There are 3 basic money-making strategies. Mining
and smithing/mining is the first way. At first, mining and smithing really
can't do anything for you. Bronze armor and weapons are horrible, and they
don't sell for very much. However, iron is a little better, and steel is
very good. If you make tons of steel bars, and then smith and sell, you
can make about 2k per trip, depending on what you smith and how much you fit in
your pockets. Mining is a great way to make money if you are at least
level 30, too, because you can sell coal for at least 100gp each to high-leveled
players. Get a lot of coal and put it in notes. (visit the
Things of Interest
section for details) Then, sell them either little by little, or all in one big
chunk to reel in cash. However, if you mine large amounts of iron (such as
1k), you can sell them for 100 each. Iron is easy to mine if you are a
high lv, and 100k is a lot of money pretty easily.
The next way is the least effective. You can kill
enemies and then take the money and items that they drop and sell the items.
It can actually be effective if you fight higher level creatures, like hill
giants. You commonly get runes, sometimes even cosmic or nature runes,
which are kind of rare. The good thing about this strategy is that money
is not the only thing that you get, as you can get rare items that go toward
another skill.
The third and final money-making strategy is fishing and
cooking. Of course, very much like mining and smithing, at the beginning,
it doesn't help. Cooked shrimps reel in (no pun intended) about 5gp a piece; that means you
have to fish 1000 before you even get 5k! However, if you boost your
fishing and cooking, you can make a lot of money, especially at level 40 cooking
and fishing. If you can get 1k cooked lobsters and sell them for 200gp
each, you can get 200k!
These are basic strategies, but there
are supposedly great ways to earn money in other ways. If you want to make
easy money, these might not be the best way, but they can make you good money
still.