Making your seed money.

Meet Roselli (and Beaky). I created this little Asuran to help me explain some basic hints and tips to help you make money in Tyria. She is a standard starting character for Guild Wars 2 and I've not given her anything from any of my alts.

So you've run through your introduction quest and you're eager to get out into the world and make some gold, what should you do?

1) Buy harvesting tools.

While you don't have to buy tools right away I've found that doing this increases your earning potential right away. Roselli walked out of her introduction with 72c, exactly the right amount to pick up a Copper Mining Pick, Copper Logging Axe and a Copper Harvesting Sickle. I equipped all three right away and was eager to get going.

So off I went into Metrica Province to start enjoying the game's content.


2) Complete Renown Hearts.

As part of your personal storyline you'll be asked to complete a renown heart. There are NPCs throughout the world who need your help on various tasks, help them enough and you complete their renown heart. Upon completing your first heart you'll receive some mail with a thank you and some coins. The monetary reward isn't huge every bit adds up and you should hopefully have gotten some drops from mobs while completing the task.

While you could go out and find a good spot with lots of baddies to farm drops instead completing renown hearts has another couple of bonuses attached to it. A completed renown heart means that the related NPC becomes a karma vendor, exchanging goods in exchange for karma, some of these can actually be quite useful. Completed hearts also count towards map completion which is always worth aiming for (more on that later).


3) Harvest Everything.

Remember those tools I suggested you buy? Use them. Harvest everything you can get your grubby little hands on. There will always be a demand for crafting supplies so harvesting nodes is easy money for very little effort (especially if you're out questing and passing nodes anyway). A few copper coins for your copper ore may not seem like much but it all adds up! And on top of that you have a chance of picking up something that may fetch more money, while rummaging through some herbs I found some vanilla beans (currently selling for about 1s 50c each) and an unidentified dye, which are always nice to find.


4) Don't get weighed down.

Seeing that little bag in the top left of your screen go red can be an utter nightmare. This means your inventory is full and you won't be able to pick up anything else until you get rid of a few things. I've stupidly ended up in this position a few times so here are a few tips to help avoid this situation:

Get more bags. I know this may seem like an obvious suggestion but it can come in very handy. I know it's tempting to look at bags with as many slots as possible but you're only starting out and you're trying to make money. My advice is to look on the trading post for these:

Aren't they pretty? Just search the bag category on the trading post and order your results by price and these will be the cheapest. Coloured leather bags drop frequently from some group events and can be sold on after they've been used so there are loads of them out there. I bought three of these (a blue, a red and a purple as I'm a girl and decided to vaguely co-ordinate them) for 15c total which increased my carrying capacity by 15 slots.

List on the Trading Post.You can put your items up for sale from anywhere, just open the Black Lion Trading Company panel and start selling. You won't be able to pick up your funds unless you're near a Trading Post but at least the items aren't cluttering up your inventory. More about the Trading Post can be found in my previous entry Black Lion 101.

Sell Junk.While out and about you will pick up items that are, quite literally, junk. Small trophies from kills that aren't worth much but clutter up your inventory. They may not be worth a huge amount but they quickly pile up and every little helps. Every time you pass a vendor of any kind stop and check if you have any of these items. When selling to vendors there's a button at the bottom of the panel labelled 'sell junk' this will sell all of these items in one swift click and you'll be good to go again, less encumbered and with more coins in your pocket.

Deposit Collectibles.I was a little unsure over this one but I thought I'd share it nonetheless as it was something I wasn't overly aware of when I started playing the game. Even though you've just started out you may have a particular crafting profession in mind and want to save some crafting materials, or you may want to list all of your items later rather than putting them on the trading post right now. To put crafting materials somewhere safe just right-click on the item and choose 'deposit collectible' or if you want all of your materials out of your bag click on the little gear and choose 'Deposit All Collectibles'. This puts your items into your collection which can be accessed later through a banker or any crafting table.

5) Take part in events.

As you run around you'll always bump into ongoing events, if you're not in a hurry to do something else it's worth stopping and taking part, especially if you're playing a class with suitable Area of Effect attacks. Many events with have waves of bad guys or at least a decent number of mobs so they're great for picking up a lot of drops in a small amount of time. On top of that you get karma, XP and a small amount of money at the end of the event which is a nice bonus.

6) On to the selling!

So, you've done steps 1-5 for a while and your bags are still filling up, it's time to sell, sell, sell! While I covered some of the basics in my Black Lion 101 post here are a few more tips to consider while doing this.

 Check the vendor price of an item. Before you list on the Trading post check how much you'd get for it from a vendor. If you hold your mouse over an item's icon it'll have a listed value, this is what a merchant will pay for it. On the left is the minimum price I could list a bow I had for. The bow was worth 10c to a vendor but if I listed it for the 11c on the trading post I'd only get 9c after fees. While that 1c difference may not seem like much every coin counts and this difference gets larger at the higher levels so it's a good habit to get into.

Know when to undercut and when to price match. Look at the number of listings for a certain item before determining your listing cost. For items like crafting materials a buyer will buy several in one go so if there's not too many of an item listed at a certain price then it may be worth listing at the same price as the current lowest seller. However if there are lots of an item listed at the current lowest selling price then you want to be undercutting. Listing your item for less, even if it's by just 1 copper, puts you to the front of the queue to have your item sold.

Sell to the highest bidder sometimes. Yes, you're out to make the biggest profit you can but sometimes the difference between the highest bidder and lowest seller is just a copper. Selling to the highest bidder at this point gets you immediate money.

A couple more tips.

If you pick up an Unidentified Dye (or a couple) in your travels, don't identify it. Instead put it right on the Trading Post. If you identify a dye there's a high chance you'll get a common dye that will sell for about 70c but unidentified it'll sell for several silver. I sold this one for 14 silver (I probably could have held out and got that up to 15s but I wanted to complete this guide so went for quicker sales).

You'll also likely pick up a Black Lion Chest or two. These sell for next to nothing but don't throw them away, keep hold of a few (even if you just throw them in your bank). At the end of the first part of your personal story you'll get a key to unlock a chest. A Black Lion Chest will contain random buff items and other such goodies. I advise keeping multiples of the chests as there is a chance your chest will contain another key!

Enjoy your seed money!

Roselli is now level 10, has completed the first part of her personal story and has explored 63% of the Metrica Province. I followed the steps I detailed above while doing this and she now has a chunk of money that could be used for investment, over a gold in fact!

Obviously results will vary based on the market and on luck but these tips should help you earn your investment money.

There are several things you can invest in but I'll get around to that in future posts.