Newbie money making guide

Rule nr 1: LOOT EVERYTHING

This guide has the following sections:
1 general gear
2 crafting
3 general selling to players
4 vendor tips
5 where to find nice weapons
6 what to kill at +- lvl 15
7 rare crafting drops
8 monster play
9 burglars
10 auction house
11 quests

1 gear don't worry too much about buying gear, trust me, it's really easy to get better stuff from quests that are way better then what any vendor will sell you (see bottom for 2 advanced tips)

2 crafting! this is generally seen by newbies as the nr 1 way to drain your money, and it most certainly is in some cases, but let me split this in 3 parts:

What vocation (profession package)? a good way to start off is with the forester, woodworker, farmer OR the prospector, metalsmith (any smith will do), tailorer package as those are the easiest for making money. I consider the first one better, see next point:

Why being a lumberjack is easy: it's easier to acquire all the wood you ever need.. run in a streight line from the border of Ered Luin to the border of Bree where they both border the shire, and with a little luck you can find as much as 50 rowan wood if you go to wood whenever you see it on your map. A stack of 50 easily sells for 20s, though I recommend using it and leveling your woodworking. Then once you get higher you can find lots of ash wood in and around the northern bree-fields in bree-land (or go to the forest streight east of the top of the northern bree-fields (you'll see it on your map) it's generally really quiet there, but you'll find a lot of ash wood if you keep cruising around in there (this forest is recommended for lvl 15+).

3 in general selling to other players: experience taught me that it's a pain to sell items to other players, for starters: the basic recipes are not that good. For example you'll need the upgraded version of the items like 'rowan bow - heavy rowan bow'. Even this heavy rowan bow might take you some time to find a buyer for, why? First of all people don't see that for the level what you sell to them can actually be a cheap upgrade, Secondly, especially once you reach 10+ you'll see that quest items can easily beat the items you can craft in quality. The only way you can beat those items is by being a master crafter and succeeding critically in crafting your item (which boosts its statistics). See section 9 for auction house tips.

Below I'll add another thing that makes ths foresting/woodworking profession (and the prosp, metalw, tailorer package) a nice way to make money:

4 vendor tips: Now most people will have noticed that durability from crafting materials wears off quite easily, and that buying crafting materials will leave you broke in a heartbeat. Good news though, there's 1 magical word that's all that you need: GROCER!! Most major towns have a grocer. He sells the same items suppliers sell, but for 50% of the price! (I'm not sure if this differs at higher level, and you need to be around lvl 10 I guess before he'll sell cheaper) Also he repairs a lot cheaper then some other NPCs, or so it seemed to me.

damaged items if you're selling even gray non-magical weapons/armor to a vendor and you've died before the sell, make sure to "Repair all" or at least the items you plan on selling. The repair cost is often not more than the 50% difference, and once it's repaired you'll receive 100% make very sure though to check whether you're not paying too much for the repair versus what you gain on it! usually magical items or better cost more when repairing then they gain you.

Example: Gray sword says it's worth 2s 50c. It's at 90% because I died, so the vendor only offers me 1s 25c for it. I repair it for maybe 10c, and then teh vendor offers me the full 2s 50c.


5 Where to find the nice weapons
Hunter One of the best bows you can get can be found at Bree-Land. In the northern Bree-Fields, you have to follow the road and at the most northern farm you'll see a lady with a quest: this quest gives you an 8.5 DPS bow
2 handed/1handed weapon Some of the best ones I've encountered so far is from the questline 'to avert a war' in Ered Luin. A follow up in this questline (not sure which one, sorry for that) will give you a lot of choice between very good gear, for example a 9.0DPS 2 handed axe.

6 What to kill at higher level in the beta for good money, items and formulas?
Yrch! I believe is the elven word, we speak of it as orcs though. Once again you'll find yourself in the northern bree-fields looking for those rascals. They can drop a variety of items: yellow items and better, formulas, coin, and almost on every kill some vendor food item(s) that will sell for 8s/stack of 10

7 rare crafting drops
When killing monsters, most of them will drop purple items sooner or later that usually have a name with the name of the killed monster in it (e.g. clean barghest tail). Those items are used in various crafting professions to make mastercrafted items. As such those items can be quite usefull! You can check on various lotro websites what profession uses the item you found. If it looks usefull you have a good chance you can sell it with some nice profit on the auction house.

8 In Monster Play:
Kill npc hobbits and any free people. They got lots of silver on them, and the hobbits carry around fancy mugs which fetch a nice price. You won't carry the silve out of monster play, but it's useful so you can pay for equiping traits

9 Burglar
If you're a burglar you have the option (post-14) of just burgling as you kill off humanoid mobs. People have found some very, very nice gear that way, and gained some decent coin after selling off the items they drop once you kill them.

10 Auction House
A general guideline might be: check the price a good vendor would give you for the item, then check the lowest price on the auction house for the same item, make a price somewhere in between and you should be good.
Always add a buy out most players will never bother with items that have no buy out
Careful on the big stacks Example: with crafting components people might not want your 50 tin or, but just about 5, so splitting stacks up can be useful
If AH the is flooded sometimes the AH is flooded with the item you want to sell for low prices that's about the same price as vendoring the item, don't bother and vendor it right away.

11 quests
Keep in mind to check the value of all rewards if you are sure that you're going to sell the reward (i.e. when none of the items is an upgrade to you)
post by morkatog@http://forums.lotro.com