Is there anyway to make a half-decent amount of money other then jobs?
Yes, but you need to do quests anyway for the platinum, so you may as well. I Want It and Delivery quests are really the simplest, fastest and probably best way for a new character to make money. The road between towns is mostly safe, so even at level one you can do delivery quests with minimal risk. In the early game, only accept deliveries to Vernis, Yowyn and Palmis. Possibly Derphy and Port Kapul once you get comfortable. The other towns are a bit further away, and it's sometimes difficult to each them in time. Also be sure to check the time allowed to complete the quest. Four days is usually enough time. For I Want It quests, just buy some crim ale from an innkeeper and trade for the item you need. Entire stacks can be traded, so if one ale isn't enough, offer them two, then three, etc.
Other options:
* Everyone and their mother and their cat and their cats second counsin will recommend you take up performing. Yes, performer skill can make money. But you'll need probably at least 20 performing skill before it's worthwhile. I recommend you do it. But it's not a fast solution.
* It is possible (though not easy) to make a profit by selling tradegoods. Purchase low cost goods from a trader in one town and sell to a trader in another town. Not really recommended because carrying high value trade goods will increase your chances of being ambushed by rogue bosses, which at low level is a bad thing.
* If you happen to have a character with relatively high charisma, you can use 'i'nteract to give alcohol to npcs, and then have sex with them for money. Rumor has it it's possible to acquire diseases by doing this, but I don't think I've ever seen it happen.
* You can increase your bi-monthly salary by a number of methods: upgrading and/or adding furniture to your cave to increase its level, gaining ranks by winning arena matches, having pets gain rank by winning pet arena matches, building and upgrading a museum, and stores will generate a small income even if they don't sell anything.
* Store. Read below.
identification costs more then the item sells for
The following may help:
* Don't identify bones, crystals, ore, junk stone, or any other things that sell for completely trivial amounts of gold. Don't bother. Crystals and ore have uses (god offerings, I Want It quests, etc.) but there's no point in selling these things, so don't pay to identify them. Drop them off at your cave and forget about them until you find a use for them.
* Buy
cargo food from an innkeeper. It is cheap. It can only be eaten aboveground, so eat it aboveground. Don't pay 500 gold for vanity food from a chef until you can afford it.
* For monster body parts (skin of rabbit, eye of flying frog, etc.) identification is only required
once per item type. Once you've paid to identify a skin, all skins can be sold for full value regardless of the monster it came from. This can be a sizable portion of your income during the first few levels.
* Go to Port Kapul and get the fighter's guild quest. It wil take you probably five or ten levels to get around to completing it, but once you do, all ID costs are cut in half
* Negotiation skill will increase the efficiency of all transactions
* Note that contrary to what the wiki says, ranches and farms are not really very profitable.
* Psuedo-id in elona is somewhat deceptive, as potion and spellbook flavor descriptors are not unique. Once you ID a spellbook of magic arrow, next time you find a spellbook of magic arrow you'll automatically know that it is one. However, flavors are recycled. So you might ID a mossy spellbook to find it's magic arrow, but then find another mossy spellbook and find that it's something else.
* Once you've identified most of the basic potions/scroll/spellbook types, you'll find that some of these items sell for a great deal of gold, and do not require any further identification beyond knowing what it is. For example, find a scroll. Identify it, it's a scroll of oracle. Now, next time you find a scroll of oracle, it will be unidentified, but you'll know that it's a scroll of oracle. You can sell it without identifying it for around 1700-2000 gold. Identifying that second scroll will only tell you if it happens to be blessed or cursed, but if you're not going to read it, you probably don't care. Just sell it.
* Once you can arrange it, purchase a shop deed, recruit either a rogue archer or a Juere swordman to staff it. If you happen upon a rod of domination, Juere swordmen routinely appear in hunting quests. If not, rogue archers are available from the slave trader in Derphy starting at level 10, and Juere swordsmen become available at level 20. Note that it will probably take a couple months of game time for your shop to become profitable, and you'll need to keep it supplied with things to sell. Shops are usually a losing proposition to begin with, but they do become very much worthwhile.
* The price that vendors will pay for all armor and weapons is
cut by 95%. Even artifacts will routinely not sell for enough to pay for the cost to identify them. The only way I'm aware of to sell equippable items for a reasonable price is to sell them at your own store.
money
Finally...read
this thread. Gold is not very important. There are things that are fun and/or useful to do that require hundreds of thousands of gold, or millions if you're planning on doing heavy investing...but in terms of basic early game play...once you get past the first couple levels, learning what to identify and what to not, how to get food, etc., gold really isn't very important until you decide you want to start buying deeds. At that point, yes...unless you went with a charisma-heavy / performer character build you'll need lots of gold to get started. Personally, I got past that hump by sitting down and grinding quests for six hours. Again...you'll need the platinum anyway, so you may as well start while you're short on gold too.
Author
Topic: Elona: Roguelike. (Read 486968 times)