Earning gold

The world of Guild Wars isn't any different from real life. If you spend more than you earn, you'll be broke in no time. Upgrading your armor, creating different armor sets for different uses, and keeping a flexible set of weapons for various "builds" can become very expensive. The following are a few tips to give beginners some ideas how to start collecting gold. These are just some few basic principles, and countless variations exist.

''Note: Be aware that ArenaNet, the makers of GuildWars, constantly monitor the economy of the game in order to balance it. If a method of income is being overused by players and deemed too "powerful" by ANet, they will eventually take conter-measures to weaken it (i.e. "nerf" it).

Playing the game "normally"
The drops that you collect from killing foes in normal game play (i.e. simply playing through the storyline missions, quests, and exploring areas) should be sufficient to cover your "normal" expenses (i.e. buying the "standard" skills, weapons, and armor).

It is when you go for the high-end "perfect" and "green" weapons and "prestige" armor that you will see prices skyrocket. Be aware that many of these weapon, armor and items were put into the game specifically as a "gold sink" for the wealthy players. In most cases there are alternative weapons that are near equivalent, but much cheaper. Go for the cheap alternative. For example, a perfect sword pommel of Fortitude (+30 health) can cost tens-of-thousands of gold, while a pommel that only provides +28 health will only cost a small fraction of that. Be sure that you have done your homework and know your options before spending huge sums of gold on an item.

Farming
Farming means that you do not kill foes as a side-effect of playing the game "normally", but specifically for the purpose of collecting loot. A variation of farming is chest farming. For further details and tips, see: Farm


 * Warning: The use of farming bots is a violation of the User Agreement and the Rules of Conduct, and, if spotted by a game master, will result in an account mark or a ban.

The farmed loot can be used to sell it to merchants / traders, to give it to a collector or to trade it to a fellow players if it is a high demand or valuable item. See the following sections for further details.

Merchanting
Merchanting revolves around buying low and selling high. This is most easily done with Green items, since their prices cannot be easily "looked up" on a Trader in the way that Crafting materials or Runes can. Merchanting requires you to have a good idea of what a price range for a specific item is. If you see any items being sold that you don't particularly need, but at a bargain price, don't be afraid to take up their offer. With a lot of knowledge and a little luck, you can often re-sell items for a premium this way.

Trading with other players
When Trading, other players will usually offer you better prices than vendors both when you are buying and selling goods. This means you can often save a lot of money by trading with a fellow player compared to dealing with vendors. This is not always the case with rare, or high demand items. Sometimes, (usually inexperienced) players will attempt to sell these items for far more than what they can be bought for from other players or vendors. It pays to shop around.

On the downside, trading can be quite a hassle. Depending on the rarity of the item that you want to buy/sell, it may take quite some time of advertising and price negotiating until you've found somebody who is willing to buy/sell at a price that you deem reasonable.


 * Warning: "Spamming adverts in chat, especially the public channel instead of the designated trade channel, is not only annoying for fellow players, but also a violation of the Rules of Conduct, and may result in an account mark.


 * Warning: While trading with other players, watch out for scammers! Also, yourself refrain from any behaviour that might be considered scamming, as scamming is also a violation of the Rules of Conduct, and may result in an account mark or ban.

Collecting
Most weapons and armor offered by collectors are very cheap if you compare the value of the collectable drops stats against the price of an equal item bought from a fellow player or by crafting the item yourself. This means, you can save a lot of money if you use a "cheap" collector reward item instead of crafting or buying an equal one.

You can also make some money by selling collector reward items to fellow players because of this. Even if someone pays 100 gold each for five collector reward items, the reward they receive for the 500 gold spent is comparable to a crafted or unique item costing many thousands of gold. It pays to learn which collector reward items are most desired and what the market price for them is.
 * Warning: Trading a collector reward item hiding its nature is considered scamming, because collector reward items cannot be salvaged. Scamming is a violation of the Rules of Conduct, and may result in an account mark or ban.

Crafting
Many weapons offered by weaponsmithes are equal or almost equal, but quite a bit cheaper than high-end green weapons.

Also, artisans, material crafters, provide a method of adding value (literally) to materials. Very often you can sell a rare crafting material for a higher price than the sum of values of the input materials plus the fee for the artisan. Be sure to consider the alternative however, as it costs gold to salvage items, you may sometimes be better off selling the item to a merchant directly. You might be spending more money creating rare crafting materials than you make in the long run.

Running
Running, i.e. leading a group to a destination, is a job that requires some experience, but it can be a good source of income.

For further details and tips, see: Run

Begging
Because of the fact that there are so many easy legitimate ways of making money (with only some of them mentioned above), begging is considered the lowest form of funding. It is a nuisance to other players, and demonstrates a lack of respect and initative. It should be avoided and only be used as the very last resort for people who are missing just a few gold. Do yourself a favor and simply dispatch a handful of mobs to collect some loot. Not only is it less annoying for others, but will probably be quicker than begging the same amount of gold. You will be ridiculed less also.

General Tips

 * Because loot is divided equally among your party, if your intent is to make money, adventure with as few party members/henchmen as possible to increase your earnings.


 * Other Players in Guild Wars pay high sums of money for Green items because they are unique and a symbol of status. It pays to keep an eye out on the trade-chat to see just which items are popular, and which ones aren't; you may spend some time chasing after items that other people are just not interested in.


 * Also it is worth considering what people may pay for bulk lots of crafting materials, especially if the price is lower than the cost of 10 at a Material Trader, but higher than the price you recieve from selling 10 to a Material Trader. For example 400 iron ingots are requred for a full set of 15k Kurzick Warrior Armor, it is time consuming to gather that amount of material and expensive to buy it from the trader. As a general principle, you will have little success charging a player the same price per item for a bulk lot as what you would charge for a few pieces of crafting material.  If you are in need of a great deal of crafting material, negotiate a bulk price that is still above the merchant price, but several gold below what you would pay individually.


 * Use a build for Farming. On this wiki, there are several builds. You can find them here.


 * Consider doing the missions and quests on your own rather then getting runners for them. You will earn a lot more money and experience.


 * If you are considering running as a way of earning gold make sure you have a full party or semi-full party, therefore you are earning money from multiple people from just one run. However there are certain rules of etiquette to be followed if you are a runner, see Run for details.


 * Don't spend too much money on your armor or weapons, until you have a reliable way of making money. When you need new armor (which should be very rarely), use collector rewards.  When you decide to purchase specialized armor, upgrade the most essential parts first.  For example, upgrade chest and legs in Ascalon, the rest in Yak's Bend and so on.


 * Before spending all the money you have on a gold max-damage weapon with interesting mods, consider using a crafted/collector-weapon with the same or similar stats. It won't increase your personal bling-factor, but it will have the same functionality and won't drain your wallet.


 * Be friendly to people, they might give you something for a lower price, or help you out some time. Don't spam the chat with something like "free please." Everybody needs something, you aren't special in that regard.  When selling items, even if it is an expensive perfect, or unique Green; don't use aggressive language like "NO NOOBS" or "Serious Buyers Only."  This gives off an impression of inflexibility and puts people off.  If you are selling a rare weapon, many people will want to see it who have no intention of making a purchase.  That is a fact of selling.


 * Make as much room in your inventory as you can. If you fill your inventory, each item you leave on the ground is one less item you can sell to a merchant later. Salvaging items may help mitigate this but requires space for the resulting crafting materials. If you are running low on space, prioritize by looting items that stack (like collector items, valuable crafting/salvage material) and high value items.


 * Identify items before vending them. An unidentified item will have a lower value to a merchant than an identified one, and more often then not, the extra value will make up for the cost of the identification kit, especially if identified as Precious. Gold and purple items have a high intrinsic value, shown especially after identifying (and will also very often have mods that your fellow players might be interested in buying); blue weapons are often overlooked but have the highest chance to be either precious (sell to merchant) or highly salvageable(salvage, sell for parts), both of which are mods that'll put money in your pocket. You will be making a profit if the average price increase is more than the cost of identifying the item.


 * Note however, that there are other players out there who will gladly pay handsomely for undidentified gold items to increase their Wisdom Rank, and yet other players might be very interested in buying unidentified pieces of gold monster-armor for the sake of unlocking runes. It pays to be flexible in considering your options.