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With the patch 2.0, a lot of the older tricks to have easy gold at the start of the game has been heavily nerfed (painting trick) with the insane rise in equipment and skill book pricing in order to emphasize more on trading instead of just stealing to victory.
While there are a lot of complaints about how this needs to be fixed, the patch actually made it even easier to have tons of gold as long as the player explore every possible gold option in the game.
As I am writing this, my new characters so far are about to exit Fort Joy after exploring all the different routes to gain all the items and gold and have about 3k gold in coins with over 3k more in recyclable items and nearly every mandatory skill learned for every characters.
In this tips and tricks, I will list majority of the trick I am using in order to have insane amount of gold, to the point they might as well be inifinite if you AFK with the game active.
I will not talk about the painting trick since everyone talks about it already.===
Bartering and AttitudeWith the recent patch, Bartering is now extremely important because of the Overcharge/Discount power. Red Prince starts off with 1 in Barter and you might want to boost it so that he can buy and sell everything for the game for maximum value.
The game also demands the player to actually use the Attitude system now before trading with all the NPCs in the game. An NPC you're trading with at 100 attitude will offer the OC/DC around level 2 Barter, greatly dropping all the equipment and skillbook price down. NPCs where you have to purchase multiple copies of a skillbook or craft material are best pushed to 100 attitude before you do any trading.
How does the attitude system work? The current game will boost the NPC attitude if you shower them with gifts and it will drop if they catch you stealing or hitting them. A few NPCs will have attitude boost from quests but the amount of them around is very minimal and most of them aren't even merchant-type NPCs so they're best ignored.
To shower the NPCs with gift, simply offer them X amount of gold in item or coins and the attitude point depending on how much you're giving them, up to 100 points. Every NPC has a certain ratio of Gold/AP. Majority of the merchants in Fort joy will gain 1 AP per 2 or 3 gold, with some exception at 1 AP per gold. To figure this out, try to give the NPC 12 golds at first as that is divisible by 1 2 3 and 4 and you can then figure out the exact Gold/AP ratio.
Also, when talking to the House of War lizard guy in the Elf cave who sells all the warrior stuffs, use Ifan "Soldier" tag to gets easy permanent discount.===
Sparkler CardBy Lester tent is a dying NPC who will die after a certain amount of time anyway. (Don't forget to buy or find a mug of beer to give to Lester for EXP and have Redprince do the talking so he can shout at her as well for extra EXP)
After he dies, grab the Sparkler, go back to the Entrance to Fort Joy, climb the ladder to the left (Near the crying mother) and go to a gank of 3 playing cards. Join the game, show them the Sparkler and mention how Sparkler always win and that's the rule to get some easy gold.
Also kill all 3 of them anyway for more gold and exp because they are all potential enemies.
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Nice Mother MargoMargo, who is by the beach, just want to talk about her son. Every character can take turn talking to her and always allow her to talk about her Son. Doing this 4x will give you 4x Recovery Scroll which is about 88 extra gold in the early game for investment into the crafting method.
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Crafting
With the rise in equipment prices, Crafting is very important now if you want to be rich. Here are the following NPCs you will want to befriend at Fort Joy
Nebora - The merchant NPC near the gate to Fort Joy. She sells Empty Canister, Flask and potion bottle
Maol - The earth spell book NPC. He sells Empty Canister and Nail. He also gives you a gem if you pick the right dialogue options.
Lester - The doctor NPC who sells potion material near the entrance to the Elven cave.
Here are the stuffs you want to craft
Potion of Con- Empty Potion + the brown twig-like herb Farhangite.
Potion of Elemental Resist - Empty Potion + Any of the mushroom
Minor Healing Potion - Empty Potion + Penny Bun mushroom (picked from around the place)
Magic Armor Potion - Empty Potion + Whisperwood
Healing Elixir - Minor HEaling Potion + Yarrow Flower (picked from around the place)
Nail Grenade - Empty Grenade + Nail
Chemical Canister - Empty Canister + Intestine (picked from corpses and dead animal)
Razzle Dazzle - Empty Canister + Jellyroom
Poison Flask - Empty Flask + Ooze Barrel (just pick one up and you can keep using it for crafting)
Branches - Log (picked from random crate) + Knife (any knife weapon)
Makeshift Staff - Brancher + Any shell
All of them will give you a 4-13 gold profit per crafting or higher based on the attitude and barter level.
The store restock every hour or when you level up. The earlier you do this, the more you generate later especially when you start to recycle them with the next tip.
The makeshift staff is a special case and they fetch really nice price for something you randomly pick up from the map.
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Boost your wits and get good weapons before fighting MagistrateNot because you want to have an easier time winning, but because you want to kill them before they act. Magistrate love to carry grenades or unique arrows around with them. By killing them before the get to use those, they will have a high chance of dropping them for you to loot. These grenades sells for extremely good value and can be recycled.
With some of the unique weapon like Houndmaster crossbow and some good knife, your archer + default Ifan can kill or at least knockdown with the KD arrow before they even act.
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Know which NPC will die to recycle trade goodsCertain merchants NPC in Fort joy will fight you because of the quest. By knowing which NPC will die, you will be able to recycle goods from trading.
-Gold from trading will not be fully returned from killing them.-All Consumable goods and stuffs you sold to them will be looted from their dead body.With the crafted stuffs from the last trick, you can just sell EVERYTHING to an NPC that is about to die, get all their expensive stuffs, and kill them as part of the quest chain to get all it all back to trade to someone else.
For example,
The Teleporter quest. Gawin will run away after you help him. However, if you do this quest with someone else also having teleport (Magister Bed room behind the Necromancer tent), you can bring them along to the teleportation spot and have him pre-cast teleport on Gawin who was taunting you and teleport him back to kill. If you do it this way, the quest will be marked as completed (since you already helped him and he will die somewhere else anyway) and you can also kill him for all the loots you sold to him while also receiving his unique robe for Leste to use.
You can then do this with the
later.
This is why it's so important to carry around 2000-3000 gold worth of Bomb and scrolls. Reusing them on 4-5 different NPCs is almost the same as saving 8000+ gold to buy different skill books and gears before you finally permanently sell them to someone you won't kill outside of Fort Joy.
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ThieveryThe last patch made Thievery even more mandatory especially with "The Pawn" now requiring 1 Scoundrel to be taken for anyone who wants to waste no AP with repositioning.
When stealing, you can only take up to X amount of gold in value from the NPC. This value is based on your character level and your thievery level above the requirement. Every base character levels add 60 gold to the cap and every extra thievery level add about 40-50 gold.
Let's say you are stealing from someone with a requirement of 1 in Fort joy. Your character is level 5 and you have level 4 Thievery from stat+gear. You can steal 5*60 + (4-1*50) or up to 450 gold in item/coin. Skillbook will show their base price instead of the inflated +150% trade price and you can easily steal everything that needs to be learned at around level 5.
You can only steal from the same NPC once per character. Save your stealing for later levels when you can really get all the expensive loots instead of going for early level 2 or 3 extra golds.
If you can find some early game Thievery rings, get them. At fort Joy, you only need level 1 thievery to start stealing with every character around level 5 for great efficiency where you can steal all the basic skill book (and all the advance book if you have 2 rings like I do). If they suffer from the "Need level 2 because not enough finesse", use a bedroll for the "rested" stat which will boost their fineese by 2 temporary, allowing you to steal anyway with only level 1 thievery.
If you already teaches every character 1 Scoundrel anyway, try to get everyone the "Walk-in-Shadow" sold by Hilde in Griff's Kitchen. With this, anyone can steal with minimal set-up since all you have to do is have someone talk to the NPC to keep them busy then stealth-and-steal with the other characters before running away.
NPCs won't notice they have been robbed until you finish the conversation so just steal and run and leave the best talker around to persuade everyone that you're clean. Lizards are the masterrace especially with the +1 to Persuasion so with a little Fineese on custom character or just some Str on the Red prince, no one will ever doubt you and let you run free.
Just use these tricks and you won't complain about gold issues ever again. Well, maybe about the inflation.