Earning Gold

maxjam · April 16

I recently returned to ESO after a long break and am wondering what the best/quickest ways to make gold are now-a-days. A lot has changed since I last played!

I am currently doing my daily crafting writs, keeping on top of my Tome activites and running around gathering resources. Are there any other quick and easy daily activities I should be doing to earn a bit of gold? I have an expensive lifestyle!

Thoriorz · April 16

I can't recommend a quick way, but for a steady income, I suggest doing daily writs (which is actually what you're already doing ) with many characters as possible. Personally, I think this is a good use of time for alt characters. Right now, I'm working on a second account dedicated solely to daily writs. This will cover your Crown purchases pretty well (you pay with gold...), and personally, daily writs suit me best as a income. But of course, it doesn’t happen right away (leveling, learning recipes, traits, etc.)...

Palumtra · April 16

Daily crafting writs, pledges, the Mage/Fighter/Undaunted dailies.

Look for the (trading) guilds that have vendors at popular spots and try to join them so you can sell your stuff. They usually advertise themselves in capital cities.

Make alts to do the daily crafts with and to get the free deliveries of mats from the hirelings, use them as mules, and stock up on upgrade mats, the purple and golden ones are liquid gold (always valuable), especially for jewelcrafting (if you have Summerset DLC)

Also spend wisely. Even if you dont want to use addons for price checking the ESO hub webpage shows the recent listings of items that you are looking for (gear, recipes, mats, you name it) at the guild traders that can save you A LOT of gold.

Horace-Wimp · April 16

I am uncertain if this will earn much gold but when I did it I think it loaded me up a bit (I do NOT have expensive tastes and do not farm gold so consider that) but you can join the "dolmen circuit" in Alik'r and see if the results meet your needs. Thee has ALWAYS been a group running the dolmens in Alik'r 24/7 unless something has changed since Update 49 went live (I haven't run the circuit since Christmas 2025, I think.)

One HUGE benefit to running the "dolmen circuit" in Alik'r is you should get TONS and TONS of jewelry to sell, break for mats, use on a toon or research (although I doubt you will get any or many good researchable items.)

Also, be mindful of the treasure chests that you encounter while running around the world. There MAY be some good items that folks might be willing to pay for should you choose sell them on a Trader.

Or, if you enjoy tanking and healing you could run random dungeons all day for a few days and just sell all the drops. FULL CLEARS yield best results. However, your eyes may bleed out of your skull followed by your liquified brains. Took me some time to login again after I did that. Once.

Remember to just enjoy your self. This is ONLY a game after all. Best of luck to you!

maxjam · April 16

Thoriorz wrote: »

I can't recommend a quick way, but for a steady income, I suggest doing daily writs (which is actually what you're already doing ) with many characters as possible. Personally, I think this is a good use of time for alt characters. Right now, I'm working on a second account dedicated solely to daily writs. This will cover your Crown purchases pretty well (you pay with gold...), and personally, daily writs suit me best as a income. But of course, it doesn’t happen right away (leveling, learning recipes, traits, etc.)...

Thank you, I'm doing my daily crafting writs on a number of characters, I returned for the start of Season 0 and levelled a few more chars during the Anniversary Event so I have even more! Its a nice bit of gold before I go off and actually play the game properly!

I've been watching some videos of how to earn 50k-100k gold/day that mention doing dailies in various locations, some of the areas dropping crafting motifs or giving you higher drop chances until you get your first etc - but they are all from before the start of Season 0 and I'm not sure how relevant they are now.

Hopefully someone can give me an idea of where to head off to and what to do/farm etc whilst I get myself back up to speed with the game again, a lots changed since I last played!

SeaGtGruff · April 16

Antiquities can be a reliable source of gold, because every zone that has antiquities to dig up has three Treasure antiquities which can be sold to NPC merchants for gold-- a green Treasure that sells for 250, a blue Treasure that sells for 1000, and a purple Treasure that sells for 5000. The lead for the green Treasure is always available to scry, and excavating it gives a lead for the blue Treasure. Excavating the blue Treasure gives a one-time lead for the purple Treasure, so you will only be able to excavate it once. But after that you can continue to excavate the green and blue Treasures endlessly.

Looting "owned" containers can also yield loot which can be fenced, although there's a daily limit on the number of items you can fence. Still, if you loot containers or pickpocket NPCs, destroy the lower-valued items, and keep only the more valuable items, you can make a nice amount each day by fencing the higher-valued items.

Thoriorz · April 16

maxjam wrote: »

Thoriorz wrote: »

I can't recommend a quick way, but for a steady income, I suggest doing daily writs (which is actually what you're already doing ) with many characters as possible. Personally, I think this is a good use of time for alt characters. Right now, I'm working on a second account dedicated solely to daily writs. This will cover your Crown purchases pretty well (you pay with gold...), and personally, daily writs suit me best as a income. But of course, it doesn’t happen right away (leveling, learning recipes, traits, etc.)...

Thank you, I'm doing my daily crafting writs on a number of characters, I returned for the start of Season 0 and levelled a few more chars during the Anniversary Event so I have even more! Its a nice bit of gold before I go off and actually play the game properly!

I've been watching some videos of how to earn 50k-100k gold/day that mention doing dailies in various locations, some of the areas dropping crafting motifs or giving you higher drop chances until you get your first etc - but they are all from before the start of Season 0 and I'm not sure how relevant they are now.

Hopefully someone can give me an idea of where to head off to and what to do/farm etc whilst I get myself back up to speed with the game again, a lots changed since I last played!

Yea, some motifs can be valuable. Although I’m not sure how much the ones from the daily coffers will be worth. But yeah, even that can be a good start. Or, as mentioned above, in Antiquities, you have those “base” treasures, which you can also sell for some gold.

Orbital78 · April 16

I farm the newer dlc dungeons I've done on hard mode for motifs. Easy 50-100k+ if the queue isn't fill with new players.

Watching the radar for specific resources and hunting mudcrabs it ok, mudcrabs can be over farmed/crowded at popular areas.

I have a few places I hunt treasure chests and heavy sacks but that can be heavy rng. If there is something to farm between like bosses or resources, that helps.

Use up excessive amounts of provisioning material and sell food to merchant. I freed up some mules making 5g stuff. Unless you do this from time to time, you probably have more than you'll ever use on writs or combat.

Unpopular, but fishing still nets perfect roe, with the last event the market may be saturated. Positive thing is people use it a lot, especially high end raiders. I had been selling 5 at a time at 38k per roe.

Imperial sewers nets some decent money too, just bank your tel var and go at non-prime time hours, unless you're ready.

Lots of ways, find what you enjoy most and don't burn out.

LootAllTheStuff · April 16

Thoriorz wrote: »

Yea, some motifs can be valuable. Although I’m not sure how much the ones from the daily coffers will be worth. But yeah, even that can be a good start. Or, as mentioned above, in Antiquities, you have those “base” treasures, which you can also sell for some gold.

That's actually a good point - each zone has something you don't need to first find the lead for, and digging that up does have a chance of providing a higher tier lead.

cyberjanet · April 16

There are two ships in the Daggerfall harbour. The passengers go ashore and leave behind stuff they feel too lazy to carry with them. The guards haven't yet arrived to clear away the unwanted goods. So while they still "technically"belong to the passengers, and it's "theoretically" stealing, you're basically just making the guards' jobs easier by saving them the trouble. The Outlaws Refuge is close by, don't look in your bags while travelling to it, and you can make about 1500g on one character per day. There's only person who actually comes aboard, carrying boxes to an upper deck, but she is easily avoided.

Recent · April 16

I make lots of gold in infinate archives as i get a lot of treasures to vendor. Some purple treasures vendor for 1,500k each.
I also was able to purchase some gold with tome points.
Im not in a trading guild right now and i seem to be making gold by playing the game and crafting dailies.

Note: trading guilds are great for selling items to make gold if you get enough items to sell.

couriersix · April 16

If you have a guild with a trader, then farming furnishing plans or style materials can be a pretty effective way of making gold. Shimmering sand, Hackwing Feathers, Culanda Lacquer and Stendarr Stamps are all pretty valuable and can be earned through dailies. there may be some new style materials which released which are also worth quite a bit, but I haven't been keeping up with it.

Infinite Archive can also be a good way to make some gold, especially if you keep an eye out on things for sale through the weekly vendor.

DoofusMax · April 17

Depends on how much effort you're willing to sink into the process. If you're seeking insta-gazillionaire staus, get tight with RNGesus and manage to get several somethings from loot drops that will sell for that gazillion gold. Lightning can strike multiple times, but the odds of it happening are not good. People do get lucky.

If you're willing to settle for steady incomes rather than instant riches, then here are my favorites:

1. Daily crafting writs: About 5K gold per character per day if you have access to Summerset and can do Jewelry writs (I'm counting the Gilded Fingers perk in that, so ~4500 without it). Gold is character-level dependent, but the stuff in the reward coffers is crafting-level dependent. You'll eventually pull in gold upgrade mats pretty regularly and those can sell very nicely.
2. Guild dailies (Fighters, Mages, and Bolgrul's): close to 3K per day per character for the gold rewards (also affected by Gilded Fingers), chances for Ornate gear (extra gold) in the coffer, as well as motif chapters which unfortunately don't sell for a whole bunch). If you complete first four wings of the Scholarium, then you'll also get one of each script type per day (Focus, Signature, and Affix); if you don't want to learn them, they're worth 1K gold each. The first coffers of each is a guaranteed frop and subsequent coffers are 25% chance of a script drop.
3. Sticky fingers: Get Legerdemain up to level 3 and put a point in Trafficker to more than double the number of items you can fence per day (extra points help a little but the first is the main boost). Steal what ain't nailed down, discard the cheap stuff, keep the good stuff, and profit very nicely. Like the first two, it works better with mulitple characters doing it multiple times per day.
4. Zone dailies: work kind of like guild dailies and another source of those 1K scripts. Rewards are comparable, especially with motif chapters, but be careful with dailies in zones after Northern Elsweyr since those will go on cooldown until server reset afte a motif drops. All expansion zones have a delve and WB Daily, but only Summerset and later have an incursion daily (Blackwood and Deadlands excepted; Oblivion Portals are incursions, but no daily)

Or just get out there kill stuff, loot it, then kill more stuff and loot it. Gold is not hard to get, but keeping a rein on your spending is the best way to make it accumulate.