LOTRO Guides - Quick Guide to Making Gold : LOTRO - Guides

The quick guide to making gold at a low level.

Here are some basics to making gold in Middle Earth. If many of you are from WOW like I am, it’s similar but with enough difference to make mention. For one thing we don’t have an auction house add-on in LOTRO to help, and the other thing is that you really have to study the auction house for deals to re-sell. It takes awhile to get the finer points down. I’ll mention more on that in another post.

So instead of paying a gold spammer (and I hate those guys) good money and the threat of getting your account closed down here’s some simple rules to making your fortune in LOTRO.

Getting started

1. Create a main character
2. Create 3 alts
3. Get three different and useful professions in crafting
4. Buy a house (lvl 15)

Step 1
When you create your main character I like to get them out of the intro phase, and then create 3 more alts (which should take roughly 1 hour each character) to maintain my main character but also to start making some serious gold. You can do this after your main gets to say lvl 15 or close. Roughly an afternoon or evenings work.

My own preference is to have my main be a forester. It’s diverse enough to get started. So my vocations are forestry (tanning hides, and treating wood), woodworking (bows, javelin, and spear making, plus musical instruments, AND housing decorations), and farming.

First thing I do is simply farm hides and lumber. You can cure or treat, whatever happens to be selling well at the auction house. After about 2 hours of farming you should be able to pick up close to 400-500 silver or more. This is your base investment.

Step 2
Take your other alt now and level them up enough to start a profession. My first choice is scholar, but use your own variation. These are just what have worked well for me. Now, I’ll take my farmer and lvl their profession up enough so I can start growing iris plants. This is journeyman level, and you’ll want to have mastery. This only takes a total time of about 2 hours and about 200 silver. Once I’m there I start planting iris, and keep the criticals which are iris roots. A hint on farming to make it go faster: plant 5 fields at a time, 3 one direction then turn 180 degrees and plant 2. When you harvest just go from one field to the other and you don’t have the wait time to harvest between fields.

Step 3
Now take your alt who’s a scholar and lvl them to journeyman (don’t worry about mastery). You only need to go the 280 points to get there and use some of your other silver now to buy third age relics and aged scraps of text at the AH. If you run short just take your main and go out and farm more wood and hides. Once you have your scholar to 2nd tier buy the grey dye recipe at the AH.

Step 4
Take your farmer now and grow iris like there’s no tomorrow. If you do it right (and use the soil of Rivendell) you should have about 15 iris roots after an hour of boring farming. I don’t waste any time sorting seeds, etc, after I’ve gained journeyman mastery, I just sell the rest as vendor trash.

Now take your roots to the scholar and create grey dye. Grey dye in the AH has been selling for about 100 silver per vial. I usually group them in stacks of 2 and sell for 189 silver each stack. Put three stacks out on a Thursday night and click the 2 day auction option. Note if there are lots on there don’t bother now. But grey dye is a boring thing to make and there are not many people who do it.

By Saturday morning you should have close to 600 silver. Now put 3 more stacks out there and so on. By Monday you should have well over your first gold. If you don’t than just put them out there again until you do. ALWAYS go with the 2 day auction option.

The dye making enterprise will now be your foundation for gold instead of farming hides, etc.

Level your alts

Now while all this is going on at the AH you should be busy creating and leveling your other 2 alts enough to get out of the intro stage so you can gain a profession. Don’t worry about a profession for alt number 3 as they won’t need one. I use the 3rd alt later on as a auction house runner to keep my main characters bags empty and so they don’t get bogged down checking and running back and forth to the AH.

Basically you should have three characters that cover all the major professions. Weaponsmith, woodworker, metalsmith, scholar, farmer, and cook. These will become good money makers in the future, and you have the benefit of not spending silver keeping up gear and food. Food is important as it can add criticals to your character. One other thing I like to do is to start developing my alts when my main character gets to max on their XP and they don’t get full credit anymore. Let them rest for awhile.

Now start working your woodworker. Same thing, get to journeyman lvl and don’t worry about mastery. You can go to the housing vendor in Bree and Ered Luin and the Shire and buy recipes for bookcases for a few silver. At journeyman level you can make small bentwood bookcase and also the red scholars bookcase. These are selling for about 100 to 250 silver at the AH at present. Make up around 5 of each and put them out there 2 at a time. People with homes usually by 2 at a time or more. But never dump everything at the AH. It will move slow and people don’t tend to buy if they think there’s a lot of them and they can go back anytime and grab one, as opposed to the appearance that there are only a few so they should grab them now before they’re gone. The shelves themselves post for about 155 silver and they tend to sell well. You also want to level your cook up so you can buy the breakfast table recipe and start making those. Breakfast tables sell anywhere from 195 silver to 355 silver at the AH. Don’t be alarmed if you see some going for 55 silver. Just hold yours until there’s none out there or if there are just a couple that are going for 150 silver, undercut pricing by about 25 silver. Or keep your price high if there’s only one or two in the AH. They’ll sell.

At this point you have three good money making professions at a low level (you can be as low as 15 or lower to do this). Dye, bookcases, and breakfast tables. Your average sell will be close to 200 silver per item, so you do the math. It doesn’t take but a couple of days to have 2-4 gold. You can do this in about 4 days of casual playing.

Buy a house

Now we get into the serious money making. I hear a lot of people ask what the benefit of having a house is for other than ego. The top answer is storage, but for me the best use is to have a central drop point that I can put all of the items I want sold at the AH where my AH alt can port back and forth to pick up. This saves a lot of time and money mailing one item at a time. Basic houses are cheap and go for roughly 1 gold to buy and about 55 silver upkeep a week. Well worth the investment and you get a cool place to hang out, and you can decorate it yourself instead of buying bookcases and breakfast tables at the AH!

Now on to fortune…fame is up to you

Put your basic strategy of woodworking and dye making on hold for now. Periodically use them when they’re selling at the AH or when there’s few or none out there.

Here’s a real secret to getting a lot of gold fast at a lower level without much work. In one word, Shards. Once your main gets to level 21 you’ve got a good chance at making a nice tidy supply of gold. Best case is to bring your other two alts to the same level depending on how much you want to make, but try and level at least 1 other alt to 21-24.

There are two good sources of shard income at this level. Sapphire and Ruby. Sapphirs have been more plentiful since the newer quests in the Barrows, but still sell good enough. There are mobs that drop these regularly and you can find a map with locations easily by a google search. So take a day and explore around and see where the hot spots are. Most of the mobs that drop shards are random, so they can show up 4 times in an hour or 4 times in a day. I have a couple of favorite spots that I’ll keep secret. But here’s the trick. Camp. When you are through playing for the night, log your main and 1-2 alts at the drop locations. When you log on the next day with your main, there should be a mob just waiting for you with a nice ruby or sapphire shard to loot. During game play or even periodically through the day if you’ve the time, log in to your alts and check. If there’s a mob, kill it, loot it, and log out. Your average price at the AH for sapphire or ruby shards are anywhere from 150 to 350 silver each. So not bad for a few seconds work.

As your main and alts level you can camp them at adamant and beryl drops the same way. It’s up to you. Just use your AH alt to periodically check what’s selling.

Some last hints to making gold

Mine silver ore. Takes about an hour to mine 50 in the eastern Bree Fields. Don’t smelt it, just sell the ore at AH. I like to sell mine for roughly 389 silver for stacks of 25, and it goes fast since silver seems to be rarer and it’s needed to level in the jeweler profession. Once you get to level 27-28 the mobs there don’t even bother you, so it goes quicker.

For shard drops use a hunter. You get the tracking skill at a low level and it helps substantially to find that mob, especially if they’re roaming.

Keep your stacks smaller. Stacks of 50 that go for 500 silver move slower than stacks of 25 at 249 silver.

Level up your professions. When you get to the higher profession tiers, and especially when you gain reputation with the profession guilds you get some nice recipes. The products go for good gold or more at the AH.

You can still focus on leveling (not your profession, your actual character level) your main character and let your alts stay lower level if you want. The basic strategy here takes about a week and you’ve got a gold making factory. I spend the first 4 days building the strategy I’ve outlined above, and then work on getting my first 4-5 gold. Once that’s done I just focus on having fun and gaming, but I’ve a gold making resource I can rely on to make me some money with only a minimum of effort. If making gold is your trip right now, you can use this strategy and bank approximately 20 gold with hardly any effort in about 2-3 weeks. If having a base resource of gold making but focusing on your character advancement is more important, then you can do that as well, and be content with about 10 gold. But you’ve done this well before you’ve reached the higher levels. Nothing like not having to scrap together that 4 gold when you want to buy a horse.

Once you get to the higher levels with your main, gold comes a lot easier, so this strategy is especially for the lower levels just starting, but can be used successfully with any level if you’re constantly running short of funds.

well the tip to mine silver ore is about the only really good advice

but dont sweat it you dont need money much anymore you can do fine with quest reward gear and jewellry and weapons.......

the other stuff well you might find yourself competing with high levels come to low town to farm ore/hides and being able to ride node to node they will beat you, being able to one shot kill any mob, they will probably get much more hides as well

come dec 1 you won't need a house to transfer items so that's a savings

note you really won't make money and be a crafter at the same time IF you actually have to use your mats sure you can raise the "non-productive" prospecting and forestry and still earn money selling ingots and treated wood but you wont have the mats anymore for the harder professions like woodworking, armour making, weapons making...

oh, come dec 1 most wont need to buy a mount anymore so the main thing most saved up for will be gone too so all you really need is travel and repair money

I have supreme mastered all 10 professions (with 5 more SM skills duplicated) and am kindred with all 7 crafting guilds but only got 3 of my 60's kindred in Loth for the recipes...

This is the hard way to make money i must say.

Best way is to use mmoviper, just get a lvl 20+ char and find a good patrol path in a quiet area. The best mobs to kill would be humanoids(Any mob what has human features). The reason for this is they drop better look and always drop silver coins.

You can also use mmoviper to grind out virtues at the same time.

Fast and easy^

NIce little guide amondun. Moving this to confirmed and 750 to you.