tips for making gold?

JJBoomer · December 2019

I've always gotten by farming/selling raw mats. But prices for rubedite mats have plummeted. It doesn't bring in the gold like it used to. And the time it takes doesn't have enough return anymore. Plus I want to break into bigger gold numbers.

What are some current and reliable methods, that don't involve vet dungeons, or trials?

MLGProPlayer · December 2019

Flipping is the only way to make significant gold anymore. Farming used to be a decent way, but botters tanked mat prices.

Just look for sellers in zone chat and offer crap prices (like 25-30% below MM), then relist at market value on your trader. If you're lucky, you'll run into a botter selling in zone chat (you'll know they're a botter because they'll offer to sell a humanly impossible to farm amount of mats at a low price). Friend them and just buy their stock whenever they resupply (which is often). You aren't breaking ToS since you don't have any way of knowing they are botters (it's not your job to ask how someone obtained their mats).

Things like stealing, fishing, urn farming, etc. suggested in this thread are all low-yield activities (even lower yield than farming mats).

Here's hoping we get a new mat type with next year's expansion. Jewellery crafting made farming profitable for a few weeks, which was nice.

goldenarcher1 · December 2019

Level up an army of jewellery crafting Alts.

Contaminate · December 2019

Alchemy reagents sell well (esp Cornflower), raw clothing materials are still up there in prices, Potent Nirn (you can mostly avoid combat in Crag), farming dailies for new motifs, if you’re CP160 and have Wrothgar you can make money farming Briarheart jewels and weapons.

CaptainVenom · December 2019

Try doing crafting (and master) writs, since it awards a nice amount of gold per completed quest. Selling writ items (like crafting stations) could be a good idea, too.

kylewwefan · December 2019

Recipes are hot commodity atm. So, slaying dragons, looting, stealing etc.

Zone callouts selling seem particularly effective as well. I know, it’s annoying af; but they wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t making them loads of gold.

Asardes · December 2019

Do writs. If you can't sell refined materials use them for those, they're much more effective. Leveling a char from 10 to 50 takes 5-6 hours during double XP events, leveling alchemy & provisioning takes 15 minutes, leveling woodworking, blacksmithing and clothier takes ~a week, enchanting and jewelry crafting takes ~2 weeks. Considering you mostly deconstruct trash drops. If you gather all shards, do the event from the public dungeons, and do the main quest in the starter island(s) and the first zone of your alliance, the game tutorial (the DLC one + Soul Shriven in Coldharbour) and the Cyrodiil tutorial you have enough skill points to fully spec crafting main passive, hirelings and research passives (82-83).

From a fully trained character you can expect 5K gold and about 10K worth of materials from daily writs. Averaged, the surveys will give ~3K worth of materials in the long run. If you research traits and discover alchemy reagents and glyph translation you will also get master writs which you can sell. It's hard to estimate the latter, but from my experience it's around 10 voucher/day/character worth of writs if you fulfill those conditions. Since voucher price can vary, that can be anywhere between 2-3K. So overall I would say a character can produce ~20K gold/day from writs.

Nestor · December 2019

Legerdemain can net 5K to 15K gold per day per alt. And, you don't need to level anything, but have one skill point to invest in the Fencing Passive.

There are some areas in the game, most of the Palaces, Orsinium, the ships in Daggerfall near the Guild Kiosks are just a few of them, that have lots of containers and little to no NPCs about. You can max out your daily limit in about 10 to 15 minutes if you grab everything worth 9 gold or more and fence it. Grab all the ingredients and mats too and launder those for quick legeedemain skill leveling.

Some will say only grab the Green or better items, but in terms of Gold per Hour per Alt, that is a waste of time. The green or better strategy only makes sense if you are chasing the 1,000,000 Fencing Achievement.

Asardes · December 2019

Ledgermain can net 15-20K gold only if you have all passives specced, and you discard all white items (40g), selling only green (100g), blue (250g) and purple (1500g) to fence. The level of ledgermain determines the quality of the items you find: higher skill means a higher proportion of items of higher quality. Also pickpocketting generally nets better items than looting containers but it's also riskier since even with 90% chance and the eye fully closed there's still a considerable chance you get caught and net a bounty. With Trafficker IV you can sell up to 140 items to fence daily. So 15-20K is realistic.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Legerdemain

But there's a catch. In order to find that many of those items it will take you an hour or more. I used to farm NPCs in Balmora and other settlements for Great House style pages after Morrowind came out each evening. I had ledgermain fully leveled, and passives specced (Light Fingers, Traficker, Improved Hiding). For around an hour and a half of pickpocketting I was getting 2-3 of those pages and ~120-150 "treasures". Sometimes I also found furnishing blueprints, shillings and wanted posters from guards. Overall 50-60K gold from laundered motif pages and the other items, 20K from selling the "treasures" to the fence. But when the prices for the former dropped I didn't consider it to be worth doing anymore. The bounty was 5-6K but I waited till the next day hidden in the outlaw refuge and it cleared (drops by about 500 gold/hour).

Overall it's far more tedious and risky to fence than do writs even though it may seem easier. I once got one-shotted by a guard with a crossbow bold because my bounty had gotten too high and lost all loot from that evening just as I was about to go to the fence. They gain that ability after your bounty passes a certain sum, I think 5K or so.

Anotherone773 · December 2019

kylewwefan wrote: »

Recipes are hot commodity atm. So, slaying dragons, looting, stealing etc.

Zone callouts selling seem particularly effective as well. I know, it’s annoying af; but they wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t making them loads of gold.

Recipes are at one of the worst places they have been in a couple of years. Most chapter recipes have been farmed into near worthlessness. Especially the Elsweyr ones now. You can still get a little bit for blue and purple but its a slow sell even in major hubs.

From the ones i talk too, the people doing callouts dont want to put effort into getting in trade guilds and post their items, so they spam zone chat with them. ZOS should just make a trade channel or ban people from doing call outs from zone,yell,say chat for x hours. Most seem to be against paying a fee to sell an item. Good thing they dont run a real business, they would be greatly disappointed when they see it cost money to make money.

OP: Overall the base prints have dropped by half in value over the last year or so. Just not a lot of people getting into it right now and the drops have become to common. You might do a bit better with murkmire prints but they are much harder to farm so become as unreliable as motif drops.

Speaking of which, motifs are doing ok right now. Prices are good on most of them. They are selling a little slow but its not terrible. Motifs will probably be decent for the next couple of months and then start to drop off. They are not the most efficient money making item scheme right now or rarely ever. But hunting them can be a nice change from more grindy stuff such as killing 3 billion dragons for pouches.

As always the best return on time is probably going to be mass crafting. When done right you can make bank doing it. Its quite repetitive and can be a bit of a pain to set up. But its like a mint, once you get it going, you cant pretty much just print money with it.

I personally do a variety of money making activities. I dont care about efficiency as much as some people. I like making gold, but i get bored of grinds really fast. I dont even do my crafting dailies every day on one character little lone all of them.

SidraWillowsky · December 2019

Pickpocketing in Vvardenfell usually nets me at least one motif per "run". The drop rate doesn't seem to differ based on the difficulty of the pickpocket, so I generally stick to slaves and drunks (LOL) to make things ez. Sadrith Mora is great for this- there's a slave on the docks moving barrels around; if you go to the left upon exiting the wayshrine, you'll see him. Continuing forward towards the inn, there's one leaning against a crate. There's someone right next to him, but if you crouch either behind or on top of it (much sneak...) you can get him. In the inn there's a drunk on the first floor (I have to pan my camera to the ceiling and jump behind him to avoid reading the book on the table or talking to the drunk dude) and two slaves on the second, and another slave outside sweeping if you continue past the inn. On a little island thing to the south of Sadrith connected by a footbridge there are five slaves, though a few are difficult to pickpocket and I hit them at the end of a run where I can cloak up on my magblade and nab them, even if I get caught. Lots of easy pickpockets in Balmora too.

Loot all the urns/backpacks you come across- I get a lot of motifs/recipes/designs that way.

Farm Deshaan chests for Mother's Sorrow and Wrothgar for Briarheart, though that can be more hit or miss and the zones can get crowded with farmers. Still, if you pull a Briarheart dagger/axe or a Mother's Sorrow purple jewelry piece or inferno staff, you can make a killing depending on trait.

Deconning items that are in a specific style will give you the style material maybe 50% of the time, and some of them go for quite a lot. Sets from Northern Elsweyr drop Shimmering Sand when deconned, and that sells for quite a bit. Culanda lacquer sells for a lot too, and while I don't think anything drops in the Sapiarch style, but you can get them from the Summerset dailies. You can also craft and item in any style using a crown mimic stone, then if you decon it you have a chance at getting the style material back. I think I had 40 or so sitting in my inventory from monthly rewards, and what I did was craft a bunch of gear in the Sapiarch style then deconning it. In the end, I think I ended up with about 30 culanda lacquers.

And, as others have said…. Writs. Max out crafting on at least one character; the drops that you get are great. I frequently get Kuta, Dreugh wax, tempering alloy, rosin, and chromium grains from my containers.

Maxx7410 · December 2019

In rivers maybe or in mountains maybe in gold mines? I make gold with daily writs and selling mats. But you can do more from farming motifs (the pricy ones!) or farming Tel Var Stones or buying cheap selling high things

General_Zeranth · December 2019

I fish for my gold.

I have one "flex" character spot to create an alt, fish until I get the Master Angler achievement, then filet the fish for Roe and sell the Roe.
I don't filet a single fish till I have my title then I delete the alt and start all over again.
I've got it streamlined down to maybe 3-4 days per title and I make anywhere from 400-900k per run depending on Roe counts.

It's not a bad way to do it.

SirAndy · December 2019

JJBoomer wrote: »

What are some current and reliable methods, that don't involve vet dungeons, or trials?

Buy low, sell hing, play the market ...

Asardes · December 2019

SirAndy wrote: »

JJBoomer wrote: »

What are some current and reliable methods, that don't involve vet dungeons, or trials?

Buy low, sell hing, play the market ...

ATM the material prices, even gold upgrades are going down and they are not stabilized, so the margin is pretty slim. By the time you may sell what you have bought cheaply from another guild, it will get even lower. In any case you have to buy about 20% lower than you're selling to make it worth while because guild fees are 8%.

SirAndy · December 2019

Asardes wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

JJBoomer wrote: »

What are some current and reliable methods, that don't involve vet dungeons, or trials?

Buy low, sell hing, play the market ...

ATM the material prices, even gold upgrades are going down and they are not stabilized, so the margin is pretty slim. By the time you may sell what you have bought cheaply from another guild, it will get even lower. In any case you have to buy about 20% lower than you're selling to make it worth while because guild fees are 8%.

Spent some time upfront exploring what sells well. I usually don't bother with anything below 20k (Single item) or below 10k (Stacks). Then work the kiosks and find good deals. You can easily maintain a 10%-15% profit margin on that and every once in a while you hit the jackpot with something so cheap that you can easily sell it for 10x or more.

PS: If you are worried about the house cut, try selling bit ticket items in zone chat.

Gythral · December 2019

Craft, then do the master writs from it & sell whatever is selling for the most value at the time from those writs

Kilcosu · December 2019

at the moment tel var is at about a 1:3 ratio and one hakeijo sells for about 15k on the low end. granted tel var does come with some risks involving pvp and the ebb and flow of imperial city but I think it's a successful way of earning gold.

xWarbrain · December 2019

General_Zeranth wrote: »

I fish for my gold.

I have one "flex" character spot to create an alt, fish until I get the Master Angler achievement, then filet the fish for Roe and sell the Roe.
I don't filet a single fish till I have my title then I delete the alt and start all over again.
I've got it streamlined down to maybe 3-4 days per title and I make anywhere from 400-900k per run depending on Roe counts.

It's not a bad way to do it.

You, sir, are a psychopath.

I may try this...

Araneae6537 · December 2019

General_Zeranth wrote: »

I fish for my gold.

I have one "flex" character spot to create an alt, fish until I get the Master Angler achievement, then filet the fish for Roe and sell the Roe.
I don't filet a single fish till I have my title then I delete the alt and start all over again.
I've got it streamlined down to maybe 3-4 days per title and I make anywhere from 400-900k per run depending on Roe counts.

It's not a bad way to do it.

Out of curiosity, why do you delete the character to start again? Maybe it’s a dumb question, but I don’t know how fishing works (tried to find an answer through Google but no luck) and would have assumed it was like crafting and ledgerdomain, where your potential to make money is increased by leveling the relevant skill, unlocking traits, etc. 🤔

wild_kmacdb16_ESO · December 2019

Furnishing recipes are one way to go, particularly ones unique to Summerset, Murkmire and Vvardenfell. I recently found a green murkmire recipe that TTC estimated at 400k.

Of course, this method is very much like gambling; you could spend hours opening every container and end up empty handed or some of the more common recipes.

volkeswagon · December 2019

General_Zeranth wrote: »

I fish for my gold.

I have one "flex" character spot to create an alt, fish until I get the Master Angler achievement, then filet the fish for Roe and sell the Roe.
I don't filet a single fish till I have my title then I delete the alt and start all over again.
I've got it streamlined down to maybe 3-4 days per title and I make anywhere from 400-900k per run depending on Roe counts.

It's not a bad way to do it.

I don't get it either. If you wait till master angler achievement to cut your fish then why not just keep fishing with that toon once you have the achievement

Asardes · December 2019

wild_kmacdb16_ESO wrote: »

Furnishing recipes are one way to go, particularly ones unique to Summerset, Murkmire and Vvardenfell. I recently found a green murkmire recipe that TTC estimated at 400k.

Of course, this method is very much like gambling; you could spend hours opening every container and end up empty handed or some of the more common recipes.

TTC shows the listings, not the transactions. Nobody would buy any green recipe or furnishing blueprint for more than 1K, regardless of zone; most won't even fech 300 gold, so they're not worth listing. Of course, some players really have no clue when they list items, but you lose 4K up front listing something at 400K, which will most likely never sell. Purples and some blue ones will sell pretty well though. Gold ones are bought from the writ merchant, with some being pickpocketted from "noble" type NPCs, but the chance for those is very slim.

Asardes · December 2019

SirAndy wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

SirAndy wrote: »

JJBoomer wrote: »

What are some current and reliable methods, that don't involve vet dungeons, or trials?

Buy low, sell hing, play the market ...

ATM the material prices, even gold upgrades are going down and they are not stabilized, so the margin is pretty slim. By the time you may sell what you have bought cheaply from another guild, it will get even lower. In any case you have to buy about 20% lower than you're selling to make it worth while because guild fees are 8%.

Spent some time upfront exploring what sells well. I usually don't bother with anything below 20k (Single item) or below 10k (Stacks). Then work the kiosks and find good deals. You can easily maintain a 10%-15% profit margin on that and every once in a while you hit the jackpot with something so cheap that you can easily sell it for 10x or more.

PS: If you are worried about the house cut, try selling bit ticket items in zone chat.

Well I asked someone from one of my trade guilds who had managed to sell over 10M in a week, how much profit did he make. He said about 700K. I had only 800K sales, but because I only sold my own stuff, I managed to make 735K in profit, more than him. I asked other people and they gave me similar answers, they had high volumes, but the overall profit margin was slim, 7-12% so I didn't bother flipping anything thus far. I may start at some point but I have enough merchandise to keep my guild slots full although I sell constantly.

My best aggregate week was around 12M in sales, spread over 4 guilds but that's rare. Normally I sell around 700K-1.5M depending on week - mostly excess low level materials, cooking supplies, intricate jewelry, whatever motif I get from DLC dungeons when I run them as pledges, BoE gear from various sources (overland, RFTW, BG rewards) that happens to drop. I follow the prices in MM and when they reach a certain pitch I also sell some of my legendary upgrade materials in small bundles. Usually this happens when a new patch comes out, introducing new sets or older sets become popular when there are combat changes, which people want to fully upgrade. For example I had very good sales at Murkmire, Elsweyr and Scalebreaker. Dragonhold was kinda flat, prices didn't tick upwards, and they continued their slow decline.

Marolf · December 2019

Find a public dungeon, I recommend Forgotten Crypts in Deshaan. Run a "loop" on the 4 bosses there, while killing everything else along the way also. Keep any Mother's Sorrow Flame staves you might collect, as these sell well in traders. Other gear pieces that sell well in traders from here include: Mother's Sorrow body pieces ( excluding shoulders) & Plague Doctors body pieces ( also excluding shoulders),, one handed weapons, Shields and ice staves. As for all the other items you loot while grinding, sell those to merch, rinse and repeat. I can easily accumulate 20k-30k per hour just from the gold dropped and selling the trash loot to merchant

Araneae6537 · December 2019

Asardes wrote: »

wild_kmacdb16_ESO wrote: »

Furnishing recipes are one way to go, particularly ones unique to Summerset, Murkmire and Vvardenfell. I recently found a green murkmire recipe that TTC estimated at 400k.

Of course, this method is very much like gambling; you could spend hours opening every container and end up empty handed or some of the more common recipes.

TTC shows the listings, not the transactions. Nobody would buy any green recipe or furnishing blueprint for more than 1K, regardless of zone; most won't even fech 300 gold, so they're not worth listing. Of course, some players really have no clue when they list items, but you lose 4K up front listing something at 400K, which will most likely never sell. Purples and some blue ones will sell pretty well though. Gold ones are bought from the writ merchant, with some being pickpocketted from "noble" type NPCs, but the chance for those is very slim.

That is all probably true in general, but I have heard that the Murkmire green recipes are indeed an exception, that their droprate is not comparable with most other greens and so they do indeed sell for more. I agree that 400k does seem high, but I honestly don’t know.

Anotherone773 · December 2019

Araneae6537 wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

wild_kmacdb16_ESO wrote: »

Furnishing recipes are one way to go, particularly ones unique to Summerset, Murkmire and Vvardenfell. I recently found a green murkmire recipe that TTC estimated at 400k.

Of course, this method is very much like gambling; you could spend hours opening every container and end up empty handed or some of the more common recipes.

TTC shows the listings, not the transactions. Nobody would buy any green recipe or furnishing blueprint for more than 1K, regardless of zone; most won't even fech 300 gold, so they're not worth listing. Of course, some players really have no clue when they list items, but you lose 4K up front listing something at 400K, which will most likely never sell. Purples and some blue ones will sell pretty well though. Gold ones are bought from the writ merchant, with some being pickpocketted from "noble" type NPCs, but the chance for those is very slim.

That is all probably true in general, but I have heard that the Murkmire green recipes are indeed an exception, that their droprate is not comparable with most other greens and so they do indeed sell for more. I agree that 400k does seem high, but I honestly don’t know.

They sell for more and people list them for ridiculous prices, but most people who manage to make and keep 400k arent dumb enough to spend it on a green print.

Base game green prints go for 30-100 typically.
Vvardenfell green prints go for a few hundred gold typically
Alinor go for a few hundred gold to just over 1000 gold
Murkmire go for a couple of thousand to about 15-25k for a green. but that higher end your going to work those.
Elsweyr is in a terrible spot because of the event and how easy prints are to get. maybe 100-300 for greens.

That is PC NA. Your server may vary.

I sell low end prints because they do sell. Many just want the big money makers and that works for me because i dont need them flooding the market. It might take me 12-72 hours to sell a blue for a decent price but in 12 hours i will sell 10-20 greens for 50-100 gold. I also sell lockpicks, soul gems, and any purple set gear( sometimes blue set gear if its a FOTM set). Is it the most efficient use of my trader slots? Nope. but it keeps a nice steady income and provides great filler between big ticket items.

Crafting and stealing are your big steady money makers. But they are both grindy. I start out stealing on one character and then got to 3 max ledgremain before i stopped. i made several hundred at first and got up to 30-40k a day before i quite.

Motif and print farming is like playing the lottery. Ive logged in and farmed for an hour and made hundreds of thousands or even millions off what i collected in that hour. Other days ive farmed for 4-6 hours and only got a 20-30k in drops.

Want a job or do you want to play the lottery?

Asardes · December 2019

Araneae6537 wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

wild_kmacdb16_ESO wrote: »

Furnishing recipes are one way to go, particularly ones unique to Summerset, Murkmire and Vvardenfell. I recently found a green murkmire recipe that TTC estimated at 400k.

Of course, this method is very much like gambling; you could spend hours opening every container and end up empty handed or some of the more common recipes.

TTC shows the listings, not the transactions. Nobody would buy any green recipe or furnishing blueprint for more than 1K, regardless of zone; most won't even fech 300 gold, so they're not worth listing. Of course, some players really have no clue when they list items, but you lose 4K up front listing something at 400K, which will most likely never sell. Purples and some blue ones will sell pretty well though. Gold ones are bought from the writ merchant, with some being pickpocketted from "noble" type NPCs, but the chance for those is very slim.

That is all probably true in general, but I have heard that the Murkmire green recipes are indeed an exception, that their droprate is not comparable with most other greens and so they do indeed sell for more. I agree that 400k does seem high, but I honestly don’t know.

That's really odd. I looked up those recipes on TTC and there are far fewer greens for sale, and at much higher prices, compared to blues, and the latter are several thousands/tens of thousands of gold which is in line with other DLC ones. When I did the DLC last year, around Christmas, I got quite a few green and blue ones from containers from what I remember. Maybe they changed something about the drop table in the mean time. In any case I wouldn't farm for those if they are indeed so rare nowadays.

General_Zeranth · December 2019

@xWarbrain
I'll take that as a compliment. xD My guilds think I'm a psycho too. Lol!

@Araneae6537 and @volkeswagon
In regards to waiting till I get the title to cut my fish then deleting and starting again its just my way of making it more fun since I know a lot of folk feel fishing is the most boring thing ever in this game.
Not cutting my fish till I have Master Angler is a self challenge to see how many fish I get overall, and then how many Roe come from that fish. Just data collection for data sake. I like number crunching. xD
So deleting and starting over, for me at least, just keeps it fresh and not mind numbingly boring.

Serjustin19 · December 2019

Bumping this thread, due to many good tips and claims.

Asardes · December 2019

The fishing method is probably the worst one. Drop chance for perfect roe is ~1%.It's about 10-12K on guild traders. Filleted fish is like 5 gold. It will take you realistically about an hour to catch 100 fish since you need to move from one spot to another, the pull timer varies etc. So between 10.5-12.5K gold an hour, if averaged over a very long period. And it's by far the most boring activity in the game.

ArchMikem · December 2019

CaptainVenom wrote: »

Try doing crafting (and master) writs, since it awards a nice amount of gold per completed quest. Selling writ items (like crafting stations) could be a good idea, too.

Thats only lucrative if you do writs on a ton of Alts. The full payout on one character is just 4.2k. And thats i think with the 10% extra gold from ESO Plus.

What i found is pretty simple is Imperial city runs. Clear your branch of the sewer down to the center and back. Do like two laps and vendor everything you looted, you'll have picked up a ton of Ornate items netting you over 10k easy.

Varkal2112 · December 2019

Do raids, sell the motifs that drop. If you get good enough, you can sell carries

WiseSky · December 2019

General_Zeranth wrote: »

I fish for my gold.

I have one "flex" character spot to create an alt, fish until I get the Master Angler achievement, then filet the fish for Roe and sell the Roe.
I don't filet a single fish till I have my title then I delete the alt and start all over again.
I've got it streamlined down to maybe 3-4 days per title and I make anywhere from 400-900k per run depending on Roe counts.

It's not a bad way to do it.

Wait what... 3-4 days to get the Master Angler Achievement????

WTF?

The Elder Scrolls Online

tips for making gold?

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