Starting the game (How to make money)

[Sidgreen]

I've restarted the game alot of times and have a few tips for new players.

The first thing is to always follow Ralof, The only bonus to not folowing ralof is 5 steel and 5 iron ingots at riverwood.
Following Ralof allows you to loot the imperials, their armor and weaponry is a lot more profitable then the stormcloaks. Pick up everything BUT maces stormcloak cuirasses, imperial swords and the brief history of the empire books. Keep in mind you can walk through the gate the imperial captain opens to pick up the loot in the room Hadvar takes you too.

After leaving the keep proceed to riverwood and sell everything but potions, your weapon choice and your armor choice (you can use the bear pelt and wolf pelts (on the way) to make leather armor so you may want to sell all the armor then make some.

Go to the unmarked bandit camp south of the standing stones and kill everyone, be sure to loot the treasure map I, night falls on sentinel and the black mage robes. Go to the treasure (inside a fallen tree near riverwood, cross the river and head a little way towards anises cabin. Loot the treasure and consider killing and looting the hunter behind the standing stone for leather making gear. return to the riverwood trader and sell all your gear again. (if you sell everything one by one you are more likely to level in speech)

Then kill and loot the bandits at embershard, (it may be worth killing the guard outside during the treasure map bit to save space in inventory) be sure to take the hanging moss inside (last room on the walkway to the right) it can be used with the bear claws to make a damage magicka regen potion, even the worst alchemist can gain 80 coins for such a potion.

After this you should have about 2000 coins which is a good amount to start the game properly IE. buy spells or crafting equipment to make the best armor available.

Hope this helped Somebody.

[Sonixboom]

Generally by the time I got to riverwood and sold everything I have around that much money without going to embershed (which i did anyways later on)

-Sonix

[Sidgreen]

Fair enough, but I alway like to play through the entire game richer then I should be IE by time the breezehomes available I can fully upgrade it without thinking about it

[soda popinski]

I dont think selling items one by one is better for speech in Skyrim.

[cypruss11]

Just keep chopping wood while you watch a movie or something, you'll make tons of money eventually.

[Sidgreen]

I dont think selling items one by one is better for speech in Skyrim.

When selling things in bulk it only gives you the speech xp for the single item, whereas selling a stack one by one increases the chance of a level up.

[Dohva.]

What I have done with both my characters is start alchemy from the beginning. I started collecting ingredients and making potions and selling both to make income. I still do it and it pays decent when you are getting several hundred gold for everything combined. Plus it raises your alchemy skill.

[Sidgreen]

Good point, there basicly this was an absolutely useless guide

[Da_BossMaN69]

Nah, even better option, go to Whiterun, stock up on anything you need than head towards Halted Stream Camp, go in and be sure to get the Transmute spell tome, and then mine the entire mine, you should get 16 iron ores, which translates to 16 gold ores then to 8 gold ignots that alone is 960 gold worth, so after that get the most profitable enchanted item you have and disenchant it, make sure it's not the item material that makes up most of it's price, you can't go wrong with an enchanted iron armor or shield with a price well over 200

With that enchant, doesn't matter the soul type, any enchantment is enough to give you 50 or more gold. Then sell these items, I did this and made 3000 gold. Although I did get lucky and come across multiple soul gems and iron ores, on the side of the road and found a few gems.


But the real money making technique is the following:

-Dump ALL unnecessary load off somewhere, make sure to clear the misc category, unneeded weapons/armor/potions, etc. only bring essentials
-Recruit follower, doesn't matter combat skill, just need a mule.
-If your a mage or simply have a 'zombie' spell, make sure to utilize it here as it is very helpful.
-Get a Horse
-Get the Soultrap spell tome (only if you smith)
- If your a smither, make sure you have dwarven. (only if you smith)
-Run into Dwarven ruin, collect all scarp metal you can find. *
-Once filled to the brim with scrap on both you and your companion, place all the scrap you can in a corpse, and Resurrect it (make sure you have the right spell for the body, I.E. raise zombie wont work on a Bandit Outlaw, etc.)
-Keep track of the zombie and protect, and keep moving the scrap, to a different corpse each time the body dies (your really only going to be able to use it on Falmer) if you have one.
-Keep all Soulgems you come across, and to fill the appropriate ones you find (only if you smith)
- Exit the ruin, AND NOTE, also when shifting from different cells, (Such as opening a Door to a new zone) kill the zombie take the gear, carry it till you find a new zombie, mount your steed and go to the nearest town (YOU CAN FAST TRAVEL ON A HORSE), taking ALL THE GEAR, from your zombie if you have one.
-Smelt all the scrap, and build gear, shields are the best since they take less ingots, and cost more than the other pieces, save for armor itself, keep in mind you will have 80 or more pieces of ingots. (only if you smith)
-Enchant shields with highest enchantment, regardless of soul type, (only if you smith)

And then done, you should have a good 5k of your efforts.

*Only certain scrap can be smelted, the only ones that CAN be smelted are: http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Dwarven_Scrap

[Sidgreen]

Iron dagger with a petty soul and an absorb enchantment sell for 700ish (before merchants rate)

[Da_BossMaN69]

Off of ingots alone you can expect to make 1000 average with 80 or ingots, but here's the thing, you can find over 400 worth of ingots in Nchuand-Zel under Markarth, that's only one ruin, the real prize (and arguably hardest haul you'll ever have to make) is in Blackreach. And since you have Geode veins, you'll never have to worry about soul-gems.

By going through all 3 ruins, and those in Black reach already you can make exactly 327 scrap of found scraps, which means it's already lying around, this disregards those you find on animunculi and chests, which greatly outnumber those in other places due to the size of Blackreach and number of machines/chests you find here.

so working with only 327: 327 x 30= 9810 gold, that's disregarding the random pieces. but with merchant prices you can expect that to be between 3-4 k.

With smithing in Dwarven you can make 109 shields (you will also need 109 iron/steel/leather strips) with appropriate enchantments (lets say only common) and fortify block adds 25% so 281 gold for one shield.

So totally, thats 30629 gold, again this is pure hypothesis, I've never tested this personally. before merchants, so around 15k maybe or more depending on if you get a haggling potion or not.

[shu]

Banish. The moment you find a weapon with the Banish enchantment, all your money problems are gone.

[Iamgoofball]

The only weapon with that is Mehrunes Razor, and not many people will want to sell that.

[Da_BossMaN69]

Banish. The moment you find a weapon with the Banish enchantment, all your money problems are gone.

I'll run off quick and try to find as many enchantments as possible tomorrow, and come back give a report, and see which is most profitable. If only there was a chart for prices/value of each enchantment.

[soda popinski]

I dont think selling items one by one is better for speech in Skyrim.

When selling things in bulk it only gives you the speech xp for the single item, whereas selling a stack one by one increases the chance of a level up.

I thought I heard Todd specifically mention during development that they had fixed this annoying and pointless problem with Oblivion. Is this documented somewhere that selling 10 of a certain item in one transaction gives less XP than 10 transactions of 1 of said item?

If so that is pathetic that they didnt fix this

[JarlofLeland]

The only weapon with that is Mehrunes Razor, and not many people will want to sell that.

Mehrunes Razor isn't enchanted with Banish, its enchantment is "Hits have 2 chances in 101 to instantly kill". There are plenty of weapons enchanted with Banish.

[Sidgreen]

They haven't. I tested it out of helgen, using the thief stone I sold all the gear one by one and then reloaded and did it in a stack, ended up level 22 first time and 21 second time.

[SithisIsMyCopilot]

I find that making halted stream camp one of your first stops and grabbing the transmute spell book is a good way to make money early by making jewelry from transmuted ore.