Making money early in game...

[DOCac42]

Hey everyone,

I'm new on the forums and wanted to post something of use to help new players so here we are!

In my time of playing Skyrim, I've found that when I'm doing the quests like Bleak Falls Barrow and Dragon Rising, I'm usually in need of some money to upgrade equipment etc. Of course you can just loot every urn, skeever, bandit and draugr in sight but that is very time consuming and not as effective. Instead, loot all of the items that don't way much (0-10 ish) but are worth a decent bit of gold. Some good and common examples are: Fur Armour, Hide Armour, all types of arrows, gems and jewels along with skill tomes and scrolls (unless you plan to use them.) Most of these are just found in your average dungeon and are all fairly light. Obviously Hide Armour isn't worth a great amount (75g I think), but with a load of them, the money adds up. Doing this gave me around 10,000g by level 7 (master difficulty so you do level quite fast). Each dungeon, looted effectively renders around 1000-2000 gold. That's all! Remember, light and valuable.

Thanks for reading. DOC

NOTE: This probably isn't as effective at higher levels where your used to more money and as you usually have more stamina, heavier and more valuable items come into play.

 

[High King of Skyrim]

Get into enchanting. Make iron daggers and then enchant them and sell them. This can net you a good profit early. Also, head to Riften and join the Thieves Guild. The extra jobs you can do for the guild are infinite and hence, a licence to print money. You'll be rich in 2-3 hours or at least have a solid nest egg in which to build on

 

[drem yol lok]

The dark brotherhood can get you alot of gold. Plus at the end the each contract gives you a 1000 gold.

 

[Yukari Yakumo]

Get into enchanting. Make iron daggers and then enchant them and sell them. This can net you a good profit early. Also, head to Riften and join the Thieves Guild. The extra jobs you can do for the guild are infinite and hence, a licence to print money. You'll be rich in 2-3 hours or at least have a solid nest egg in which to build on

Pretty much that.
Though, if making daggers is too expensive, just enchant your loot before selling.
And fyi, the Banish enchantment gets the highest amount of gold. If you see something with it in stores and can afford it, BUY IT and disenchant. It'll probably be really expensive, but you'll make your investment back in no time.

 

[aena68]

I usually follow the opening post looting policy : no arm (unless magical), no common heavy armor
and i usually don't get money issues at all.

But if you simply cutting wood may yield you a higher return per minute than looting. Right after escaping Helgen
i made around 600 gold selling all that i was carrying (299 pounds of light loot), and it took me like 2mn to get 300 gold more cutting some wood and selling them to the sawmill owner. I don't really now if there is a limit of the amount of woodchop you can sell.

 

[Lydia'sPimp]

Get yourself a drink (tea coffee beer etc)
A snack to accompany said drink (cookies pork scratchings eggs sandwiches)
Grab your laptop tablet or internet phone.
Eat drink and google random skyrim stuff while chopping wood for an hour.

My latest character is level 3 at riverwood and has 8000 septims. And i have a full belly.

 

[AS88]

If I'm considering looting something, I also use the maxim "if it's not worth 10 Septims per 1 weight unit, it's not worth it"

In terms of looting enemies, helmets are usually the most value/weight valuable, so I often end up carrying half a dozen hide (25 Septims/ 2 Weight) or iron helmets (60 Septims/ 5 weight) early in the game, leading up to stuff like steel plate (300 Septims/ 6 weight) or scaled helmets (175 Septims/ 2 weight) later on. Light armour items are generally more valuable in relation to their weight, too. Scaled helmets can earn you a lot of money if you play the Civil War as an Imperial, and loot the Stormcloaks who often carry unequipped scaled helmets.

Enchanting is probably the quickest while still playing (finding enchantments, soul gems, souls, etc). Wood-cutting probably quickest for grinding. If you go to Halted Stream Camp and find the Transmute spell, smithing jewellery and enchanting it is a very effective way to earn money and boost 4 skills practically at once (Alteration, Smithing, Enchanting, Speech)

 

[aena68]

If you are lucky you may find early in the game a weapon with the banish enchantment on it. This mean immense wealth since even an iron dagger with such an enchantment sells 1000-2000 septims.

Note that none of my character even found it before being already rich enough to get anything he wanted.


Another good way to improve your finances is to do the daedric quest named "A daedra best friend", but you cannot do it right after escaping since you need to be level 10..

 

[Lydia'sPimp]

Item enchantments appear with your level. Thus the banish enchant wont appear until you are a decent level anyway.
Absorb health and turn undead show up early however and are valuable. At low levels without any perks to boost the enchant power a petty soul iron dagger with absorb health goes for 50-60 gold. I usually make about 30 of these at a time. As and when My soul gem stock is plentyful

Incedently the more powerful the enchant the better the price. More charges and less power will lower the price.