How do people make so much money?

I was wondering how people made so much money in game. This isn't for farming locations/builds just more of a general question. Is it getting gold or selling items?

I ask now because how bad I am at this just dawned on me today. I"m at thunderhead keep with my 1st character and have only 600 gold. Also the highest amount of money I've ever had is around 2K.

This is disheartening when there's people who just got to Lion's Arch who have 10+K just on them. I'm not sure if it's me just sucking at farming or really bad luck.

Lately I've been thinking the latter as I've gotten horrible drops. An example is on one try for a mission today there were 4 or 5 gold drops and around 10 purple. With a 4 person(people quit) party I only got 1 blue and barely anything else(3 or 4 white armors/weapons and a few creature parts).

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

well it sounds to me like you arent actually farming when you think you are. Farming isnt just going into a mission and getting random drops its specifically going to a place and killing certain things the less people the more money you get. try looking at some W/mo or Mo/w builds posted here if you want money

Well it is your first charchter therefore im guessing you havnt played much or farmed much in FOW/UW which is where alot of farming goes on, also if you compare the hours you have played to people who have FOW armour and perfect weapons it will be alot different.

Time + luck = GOLD

gl leeky

soloing certain areas is a good way of making quick cash, there are enough solobuilds in the forums here, just go and pick one you can run and try it out.

doing high level areas with a good group can also make you quite some money. For the elite weekend our alliance (which in normally pvp centered) did some runs in "The Deep", in 6 hours i made around 200k worth of items. Same goes for Dual UW runs : if you haved a necro or a monk you can esely drag lots of money out of the underworld.

The advantages of doing solo/dual runs in certain areas is obvious : you get a bigger share of the pure gold drops, and you have more chance of getting a good drop yourself.

also, HA can get you quite some cash, in sigils and rare items, but you have to hold halls for that

There are many guides on how to make money on GW. This is a supply and demand economy, so you'll have to find what's in demand and supply it. So what's in demand? Well, materials are always in demand because people are constantly crafting weapons and armor. Parchment is a popular item. Learning to craft rare materials from you regular materials can yield quite a profit. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money. It costs me 4k to craft 200 parchment from 1000 wood planks at the material crafter. I sell it for 65 to 75g a piece. Thats 13 to 15k (about 11k profit). Instead of selling Gold weapons look to see if it has max perfect mods on it and salvage it. If you can get the mod, it's usually worth more than the weapon itself. Salvaging is your friend especially with an expert kit as it will many times get you rare materials. You can create a farming warrior with many builds listing on this site or a smiting 55 monk. I have both for farming purposes. Many green items are in demand. Find out where they drop and farm for them. Then sell them. You'll be rich in no time.

My suggestion would be to complete the game with your current character and look through the various farming guides for your character and start farming. When you have enough money, you can start doing buying/selling, which is probably the fastest way to gain money in this game. Running people from place to place is also a way to make some good money.

Today, actually, I sold a Perfect Chaos Axe for 100k+30 ectos, which is like 280,000 gold, ish. When you have a lot of money, buying and selling smartly is the best way to make money.

The other option is to farm a lot, like in underworld with a ranger trap team or 55/SSing it, and hoping for ectoplasms and things, which sell for about 7k each.

The last option [which I do not reccomend until you get experience] is to create a PvP character and go fight in Heroes Ascent. When you win, you could get one item from the victory chest worth millions.

For now, concentrate on completing the game before farming of any sort, that would be my suggestion.

Quote: Originally Posted by Khaly My suggestion would be to complete the game with your current character Excellent suggestion. There are many ways to accumulate wealth in Guild Wars, but here are some general rules of thumb.

1. Watch Your Spending. Money is extremely easy to spend in Guild Wars, whether it be on armor, runes, dyes or weapons. Honestly, you don't need to spend money on most of that stuff until you get very late in the game, where it really makes a difference. Remember - COLLECTORS ARE YOUR FRIEND. Use their armor and their weapons that they give as collectors gifts until you get to Droknar's Forge or Kaineng City.

2. Don't Join Max Size Parties. You don't have to be able to solo, but you also don't need to have the maximum number of henchmen in your party as well. Take one, maybe two - it's highly likely you'll be able to complete your task and get 3-4 times the loot.

3. Don't Expert Salvage Everything. An expert salvage kit (and especially a superior salvage hit) is a lot of money to spend early in the game. They average out to at least 16 gold per salvage, versus 4 gold per salvage with a normal kit. Yes, you get some very rare materials every once in a while with an expert kit, but I found in the long run that selling the common materials (especially on the open market) is much more lucrative in the long run.

4. Look For Bargains. If you have spare time (i.e. when you're setting up skills in a town, changing attributes, or even looking for party members), check out the trade channel. Visit the main trading hubs every once in a while. More times than not, I find a great bargain that I can part with for a very nice profit later on (e.g. I bought a perfect +5 sword pommel of defense for 500g the other day and sold it a week later for 4K).

You follow those four guidelines, and you'd be surprised how quickly your wealth accumulates.

If you don't buy everything you like, it's perfectly normal to have 10 plats by Lion's Arch. If you only have so little money, it means you've squandered it at earlier parts of the game.

Did you craft armor? These eat up money. Get collector armor. Did you craft weapons? They aren't necessary. Get collector weapons. Did you buy too many salvage and id kits? Choose your salvage targets. Did you buy too many skills? Buy only those you plan on trying out and only if you have extra money. Did you pick up all the stuffs dropped for you and sell them? Don't leave things lying around. Did you sell special things to the correct traders? Don't just sell to merchants.

Well by the time I got to THK, my monk had already gotten 20k+ just from mission drops.

Anyways, I've played this game since the beggining, and it took me 6 months to find the best ways to make money..lmao, well until I started using gwguru.
Just go the farming sub-forum and search up some farming techniques. My first way of making money was troll/minotaur farming and it was fairly easy.

Also, something that can get you a lot of money in the long run, is to ID all items (yes, including white items)with an ID kit. I use a normal ID kit for blue and white items, and a superior ID kit for gold and purple items, and I almost always get at least a small gold profit from it. Enspecially the items you get latter in game. The whites alone can more than double their value just by a normal ID kit.

one thing i do is i don't buy anything. i don't buy materials for my armour, i go solo a zone and get the materials that way. i don't buy keys because they're a gold sink and not worth it. i don't buy greens i go out and get them myself, no matter how long it takes. i use collectors for armours and weapons, especially before max armour.

there are a lot of good tips in previous posts, but i didn't notice one thing i do a lot to make money (recently nerfed) which is scavenge. just pick up whatever other people leave behind. leave lots of room in your inventory because this can add up. although i haven't seen how much stuff you can scavenge since the loot timer was upped to ten minutes, if you go on your average sorrows run, there is usually plenty of free white stuff you can run around and collect after everyone goes back do dwc. i used to make 1-2k from other peoples stuff alone.

other than that i farm. back when runes were more profittable i must have made 300k from ettin farming. when new greens are introduced you can make money selling at inflated prices, if you get one early.

so yeah. pick up everything.

Quote: Originally Posted by gamecube187

My storage self-replenishes.

If that char isn't making money for you, you should probably reroll the toon.

I'm just kidding hehe.

But seriously, how did you get all the way to THK but yet have no money? I'm not trying to bust your stones, I am curious because like eternal said, you should have some money saved just from drops alone. Guessing it was the 1.5k armor.

If that's the reason, you shouldn't be upset you are broke. You need the max armor. If you are broke cause you blew your money on every set of armor that was an ar increase then you should be angry. Using your money to buy things you need is not something to be mad about.

On my first run through Prophecies, I didn't end up with a lot of money much of the time because I was still getting used to the game mechanics, which meant getting used to what to buy and what not to buy. I didn't know what to expect as I went along, so I bought armour and weapons and such at times when I could have waited until a more opportune outpost etc. I wasted money on dye mixing because I didn't realise entirely how it worked until I'd experimented a bit. You get the idea ^^

If it's your first character, I wouldn't worry too much about making money until you've at least got through the full game. It would be inhuman of you to know on your first run through the wisest ways to keep and spend cash. On my first character, amounts like 10k and above seemed crazy but third character in and it's a lot easier than you think. You learn through experience ^^

chest run !! lucky and spend time to sell items. let me make over 800K (of course u need to find a right place to chest run)
about 3 weeks as I guess

Quote: Originally Posted by Arturo02

Quote: Originally Posted by Darkwyrm

Quote: Originally Posted by Darkwyrm

I can give some general advice, i hope.

What i have done in prophecies is playing multiple characters at the same time.
One advanced (started Ne, not the easiest), that generates goodies (collectable drops, salvage, some weapons) for the other characters.
So when I had a new character in the jungle, i would have my Ne get the collectors items for armor. I never used weapons besides the one that dropped for me. Few exceptions, on high level.

The drops for the 'new' characters just go to merchant / storage.
Al those little 10 and 20 golds do add up in time.

On my cathan characters i have used a different approach.
Those should pay themselfs. So collect money and stuff for weapons/armor and no grabbing from the storage.
This also worked, since there are loads of quests out there.
Afaik, i just bought armor there and did not collect.
The number of quests is enough to generate a fair amount of gold.

About the amount of money you can make this way:
I have played several missions today with my monk.
Want protectors for tyria, so revisited some places.
Did Thunderhead, Icecaves (1x bonus, then helped out some partymembers on mission on second try, since most of the team left), Iron Mines of Moladune (helping same partymembers), Dragons Lair (bonus, 2x), Elona Reach (no drops there, 2 people in our team agreed to run), Divinity Coast (twice, first time 3th villager died on arival), The Wilds, Bloodstone Fen (bonus only, henched), Aurora Glade (failed bonus).

On those missions i have had one or two purple drops, no gold item drops. Did not use keys.
I've bought superior protection + protection scalp (droknars), that's about 6K + materials (which i have in storage).
I've taken some gold out of storage for this, about 4K.
Since i don't like large amounts of cash on my char, i must have made about 2K before I bought those. And now there is about 4K on my monk, so I must have made about 6K just playing missions/bonus.
I sell all weapons to merchant (to pay for ID kits and Sup Salvage) and salvage all armor.

Will this make you very rich?
I think not. But those 5-6K a day just playing missions will add up in time.
For me that's enough to buy all runes, armor and weapons I need.

And you should consider what something is worth for you.
For example, a Sup Vigor (+50 health) is about 30K more expensive than a Major Vigor (+41 health). I won't pay +30K for 9 health.
The same goes for major runes in general. They provide +2 instead of +3, but will cost you about 100 gold.
And 15^50 max damage sundering gold weapons of fortitude with rare skins are cool, but i don't need them to finish the game.
You can finish with the collectors weapons or the ones that drop.
Just takes some more time to get them.
When you get your character(s) to max level (and max armor/weapons) there is little to spend your money on, except 'nice to have' goodies.
15K armor, keys, ale, extra weapons/armor/runes, all nice, but you don't need them.

And for skills, check wiki which skills you want and only buy those.
And don't buy what you can quest.
You don't need all the skills and when you have enough gold in time, you can always buy them.