Saving up some gold: a few tips.

First of all, forgive me if this is the wrong forum for this, but I thought it was the most appropriate one.

I've noticed several posts on this and on other Guild Wars forums with questions regarding making money to buy that killer item. Following, I thought I'd give you all my two cents on the subject, and hopefully, someone will find it useful.

The first thing to remember when trying to collect cash for that new armor, a guild hall or whatever else you need, is that there is no generic template for making money. There are several ways to go about, and basically, it all depends on which way you prefer.

The easiest way of getting some gold, is to just play the game. This worked out perfectly for me. The trick is, to sell everything you can get your hands on, except from salvage items, max stuff, and weapons with perfect or near perfect mods (salvage these, and sell them to other players if you have the patience). Don't sell "regular" items to players though, but to merchants. This saves a lot of time, and is generally just easier as long as we talking about non-max items. When my elementalist reached the desert, she was carrying around 40k from just playing the game.

Another popular approach to money making, is off course, farming. “What am I supposed to farm?” you might ask. The answer: The highest level mobs you can solo. And you better be able to kill off lots of them at a time too. There are of course some mobs that drop more desirable items than others, and that is the tricky part; finding a good farming area IE; an area with mobs that drops “good” stuff. I've found that the best way to finding a good farming area is once again, to play the game. When you stumble across a nice spot, you will know. Just look for places with high concentration of mobs relatively close to the zone portal, and try to farm them to see if it works out. I've seen a lot of topics lately saying that most farming areas have been nerfed, and while I have noticed a small decrease in drops on my favorite spots, they are certainly not completely nerfed. I can agree though, that when Anet replaced their nerfing-bat with a nerfing AoE with 75% drop penetration, it's gotten a bit tougher to find good spots, but far from impossible.

Speculating in the marked can also give quite a profit, but this requires you to spend time watching prices and finding out when to buy/sell. You can earn a lot this way, but you need to have some money to start with. Personally, I prefer farming or questing, hence I have little experience with this approach and not much to say about it.

The most important thing to remember when trying to save up to that awesome item, is don't spend money on unnecessary things. The only thing you should spend your money on while saving up for something, is salvage- and identification kits. Another thing to remember, is that collectors are awesome. They give you everything you generally need, at least until you can afford that godly sword or whatever. It isn't exactly hard to collect 5 items either, so it's worth it even as a more temporary solution.

Well, thats about everything I can think of right now. I hope someone will find this useful.

Lolololololololoololololololololololololololololol ololololololoololololololololo Hi Bak Gtg

Good tips and maybe something that could be written up in an article form and placed on site (up to the admins hehe) for "new players"? I could've used something like this when I first began.

Good tips.

I'd add that being patient and calm while trading in towns can earn you more than hardcore farming. So you only have a 20 hp fortitude mod, spend some time and sell it. Even if you typed in your WTS while reading a forum or something, it's better than beating the same mobs over and over again. Even if it took an hour, unless you have an established spot it's probably well worth it. And you got to make your forum posts in the same time

I really am thankful for this thread! These points needed to be made and shared for the betterment of all our coffers

I think that the best way for me to make money in pre-searing, well it was how I did it myself, I literally killed everything on the map between warps, then sold it all (id-first on blues) then repeat once or twice. By the time I cross over, I can upgrade or nearly upgrade my armor from panties to something that says "imma bite yer char head off"

I want to underline the OP comment on just playing the game through and saving. By the time my first character reached Droknar's Forge (where the "leetsauce" armor is) I had about 10k saved up, all the materials I could hope to need for my armor, plus about 10 or 20 plat in steel, at least 5 or 6 plat in iron and about 5 plat in all other materials, plus I had about 40 dyes (got about 60 now) including 10 silvers, 1 black and 5 or 6 blues (the three most sought after). That's not including the tons of runes and upgrade items that I salvaged, all of which will sell on the open market for around 100 to 300 each.

Off topic note: I salvaged my first superior vigor two nights ago!!

Cool. I spent like.... 2k faction on mine

well, my way of making golds is kind of similar to yours. I mostly just run around maps to kill enemies and picking up every drops that i can find. Also when i do missions or quests, i would get items to sell or when i receive items that i don't need, i'll sell it.

so far, i made 17k and hopefully i'll get enough for 1.5k set of armors for my W/E

what you think gets more cash on average? selling off drops or salvaging them for the materials? I salvage every hammer, axe and sheild I get for iron and steel, but as for hides and the like, I'm not sure.

Thank you all for the positive comments

I did the same for my first char. I think it's a good idea to keep a balance between salvaging and selling, that way you can build up a material stock which you will later need for a new armor or weapon. My first char managed to salvage enough stuff to suply four RP chars with the materials they needed for their droknars armor. I salavaged up until I reached Driud's Overlook, after that, I started to sell since I had all the materials I needed. Also, I think that you'll earn more cash just by salvaging in the beginning of the game (up until the point in the game were the items are worth more than the stuff you can salvage from them), but you'll have to consider the cost of salvage kits and such as well, so I'm not quite sure if it's more profitable than just selling the items to a merchant.

Well I think only "highly salvage" items are worth at the start, or gear drops.

A salvage kit costs 100gp and it have 25 uses so every salvage is 4gp cost, at start most stuff simply is salvaged for one material, seeing how bad prices became ...

at the start you do better to sell your stuff when your inventory is full

example is iron cloth or wood which sell for an average of 4-5 each which is breaking even or 1 gold profit.

only salvage after the inventory is full and you want to go on.

an item that you sell for 3 gold is 2 gold more profit than a salvage item at the moment

it changes later when you get 3-5 (or more) from a single salvage

What works for me: the less you pay attention to how much gold you have, the faster it seems to rise; sell everything that you have no use for; buy nothing unless you absolutely need it; and finally pick up everything no matter how worthless, even the stuff group members leave behind.