And there’s always the gold sinks such as repairing equipment, purchasing and feeding horses, and also important increasing your character’s inventory and bank space. Bottomline is gold is easily spent and there will always be a demand to earn more of it, so I hope some of my tips and experiences can help you out in earning more gold in ESO. Most of them include using Guild Stores to trade more conveniently, so being part of several large trading guilds with active members is certainly helpful.

5. Sell traits

With research times lasting months of real time, players are often looking to maximize their trait research times and will often gladly pay for certain traits on items. Some can be quite difficult to find and getting 500g-1,000g for selling a simple level 1 item with the required trait is very common. You can pay attention to zone chats and you’ll frequently see players purchasing traits, so if you have them be sure to contact them as this is one of the easiest ways to make gold with very little effort.

Tip: use Research Assistant addon to quickly check which traits you have!

You can also utilize guild stores to sell traits, though from my experiences not as many people are searching there. Some of the most sought after traits are:

• Light and medium armor: Impenetrable on gloves, head, shoulders, belt
• Heavy armor: Divines and Infused on boots (and pretty much all other item slots)
• Staves: Weighted on Inferno Staff, Precise on Lightning Staff

Also Training and Exploration are surprisingly sought after frequently as well for all items: most players research these last and with 12/24 day research timers are easily prepared to pay 1,000g just to do it as soon as possible. This is by no means an extensive list of traits you can sell, but guild stores have limited slots for putting items up for sale so don’t overdo it and keep it down to just a few best-selling traits I listed.

4. Buy and resell Monumental Glyphs from vendors

Not the best nor most profitable way to make gold, but this easily nets me 1,000-2,000 gold a day. You’d be surprised how many Veteran players don’t know you can purchase Monumental (currently highest) level glyphs from vendors for mere 255 gold a piece, meaning you can resell them to other players for twice the amount of not more. These glyphs don’t add much Inspiration for deconstruction but there’s always gear to be enchanted and not many players have thousands to spend on Legendary glyphs.

I’m guessing if so many players haven’t figured this out yet chances are this will be a decent money-making tip for awhile. Check your favorite enchanter in Veteran zones: I play Ebonheart Pact, so I shop from the one in Rawl’Kha in Reaper’s March. I typically put them up on my guild stores for 600g each which doubles my investment in a very short time. Health and Magicka glyphs sell best!

3. Refine raw materials

Though the recent patch 1.2.3 slightly decreased the chances of gaining higher quality tannins, resins, and tempers for improving equipment’s quality, the principle still works. More often than not players will be prepared to sell you a stack of 100 raw materials for far less than 1,000g, even 600g per stack. From my observations there’s about 2-3% chance to gain a Legendary improvement material when refining 10 raw materials, giving you roughly a 25% chance to get one per stack. Since legendary mats can be sold for 5,000g each, even paying 1,200g for a stack of raw materials is worth it.

Don’t forget, you also get Elegant Linings, Grain Solvents and Mastics worth about 1,000g each at an even greater chance. The chances I mentioned for gaining Improvement mats are based on having 3/3 skill points in Metal Extraction, Unraveling and Wood Extraction, which all greatly increase the odds of gaining them.

2. Use Hirelings

Spending skill points into Hirelings for Clothing, Blacksmithing and Woodworking is immensely profitable, particularly if you invest full skill points into them. With 3/3 in Hirelings you have roughly a 20% chance to gain one or even two Legendary crafting materials twice a day. If you include Epic ones into the equation and raw materials you can further use for refining, this means you can get 5,000g per day on average without lifting a finger!

Best of all, you can do this on 8 characters. Though leveling professions takes time and essentially gold, even basic hirelings with 1 skill point invested will on occasion send you Legendary mats. If you make a new character, you start with level 3 with equal amount of skill points to spend: just enough to put them into hirelings without even having to do any quests, gain any levels or hunt for skyshards. You will need to level your Woodworking, Blacksmithing and Clothing to level 3 though, but that only takes 2-3 Veteran item deconstructions. Easy, cheap and highly profitable, and all you have to do is log in with each character once a day and pick up the profits.

1. Deconstruct items

Though the prices may change, currently you can sell Superior (blue) improvement materials such as Dwarven Oil, Turpen and Embroidery for 500g a piece. If you invested skill points into Extraction passives as mentioned in the “Refine raw materials” tip above, you will have about  85% chance to gain a blue mat when deconstructing blue items. Being a part of 4 trading guilds I can purchase at least 20-30 blue items on guild stores for less than 200g a piece every day, and simply resell all those improvement materials for higher prices. You also get a ton of refined materials which you can further sell for higher profits, or just vendor them for 400g/stack.

Even higher profits though can be made by purchasing and deconstructing purple quality items. Again I can easily purchase up to 10 purple items for less than 500g each, deconstruct them for a 75% chance to gain a purple improvement item, and resell them for 1,200g or more. There’s still a really good profit margin here, but if you dread selling so many things all the time at the very least you can get improvement materials for half the price this way.

In closing

These are right now one of my favorite things for making gold in ESO. Combining all of these does take some time and effort but easily nets me at least 10,000 gold every day, and it sure as heck beats grinding! Trading and crafting isn’t everyone’s cup of tea though, but there are plenty of other ways to make gold in Elder Scrolls Online:

• Farm raw materials and sell them to other players, or refine them yourself. For selling refined stacks of cloth, iron and wood level 30-45 is best, and VR1-VR3 mats usually sell faster than highest Veteran Rank ones.
• Do public group dungeons, sell items with Intricate (increased Inspiration gained when deconstructing) trait to other players for 100-200g a piece.
• Do public group dungeons and sell dropped Glyphs to enchanters for up to 300g a piece.
• Buy empty Soul Gems from vendors, fill them and resell for 10-20% more.
• Grind bosses in delves, deconstruct blue items, and sell gems and potions (very profitable when done right!).
• Farm herbs, sell for 100g-150g a piece. Mountain Flower is often bought for up to 200g a piece.
• Grind for racial motifs (extremely boring and repetitive, nevertheless profitable). Good places are Altmer Embassy in Grahtwood, Daggerfall Castle in town of Daggerfall, Inn in Rawl’Kha town in Reaper’s March.

I do hope this article helped you a bit and gave you ideas on earning and farming gold in Elder Scrolls Online. Unless you took advantage of some bugs or high racial motif drop rates early on in the game, you will inevitably find yourself looking for more gold constantly and I hope you will refer to this post for some inspiration. If you have any of your own gold making tips, tricks or strategies be sure to contribute in the comments just below. What’s your tip?

When you first start playing Rift and finish your first few quests you’ll get a few silver coins. One hundred silver coins gives you 1 gold, and 100 gold gives you 1 platinum.

There are also other types of currencies in Rift such as planarite and valor: planarite is gained by participating in rifts and invasions and valor is gained by fighting other players in either open world PvP or Warfronts. We’ll probably not be discussing those currencies in detail here but rather focus on just platinum.

Easiest way to get more gold in Rift

One of the most simple and easiest ways you will have more platinum in Rift is by making sure your bags are always empty. Often times when you’re doing quests and participating in Rifts you don’t have enough room to pick up all the items dropped from monsters. Even worse, I’ve been known to sometimes destroy green quest rewards because I had no room for some better items.

It’s absolutely the worst thing you can do. Sometimes you simply have no choice though as you have to prioritize: I’d rather destroy a 1g worth of item than a 2g item, but it’s still just a huge waste. I definitely recommend you fill out your bag slots as soon as you can.

Where to get bags?

1. Quest rewards – certain quests will award you with bags
2. Monster drops – although not very frequently and you can’t count on it really, you will get bags even from random monsters you kill
3. Vendors – you can always go to the nearest “General Goods” vendor and purchase bags
4. Auction house – auction house is also a source for bags, and quite frequently a lot cheaper than vendors. If you’re passing by make sure to take a look, you might just strike a very cheap deal.

Inventory space can be a significant problem especially if you take all three gathering professions in order to make the most money. In that case you will have tons and tons of materials with you at all times which you definitely won’t be selling to vendors. It’s easy with random green, white and gray quality items which you can sell whenever you’re at a quest hub, but these stacks of materials are worth far more on the auction house.

In conclusion, this is the most newbie and also the most important platinum making tip I can give you. Make sure your inventory is never full so you can always loot EVERYTHING. Even the gray quality items which sell for decent amounts and if you’re serious about making platinum, every silver counts.

Making platinum with gathering professions

There are three gathering professions in Rift: butchering, foraging and mining. Needless to say if you want to make the most money while leveling up it’s no doubt the best to take all three of them. You’ll have TONS of materials to pick up all the time (assuming your bags are empty), and with a huge number of players leveling up their crafting professions all the time you have a decent demand for the raw materials.

If you do decide to take all gathering professions make sure you save some of the materials so you can level your own crafting professions later on. If you want to take only one or two gathering professions however you probably want to know which ones are the most profitable, and I’ll try to do a small analysis below.

The only resource I’ve been able to find on the popularity of certain professions is this professions guide. There are polls embedded and the current results are as follows:

1. Mining – 36,6%
2. Butchering – 31,5%
3. Foraging – 20,7%

The other 11,3% are haters who either don’t like gathering or whatever else. Based on this we can assume most players are picking up mining and butchering, and by a significant percentage.

On the other hand, and from the same guide, we know the popularity of crafting professions as well:

1. Apothecary – 20,6%
2. Outfitting – 17%
3. Weaponsmithing – 15,6%
4. Armorsmithing – 15,6%
5. Runecrafting – 13,5%
6. Artificing – 12,1%

Mining gives materials mostly for weaponsmiths and armorsmiths which in theory gives you access to the biggest pool of players looking for them: 31%. It’s also a bit useful for runecrafters, thus increasing this number to almost 45% of the player base.

Butchering is used to provide materials for outfitters, and a small bit for armorsmiths and apothecaries, thus having the demand of roughly 55% of the player base.

Lastly foraging gives materials for apothecaries, artificers and even weaponsmiths. Those three crafting professions combined roughly equal to 46% of players.

From these statistics we can conclude the following: while butchering is seemingly profitable it doesn’t have enough players with the appropriate crafting skills: most of the demand is from outfitters and far less from armorsmiths and apothecaries. A lot of players are also taking butchering because it’s easy to gather materials since you’re killing beasts most of the time, but that also reflects the prices on leather and hides.

On the other hand there is a rather high demand for ore. Both weaponsmithing and armorsmithing are popular professions and require a lot of ore for crafting. While low-level ore is relatively easy to come by and the prices are cheap, high-level ore like Platinum or Orichalcum sells for quite a lot. It’s also popular to take both armorsmithing and weaponsmithing as a warrior so having mining is a must, otherwise you’ll be spending a ton of money buying overpriced ore from other players.

Foraging is clearly the least favorite gathering profession but also possible one with the most potential for making platinum. Apothecary is the most popular crafting profession, and if you look at the numbers closely you’ll notice there’s almost the same number of apothecaries and foragers. Potions and elixirs are always wanted commodities and if you can craft high-level ones you’re bound to make plenty of money. A lot of higher level players are also dropping gathering professions and focusing on crafting only so there will in fact always be a demand for herbs. Additionally, you can sell wood to artificers and weaponsmiths.

When picking gathering professions you should 100% first figure out which crafting profession you’ll take along with it. These are some basic recommendations:

• Warriors: Weaponsmithing, Armorsmithing
• Clerics: Armorsmithing, Artificing, Apothecary
• Mages: Outfitting, Artificing, Apothecary
• Rogues: Outfitting, Weaponsmithing

Your first gathering profession should thus definitely be picked according to your preferred crafting profession.

Basically all of the three gathering professions are profitable, even though I’d rank them like this:

1. Mining
2. Foraging
3. Butchering

You should not actually look at this ranking but rather think about which crafting professions you’ll be picking later on, because most of these platinum-making profitability factors will be irrelevant if you end up buying materials from other players.

My recommendation: pick all three gathering professions and make the most of it. Take a look at roughly how many raw materials you’ll need in order to level up gathering professions and save it in your bank for later on, and sell the rest. By the time you hit level 50 and decide on crafting professions you’ll have a ton of materials to level up any crafting profession you like, and more than enough platinum to purchase any additional mats you might need.

But hey, that’s just my opinion. If you have better ideas be sure to post them in the comments below!

Platinum making tip: get a banker alt!

Banker alts are nothing new. If you ever played an MMORPG before you most likely know what I’m talking about, and how much easier they can make your life.

A banker alt is basically a character you make in order to utilize additional inventory space and get easier access to the auction house. If you took all three gathering professions to make platinum it’s very likely that your characters inventory and your bank combined is simply not enough for all the materials you gather. In that case your options are to either get rid of those mats on the auction or create another character to hold it for you.

The latter is a preferable option, because you should never feel forced to sell items. You’ll often sell them underpriced in that case and waste even more platinum. Fortunately creating a banker alt doesn’t require a lot of work. Basically you make another character and get him to your faction’s capital city. Park him near a bank or a mailbox for convenience sake. You can then easily use his inventory to store items, as well as quickly relog from one character to another if you wish to sell some of the items on the auction house: it saves a lot of time since you won’t have to travel with your main character.

Just as with your main character, you should buy additional bags on your banker alt as well. They don’t have to have 16 slots immediately, but having additional space is always beneficial. Consider how much space you need and buy bags accordingly. You can even start with several 4-slot bags you get from quests or just buy them off the AH. They will pay off quickly.

Make sure you utilize the mailbox as well. It can be used as temporary storage if you need it. Also, if you run out of inventory room on your banker alt you can always make another. It might get a bit difficult to keep track of all items across several different characters, but if you keep for example ore on one character and herbs on another you’ll get used to it soon.

Auction house flipping basics

Flipping items on the auction house basically means buying them for low prices and reselling for higher in order to make a profit. It’s not an exact science and it’s hard to say what works and what doesn’t. Basically it requires good knowledge of the market and your server’s economy, as the prices can often vary from shard to shard.

Lots of players try to do this but frequently fail. Many are lazy to do the proper research and end up wasting more platinum than they earn, or earn so little it’s not even worth the effort. A few years ago, back in my WoW days I used to make literally thousands of gold weekly just by spending 10-15 minutes per day browsing the auction house. It’s not overly complicated and you don’t have to have a degree in economy in order to turn a profit, but some basics are necessary to know before you get started.

1. Start slowly

Don’t expect you can just visit the AH, buy a random item and sell it for a fortune. In most cases that will turn out badly and you’ll end up desperately trying to sell the item in order to get your investment back. Which brings me to…

2. Be patient

Patience is the key. You also shouldn’t expect to sell an item 5 minutes after you purchase it. The prices often fluctuate a great deal, and what may be cheap one day may be expensive another, even a week after. It also depends on the supply as well: if there are 10 identical rare Daggers listed all the time it’s unlikely you’ll be able to (re)sell it for a substantial amount.

3. Sell what you know

Don’t try to flip rare items (blue or purple) if you don’t know the prices. And I don’t mean the current prices, but rather how they fluctuate through a week or even month. Stick to selling items you are confident you know prices on, for example if you have all gathering professions and always sell raw materials then. If you have armorsmithing you most likely know the prices for crafted items so start there, and later on when you memorize the prices of related items you’ll know for how much to buy or sell.

Those are the three key things you should known about auction house flipping. It’s not hard, but can sometimes be time consuming. If you’re serious about flipping then make sure you log in and browse the auction house for at least 10 minutes a day: you’ll quickly get the hang of it and within a week or two you’ll know which items sell easily and for how much. If you use a banker alt you don’t even have to bother traveling to the capital city.

Making platinum with Weaponsmithing

Currently one of the most profitable crafting professions can be weaponsmithing. The reasons are actually quite simple: there’s a lack of decent weapon rewards from quests.

This is especially true for warriors and rogues which are highly dependent on quality weapons and they do increase their DPS by a decent amount. It’s important to upgrade them frequently for these callings so you should definitely do your best to monetize it as much as possible.

Selling on the auction house however might not be as profitable as advertising your crafted items in chat channels, so take that into consideration as well.

Making platinum with Runebreaking

From my experiences so far runecrafting is extremely profitable. A bunch of players are just now leveling up so there isn’t much demand for enchanting items yet, but it soon surely will be. As soon as more players hit level 50 and start doing instances and raids, thus getting better gear, they will start investing a lot of money in order to put quality enchantments on them.

But this post won’t really talk about making platinum with runecrafting, but rather runebreaking. Runebreaking is a skill you get when you learn runecrafting which enables you to destroy green or better quality gear and get shards, essences and other items required for runecrafting. All the time the quest items I receive and don’t need, or the gear I replace I runebreak to gain materials needed to level up the profession. As such leveling runecrafting can be expensive since you don’t sell those items to vendors, but I’m sure it’ll all pay off many times once I hit the cap.

Anyway, the materials you get from runebreaking your items are quite often worth twice as much if you sell them on the auction house. At lower levels you’ll typically sell green items for 1-2g, and these raw materials can be sold for 3-4g easily. I expect the prices to increase as well as soon as more players start hitting level 50 and leveling their professions, of which runecrafting will surely be popular as well.

Another way you can earn plenty of gold also is by buying green items on the AH and then runebreaking them. Sometimes you’ll find green items sold for such cheap prices that vendors will actually give you more money than it costs you to buy it from the auction house — there’s always players who don’t check the actual price of the item. Auction house flipping suddenly gets a lot more profitable for runecrafters! Lots of players don’t know what to do with crafted items as well and will gladly get rid of them for no profit at all: be sure to check the chat channels from time to time as well for good offers.

In most cases runebreaking an item can yield a decent profit and takes very little work.

Have you found an item you can consistenly runebreak in order to make a profit? Did you find runebreaking to be as profitable as I did, or do you consider runecrafting as a profession just a drain on your income? Answer these questions and tell us what you think in the comments below!