Methods of Making Gold

[Countessa]

No matter what character you start, gold is always a pressing need. This guide is a summary of various gold-making guides and common practices for making gold on Hybrid. The skill gain procedures for these templates are not included. This information can be found in other posts by searching the guide section.

Note you can bypass all of this with a contribution to the shard through the donation store.

Starting out

There are a few methods of making gold that anyone can do, no matter the template or skill levels of the character.

• Escorting NPCs is the first way. This guide to escorting will tell you everything you need to know. If you have not yet created that first character, choose a start town from the list of towns with escorts provided in the guide.
  
• The second way is gathering cotton and wool. Cotton can be found in fields around the server, and in areas of t2a. Wool is harvested from sheep. Sheep can be found in numbers east of Delucia and other areas of t2a, outside Moonglow and in Yew territory. After harvesting either, move to a tailor shop equipped with a spinning wheel and loom. Use the wool/cotton on the spinning wheel, then the yarn/thread on the loom, making cloth. Cloth can be sold to tailor npcs or to players in bulk.
  
• The third method is scavenging. Run around areas of high traffic, pick up anything you find that can be sold, and sell it.

All three of these can be done with no skill and no gold. Of the three, escorting will net the quickest return. Although these methods can be used as income, there are better ways to earn gold that garner a better return once you have a bit of startup cash and begin to know your way around Hybrid.

Important uses for startup gold

• If your character will use any kind of magery, you will want a spellbook. Filled ones can be bought from players for around 5 -10k. Empty ones and all the scrolls needed to fill the book can be purchased from a mage at a mage shop. Town prices can fluctuate so shop around.
• A runebook is especially handy even for non mage characters. Anyone can recall using a scroll or a charge in a runebook with a minimum of 11 int/mana. Note, non mage characters will need someone else to mark their locations for them. Runebooks can be bought from mages for about 2500 in a 0% taxed town but players will usually sell for much cheaper with more charges.
• Other supplies will depend on your plans for your character and other characters you wish to create.

As you will see, there are many ways for making gold on Hybrid. While the above require no skill or gold, the rest require at least a bit of both. These characters will be supported by the first, at least to start.

The First Character.
On Hybrid, skill gain slows as you reach skill cap. Each skill also slows once you reach about 70.0. For these reasons, it is important to raise skills that are time consuming and/or resource consuming (causing expense) when your skill total is low. This can be difficult to accomplish when you start out. Once you have enough gold to get by, it may be better to make a new character for your true starting template.

Another alternative is to turn the starting character into your helper. Your helper will be a character that can gate your other characters out of dungeons, resurrect them and their pets when needed and lore your weapons and armor. It will finish with the template Magery, Mediation, Healing, Anatomy, Veterinary, Animal Lore, Item ID. Generally this character will be on a separate account from your pvp characters and tamers.

Start the character with 50 magery, 49 vet and 1 healing. Magery will allow you to run escorts much faster. The 1 point in healing will give you a pair of newbied scissors at startup which will be used to cut cloth to bandages. Lock all your skills except magery and meditation and allow them to gain as you escort nobles. Some gold can be used to macro skill between escorts but the main point of this character is to create income, not spend it.
By the time your magery is GM, you will have a good size income to work with (perhaps even before). Finish the skills in the order listed. Healing is easiest raised macroing on a ghost. This can be done on a dead character from a second account. Veterinary is easiest raised macroing on a dead bonded pet (ghost).
It can be helpful to have at least one character with a pack animal. If you purchase a beetle early on from startup funds, you will have your own bonded pet to use for raising vet. Alternatively, another player may allow you to raise skill on their pet.
Keep in mind this is only a use for your start up character.

Ready To Go
So you have startup cash and your ready to work the skill of your first real template. At this point gold is still a priority but you're not floundering. The following methods are listed in order, with the easiest/safest skills explained first and harder/more costly or dangerous skills explained last.


The Miner/Blacksmith

Start with

50 blacksmith
30 magery (for recall; you will need this to sell your ingots)
20 mining (to start with shovels to get you started! )

Str 60 ( this will help you carry as much as you can)

Start in a populated town, either Moonglow or Britain, and ask for a gate to Delucia. Delucia is a great town for a miner. It surrounded by rock and has a great cave. There are miners in town and players to sell ingots and weapons to. You can also buy a pack horse here when your income has increased some.
At the start you will need to use your funds to reinvest into more shovels or pickaxes, and a pack animal or two. Train tinkering from a tinker npc to make your own tools. Otherwise buy them from a tinker/smith.

Once you have a good amount of pickaxes/shovels, 2 pack animals and some skill in blacksmithing and mining, continue to mine, smelt and sell and you will soon see the money building up.
Ingots can be sold to players since there is always a demand for them. As your skill increase and weapons and armor become better quality, they too can be sold to players. Blacksmithed items can be sold to npc smiths and armorers although they are limited in the amount they can buy. As your smith skill increases, NPC smiths will offer smith bods which can eventually net a greater income.
Other mining locations include Cove and the Britian Farmlands. There are other areas along mountains and inside caves but these mentioned are within guard zone for the most part.


The Tailor

Start with
50 tailoring (for beginning skill and startup supplies)
49 Magery
1 healing (for scissors)

50 str ( you will need this to carry cloth )

Start in Moonglow, Vesper or Britain since all three have a good number of tailor shops/npc tailors. If you run out of funds, cotton and wool are free if you do the harvesting and can be found outside Moonglow, in Britain, Yew and Skara Brae fields, and outside Delucia. You may find the npc tailors run out of funds as you make items and sell to them. For this reason it is helpful to have magery to recall to new shops. If possible, mark a rune at each tailor shop you visit for return visits.

The aim of this character is to gain skill while making gold, eventually using this character for bods which can bring in a greater income. BODS are simple to finish and when you have hand them back to the shopkeepers and they will give you money ( around 1k which should cover your cost of buying the cloth ) and "BOD cloth" which is coloured cloth that canot be bought from any shopkeeper. This cloth brings in income from players who value many of the colors for blessed clothing. Higher level bods will bring in rewards of greater value eventually (such as cloth bless deeds).

Tailoring and Blacksmithing are often raised on the same character.

The Idoc Hunter

A solo IDOCer can be hard, but it is possible to obtain a starting house for yourself or to sell for gold.
First things first, you will need 35250 gold plus the cost of a few house placement tools. This could be obtained from one of the previously mentioned methods. House placement tools cost 601 gold at 0% tax rate. You can get by with only 30500 gp but this will limit your choice of IDOCs to locations that will allow a custom plot.

The first IDOC is the starting IDOC. You're looking for a nice, small plot - preferably no loot so it's less likely others will be watching it. Next play the waiting game. Hide your character so it doesn't call attention to other players passing by. The stage of IDOC lasts 16 hours 46 minutes 19 seconds. Since you don't know when the house/plot turned IDOC, the IDOC could fall at any time within that period.

When it falls, place a customizable 7x7 2 story house or a 7x7 classic house. Try either one, depending on your preference and what style just fell. It may take more than one try on the same location to get the house to place. Keep in mind, some locations will not allow a custom plot although a classic house will place fine (they have different 'foundations'; the custom being flat and the classic being hollow, they also have different front steps). Try placing the type of house that just fell if you continue to have problems.

Once you have the house placed, sell it and repeat the cycle. West Britain Bank is a good location for in-game selling (no spam or afk selling). The forum trade section is also used frequently. Small houses usually go for 60k-150k depending on the location. Take a quick look at the known scam guide for awareness of housing scams and the trade forum for an idea of current housing prices.

Part of the gold should be used to invest in a runebook for idocs (if you dont already have one), 16 recall runes, and reagents. The majority of your reagents should be mandrake root, blood moss and black pearl. These are used for recall and marking. If you find yourself dying often, mark the runes in town so they can be added to the runebook immediately. You wont lose them if you die, your backpack stays neater and you can mark over them as you find houses to watch.

With these items, run around searching for smallish houses that are fairly worn, greatly worn and IDOC. As you find them, mark the location and add them to your book. Aim for at least 5 greatly worn, 3 fairly worn and as many idocs as you can find.

Once you have these greatly worn (GW) and Fairly worn (FW) houses marked, recall to them every hour and click the sign to see if it changes. If it has changed you have a window.
For example, You last checked at 2:30PM and now at 3:30PM there's a change to IDOC. Since an IDOC lasts 16.8 hours, you know the house will fall between 7:06AM and 8:07AM (16.8 hours from the original times). Recall back at the start time of the window and when the IDOC falls, place the house, grab the loots, and hit the bank to sell your house and store the loot. Now you have more gold.

At some point you will need to keep a house for yourself to store your building wealth. This will depend on the amount of loot you keep and the room available in your bank box (max 125 items like all containers). Later, a house can be a useful tool to sell your looted goods via a player vendor.

Rinse and repeat until you think you have learned enough about placement to try a larger IDOC. Remember the larger the placement, the better the return. It also means it's more likely others know about it and/or want it. This is where friends and guildmates become helpful. Watch out for PK's.

For a complete list of house decay stages and times, see this page from the knowledgebase.

The Hunter

The hunter is used for pvm. There are a number of options for this template depending on available funds and personal playstyle. Some suggestions are:

• Swordsmanship, Fencing, Lumberjacking, Healing, Anatomy, Hiding and Tactics. There are better templates for PVM however this one requires virtually no startup income and no skills require reagents or other costly consumable items.
  Start with
  50 Tactics
  49 Swordsmanship
  1 Healing (for scissors)
  
  *Fencing can be removed and replaced with magic resistance for a more effective character however raising magic resistance will obviously increase the cost of creating the character. If magic resistance is not used as originally shown, you will need to be very careful in battle against magic-using monsters like liches.
  A second character to gate your dexxer around can come in handy if one is already created. Your dexxer can optionally use charges in a runebook to travel. Another option is to drop 20 points in hiding for 20 trained in magery from an npc strictly for recall (and perhaps the occasional heal/cure spell). The final option for travel is public moongates and running although this will certainly cut into your profit.
  
• Archers can be effective with a slayer bow.
  • Archery, Antomy, Tactics, Musicianship, Peacemaking, Magery, Meditation; or
  • Archery, Antomy, Tactics, Musicianship, Peacemaking, Magery, Healing
• Fencing/Swords, Hiding, Magery, Healing, Anatomy, Resist, Tactics is a very effective pvm character with some defense against player attacks. With magery and resist, this is a costlier template.

Using a swamp dragon with platemail on (dragon barding deed) is helpful when you can afford it, reducing some of the damage you take. Alternatively, a giant beetle can be helpful for holding loot taken from fallen monsters.

Good monsters to hunt include medium strength monsters like liches (silver weapons can assist killing them), cyclops, titans and elder gazers. Larger monsters like dragons, daemons, wyrms and fiends may have more loot but they are also more difficult are better left to the pvm tamer.

These templates are not designed for pvp so you will want to dump your loot at the bank or another safe location often. If you use runebooks, an escape macro can do much towards keeping you alive and your loot in your pack.

The PvM Tamer

This character will also require some startup gold but it is a very lucrative character to play.
This character type has some versatility with templates. Two recommendations are:

• Magery, Animal Taming, Animal Lore, Musicianship, Peacemaking, Item ID, Veterinary
  This one offers no protection. You're completely defenseless against any physical attack and once your magic reflection goes down you could be in trouble
• Mage, Eval Intelligence, Meditation, Animal Lore, Taming, Veterinary, Hiding
  This template offers much more protection from Pkers and Monsters alike but it doesn't have the bard skills to assist in killing the monsters. For those that would rather fight back, swap out hiding for resist (resist should always be the first skill trained on any character that uses it; this skill will increase the cost of creating the character.)

As soon as you are able, begin the bonding process for a mare. Follow it with another mare or a dragon.
These characters can make gold by killing other monsters with pets, or tame and train mares and dragons to sell to other players.

The Merchant/Trader

Once you have some funds to work with, buying and selling can be very lucrative. It is important to know the current markets in order to make gold by trading. Items to buy and/or sell include:
Bulk reagents, bulk resources including leathers, ingots, cloth, and wood, bods, rares, and housing. Of course there are other items to sell and trade but these are the most lucrative.

Portions of this guide come from the following posts:

• An IDOC guide : To make nice Money!
• How To Make Money. For New Players.
• guide to making gold. Version 0.2