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Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim How To Make Gold Fast

Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim How To Make Gold Fast
Having more gold allows you to level up all your skills faster, buy new houses and horses, and show off your wealth wearing the best gear. This Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim How To Make Gold Fast Guide will give you a basic technique to earning lots of gold very quickly. No exploits or dirty tricks involved.

In order to make lots of gold fast you need to do a few simple tasks. Firstly, buy as much Iron bars, Iron Ore and Leather as you can find. Most Smithing stores sell it, most towns have a blacksmith. Once you’ve gathered all your Iron Bars, go to a forge, I suggest using the one in Whiterun because there are 2 blacksmiths in the same building that sell Iron Bars and Leather, they do not share an inventory. Change all your Iron Bars and Ore into Iron Daggers, the Bars cost about 20 Gold each, the Leather costs about 25 gold each. To save yourself cash use the Thief Guilds cowl for cheaper items or anything else you have that increase speech. Each Dagger costs about 60-70 gold to make, they sell for mere coppers. The trick here is to enchant them.

A Guest Hero suggested using Absorb Health Enchantment and it works well but if you can get Banish, that will make this far more profitable. All you need to do it find an item with that Enchantment and Disassemble it, you can then use the Absorb Health Enchantment to Enchant your Iron Daggers with. You need a lot of Soul Gems for this method, you can purchase them from most Taverns. Don’t spend Gold on filled Souls or it’s not worth it, I suggest buying Common Soul Gems or lesser. You can then sell the Enchanted Iron Daggers for 200-500+, the better the Soul, the more profit you can make so if you can catch the Souls yourself, that’s easy cash. Especially if you use a Soul Trap weapon and Azuras Star. I suggest using the Enchanting table in Dragons Reach as it’s easy to get to and the guy there sells Gems. Once you’ve completed this method once, wait 48 hours and make the same trip to each Blacksmith, this time sell the Daggers as you’re buying more Iron.

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Blaine Smith

Blaine Smith, or Smith as he prefers to be called as he doesn't have to repeat it four times before people get it, is one of the original founders of Gamers Heroes. Smith has been playing games for over 30 years, from Rex & 180 on ZX Spectrum to the latest releases on the ninth generation of consoles. RPG's are his go-to genre, with the likes of Final Fantasy, Legend of Legaia, and Elder Scrolls being among his favorites, but he'll play almost anything once (except Dark Souls). You can best reach him on Twitter

62 Comments

  1. The damage stamina enchant gives iron daggers that sell for over 600 gold at lower levels. Strangely, as your enchanting skill goes up and you get perks that improve the enchantments, the value of enchants you sell go down…

    1. Maybe cause the,person your selling to is trying to rip you off >:O (not really, ok my REAL guess, probably because its so good and ABOVE them, as in there invontory, it makes it less valued, or that they cant afford it, one of the two, or not, but, ya…thanks for telling that though, now i know not to EVER get perks for enchanting :D)

    2. Actually Xeiro may be more right than he knows. I tried to sell my enchanted daggers to Enthir, the stolen goods fencer in the college of Winterhold, and he gave me a SIGNIFICANTLY lower price than other vendors. I don’t know if it’s because he’s affiliated with the thieves guild or what. Moral of the story: don’t sell to crooks.

      1. Its probably based on on market saturation. If you keep selling the same goods with the same enchantments in the real world the market value will be severely deflated until the goods can find a broader demand. In Skyrim I have no idea if the economy functions this way, but there may be an attempt to make it work like that. Do your enchanted items of different types all lose value the same way, or just the ones you have already sold him before?

  2. My soul gems don’t appear when i want to enchant bij iron dagger. But i do have soul gems when i look at my item when i’m not enchanting.

    What am i doing wrong?

  3. In Ivarstead, a woman named Boti will buy Cabbages, Wheat, Potatoes and other food like that for a fixed price. So if you have any kind of vegetation in your inventory or at your home, go there and sell it to her. She also works in a farm that has those things.

  4. Also one thing, how would i be able to make 25000 gold fast? I do wood cutting, not as good as i thought, i cutted 60 logs and, only got 300 pay

  5. dont forget to simply get married early on, as long as they have a shop they will make u a 100 dollars a day which adds up when u fast travel lots

  6. If you prefer to use alchemy, you can make a really easy potion with blue mountain flowers, wheat, and hanging moss (all pretty easy to find) and i believe they sell for upwards of 150 each. also, if you happen to run across nirnroots and luna moth wings those sell for about 300. I generally can get a couple K out of a half a skyrim day’s work of gathering. not much maybe but it’s something diferent

  7. You can also buy up lots of Iron ore for cheap and use the transmutation spell on it to turn it into gold and silver. Smelt it and craft it into jewelry at the blacksmiths. Also an easy way to boost your alteration and smithing skills!

  8. I found a cool trick for speed waiting on Xbox 360. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-bwrUXzKKk Usefull when you have lots to sell. You can wait 48 hours much faster this way then you can waiting 24 hours normaly. It’s simple, hit select, go over to 24 hours, hit A and immediately hit center button on your controller (live menu or whatever). Saves a good amount of time if you have thousands or tens of thousands of gold in stuff to sell.

    1. You do realise that is a myth, I have timed it and it is false, it just seems it as you can’t see the countdown. Like they say, “A watched pot never boils”. (meaning it seems shorter to just look away than stare at it for the duration)

  9. I don’t find crafting enchanted items for sale to be too worthwhile. Sure you can enchant an item, but the cost of the soul gem really cuts into the profit, plus you’re probably only going to get 40-50% of the value price of the item. A simple gold ring enchanted with fortify archery or 2-handed will net 30-40 gp if charged with a petty soul gem.

    The only way to make big $$ with enchantments is to use the Black Star. Problem is, you only have one of those, and have to go out and kill a human to fill it! That’s a lot of grind for the payback. I want to play and have fun! I like to use the black star for special items that I will keep.

    Aside from looting, the best returns seem to come from certain potions, like Slow, paralysis, and fortify 2-handed. You pick the ingredients for free, brew it, then sell it for a nice profit and little work.

    Bathesda seems to have really locked down the gold in the game. Even when you have big-ticket items to sell, vendors only have ~750gp at a time, and many of them will only purchase certain things. That makes it a real grind to go around collecting/crafting items and selling them. Especially when houses in Solitude go for 25K! I’m not sure they got the game balance right as far as money. Maybe for people who have lots of time to play, but I’m not into putting that much time in. They need to either lower the prices for the big-ticket items or raise the amount of gold vendors have. This is a single-player game, not a MMORPG, so balance isn’t quite as crucial.

    And I agree that getting married in the game is very profitable at a bonus of 100 gp/day. Also, if you marry a Companion, you essentially get to train in their combat skill for free. You still have to pay for it, but can trade the money back. Aelin is a good choice… 😉

    1. there are easier ways to stop that running around for the right shop and the right gold amount get some perks invested in speech and get the master trader and investor perks you can then increase the total amount of gold a shopkeeper has for ever by 1500 gold the only problem is for you to get these perks you need around 75 for investor and 100 for master trader but do not fear master trader also in addition to adding 1000 gold to all shops allows you to sell all types of items to all shops so you can now sell food to a blacksmith etc for a quick way to lv up your speech skill consult the fast lving guide i hope this will prove useful to you and others who take the time to read this

      1. Or, if on PC platform, get a mod that lets any vendor sell anything (also achievable in perks, IIRC) and gives every vendor 10,000 gold. You decide if it’s cheating – what’s the difference between that and massive 2-day sleeping runs?

  10. What I do for fast money is just selling Dragon Scales and Bones. I seem to encounter Dragons a lot now in game, and I already ace made the armor sets and upgraded them. I really don’t have any purpose of keeping them since all they really do is add extra weight. Is this a bad idea to do?

  11. The best ways i can think of are to either wait a bunch when your married and then collect all the gold your spouse has, or simply wander around dungeons and stuff like that. I’m on level 42 and I keep finding about 150 gold in each chest or off each guy i kill. If you get married just make sure you marry someone who can die. Don’t just go and marry Mjoll the lioness like i did because she CANT DIE!!!!!!…..then just go and adventure and after a while go back home and collect the gold. IF you do want to marry Mjoll save your game right before the wedding. Then if you have second thoughts you can load the saved game. I Married her when i was on level 41, i had all dedric quest completed and by the time i was at level 43 I decided she had to go. MY original plan was to marry a wood elf but as there are none that you can marry im going to wait for Dlc. I tried to kill Mjoll and she cant die so I then had to load a game were i was on Level 35. Also the thing were you get infinite dedric arrows actually works. go to solitude, go to the barracks at night, pickpocket all the guards taking their arrows and replacing them with one dedric, elven, ebony, or what ever you want. Then wait for them to get up and go outside. ones going to start shooting arrows at a target. Just take the arrows that he shoots and BAM!!!!….all the arrows you want. I did this on a PS3 with all patches so im sure it works. TO level up alteration go out to the plains of whiterun and look for a saber-cat. Then get equilibrium and oakflesh, stand on a rock and just start casting spells as it tries to get you. I got my skill up to 67 before i got bored and wandered off.:) AH the wonderful world that is skyrim.

  12. (100 skill of smithing)(50 skill of enchanting)REQUIRED. What I did was wear the Amulet of Akatosh, which seems to make more dragons appear from recent sources and peronal experience. Then I kill a whole bunch of dragons and loot thier bones and scales. Then I would go and make that into Dragon Armor and upgrade it on a workshop until the armor is fully upgraded. Next I went to an enchanter and put a good enchantment on it that gave me the most gold. Finally you sell it. And you repeat the process.

    1. enchanting does not multiply value as in previous tes games, the value only adds to it. 500 gold armor + 1000 gold enchantment sells for 1500. it would be easier to just make iron armor, enchant and sell. especially sense you can just buy iron faster than you can use it.

  13. The enchant price dropping is a bugged system in an attempt to prevent enchanting for money making. The more you make of a single enchantment, the less each is worth. Some argue it depends upon enchanting level, but this seems to not quite be the case.

    There are work arounds, such as making a save game before enchanting, loading it after you finish and then loading your finished enchanting game often reverts the items to the top price.

      1. The chest should be there, since it is for everyone. The chest contains what one of the shops have or the merchants have, so without chest, there would be nothing for them to sell. You go near the mine and crouch, to the left there will be three rocks, put your crosshair (cursor) in the middle of the three rocks, keep moving and looking until you see “Search Chest” and there you go!

  14. i just cut logs and surf the web so it will be like click ok logs started now lets look for skyrim stuff over and over again i usaly get 54 logs fast which is bout 100$ You can do this in darkwater crossing go get some logs and then go mine very easy to get some cash

  15. Well, a good way to make a good bit of gold is to do some quests, particularly the Dark Brotherhood ones as they pay roughly 500-1000 septiems,depending on current level, per contract.

  16. with full enchanting a banishing dagger made with a soul from the black star sells for over 3000. i can pop them out like nothing but find nobody has the money to buy them.

    1. I haven’t found a guide in regardess of this tiny glitch but either way it works. First, Have you completed the “Butcher” quest chain? If yes, sorry. The idea here is to have roughly 100 pickpocketing w/ bonuses, and you sell the amulet for 500 and then pickpocket it back. Rinse and repeat + the occasional save… Easy money, glhf!

      1. Tried and proven, 10k every 5mins if you skip the chat and etc. (tip: make sure he’s sitting down in his home to start this)

  17. you have a good list pointers out there pretty cool dude, it’s like these hunting down animal using my bow then turn it into leaher then go to the nearest smith area voila you can produce as many as hide products as you can provided though you have amassed so many animal hide you got from hunting down game animals in the wild. it increases my archery,sneak,my smithing,speechcract…and so on.(but when you’re a low level character it’s pretty tough though)..thanks for the guide for enchanting….

  18. I found a pretty good method I went to the nearest giant place to whiterun and then brought the giants to the wall nearest to the entrance to it and hid under the roofed area I waited untill he hit and attacked until it died I got 100 gold each time and extra items like giant’s toes this isn’t the best method but it is the easiest for me

  19. Kill mages and take their robes: the robes weigh 1 and sell for at least 54 gold. With that stone steed +100 carry thing you should be able to carry around 330 witch means in one trip you can make 17,820 gold. That’s boss! Npcs / monsters should regenerate after 10 in game days.

  20. If you’re patient, you can take half an hour waiting after your married to wait 24 hrs 250 times to get 25k when you ask your husband/wife for money from the store

  21. My way of making quick coins is a very good one for high level players.

    Get all the stones of Bahrenziah, then reap all of the diamonds and such. Make them into necklaces etc, enchant them twice and sell them at about 2-3k each.

    I’m sitting on 600k although, my attempts at reaching a million stopped a while ago lol

    1. just leave winterhol den wen der is a gap on da rite side of da road follow da path off da road until u find da siteless pit den above dat dere is a alter wit a skelaton kill him den search nd go back reapet bcuz da book dat he carrys multipliesa

  22. i get gold to buy iron and leather by killing dragons like every hour and selling their bones and scales and they drop 300 gold sometimes 350 hope this helps

  23. A good way for me is a invisable chest in DawnStar. First head over to the mine and crouch(dont enter the mine. Second, walk over to the left side of the mine where the trees and rocks are. And then you have to look around the tree and rocks and all the sudden you see a icone that says “search chest” search it and there is a lot of things inside! Oh and i very much recomend bringing your horse:)

  24. i go to dawnstar and ask the kajhits wats for sale then i exit out and go to their secret chest and get 1500 gold and a lot more gear. then i wait 48 hours and repeat

  25. Or you know… spend no money at all except maybe on a bow, a few arrows, and a pick axe and go hunt the deer/elk and the wolves… and then find you a nice quiet iron mine and clean it out… then move on to the next one… not that hard really, just takes you spending some time to do it, increases Archery and Smithing, so in my opinion its a win win situation. No real gold loss, and next to none if you just relieve some bodies of their arrows and bows… and since arrows way nothing in the game you can carry HUNDREDS of them and not be over weight… I have well over 1k dragonbone arrows on my character right now, mind you I use my bow like there is no tomorrow…

  26. Just wanted to give a MASSIVE thank you to everyone that has submitted tips to earn money. Usually we’d update our guides but it would be a massive wall of text with all your awesome entries.

    Rest assured, you have all helped thousands of avid Skyrim fans make that bit more cash. Merry Christmas and have a great New Year! 😀

  27. Find a sneak-upgrading item, disenchant it. Now if you enchant a pair of boots worth 20 gold with the sneak spell and use grand gem for it, its value will raise to ~1700 gold. From 20 to 1700 is a nice profit. Azura’s Black Star helps alot – just go to a renegade camp, kill one guy that will fill the Star, retreat. Enchant the boots/bracers, sell, repeat. For speeding things up, you can buy (or steal) grand sold gems (empty) – just remember that you have to buy less than 1500 to make profit from this.

  28. if you can be bothered waiting, head to where the imperial legion soldiers train in solitude, there is a troop firing arrows at one of the targets. you can stand beside the target and take all the arrows you want. they only sell for 1 but when you get them for doing very little its awesome

  29. if you can be bothered waiting, head to where the imperial legion soldiers train in solitude, there is a troop firing arrows at one of the targets. you can stand beside the target and take all the arrows you want. they only sell for 1 but when you get them for doing very little its awesome

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