by almost a million since the event started (and the buyers got a good deal, because I set the prices to be roughly 2/3 to 3/4 of the TTC recommended minimum price).

*** until I got fed up with the mud ball trolls who ruined that for me.

Yeah, I skip the mudball thing. And actually, anything but the War Orphans, the Castle Challenge, and the Lava Foot Stomp. I have issues with timer quests, so never do those, and I just really do NOT find the mudball thing "fun".

ArchMikem · January 4

I've been playing the game for 8 years, and all I have is 3,250,000 total. Thats from me NOT playing the guild trader market. The biggest income I've ever had was from selling the Timbercrow costume for 900,000g.

Other than that it's just selling loot to merchants, maybe going on pickpocket sprees, very slowly building up the bank.

LannStone · January 4

Daily crafting writs on multiple characters give the clothing and jewelry surveys that give the dreugh wax and chromium plating that bring in the most gold
As far as the writs, it takes about as much time as running from one crafting station to the next with the Lazy Crafter addon

Amottica · January 4

The biggest reason players build wealth in-game is because they do not spend it Willie Nillie.

TaSheen · January 4

Amottica wrote: »

The biggest reason players build wealth in-game is because they do not spend it Willie Nillie.

Well.... honestly....

There's not much to actually SPEND it on, ain't?

Amottica · January 4

TaSheen wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

The biggest reason players build wealth in-game is because they do not spend it Willie Nillie.

Well.... honestly....

There's not much to actually SPEND it on, ain't?

For some, maybe. For many, there is a lot to spend that gold on. This is evident in how successful guild are selling their wares and gathering items at the traders.

Billium813 · January 4

TaSheen wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

The biggest reason players build wealth in-game is because they do not spend it Willie Nillie.

Well.... honestly....

There's not much to actually SPEND it on, ain't?

1000% true. There aren't enough gold sinks in the game IMO. The Guild Trader economy totally eclipses the ZOS economy. Once you are making millions, the only thing left is either to start a Guild (burn Gold) or buy crowns

TaSheen · January 4

Billium813 wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

The biggest reason players build wealth in-game is because they do not spend it Willie Nillie.

Well.... honestly....

There's not much to actually SPEND it on, ain't?

1000% true. There aren't enough gold sinks in the game IMO. The Guild Trader economy totally eclipses the ZOS economy. Once you are making millions, the only thing left is either to start a Guild (burn Gold) or buy crowns

All too true. Thing is, I've no interest in either option. So I just add a bit here and there to my "bankroll" - in case a house comes up that I can't resist (for GOLD damnit!) - which doesn't happen often. And even when it does (like the druid one) - well, it's as usual HUGE - and 700 slots doesn't cut it....

I want Erlibru's Gottage - but I guess that's not happening.

*SIGH*

SilverBride · January 4

Billium813 wrote: »

Daily Writs don't make that much money IMO. People saying that are doing 20+ characters every day and selling mats (gold/pot mats), which I said I try to not do. I also only have 4 characters total. I do all the writs cause it's nice mats, but I don't sell what I get and the Gold you get is mediocre at best (ZOS economy).

Why don't you sell the mats you get from doing daily writs? Players can make a LOT of gold doing this and it doesn't have to be done on 20 characters. I made a lot when I was doing this on 4 characters. Now I have 7 and am doing even better. And the gold it brings in is far from mediocre.

Udrath · January 4

TaSheen wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

The biggest reason players build wealth in-game is because they do not spend it Willie Nillie.

Well.... honestly....

There's not much to actually SPEND it on, ain't?

Knight of the circle outfit is probably the biggest flex. You’ve either pvp’ d it all or have made that much gold and it’s one of the coolest looking knight armor in the game

Billium813 · January 4

SilverBride wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

Daily Writs don't make that much money IMO. People saying that are doing 20+ characters every day and selling mats (gold/pot mats), which I said I try to not do. I also only have 4 characters total. I do all the writs cause it's nice mats, but I don't sell what I get and the Gold you get is mediocre at best (ZOS economy).

Why don't you sell the mats you get from doing daily writs? Players can make a LOT of gold doing this and it doesn't have to be done on 20 characters. I made a lot when I was doing this on 4 characters. Now I have 7 and am doing even better. And the gold it brings in is far from mediocre.

I never sell mats (Dragon mats being the exception, from time to time, thx to the Dragonguard Supply Chest and the fact that I just never use them). If you sell mats, you will end up losing more money in the long run buying mats back when you inevitably need them again in the future. You're robbing Peter to pay Paul, it'll catch up with you eventually.

TaSheen · January 4

I NEVER sell mats. Not any of them, not EVER.

I don't NEED gold....

valenwood_vegan · January 4

I've made a small fortune from doing writs every day and selling the excess mats. Nothing crazy like 20x writs every day or multiple accounts like some folks do, but as many as I can tolerate in a given day... usually like 6-10x.

If you can do it regularly and it doesn't drive you crazy, it's a great source of steady income over time... though with the recent change to jewelry crafting, it's not quite as lucrative as it used to be, as the "new" platings are continuing to drop in value.

And as others have mentioned, the second half of that is watching my spending... only buying things that I really need, only when the price is reasonable, and farming up things if I'm able to farm them rather than buy them.

It's true that at a certain point there isn't much to buy with gold anymore - I'm into housing so that can be a gold sink, but most of mine goes to buying crowns for gold.

DreamyLu · January 4

Re OP's question, there are 2 factors explaining my millions:
1) Trading brings me an average of 150k per day.
2) I don't use my gold much, so it piles up over time.

Side note: the average 150k per day are done with less than 30 items taken, so at the top of it, I have the luck that refilling and maintaining resources is no big work. It makes it easy to me and my legendary laziness is satisfied with that!

SilverBride · January 4

Billium813 wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Billium813 wrote: »

Daily Writs don't make that much money IMO. People saying that are doing 20+ characters every day and selling mats (gold/pot mats), which I said I try to not do. I also only have 4 characters total. I do all the writs cause it's nice mats, but I don't sell what I get and the Gold you get is mediocre at best (ZOS economy).

Why don't you sell the mats you get from doing daily writs? Players can make a LOT of gold doing this and it doesn't have to be done on 20 characters. I made a lot when I was doing this on 4 characters. Now I have 7 and am doing even better. And the gold it brings in is far from mediocre.

I never sell mats (Dragon mats being the exception, from time to time, thx to the Dragonguard Supply Chest and the fact that I just never use them). If you sell mats, you will end up losing more money in the long run buying mats back when you inevitably need them again in the future. You're robbing Peter to pay Paul, it'll catch up with you eventually.

It is rare for me to craft armor or weapons so that isn't a problem for me.

Elvenheart · January 4

Lumsdenml wrote: »

emilyhyoyeon wrote: »

I'd lose the will to live if I did crafting dailies on more than 2 characters per day

Ha ha... it only takes about 3min per character to do...

On 10 characters that would be 30 minutes of play time, plus the loading time for each character, which on my old PC takes a while for some reason (my current theory is that my hard drive is just too full and there’s no room for ESO to use for temporary files, but who knows?). Maybe if I could solve that problem it would be a little more doable, but sometimes I only have 30 minutes to an hour to play so that makes doing crafting dailies on multiple characters or difficult. I do it as much as I can during that one event that doubles the gold reward though, is it the Zeal of Zenathar? Trade Be! 💰

ArchMikem · January 4

Billium813 wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

The biggest reason players build wealth in-game is because they do not spend it Willie Nillie.

Well.... honestly....

There's not much to actually SPEND it on, ain't?

1000% true. There aren't enough gold sinks in the game IMO. The Guild Trader economy totally eclipses the ZOS economy. Once you are making millions, the only thing left is either to start a Guild (burn Gold) or buy crowns

1000% not true. During my early years I was continuously broke because I'd find myself needing to buy crafting mats, glyphs, gear set pieces, outfit style pages etc. The gold I've spent on legendary quality crafting mats alone...

The only reason people claim there's nothing to spend gold on is due to having spent enough time playing to have a thoroughly established account where you've collected everything and have more mats than you craft with. After years I'm finally reaching that point myself, though I still am needing to buy Tempers or Rosin if I come across another set I want to use.

ApoAlaia · January 4

I favour traditional industries in order to expand my wealth.

Skooma trading, staffing the many houses of ill repute and dealing on weapons and ordinance.

Being the three pillars upon which success has been traditionally built there is a large degree of overlap between the them.

amig186 · January 4

I got most of my dosh by farming and selling new outfit motifs as soon as they start dropping from zone dailies. New furnishing plans sell nicely too. Usually only one drops per day so it's not even that time consuming, just log in, do the dailies, put the stuff up for sale, log out. The prices will drop after a while, obviously, but you can make some decent bank before it happens.

Zodiarkslayer · January 4

Gold piling up in the bank does not mean that you are rich. It very much depends on how much your income eclipses your expenses. An I'd rather spend my time in game playing content, than having to farm gold in order to get items that are required to play.
Once you realise how little you need to play the vast majority of the game, you will start to relax and have even more fun.

I, for example, have started ESO thinking I need to buy everything to have a sense of progression and reward. But guess what? I am in my sixth year and have nothing that interests me where I need to keep up expenses. I don't chase META, I do not PvP. I am not doing Trials any more. All my companions are dressed in purple. I own all non crown store houses. All my chars look fancy. etc. etc. But my hoard of mats and currencies is large enough to afford anything at short notice. And it steadily keeps growing with little to no effort.
What I have is enough for my gameplay needs.

The only thing I spend gold on is the occasional furnishing buying spree, when I want to furnish a house for one of my characters differently.