There are many ways to make gold in the game
Crafting Writs (Fastest)
Nets you ~4.2K gold per day per max level character
When you reach level 6, you can do crafting writs. They are located within the main cities of almost every zone. You’ll need to get certification to start doing crafting writs.
Do not invest skill points in Woodworking / Metalworking / Tailoring / Solvent Proficiency passives unless you have maxed out their level and have the full skill points to maximize the level.
The reason is that the writ you get may ask for materials for the level of the Woodworking / Metalworking / Tailoring / Solvent Proficiency passive which may mean an extra trip to guild stores to get materials. Keep it at Iron, Jute, Maple, Rawhide and Natural water usage until the skill tree is maxed out at 50.
The only advantage of doing writs with a maximized skill level is that you have a chance to get master writs.
If you get Surveys, send your max level characters to collect them for a higher possibility of max level items. Surveys can be put in the bank but not sold or traded.
Raw Materials (Fast)
To get your initial gold capital, go out of the city area and harvest / mine / pick some resource nodes. Good nodes to grab are blacksmith, woodworking and clothing ores.
Do not refine them, sell them unrefined even if you have the 9 skill points and leveling to invest in the Extraction passives as the chances of obtaining the Gold improvement material on refining is still quite low
Alchemy items also sell very well except for solvents. But you may have trouble finding one Alchemy item of the same type in one run causing your inventory to fill up.
Master Merchant should be able to advise you of a good rate. You should aim to sell at a slightly lower rate to sell quick
Stealing (Slow)
You may want to use a character specifically for this as they can incur a high bounty doing this and you don’t want to get caught by a guard while questing
Remember there’s a limit on the number of items you can launder and sell daily to Fences
Good locations to do stealing are
- Daggerfall Harbour boats near the refuge entry point
- Craglorn camps without any guards (pickpocketing)
- Rivenspire near to Oldgate wayshrine
- any location which doesn’t have a Guard walking around
Use EasyTravel addon to port to a location without any gold cost. You will need to be in guilds for this to work.
Random Dungeons (Slower)
Queue for a random Normal dungeon as a tank & dps and loot everything.
Do be sure to have a taunt (Inner Fire from Undaunted line or Puncture from One Hand and Shield) slotted
Wear Heavy for the best resistance and you should be able to tank the bosses reasonably.
If you queue as a DPS, expect long waiting times.
Chest Hunting (Depends on Luck)
For this to work, you need to be at gear cap level (Level 50, CP160) as the gear in chests drop to your level
Download Harvest Map and import data (see the “How to import data?” section). Now you have all the locations of chests and nodes in your map.
Go to a popular zone such as Rivenspire and Bangkaroi. Loot all the chests you can for divines/sharpened/infused Spriggans (Bangkorai) and Necropotence (Rivenspire) weapons, jewellery and armor pieces.
Put the good pieces up for sale in the trader.
Trading (Depends on Luck)
Join all the trading guilds you can with a low sales requirement (1000g is reasonable) and install Master Merchant addon. You can join up to 5 guilds.
You will then be able to track prices of various items.
Now you will also need to install AwesomeGuildStore. After installing it, visit any trader and apply the following settings
- Sort by “Time Left” descending
- On the bottom left, set Deal Value (or something like that) to gold value
- Hit search
You may or may not get results. The trick is to find a item that has been put on sale for too low a price. Keep in mind that you are not the only person to do this, so you will have to visit traders in various zones to spot a good deal.
The second trick is to search in those remotely located guild stores such as those located in DLC areas.
Once you have spotted a good deal, buy it and simply put it again for sale at its actual worth in your own trader :p
Try to aim for at least 5000 gold in profit and go for items which are popular – avoid items which have only have 1-2 records of history of sales.