How do you make money?

Jeremy

robacorbinb14a_ESO wrote: »

I like the crafting system in the game so far, but I can't seem to grasp how to make money off it. How do you know what to make and put up for sale? Do certain traits sell better than others, or is it mainly custom orders?

Unfortunately this game chose to butcher its economy up into numerous individual markets known as Guild Stores. Because of this, there just isn't enough broad economic activity to reliably sell your crafted goods.

Like others have said, your best bet is to just harvest materials and sell them to the NPC stores. Luckily you can make enough money this way to afford bank/bag upgrades.

Food4Thought

Calaban wrote: »

I don't make money unfortunately.

I'm level 15 and only have about 5k gold. Every 2 levels I make a whole new set of armor and enchant every piece. Some of the enchants I make myself, but most of them I purchase from the enchanting vendor, and they are quite expensive.

In WoW I was a pro at making money. I was like Bill Gates rich.

I haven't figured it out in ESO yet.

Regardless I like ESO a million times more than WoW.

I struggle with money as well, but this is directly due to my lack of play time. Dumping 250 gold every day to up the mount's ability is putting a stinger in the pocket book.

But with that said, the best way I found to make some spare change is provisioning. Loot everything while questing and when done, you can go and raise your provising. What you make nobody wants, so you just treat it like vendor trash. But even as vendor trash it wasn't uncommon for me to make 500 gold simply on stuff I looted from every box that crossed my path.

Another option is to hit on locked boxes. AD has one zone that has more than its fair share. Just because it is in a low level area, a lot of players stopped going to the boxes. But in 20 minutes I can unlock a dozen or more boxes and walk away with over 100 gold plus items.

This may seem like nickle and dimes, but since I already have an Imperial mount I am not stressing over that. All I need is money to improve my inventory space. Even equipment repair is not necessary as it get replaced evey two levels usually before it is even showing ware and tear. As for enchantments ... the only ones I buy are for weapons. The armor enchants are on long enough to make it worth the expense. Even the weapon enchants usually are tossed before they even need recharging.

Laerian

I hope this is not another undercover dev looking for some ideas to nerf them in the next patch... just saying

As other said, grinding materials and selling the to a vendor or farming mobs an selling those items to a vendor. In other words: grinding or farming repeatedly.

Probably some dudes with chat spamming skills are an exception to the rule, but no, you don't make money crafting and selling stuff until endgame. The devs have taken care of make crafting the worthless as possible limiting bank space and reducing item sell values close to nil.

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

i disagree that making items is a complete wast of time economically. there are players out there that prefer to make their money now on tradeskill items (hides/metals/flowers) then go back and fill in their trade skill holes at end game. that being the case they make a lot of money which they spend on crafted items they cant/wont get instancing or making themselves. this method just takes more time.

the guild stores really needs a search feature to make it worth while. until then you are stuck with the zone chat or hoping someone finds your wares through dumb luck.

Natjur

Most of my cash was made from breaking down all items I find in the game and selling the parts. With 3 points into getting better 'parts' when you break down items (need L32 in a tradeskill to get all 3 points) You get a lot of sell able stuff.

There is a really good add-on which allows SEARCHING in guild shops.
Have a look at Guild Store Search

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

i appreciate the link to the add-on. found out about it today and have been debating getting it.

Cepeza

Provisioning was a cash cow before 1.0.3 Now I need to sell loot in zone channel.

Destabilizator

I wanted to tell you to research traits and craft sets, but then there is the Warlock set, which is dropped...

sevcik.miroslaveb17_ESO

I think it is only time consuming to make money from selling crafted items. I need player store personaly. I don't really have time to craft gear and then spam all day WTS. When it is not working I just go questing/gathering and I need to break down items I crafted to free inventory. If there was alliance hub with player shops it would boost sales rapidly. Auction is not needed. I just need player shop. Set up price, make packs fir one price etc... Trade chat channel like in Lineage II. Right now I feel selling mats even to vendors gives more income than actual crafting.

Lupinemw

Join a guild and share crafting around. Been working for me so far.

You can still make money from food as well, the items you gain are free. Combined they make something thats worth more. The cost to you, nothing.

doggie

If you don't do enchanting then sell the dropped glyphs on guild trader, if you sell them between 100-150g they should sell well. It's much more than what you get from vendoring them to the npcs.

Rapscallion74

Money is not hard to make in this game. The problem is that most people tend to be pack rats and try to collect every single thing in the game.

What I do is just focus on 2 professions, which in my case are Clothing and Woodworking as I am a light armor casting type. I break down all wood, cloth and leather items and sell all the iron items and everything else to vendors and guild store.

This has allowed me to buy a 42K horse, have 110 inventory slots on my character, and 90 bank slots.

reggielee

youre kinda borked from grinding gold from armor and mobs, the repair costs to your armor are very expensive. i end up switching out desired armor for lesser stuff to avoid the costs, but for me the best way to make money is to grind mobs, sell the loot. I know if you can find buyers via zone chat you can sell motifs etc but like others have said.. it takes bloody forever and is annoying to spam offers

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

most times i dont have the inclination to "zone chat" to sell items. however, before i play i make sure i have the most inventory space before i start i send out a "wts X". if it doesnt sell by the time i leave, then i will just try again the next bank run. keep in mind that level 30 items are less likely to sell in level 1-10 areas, so keep that in mind when selling.

alphawolph

Jeremy wrote: »

Like others have said, your best bet is to just harvest materials and sell them to the NPC stores. Luckily you can make enough money this way to afford bank/bag upgrades.

This seemed the most efficient way of making gold, glad to see I was right. But the million gold question. Does it matter which vendors you sell to?

Sleepydan

I complete quests and I vendor stuff. That's it.

Rakshat

I don't think you can earn much from crafting unless you deconstruct all the armor and weapons and sell the materials. But even that doesn't bring in much gold mostly because materials are so easy to farm.

So in short, only craft for yourself and your friends and to get more gold, farm public dungeons.

pokebreaker

The way I make money? It's not really about how I "make" money, but how I don't spend it. I was able to purchase my Light Horse (42k) before leaving Grahtwood. Here are a few things that I practice.

1. I don't spend money on repairs. Due to the availability of drops, and the ease of crafting a white item, which "could" cost you nothing (granted you save materials you pick up, and are leveling your gear craft). Most people in-game (zone chat), will tell you that it is almost NEVER worth it to repair a piece of gear, rather than salvage it, then replace it with a white-craft or other drop item. With the current rate of durability loss, and the cost per point of durability; the repair costs exceed (if not far exceed) that of which you will usually make in gold from the quests that you completed, especially at lower levels.

We don't just lose durability from death, but also from basic usage. So your gear WILL eventually break, although not dying will cause it to happen at a later time.

2. I don't upgrade my gear at every new tier. As new gear drops from mobs and quests, I hold onto what can replace what I am currently wearing. However, I do not replace it immediately, I wear my current set until EVERY piece is completely broken. I've noticed that on many mobs and missions, I can practically be naked and still stomp the mobs. so I keep everything on until all is broken, THEN change out for new stored gear set that I have saving. I squeeze out every drop of durability, because durability equals gold (to me). I basically want the new gear to last me as long as possible. Changing out gear before they are fully broken, is like throwing away a half-eaten meal, when you could have wrapped it up to eat later (if your goal is to SAVE money). You want to get the most out of what you have.

3. I used to sell recipes I found during my searching for motifs. I would do this via Zone Chat, and was quite successful. I could charge a bit lower than most others were, because there were so many recipes popping up (although annoying, because I wanted Motifs) I had high turnover. When I stopped, I was selling them at 40g-85g, when I started at 25g.

4. Pick up all drops, if you can afford the inventory space. White items drop ALL OF THE TIME, and are often worth 16g-80g+ a piece. Trash items like carapace, daedra husk, and supple root, are worth 5g-7g each and stack up. When it comes to the gear drops, you will have to decide between deconstructing and vendoring.

5. Refining. Refined items are worth more (I believe double) to a vendor than their raw version. This may not be the case for selling to other players, but I'm focused on the time saving aspect of vendor selling. For the sake of saving bag space while im out, I keep one stack in raw form, just so as I pick them up, they don't take up a new slot. Then refine once my bags are full and I am playing the inventory mini-game back at the city.

There are probably more efficient methods, but this has worked for me so far. The biggest thing is to stop repairing your gear (refer to item 1 & 2). To me, that's just throwing money down the sink (which is the intended purpose), and why it's called a gold sink.

Hope something helped.

columbineb14_ESO

alphawolph wrote: »

This seemed the most efficient way of making gold, glad to see I was right. But the million gold question. Does it matter which vendors you sell to?

Not as far as I can tell. They all pay exactly the same.

I sell refined mats I don't need, white weapons/armor drops (unless they are Intricate or have a trait I want to research), cooking mats I've moved past, the results of cooking that I never use ... all to vendors. And I have plenty of cash for my modest needs (mostly, buying oats for three chars' horses, and armor repairs).

Mind you, I also have three chars doing constant gathering of everything as they quest. My light armor char just made her last set of jute armor today and sold 500 spare jute she will no longer need; the heavy armor maker, after both heavy armor chars moved to steel, had something like 600 leftover iron ingots to sell off. So I might be atypical there. (I note wryly that if grinding armor creation offered decent crafting exp, it would have all gone into grinding out useless sets of spare armor instead.)

mretgb14_ESO

I make money in the forge. I mine the gold then use the forge to burn out all the impure metals. Then I pour the molten gold into disk shaped and cool them. Then I stamp them with a press to get the proper images for whichever area I am in.
Easy to make gold as a blacksmith.

Traisa

I don't use Heavy Armor or Blacksmithing type weapons, so I mine ore and turn it into ingots and then sell the ingots. If I receive heavy armor or weapons, I'll deconstruct them for the materials, and sell or trade materials. I'm already past using Jute and Maple for crafting my gear, so when I come across Maple or Jute, I do the same thing, harvest, refine and sell. Oh, I forgot about Rawhide and Hide...I don't use it either. Same deal.

I also do a lot of Provisioning. I use it for my own consumption too, but mostly the for food that maximizes Health or a combination of Health and Magicka. Everything else I cook, I sell for a bit of change. It adds up though. There's also the quest gold.

I craft a lot for my own use, mainly for Alchemy, Woodworking, Clothing and Provisioning. When I reach a new level to craft upgraded armor and staffs, I deconstruct and recycle.

shadowz081

Well one way you could save money is not teleport to a wayshrine in the middle of nowhere (Unless it is needed, but than you can just use /stuck), but walk/run/ride to your closest wayshrine and tp from there. At my level, it takes a minmum of 100gold to tp from the middle of nowhere, while a 1 min ride to my cloesest wayshrine (And picking up a decent amount of crafting mats along the way), I can tp to any wayshrines for free.

Doing this can save you a significant amount of money and may even find a chest along the way!

Heishi

@Fahrice I actually have a character I'm working on doing the same with. All his skill points have been going into crafting, he only uses basic attack and soul trap to fight. I am curious though how you do upgrades with 2 pitch and 3 turpin. Do you get a bonus to make upgrades easier at max? I always end up having to use 5 pitch just for a green if I want it assured so I'm not wasting gems. (2 pitch being 40% chance).

I use my other 7 chars to feed items to the crafter for research and deconstructing mats. Does decon other peoples creations actually give you more xp than regular items? I also imagine you gain majority of your skill points from exploration xp and skyshards.

I think the biggest obstacle for me is bank/char space though. I'm not going to start a whole rant on it, but presently I hold are the mats for 1-14 and 15-25 for blacksmith, cloth, leather, enchant, and woodworking which is eating something like 81 out of 90 bank slots making it rough to transfer items. I used to hold alchemy and provisioning, but they ruined the price of vendoring provisioning which I was using as a source of income. I've since dropped both of those because I simply didn't have room. My crafter himself has 80 slots almost full because of a backlog of items lined up for research. Presently he knows 27 weapon traits and 40 armor traits with 11 weapons lined up and 20 armor with a small stock of of the style items (another 9 slots since I don't use imperial). That was after I wiped all training items from my backlog since I figure that will be the least useful later on.

On a random note, do you sell to all three alliances or just stick in the one? I know it's a lot of questions and I tried not to ask anything prying into "trade secrets" I've just hit a point where it's become a bit of a struggle and figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

Septimus_Magna

I advice to join a crafting guild and sell glyphes and runes for a cheap price.
Because the price is low each time you check you'll have sold everything. Most of the time I sell tier 1 runes for 40g each, tier 2 runes for 65g and so on. I try to stack the runes because it saves space in the guild store, for example 10 of the same runes just takes up on slot.

Catches_the_Sun

SadisticSavior wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

The real question that noone has asked is, why do you need money? Other than your horse and repair bills, money doesn't really have any real uses.

Well, to buy gear you can't craft yourself. And the vast majority of players will not be able to craft everything...even the ones that can will not be able to for a very very long time (years).

It's not "necessary" in the sense that having a car in real life is not "necessary"...but most people still want one. Because it makes life easier and more convenient.

I'm so confused by this conversation. So the gist of it is that crafters are complaining that they can't make any coin. Why do we need coin people ask...well to pay crafters for things I can't make!

So, you're a crafter that can't make any money...money that you need to pay crafters. Whaaaaat?

Phranq

Nah... we need coin to buy inventory space, so we can craft more to make coin for more space to craft more.....

Abeille

I don't really try to make money. I run around the world, complete everything in the map and try not to die because repair taxes are all I spend gold on. I also sell motifs I find because I have all the basic motifs already. I hope I will be able to buy the Ancient Elf motif eventually, or maybe I will even find one before I buy it, that would be awesome.