Are the gold making activities in ESO fun for you?

HowlKimchi

So I came back to the game around 2 months ago, but I've been playing on and off since before release. There were periods of times where I no-lifed ESO as a degenerate, but these days I spend a healthy (probably not) 1-3 hours in ESO after my uni classes. I'm a guy who enjoys two things in MMOs: PVP and doing gold farming activities. I enjoy doing these solo in a living world. So naturally, I made imperial city my home. 90% of my fortune came from Hakeijos, AP, and alchemy mats. That said, I do theoretically enjoy gold farming activities outside PVP. In Guild Wars 2 and Ragnarok Online, I even have spreadsheets that compute the gold per hour I make on certain maps. I like min/maxing my grind to make the most gold possible.

However, I have a problem with ESO sometimes. The gold making activities that I know of outside IC is *too* easy or is not min/maxable. Like there is no grind in the PVE world to make gold. The ones I know of are

• switching toons to do daily crafting writs on them
• farming for mats in craglorn or opening chests in maps with meta gear
• doing daily quests in zones with good gear (but for some reason you need to share quests with other people to get the most out of it)
• stealing stuff

None of those reward me for having a good build, rotation, and farming loop. For context, in Guild Wars 2, every map has combat related events or mobs that drops specific currency / materials, and a big meta event that's very lucrative if you perform well. In large groups you need to have a good build that can tag many mobs so you get the credit for killing them, while in solo grinds you need to have a survivable build that can clear mobs quickly and you need to be good at piloting your multiple mounts to min max your gold per hour. In Ragnarok Online, you slowly bring your power level up with deliberate purchases of gear, and then you optimize farming your chosen map, or try newer more dangerous maps to see if you can sustain farming in that area. Finally being able to farm harder maps because of incremental updates to your gear through the money you make feels amazing.

Going back to ESO, this is the best MMO ive played in terms of making builds/theorycrafting. I also LOVE the solo arenas, and is probably the best PVE content in any MMO out there for me. However, the gold making PVE options are boring me to death. Am I missing something? I truly want to enjoy gold making in this game. Is there a game mode in PVE out there that lets me make bank through player skill and optimization that's pick up and play? The daily quests has potential but because I need to beg for quest shares in zone chat, it has a lot of downtime making it a not reliable gold farm. Aside from IC, I want something that I can do solo that I can start anytime without having to rely on other people that lets me grind for gold.

Thanks guys!

Soarora

You can check the prices of Maelstrom and Vateshran style pages, they might be good. I can’t really think of anything else, though. Monster styles would work but those are few and far between (ZOS please give us more, there’s so many dungeons, you can give us more style drops without plummeting prices).

Could maybe do IA and buy material crates?

HowlKimchi

Soarora wrote: »

You can check the prices of Maelstrom and Vateshran style pages, they might be good. I can’t really think of anything else, though. Monster styles would work but those are few and far between (ZOS please give us more, there’s so many dungeons, you can give us more style drops without plummeting prices).

Could maybe do IA and buy material crates?

Yeah the style pages drop too few and far in between for my tastes. The IA angle seems interesting to me. I might give it a shot. I found a youtube video that's showing that the provisioning material crates have a decent chance of dropping the expensive mats like rubyblossom extracts.

If it turns out to be a viable gold grind, it'd be what I'm looking for. I just wish there was something that could be done in the open world that's decent for gold and also decently engaging to do (not super easy).

Thank you!

fred4

I'm also an Imperial City guy. The opportunities are just so varied. I'm a nightblade main, but I play a true PvPvE build that can solo farm, zerg, leech, or gank. It's a flexible build without being the best at anything. While I find that you got to go with the flow in IC, I recently made a point of going there at a random time when the population was very mixed, focusing on Tel Var only. No faction was consistently dominating. I took home 30K Tel Var ≈ 300K gold on PC EU in an hour outside of the recent event. So that's my baseline. Hakeijo is the material you sell, but the Columbine drop rate in the Alchemy parcels is high and that stuff is very expensive these days. This is possibly the true reason that has driven the Tel Var exchange rate back up to 9 to 10 gold each. You could also gamble on Powerful Assault ice staves, which probably sell for about 2M, or other valuable weapons. The blue gear boxes are not bad. To the best of my recollection they may also drop motifs or, sometimes, two items. A gamble with a low chance of something truly valuable, though.

Hyperioxes, a YouTuber tank who runs a lot of Infinite Archive, has claimed average hourly rewards of 650K running that content. You have to buy the Provisioning crates with the IA currency. These mostly drop crap, but have a chance to drop rare and extremely valuable materials, such as Ruby Blossom Extract, which sells for about 700K on PC EU. Again, I think you have to enjoy that content and run it a lot, because the RNG is real. For me, as a PvPer, IC is more exciting.

It's perhaps worth noting that AP has quite a good conversion rate on PC EU, these days. It used to be 10 to 1 gold. Now it's between 2 to 1 and 1 to 1. AFAIK this is due to the jewelry crafting changes from last November. Triune jewelry writs are now worth doing and, thus, I suspect Dawn-Prism is now the factor anchoring that conversion. If you regularly PvP in Cyro, then it's also worth noting that collecting Arena Gladiator Proofs buys you some extremely valuable Runeboxes. I recently sold an "Arena Gladiator Emote" for 1.7M. The notable thing about that is that it's not seasonal. It's just time-gated by the fact that you can only get one Gladiator proof per day as far as I know.

A friend is into Elsweyr dragon farming. I think the return rate is something like 200K per hour. You need to do a Southern Elsweyr questline first, a lengthy, time-gated series of daily quests granting an achievement. This will subsequently allow you to collect Dragon Rheum from Elsweyr dragons. It only drops for people who have done the questline and sells for about 10K each. Dragons also drop other expensive stuff that goes into ulti-gen potions, but having the achievement is what makes farming worthwhile.

Finally Scrivener's Hall drops a valuable style material Glass Eye of Mora. Valuable (housing) style materials also drop in some other places, typically from daily zone quests. I don't know how good of a grind that is, but when it combines with farming the mask style from that dungeon, this may be a viable way to make gold. There's usually a monster mask style for sale in the crown store. This generally means you can farm the corresponding dungeon for that mask style. I believe the drop chances increase on vet and if you either have the hardmode or the trifecta achievement. I believe you don't have to run hard mode all the time, but you need the achievement for increased drop chances. Don't quote me on that. You'd have to research it. At any rate, people like the Baron Zaudrus mask style for example. I remember when that dungeon was farmable, it sold for something like 2M. A month later, I sold my mask style for 5M. These days I believe it's 20M+, because it hasn't been farmable in a long time.

Then there is, of course, the business of carry runs. I don't know the legalities of this, as I've recently heard stories of people being banned for accepting illegally obtained in-game gold, e.g. participating in "gold laundering" so to speak. That said, someone once offered me 2M per hour for an nBRP level 1 to level 50 grind, which can be completed in about 90 minutes, even outside of an event. You just have to be a good DD, know the strategy, and the subject you're levelling must be suitably geared and fed with the right scrolls / Ambrosia.

More generally achievement carry runs extend to vBRP and trials, but there are also gear carries. For example you can farm a dungeon or trial and fill the stickerbook until the final curated drop you have left is only a highly desired item, such as a Relequen / Pillar of Nirn / Coral Riptide / Whorl of Depths (perfected) dagger, maybe a perfected Pillager resto staff, and so on. I've heard the average price for a Coral Riptide dagger is 1M, but have witnessed a player offering 15M during a vDSR run, and a transaction duly took place. I don't know whether this veers into a gray area. As far as I know carries are not against the TOS, but transactions that involve real money, logging into another's account, or that involve suspected gold laundering are. Many people also give away stuff freely, so it's not like valuable vet trial gear automatically sells to anyone in a random run.

Kappachi

Yes. IMO you're doing the wrong gold making activities. I make plenty of gold just queueing vet dungeons, gathering in the overworld and slaying mobs while barely ever doing the daily writ crafting. Can still make mils a day.

HowlKimchi

fred4 wrote: »

I'm also an Imperial City guy. The opportunities are just so varied. I'm a nightblade main, but I play a true PvPvE build that can solo farm, zerg, leech, or gank. It's a flexible build without being the best at anything. While I find that you got to go with the flow in IC, I recently made a point of going there at a random time when the population was very mixed, focusing on Tel Var only. No faction was consistently dominating. I took home 30K Tel Var ≈ 300K gold on PC EU in an hour outside of the recent event. So that's my baseline. Hakeijo is the material you sell, but the Columbine drop rate in the Alchemy parcels is high and that stuff is very expensive these days. This is possibly the true reason that has driven the Tel Var exchange rate back up to 9 to 10 gold each. You could also gamble on Powerful Assault ice staves, which probably sell for about 2M, or other valuable weapons. The blue gear boxes are not bad. To the best of my recollection they may also drop motifs or, sometimes, two items. A gamble with a low chance of something truly valuable, though.

Hyperioxes, a YouTuber tank who runs a lot of Infinite Archive, has claimed average hourly rewards of 650K running that content. You have to buy the Provisioning crates with the IA currency. These mostly drop crap, but have a chance to drop rare and extremely valuable materials, such as Ruby Blossom Extract, which sells for about 700K on PC EU. Again, I think you have to enjoy that content and run it a lot, because the RNG is real. For me, as a PvPer, IC is more exciting.

It's perhaps worth noting that AP has quite a good conversion rate on PC EU, these days. It used to be 10 to 1 gold. Now it's between 2 to 1 and 1 to 1. AFAIK this is due to the jewelry crafting changes from last November. Triune jewelry writs are now worth doing and, thus, I suspect Dawn-Prism is now the factor anchoring that conversion. If you regularly PvP in Cyro, then it's also worth noting that collecting Arena Gladiator Proofs buys you some extremely valuable Runeboxes. I recently sold an "Arena Gladiator Emote" for 1.7M. The notable thing about that is that it's not seasonal. It's just time-gated by the fact that you can only get one Gladiator proof per day as far as I know.

A friend is into Elsweyr dragon farming. I think the return rate is something like 200K per hour. You need to do a Southern Elsweyr questline first, a lengthy, time-gated series of daily quests granting an achievement. This will subsequently allow you to collect Dragon Rheum from Elsweyr dragons. It only drops for people who have done the questline and sells for about 10K each. Dragons also drop other expensive stuff that goes into ulti-gen potions, but having the achievement is what makes farming worthwhile.

Finally Scrivener's Hall drops a valuable style material Glass Eye of Mora. Valuable (housing) style materials also drop in some other places, typically from daily zone quests. I don't know how good of a grind that is, but when it combines with farming the mask style from that dungeon, this may be a viable way to make gold. There's usually a monster mask style for sale in the crown store. This generally means you can farm the corresponding dungeon for that mask style. I believe the drop chances increase on vet and if you either have the hardmode or the trifecta achievement. I believe you don't have to run hard mode all the time, but you need the achievement for increased drop chances. Don't quote me on that. You'd have to research it. At any rate, people like the Baron Zaudrus mask style for example. I remember when that dungeon was farmable, it sold for something like 2M. A month later, I sold my mask style for 5M. These days I believe it's 20M+, because it hasn't been farmable in a long time.

Then there is, of course, the business of carry runs. I don't know the legalities of this, as I've recently heard stories of people being banned for accepting illegally obtained in-game gold, e.g. participating in "gold laundering" so to speak. That said, someone once offered me 2M per hour for an nBRP level 1 to level 50 grind, which can be completed in about 90 minutes, even outside of an event. You just have to be a good DD, know the strategy, and the subject you're levelling must be suitably geared and fed with the right scrolls / Ambrosia.

More generally achievement carry runs extend to vBRP and trials, but there are also gear carries. For example you can farm a dungeon or trial and fill the stickerbook until the final curated drop you have left is only a highly desired item, such as a Relequen / Pillar of Nirn / Coral Riptide / Whorl of Depths (perfected) dagger, maybe a perfected Pillager resto staff, and so on. I've heard the average price for a Coral Riptide dagger is 1M, but have witnessed a player offering 15M during a vDSR run, and a transaction duly took place. I don't know whether this veers into a gray area. As far as I know carries are not against the TOS, but transactions that involve real money, logging into another's account, or that involve suspected gold laundering are. Many people also give away stuff freely, so it's not like valuable vet trial gear automatically sells to anyone in a random run.

Thanks for the in-depth reply. I know about all the PVP related stuff you mentioned and the carrying, but the IA and Dragon farming is interesting. I will give it an honest shot. As for the group related content like dungeon and trial farms for the style pages/materials, It's something I do enjoy but it has to be scheduled with friends, which is often a luxury these days. I prefer something I can do whenever I want, which is why IA and dragon farming has potential for me.

HowlKimchi

Kappachi wrote: »

Yes. IMO you're doing the wrong gold making activities. I make plenty of gold just queueing vet dungeons, gathering in the overworld and slaying mobs while barely ever doing the daily writ crafting. Can still make mils a day.

How are you making gold queueing vet dungeons? Gathering is pretty boring so I'd prefer not to do that.