How to make gold?

Lynxyn · March 2021

I know this is a very commonly asked question.. but I'm doing writs every day on all 8 of my characters but the gold gain is very slow. It's nice as a passive income but considering how fast bag and bank upgrades ramp up, the cost of gear and ingredients to craft potions, my own gear and enchants the small passive income can only sustain so much. Do I absolutely have to just go out and farm materials? Should I try and find a trading guild to sell all my gold upgrade mats I get? I keep them simply because my thought process is "what if I want to gold a set soon and then I'll be annoyed that I lost money selling then having to rebuy them". I'm also worried about joining a trading guild with a fairly large weekly requirement because I'm not confident I can meet those, but at the same time joining one with a lower requirement often means the trader is in a bad spot and people with tons of gold won't bother coming out there to buy stuff even if it's slightly cheaper. A year or so ago I was in a guild with a trader in cold harbor and I tried selling 200 dubious camoran throne in stacks of 25 and only one sold despite me putting it up for basically no profit.

I really want to get into trading and crafting, but the barrier to entry just feels so impossible.

Brrrofski · March 2021

Step 1 - join a training guild. Join a few. Make sure they have good spots - undaunted hubs are best by far on xbox eu. Other good spots are places where people go back to over and over. So new DLC areas are always decent. Places with popular dailies can be ok too. Also places like Northern Elsewhere main city and Alinor in Summerset, as a lot of people crowd there to get normal trial runs. But, have a look at towns on your server, figure out where is busy, try to get in some guilds in those areas.

Step 2 - if you don't play end game pve yet or pvp, find out what the meta is or what people use a lot and farm that. Weapons and armor bits in the correct traits can go for a good amount of money.

Step 3 - find out which housing patterns go for a lot and fame them (as well as the style material needed to make common ones like dwemer, solitude, markath etc)

Those are easy ways to make gold, and you'll gain champion points while doing it so it's not too bad.

You can sell gold mats too if you want, but I never do to be honest. I keep them for myself as I'm always changes builds for pvp. Don't overlook purple, blue and green materials too - these also can sell for a decent amount as they're used for furniture crafting. On my server, mastic goes for like 800 gold each for example.

Research unit price for these materials and whatever set it's from, and after doing a dungeon or questing or whatever, figure out if an item has more value being sold on a guilds trader as that item, broken down for the coloured material or just sold to a vendor as a trash item.

Just look around guilds traders too. See what goes for decent gold, and research where you can get hold of some of those items.

Lynxyn · March 2021

Brrrofski wrote: »

Step 1 - join a training guild

Step 2 - if you don't play end game pve yet or pvp, find out what the meta is or what people use a lot and farm that

Step 3 - find out which housing patterns go for a lot and fame them (as well as the style material needed to make common ones like dwemer, solitude, markath etc)

Those are easy ways to make gold, and you'll gain champion points while doing it so it's not too bad.

You can sell gold mats too if you want, but I never do to be honest. I keep them for myself as I'm always changes builds for pvp.

Just look around guilds traders too. See what goes for decent gold, and research where you can get hold of some of those items.

How would I deal with a trading guild who has a pretty horrible trader spot? I feel like I would need to have a huge discount to encourage the trip but at that point would it even be worth it to sell most things?

Brrrofski · March 2021

Lynxyn wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

Step 1 - join a training guild

Step 2 - if you don't play end game pve yet or pvp, find out what the meta is or what people use a lot and farm that

Step 3 - find out which housing patterns go for a lot and fame them (as well as the style material needed to make common ones like dwemer, solitude, markath etc)

Those are easy ways to make gold, and you'll gain champion points while doing it so it's not too bad.

You can sell gold mats too if you want, but I never do to be honest. I keep them for myself as I'm always changes builds for pvp.

Just look around guilds traders too. See what goes for decent gold, and research where you can get hold of some of those items.

How would I deal with a trading guild who has a pretty horrible trader spot? I feel like I would need to have a huge discount to encourage the trip but at that point would it even be worth it to sell most things?

In my experience, stuff doesn't sell well.

And it depends on what you mean by "bad".

There's bad as in a main city of a zone where not a lot of people go to. Such as Stormhold in Shadowfen. You get people passing through to do quests and some stuff, but not as frequently as a main city, like where undaunted are.

But, certain items will sell there. Set pieces for popular sets might, as some people will have a good look around to see if they can get a bargain.

Other items might not though, as people will just go to main places and buy cheapest there (crafting materials for example.

Then there's really bad, such as in outlaw refuges, or miles away in the middle of nowhere of a zone. In my experience, nothing really sells.

Keep in mind though, you can access all your guild traders in your bank. So if it's a big, busy guild, a lot of people will buy from within the guild at their bank.

Not sure what platform you're on, but on xbox eu getting into a trader in a good place isn't hard. Plenty of them on guild finder. Most players have 2-3 guilds that are strictly for trading and then a few for playing the game and doing stuff with guildies. You don't have to have all of it in one.

Nobody has fees on xbox eu either, but I know some servers do for top end trading guilds. But some might not in decent but not the best places. Worth checking them out.

Bucky_13 · March 2021

In an average week, golden/purple mats+alchemy reagents are 90% + of my sales at guild traders for 2 different trade guilds. Which is well over 1m per week. I do daily writs on 14 chars, until recently it was 13 however.

So if you do daily writs on 8 chars, you should be able to sell enough at a decent trader, probably even a craglorn one to keep you spot. Since those mats are always in demand as long as you price them sensibly. I usually keep 200 or all gold mats types except JC and sell everything above, so when I do need those mats for myself, I have them available. Likewise with alchemy mats (1k min), so if you do something similar, then you should be ok.

Finding a good trade guild that are able to keep a solid location is the big challenge, once you have that you're good tho.

Lynxyn · March 2021

Bucky_13 wrote: »

In an average week, golden/purple mats+alchemy reagents are 90% + of my sales at guild traders for 2 different trade guilds. Which is well over 1m per week. I do daily writs on 14 chars, until recently it was 13 however.

So if you do daily writs on 8 chars, you should be able to sell enough at a decent trader, probably even a craglorn one to keep you spot. Since those mats are always in demand as long as you price them sensibly. I usually keep 200 or all gold mats types except JC and sell everything above, so when I do need those mats for myself, I have them available. Likewise with alchemy mats (1k min), so if you do something similar, then you should be ok.

Finding a good trade guild that are able to keep a solid location is the big challenge, once you have that you're good tho.

I wish I had that much gold upgrade material lol. I've got like 37 dreugh wax as my most abundant and 25 rosin as my least. I think I might just sell it all though.. gold's not THAT much better than purple from what I'm seeing. I applied to a trading guild with very low reqs and a seemingly decent location a couple hours ago. Just waiting on a response.

JKorr · March 2021

Lynxyn wrote: »

Bucky_13 wrote: »

In an average week, golden/purple mats+alchemy reagents are 90% + of my sales at guild traders for 2 different trade guilds. Which is well over 1m per week. I do daily writs on 14 chars, until recently it was 13 however.

So if you do daily writs on 8 chars, you should be able to sell enough at a decent trader, probably even a craglorn one to keep you spot. Since those mats are always in demand as long as you price them sensibly. I usually keep 200 or all gold mats types except JC and sell everything above, so when I do need those mats for myself, I have them available. Likewise with alchemy mats (1k min), so if you do something similar, then you should be ok.

Finding a good trade guild that are able to keep a solid location is the big challenge, once you have that you're good tho.

I wish I had that much gold upgrade material lol. I've got like 37 dreugh wax as my most abundant and 25 rosin as my least. I think I might just sell it all though.. gold's not THAT much better than purple from what I'm seeing. I applied to a trading guild with very low reqs and a seemingly decent location a couple hours ago. Just waiting on a response.

I looked at the MM price for dreugh wax; 13kish.

Pick flowers. Cornflower, columbine are going for 600ish gold each. Snicker when you find worms left behind as "trash" in a node because 25 gold a worm is pretty nice trash. Mundane runes, heartwood, plating grains for jewelry. Hireling rewards. Writ rewards. Some people find it really hard to believe the prices that flowers and furnishing mats are going for.

Bucky_13 · March 2021

Lynxyn wrote: »

Bucky_13 wrote: »

In an average week, golden/purple mats+alchemy reagents are 90% + of my sales at guild traders for 2 different trade guilds. Which is well over 1m per week. I do daily writs on 14 chars, until recently it was 13 however.

So if you do daily writs on 8 chars, you should be able to sell enough at a decent trader, probably even a craglorn one to keep you spot. Since those mats are always in demand as long as you price them sensibly. I usually keep 200 or all gold mats types except JC and sell everything above, so when I do need those mats for myself, I have them available. Likewise with alchemy mats (1k min), so if you do something similar, then you should be ok.

Finding a good trade guild that are able to keep a solid location is the big challenge, once you have that you're good tho.

I wish I had that much gold upgrade material lol. I've got like 37 dreugh wax as my most abundant and 25 rosin as my least. I think I might just sell it all though.. gold's not THAT much better than purple from what I'm seeing. I applied to a trading guild with very low reqs and a seemingly decent location a couple hours ago. Just waiting on a response.

I'm curious, do you do the surveys you've gotten from the daily writs? Since refining those raw mats on a character with all passives unlocked and active adds quite a bit of gold mats. Add the hireling mails on top and you'll have a respectable amount of gold mats incoming per week on 8 characters.

etchedpixels · March 2021

Lynxyn wrote: »

I really want to get into trading and crafting, but the barrier to entry just feels so impossible.

On a game this big every single opportunity to generate a quick buck has been used already. If you collect materials you are up against everyone else who does as well as bot farmers. If you try and flip stuff you are up against everyone else who does, including people who clearly systematically datamine TTC on PC for that purpose. Same for pretty much everything except the one off solo grind for scrying the first time. If you want to craft on 18 toons all with maxed hirelings and spend the rest of the time being a human farmbot you can make a fortune.

Location isn't so important on PC - at least for higher value specific items because of TTC and people are happy to travel to save 5K on a chromium plating but not to save 5 gold on a cornflower.

Right now if your AoE DPS is decent you might earn a lot more in game gold doing equally mindless Skyreach carries instead.

harakira · March 2021

There are a lot of ways to make gold in ESO. The question is how to make it fast and/or easy. If you play on PC EU the fastest way is selling crowns (crown store items). For 1k crowns (~5$) you can get 600k gold atm. Almost any real life job will beat any gold farming activity in efficiency. Also you can become a trader guild boss or sell carry.

colossalvoids · March 2021

I personally started with selling popular gear, mostly spriggans and seventh back then, you can easily farm mother's sorrow, alfiq, same spriggans now also if have no starting capital. Look up popular guides and farm said gear for sale in good traits. Would also supply this with gold mats and jewelry crafting everything, wouldn't bother myself with farming resources really.

Also prepare for anniversary event that is coming, make use of all your character slots with daily writs and save some motives you'll get for the future, things like dromathra, minotaur chest, scale caller chests and etc that is pricy at all times.

Lynxyn · March 2021

Bucky_13 wrote: »

Lynxyn wrote: »

Bucky_13 wrote: »

In an average week, golden/purple mats+alchemy reagents are 90% + of my sales at guild traders for 2 different trade guilds. Which is well over 1m per week. I do daily writs on 14 chars, until recently it was 13 however.

So if you do daily writs on 8 chars, you should be able to sell enough at a decent trader, probably even a craglorn one to keep you spot. Since those mats are always in demand as long as you price them sensibly. I usually keep 200 or all gold mats types except JC and sell everything above, so when I do need those mats for myself, I have them available. Likewise with alchemy mats (1k min), so if you do something similar, then you should be ok.

Finding a good trade guild that are able to keep a solid location is the big challenge, once you have that you're good tho.

I wish I had that much gold upgrade material lol. I've got like 37 dreugh wax as my most abundant and 25 rosin as my least. I think I might just sell it all though.. gold's not THAT much better than purple from what I'm seeing. I applied to a trading guild with very low reqs and a seemingly decent location a couple hours ago. Just waiting on a response.

I'm curious, do you do the surveys you've gotten from the daily writs? Since refining those raw mats on a character with all passives unlocked and active adds quite a bit of gold mats. Add the hireling mails on top and you'll have a respectable amount of gold mats incoming per week on 8 characters.

I do, but all of that is still down to rng. Some days I get 1 survey or none and others I get multiples and there's not always a guarantee that I'll get gold upgrade materials from refining on top of that. They're building up slowly, but I feel like I'd need way more character slots to consistently build a large supply.

tmbrinks · March 2021

Lynxyn wrote: »

Bucky_13 wrote: »

Lynxyn wrote: »

Bucky_13 wrote: »

In an average week, golden/purple mats+alchemy reagents are 90% + of my sales at guild traders for 2 different trade guilds. Which is well over 1m per week. I do daily writs on 14 chars, until recently it was 13 however.

So if you do daily writs on 8 chars, you should be able to sell enough at a decent trader, probably even a craglorn one to keep you spot. Since those mats are always in demand as long as you price them sensibly. I usually keep 200 or all gold mats types except JC and sell everything above, so when I do need those mats for myself, I have them available. Likewise with alchemy mats (1k min), so if you do something similar, then you should be ok.

Finding a good trade guild that are able to keep a solid location is the big challenge, once you have that you're good tho.

I wish I had that much gold upgrade material lol. I've got like 37 dreugh wax as my most abundant and 25 rosin as my least. I think I might just sell it all though.. gold's not THAT much better than purple from what I'm seeing. I applied to a trading guild with very low reqs and a seemingly decent location a couple hours ago. Just waiting on a response.

I'm curious, do you do the surveys you've gotten from the daily writs? Since refining those raw mats on a character with all passives unlocked and active adds quite a bit of gold mats. Add the hireling mails on top and you'll have a respectable amount of gold mats incoming per week on 8 characters.

I do, but all of that is still down to rng. Some days I get 1 survey or none and others I get multiples and there's not always a guarantee that I'll get gold upgrade materials from refining on top of that. They're building up slowly, but I feel like I'd need way more character slots to consistently build a large supply.

Yup, those that make a lot of gold doing writs try and take RNG out of it as much as possible by having a lot of characters doing them. 36 a day in my personal case. 1 or 2 characters is going to be subject to randomness. But 12/18/36, while still subject to randomness, gets to a large sample size quicker which moves the average to the norm and expected drop rates.

Lynxyn · March 2021

tmbrinks wrote: »

Lynxyn wrote: »

Bucky_13 wrote: »

Lynxyn wrote: »

Bucky_13 wrote: »

In an average week, golden/purple mats+alchemy reagents are 90% + of my sales at guild traders for 2 different trade guilds. Which is well over 1m per week. I do daily writs on 14 chars, until recently it was 13 however.

So if you do daily writs on 8 chars, you should be able to sell enough at a decent trader, probably even a craglorn one to keep you spot. Since those mats are always in demand as long as you price them sensibly. I usually keep 200 or all gold mats types except JC and sell everything above, so when I do need those mats for myself, I have them available. Likewise with alchemy mats (1k min), so if you do something similar, then you should be ok.

Finding a good trade guild that are able to keep a solid location is the big challenge, once you have that you're good tho.

I wish I had that much gold upgrade material lol. I've got like 37 dreugh wax as my most abundant and 25 rosin as my least. I think I might just sell it all though.. gold's not THAT much better than purple from what I'm seeing. I applied to a trading guild with very low reqs and a seemingly decent location a couple hours ago. Just waiting on a response.

I'm curious, do you do the surveys you've gotten from the daily writs? Since refining those raw mats on a character with all passives unlocked and active adds quite a bit of gold mats. Add the hireling mails on top and you'll have a respectable amount of gold mats incoming per week on 8 characters.

I do, but all of that is still down to rng. Some days I get 1 survey or none and others I get multiples and there's not always a guarantee that I'll get gold upgrade materials from refining on top of that. They're building up slowly, but I feel like I'd need way more character slots to consistently build a large supply.

Yup, those that make a lot of gold doing writs try and take RNG out of it as much as possible by having a lot of characters doing them. 36 a day in my personal case. 1 or 2 characters is going to be subject to randomness. But 12/18/36, while still subject to randomness, gets to a large sample size quicker which moves the average to the norm and expected drop rates.

I don't have 12 slots or 18 slots let alone 2 accounts with 18 slots. I have 8. And it's just compounding rng too because gold mat drops are rng, on top of the rng of what surveys you get on top of the rng of actually getting a survey period. For instance I just did a lot of enchanting surveys because that's just what I got a lot of the past could days... 0 kuta. But I did like 2 or 3 blacksmithing surveys are got 4 tempering from 240 rubedite ore, but when I refined 180 rubedo leather and 220 ancestor silk I got 0 dreugh wax.

Meanwhile despite that I can't even sell what I have in order to start making some money because I haven't gotten any response back from the trading guild I applied to like 36 hours ago.

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I really wish zos would just streamline the trading. It's frustrating that you need to find a trading guild in order to begin selling at all and having to change zones 30 times to find items is annoying. Pretty much everyone uses TTC to find stuff anyways it'd just be nice to have one consolidated baked in way to find items instead of having to go all the way to the middle of cold harbor to find out the only listed item that I need that was reasonably priced was already bought.

SirAndy · March 2021

I keep some 100+ of all the base gold mats for myself and everything above that i sell.

I've made millions (literally) doing just that.

PS: As far a temper drops from refining, i still think there's a bug in ZOS's code when you roll the dice on a stack of mats. I consistently get way more gold tempers by going through a stack 1 by 1 manually.

SirAndy · March 2021

SirAndy wrote: »

I've made millions (literally) doing just that

Case in point, this was in the mail when i just logged in this evening.
Granted, one of those items was 1 x Chromium Plating but the rest were all just base gold mats.
All stuff i posted for sale last night before i logged off.

tmbrinks · March 2021

Lynxyn wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Lynxyn wrote: »

Bucky_13 wrote: »

Lynxyn wrote: »

Bucky_13 wrote: »

In an average week, golden/purple mats+alchemy reagents are 90% + of my sales at guild traders for 2 different trade guilds. Which is well over 1m per week. I do daily writs on 14 chars, until recently it was 13 however.

So if you do daily writs on 8 chars, you should be able to sell enough at a decent trader, probably even a craglorn one to keep you spot. Since those mats are always in demand as long as you price them sensibly. I usually keep 200 or all gold mats types except JC and sell everything above, so when I do need those mats for myself, I have them available. Likewise with alchemy mats (1k min), so if you do something similar, then you should be ok.

Finding a good trade guild that are able to keep a solid location is the big challenge, once you have that you're good tho.

I wish I had that much gold upgrade material lol. I've got like 37 dreugh wax as my most abundant and 25 rosin as my least. I think I might just sell it all though.. gold's not THAT much better than purple from what I'm seeing. I applied to a trading guild with very low reqs and a seemingly decent location a couple hours ago. Just waiting on a response.

I'm curious, do you do the surveys you've gotten from the daily writs? Since refining those raw mats on a character with all passives unlocked and active adds quite a bit of gold mats. Add the hireling mails on top and you'll have a respectable amount of gold mats incoming per week on 8 characters.

I do, but all of that is still down to rng. Some days I get 1 survey or none and others I get multiples and there's not always a guarantee that I'll get gold upgrade materials from refining on top of that. They're building up slowly, but I feel like I'd need way more character slots to consistently build a large supply.

Yup, those that make a lot of gold doing writs try and take RNG out of it as much as possible by having a lot of characters doing them. 36 a day in my personal case. 1 or 2 characters is going to be subject to randomness. But 12/18/36, while still subject to randomness, gets to a large sample size quicker which moves the average to the norm and expected drop rates.

I don't have 12 slots or 18 slots let alone 2 accounts with 18 slots. I have 8. And it's just compounding rng too because gold mat drops are rng, on top of the rng of what surveys you get on top of the rng of actually getting a survey period. For instance I just did a lot of enchanting surveys because that's just what I got a lot of the past could days... 0 kuta. But I did like 2 or 3 blacksmithing surveys are got 4 tempering from 240 rubedite ore, but when I refined 180 rubedo leather and 220 ancestor silk I got 0 dreugh wax.

Meanwhile despite that I can't even sell what I have in order to start making some money because I haven't gotten any response back from the trading guild I applied to like 36 hours ago.

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I really wish zos would just streamline the trading. It's frustrating that you need to find a trading guild in order to begin selling at all and having to change zones 30 times to find items is annoying. Pretty much everyone uses TTC to find stuff anyways it'd just be nice to have one consolidated baked in way to find items instead of having to go all the way to the middle of cold harbor to find out the only listed item that I need that was reasonably priced was already bought.

Yup, there is some randomness to it. Just describing what you can do to get more consistency.

The drop rate from refining is about 1 temper per 200 materials (it's higher now if you have meticulous disassembly slotted, about 1 in 180), so getting 4 from 240 is PHENOMENAL RNG... and then just slightly unlucky with the leather and silk.

As a counterpoint to the "central market", prices would likely be much higher if the game had an auction house. Right now, it would be impossible for somebody to corner the market on popular items because they have to do the "go around to all kiosks" thing to buy everything. But, somebody would definitely sit on an auction house, buy everything lower-priced and upsell specific items. The only way to counter than in a central auction house would be to impose price limits (and floors) on items (which is something that BDO does). Personally, I'm glad ESO has an open market system like it does because there is that potential to find a great deal, something that wouldn't happen in an auction house.

afia2000 · July 2021

I've been buying furnishing plans like crazy for my new house. Today I started with 650 gold, played for 2 hours and had 14000 gold by the end of it. I do not have eso+ so this is how I made the gold. First, I have 50 slots open for inventory. Second, I play a few random dungeons and farm everything until those 50 slots are full -rinse, repeat and I sell all of it to the first merchant I see. Third, just out of habit I do all 6 craft dailies that earn I think 650 gold each. If I'm feeling ambitious, I will sell a few choice items to my guildmembers at the bank but that doesn't guarantee a quick turnaround of cash.

Alucardo · July 2021

Sell crowns. I also made a small fortune while levelling up scrying/excavation and hunting down mythics.

ShinyBacon · July 2021

Making gold is also an investment game and a long term investment at that.

You mentioned you spend most of your gold currently for bag and bank upgrades. which indicates you are at the very beginning of the investment game by investing in your storage space, which is a good thing. As soon as you have upgraded everything though, you will have a nice amount of surplus gold which will stack up quickly. so be patient there. it will pay off.

then you mentioned you had a couple of gold materials, of course you can sell them to get money quicker. but another way of "making" gold is to not spend gold. Obviously you could sell those mats for quick cash, or use it yourself and "save" money. which is one of the biggest advantages of doing writs, to be self sufficient. Then again - long term view, once you have golded out a decent amount of sets on all your characters you wont need the gold materials anymore and can then sell them. the biggest factor of getting much gold is definetly to not spend it. and by doing writs you are self sufficient.

Then surveys. Yes one single survey is not going to make loads of gold, but first of all, it will add to your self sufficiency. but you can also toss them in your freshly upgraded bank and let them stack up for a couple of weeks. once you have 5-10 surveys of one kind, its much more effiecent to do them and refine larger amounts. you might get more than 20 gold materials from 5 surveys.

And lastly... everything has some value. its not only the gold materials people want to buy, its also the blue and purple ones the raw materials, all other runes not just Kuta. Again this in an investment and long term game, you need to learn the market. A good thing to do is to go into your trading guilds sales history and check what gets sold. You will be surprised what sort of stuff people buy. It might be a worthless item to you but someone might just look for it. this way you can also learn what is worth holding on to, or you can see whats worth farming for. It might be motifs if you like that activity. The best thing is to learn what activity you like doing most and find out what ressource this activity is giving. This way you can again gain gold passivley by doing what you do anyway. Lets say you really like doing the daily zone quests, they give style materials sought after by furnishers, motifs that can sell for a pretty penny, overland sets that might be valuable (or can be deconstructed for style materials again if they are not popular sets)

So bottom line... making money is mostly a long term game, get your foundations right, which you are by updgarding your spaces and doing your daily writs. Try to be self sufficient. and then find activites you like and make the most of the rewards, and very soon your goold will increase.. a lot.

preevious · July 2021

Here's a very impopular way :

Flip items. Find bargains (it's not that hard, especially if you are on PC using add-on) and sell them at their real market price.
Obvioulsy, you'd have to jojn at last one guild for this to work, but it have a very good payoff.
I do it whenever I can, and have no issue with gold at all, despite having bought every motif, and having golded all my jewels.

But there are other ways, of course :

Farm mats in craglorn. Sell the mats if you don't have crafting passive, refine them and sell the tempers if you do. The potent nirncruxes are a nice bonus.
Craft for people (but don't buy all motif if you wan't to end up in the positive, since most people don't care anyway )
Sell skyreach carries if you got the skill.
Farm high selling motifs in hard dungeon, if you got the skill

Those are the only reliable ways I know of.

Forget about

Thieving : yes, it's consistant, but it takes forever.
Writs : technically, it has not a bad payoff, but there are much better ways out there.

FrancisCrawford · July 2021

Your idea of keeping mats for possible future use makes a lot of sense. And you're right to worry about keeping up with the expectations for top-location trading guilds.

I hope that besides crafting writs you're also keeping up with the related passive-income-stream option of hireling emails. Hirelings send materials only, and require skill points to activate -- but they're good stuff even so, at least the ones at Tier 3 in blacksmithing/clothier/woodworking.

FrancisCrawford · July 2021

As for trading guilds -- find one you can easily afford. Then figure out what can be easily and profitably sold there.

On PC/NA right now, for example, purple and gold enchantments seem to sell for well over the cost of manufacture. Perhaps the same is true of a few provisioning outputs as well.

jackiemanuel · July 2021

Lynxyn wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

Step 1 - join a training guild

Step 2 - if you don't play end game pve yet or pvp, find out what the meta is or what people use a lot and farm that

Step 3 - find out which housing patterns go for a lot and fame them (as well as the style material needed to make common ones like dwemer, solitude, markath etc)

Those are easy ways to make gold, and you'll gain champion points while doing it so it's not too bad.

You can sell gold mats too if you want, but I never do to be honest. I keep them for myself as I'm always changes builds for pvp.

Just look around guilds traders too. See what goes for decent gold, and research where you can get hold of some of those items.

How would I deal with a trading guild who has a pretty horrible trader spot? I feel like I would need to have a huge discount to encourage the trip but at that point would it even be worth it to sell most things?

you might be surprised. I joined a trading guild on Xbox three weeks ago. Small guild, no dues, but trader is abbas landing. I farm mats while listening to podcasts, usually no more than 45mins to an hour, and sell the mats. Also I fish in somerset and sell the motifs that I get randomly. But it's mostly just alchemy, blacksmithing, clothing, woodworking mats.
When I logged off last night I had just under 500,000 gold.

Ken_Koerperich · July 2021

Making gold? Hmm....

Pick up everything, sell everything....

LOW BALL every other Traders price for items. Yours will sell faster, and then "they" can be the jack hole who up's the items to OVERPRICED....

You made your money, let them be the bad guy and sit holding said items for infinity....

Easy peasy.....

But really, just pick up everything no matter what it is. Sell all the junk, keep what you want....

Unless you're wanting to be a millionaire over night, there is no FAST/GUARANTEED way.....

You're competing w/ thousands of other players, and only Low Balling them will you beat them...

So I say skip trading.....

Just play the game, and it will come...

JKorr · July 2021

I have one "trading guild". I have 3 social guilds. None of the guilds requires dues or X amount a sales a week.

Every one of the social guilds has a trader. You don't need to join a trading guild to trade.

While you run around doing other things, pick up everything. Ore, fiber, wood, flowers, bugs, runes, everything that doesn't run away or try to kill you first. If it does try to kill you, take care of it and loot the body. If you have the inclination or your guild runs a fishing night, catch fish. If you clean your catch, there's a chance of perfect roe. If you don't want to fish, sell your bait; last I checked worms were going for 40 gold each. Columbine and cornflower are over 500 gold. Mundane runes, heartwood will always sell quickly.

Consider what mats you'll need for personal use. Keep those back, any extra can be sold. I normally hold back enough mats for cp 160 purple gear with golded weapons for all my characters that don't have their final cp160 gear yet.

tmbrinks · July 2021

preevious wrote: »

Here's a very impopular way :

Flip items. Find bargains (it's not that hard, especially if you are on PC using add-on) and sell them at their real market price.
Obvioulsy, you'd have to jojn at last one guild for this to work, but it have a very good payoff.
I do it whenever I can, and have no issue with gold at all, despite having bought every motif, and having golded all my jewels.

But there are other ways, of course :
Farm mats in craglorn. Sell the mats if you don't have crafting passive, refine them and sell the tempers if you do. The potent nirncruxes are a nice bonus.

Craft for people (but don't buy all motif if you wan't to end up in the positive, since most people don't care anyway )

Sell skyreach carries if you got the skill.

Farm high selling motifs in hard dungeon, if you got the skill

Those are the only reliable ways I know of.

Forget about
Thieving : yes, it's consistant, but it takes forever.

Writs : technically, it has not a bad payoff, but there are much better ways out there.

I disagree on the writs. I've yet to find a way to get more value per unit time in the game. (Only exception would be to sell trial carries maybe, can make several hundred thousand gold in 10 minutes doing vCR +3 carries).

Farming mats is profitable, but I'd argue the starter zones, with their higher density of nodes will outweigh the potent nirns that you get from Craglorn (but it's the best spot outside of those)
Crafting... taking 10 minutes for a 10k tip (or less)? I can make 150k+ from writs in that same amount of time.
Skyreach... 5 minute run, 10k each, 120k an hour? Writs still wins out.
Motifs... 30 minute run, average 50-100k each (if you get lucky and get a chest or leg motif, maybe more).

At today's current prices, on PC/NA. Doing your writs on 18 characters (which takes me about 45 minutes or less) will net an average value of goods/rewards/etc... of about 800k gold. Yes, you can only do them once per day, not infinitely like the rest, but there really is no comparison once you have the writ machine setup and running.

Viewsfrom6ix · July 2021

tmbrinks wrote: »

preevious wrote: »

Here's a very impopular way :

Flip items. Find bargains (it's not that hard, especially if you are on PC using add-on) and sell them at their real market price.
Obvioulsy, you'd have to jojn at last one guild for this to work, but it have a very good payoff.
I do it whenever I can, and have no issue with gold at all, despite having bought every motif, and having golded all my jewels.

But there are other ways, of course :
Farm mats in craglorn. Sell the mats if you don't have crafting passive, refine them and sell the tempers if you do. The potent nirncruxes are a nice bonus.

Craft for people (but don't buy all motif if you wan't to end up in the positive, since most people don't care anyway )

Sell skyreach carries if you got the skill.

Farm high selling motifs in hard dungeon, if you got the skill

Those are the only reliable ways I know of.

Forget about
Thieving : yes, it's consistant, but it takes forever.

Writs : technically, it has not a bad payoff, but there are much better ways out there.

I disagree on the writs. I've yet to find a way to get more value per unit time in the game. (Only exception would be to sell trial carries maybe, can make several hundred thousand gold in 10 minutes doing vCR +3 carries).

Farming mats is profitable, but I'd argue the starter zones, with their higher density of nodes will outweigh the potent nirns that you get from Craglorn (but it's the best spot outside of those)
Crafting... taking 10 minutes for a 10k tip (or less)? I can make 150k+ from writs in that same amount of time.
Skyreach... 5 minute run, 10k each, 120k an hour? Writs still wins out.
Motifs... 30 minute run, average 50-100k each (if you get lucky and get a chest or leg motif, maybe more).

At today's current prices, on PC/NA. Doing your writs on 18 characters (which takes me about 45 minutes or less) will net an average value of goods/rewards/etc... of about 800k gold. Yes, you can only do them once per day, not infinitely like the rest, but there really is no comparison once you have the writ machine setup and running.

The problem with earning gold from writs at scale like you has too many pre-requisites.
1. Need ESO+
2. Need A LOT of characters maxed in crafting with the skill points.
3. Need SSD for faster loads

Which is not easily achievable by many.

I won't argue how effective it is when you DO have it set up.

But I have to agree with flipping items as the most lucrative method. I only have 1 character, no ESO+, played the game for just a little under a year. The amount of gold I've accumulated from flipping items is just insane. I probably spend about 30-45mins a day doing it and most of the time is asynchronous while I'm queuing for BG or dungeons.

Lumsdenml · July 2021

I think there is a lot of great advice here, but I'll throw in my two cents anyway to how I make gold. I have 7 characters that I log in and do daily writs on 5 days a week. Having them all mostly maxed out. I get about 164K in gold a week just from turning in quests. I collect all of the surveys and master writs and I do all the surveys and some of the master writes on day 6 of each week. I'll then syphon off a portion of the gold mats, especially gold jewelry mats and sell them in my guild store. I am part of a guild that has no minimum, so there is never any worry there. From doing the daily writs and refining all of the surveys, I have quite a few extra gold mats to sell. Now, I'm only spending maybe 45min a day doing these, and am not as dedicated as some people who do this on 18 toons 7 days a week, but it has allowed me to have a consistent source of gold that allows me to mostly not worry about affording the things I want to buy. In fact, just was able to afford the last house I needed for the "Count" title, so I've easily made 10mil+ in the last few months.