How do I make money? or How do I mine for fish?

I find myself very poor in this game, almost as poor as in real life and all mmos I play.

Any tips or advice for us the money-making impaired people like me? Thanks in advance!

it doesnt give a ton of money but i balance deconstructing for my crafting and simply selling greens on the guild store, i always have them all sold by the next day, possibly by people just buying them out to deconstruct, and it helps give me a few hundred gold per day.  other than that the best way i get gold is simply from quests

Quest. Selling junk drops. Crafting. Plus it's week one, it will take time for the game economy to stabilize. Use the guild store, we have a big guild so our supply and demand should be decent by now. Plus their are people like me. I reallyhave never been into crafting, but I love player made items. So I tend to make guildies rich buying their goods.

Money comes faster later on.  The start up and go and wanting to have more invenory/bank space along with feeding the horse used up a lot of gold at first.  I'm poor atm because I keep throwing eveyrthing I get into bank and inventory expansion.  Though I'm not overly poor, my 2nd character does have 1000 gold on her and Briseadh is back to close to that already after being at 53g for a bank upgrade.

All my money is from quessts and the things I do sell that don't wind up going into crafting.

I don't sell in the guild store because I really don't want to make guildies pay for my stuff and the game doesn't need to steal a good 20% of the money from me in the process.  Waste not, want not.  

One way to make sure you save money is to never travel unless you go wayshrine to wayshrine or travel to player for the fast trips.  These ways are free.  Jumping from anywhere on a map to a wayshrine always costs money and it gets exponentially worse the more often you travel this way.  A wayshrine is almost always close enough to save some change and we have plenty of players on at one time in the guild.  No excuse to pay money for fast travel.

o/ Question.

Is the travel to player option for free?

I haven't used it, but I believe it is. For me I've just been saving money by not really spending any money. I've been trying to use it strictly on buying more inventory space. Most of my money has come from the quests and selling the junk items. I've also been making armor instead of buying it or repairing it.

Ok, so quest, selling junk, and what about selling racial motifs to random strangers? Or should I donate those to the family for vault points?

racial motifs is up to you, but another suggestion is to put some points into provisioning, especially making multiples at once. I can get stacks of food from ransacking crates and then craft it into a stack worth 300-500 and up a lot. It is how i have made money independently. Hope this helps.

As I understand it, making money per se isn't the point.  Having fun is.

I am in the same boat as you, no matter what game, I am always it seems in the lowest 5% as far as monetary resources, largely because the markets are toxic.  Fortunately in this game as in Guild Wars 2 you can make virtually any item you might need without recourse to the markets and people more interested in how much they can get, than how much fun the whole community has.  And here you can ask if anyone can make the items you cannot ... yet.

It has not been money that made me leave any game so far, I doubt it will have much to do with how long I play ESO.

Yeah, but being left behind in ava and out of the pictures because of not having a horse is not very fun for me ¬_¬

Try not to think of how to make money so much as think of how to save money.

• Do you really need to pay to teleport to a wayshrine?  or can you take the time to run to the nearest wayshrine and teleport for free?
• Do you really need to repair? or will you just upgrade that gear with item drops and quest rewards?
• Is resetting your skill points really worth it? or would it be better to just find more sky shards?
• Do you really need a horse at this point in time?
• Do you really need those extra inventory slots or bank space increases?

All of the things mentioned will save you a lot of coin.  Especially the wayshrine and repairs.

I would try Jessica's suggestion above, I did that on pts with cooking and plan to do it again when I get a few more points in provisioning. I don't know what class you are but if you are a sorc boundless storm (one of the morphs for lightning form) will make you run faster than the white Imperial horses hehe.

I would like to buy more bank space and inventory space but I am saving up for my horse. In PTS lots of people didn't have horses and were just about able to keep up with sprinting because most of us were on slow horses. There are a couple of things you could do to speed up in ava, but they might not be things you want during pve such as armor with the well fitted trait to reduce the cost of sprinting, and the Steed as your mundus stone.

Thank you for all these wonderful ideas and suggestions.

I don't travel to wayshrines and avoid repairs by just remaking armor or weapons as I need. Partner is the one who is doing provisioning, I send to him all the materials I gather from my raids to Davons Watch and Ebonheart. I also avoid doing provisioning because it will turn into a cooking simulator and I would never ever leave the tavern's kitchen. :B

The horse will just have to wait for when I get into higher levels, with better rewards and more moneys! :3

Ive found no need to buy anything. Just selling everything and not crafting with limited play time. I have more money than I need at lvl 30. I think that just grinding and selling crap you gather and pick up for a few will make you a decent profit. Eventually at 50 speed grinding a lower dungeon and sell the drops will probably be my bread and butter.

I save hundreds of gold each time I play using the Travel to Player (which ESO calls "social travel") function.

Travel to Player

1. It's free.

2. In a guild as big as ours, there's always someone in the zone you want to go to.

3. You don't have to discover a wayshrine first to "unlock" it. (In fact this method gains you significant discovery xp).

4. You don't need to be in a party.

5. It doesn't surprise the unsuspecting player you've "travelled to" as it only puts you at the wayshrine nearest them. They don't notice you.

6. It's not limited by character level. (So porting around on a low level toon will actually get you some nice discovery due to your level).

This is one of the biggest money savers that I've come across, but many players aren't aware of it. If you don't have a mount, this is the way to meet up with a group without having to walk the whole way (at least outside AvA and some dungeons, as there are travel restrictions on those). You just wait til your group is at the meeting point, and jump to them (well, to the wayshrine nearest them, wihch is usually pretty close by).

How To: Travel to Player:

1. Pull up a guild roster in-game using the G key. You can pick any guild you like. The main activity rooms (currently Gaiscioch and Gaiscioch na Murias) will always have more people and location options.

2. Click on the guild tab labelled ROSTER

3. Read down the list of online players, looking at their locations. Choose a location you want to travel to (make sure it's in your faction if you're below level 50 and haven't unlocked the other factions yet).

4. Rigjht-click the player's name in the roster list, and select Travel to Player (be careful, the Invite to Group option is right next to it).

5. If successful, there will be a pause and you'll see your character start to turn purple and transparent. (I have to close the open roster at that point or it lags out my game if I travel with it open).

6. That's it! You're there! Enjoy the discovery xp. (If nothing happened, try again and watch top right hand side of the screen. You'll probably see a white message flash up: "You cannot social travel to this location" or "You must be in a group to travel to this location". That generally means you've picked Cyrodiil or a dungeon, or the location is in another Alliance, all of which have travel restrictions.)

Player-to-Wayshrine Hopping

This is a variation on Travel to Player. Wayshrine to Wayshrine is free. Travel to Player is free. So they can be combined if you need to. For example, say I want to tavel to a wayshrine from the open world where I'm questing (and there's no wayshrine nearby) and I already have the final destination wayshrine unlocked. There is no-one in the guild at that location so I can't guild travel. Instead, I travel to a player anywhere (it doesn't matter). That puts me at a wayshrine. Wayshrine to wayshrine is free, so I now choose my unlocked destination and travel again.

And they just nerfed the value of crafted food. Just my luck >:c

I found that the first 10-12 levels were beset with money woes.  As fast as I made money it would get eaten up by repairs or bag/bank upgrades!  Having vastly improved my skills, I spend less on repairs and like the others, will craft a new set and send my damaged items to friends to deconstruct if it's something I crafted.

In other games, I expected to be in the best possible gear at all times.  In ESO with the market not yet developed; this was not as easy.  I've accepted that in most cases, the white sets I crafted would carry the day for me and would add glyphs.  And as I did more and more quests; I started getting better gear.  Doing the private dungeons is a great way to get blue gear.  Tons and tons of loot!!!

I limited myself to 3 crafts (2 on one toon; 1 on another) so I wouldn't feel the "heat" to deconstruct on my drops.  Even with 3; space can be challenging and the urge to deconstruct vs sell for revenue needs careful balancing.  I view drops in gold value order.  I try to sell the most expensive.  Save 1 or 2 pieces for research and the deconstruct.  Some days, I just sell everything to build revenue and take a break from the juggling that crafting requires.

I loot a lot so get lots of the trait stones.  I craft either white level 14 pants or white Level 14 2 handed weapons with gems I've looted and mats I've farmed.  Then quick and easy I sell them to NPC vendors.  The pants and the 2-handed weps give the most profit, even if you need to buy the racial trait gems.  In one day, my toon who is clothier and blacksmith - leveled both crafts 1 1/2 levels and made a 1000 gold in less than 20 minutes.  Of course, this works best if you have gathered/looted the mats so it's all 100% pure profit.

I've made a lot of money just selling resources I've gathered. On my main character, I do leatherworking and enchanting. When I find wood or jute/flax, I just gather it then refine stacks of it and sell it to merchants. Actually make quite a bit of money that way. Originally, I was sending those material to other characters that use them, but I have so many gathered resources on my various characters that now I just sell.

How bad is the food value nerf?

As Elth stated - think of ways to save - he made some very good points.  

I only travel from Wayshrine to Wayshrine.   I only upgraded my bag space once and I have never upgraded my bank.  I also usually do not repair armor since it is much cheaper just to make a new piece but I also only have one or two blues at any one time. 

I am getting close to being able to afford my Pinto (the pack horse) but first have to figure out which of my three alts I want to play in AvA :(

Edit Added "do not" in front of "repair armor" since that is what I meant to say.

thanks for the travel to player tip.  I never knew that existed.

You will make a ton if:
1.  You get more bag space.  I know this sounds counter intuitive, but it maximizes your time out and about, rather than frequently running to town.

2.  You sell a lot.  Either items, or materials from deconstructing (which are about equivalent in value on average,) which is what I recommend.  Sell extra potions and jewelry, as well as the random vendor trash drops.  Those start getting worth a lot later on!

3.  If you are having issues getting money, go farm nodes.  Harvest materials sell for a fair bit, and you can refine them for the rarer materials if desired.

4.  PvP does not reward a lot of cash, outside the quests... but it does not require much either (you get plenty of points which cover everything except soul gems.)

I bought my first horse a few days ago, the paint, with more pack space.  It cost me 40,700g, which I made in 3-4 days of farming and selling motifs.  Motifs are by far the fastest and most efficient way I have found to make money.  They still currently sell for 1K+ consistently, despite being low-balled by quick sellers.

It takes less than 5 minutes to make a complete route of Davon's Watch for books.  Rinse and repeat.  Within 10 minutes, you will have looted at least one motif.  Finding a buyer is steadily becoming more challenging, but you could sell a motif dirt cheap, say 500g and still make a huge profit against how much time you actually spent acquiring it.

I've found pockets of nodes where no one else was there to compete for resources and I still couldn't farm those as quickly or efficiently to make the same profit margins as I have with motifs.

I try to conduct all business via the mail system to eliminate tracking people down and waiting for them to arrive and phase, etc.

My method is ultra boring, but it gets results, faster than farming anything else at the 1-15 level.  You'll also stumble upon blue provision recipes that you can sell as well.