Making money before 20

Is there any way to make decent cash before hitting 20? Every thread and guide I read about farming areas and builds are for post 20 characters.

I'm trying to take my time and play through carefully and complete most of the quests and missions. I'm also completely broke all of the time.

I made some cash in pre-searing selling a few white dye drops and the daily Gifts of the Huntsman, but that money is in Pre and I have no way to get it to Post without posting my remaining characters that I want to leave there. Nobody is interesting in trading post gold for pre gold and I'm not sure I would trust such a transaction either.

Are there any relatively early quests in Nightfall or Prophecies that I can use to farm some cash or items? I can't even afford the needed minor runes and insignia for myself let alone any heroes.

My Prophecies characters are around level 9-11 and my one Nightfall character just hit 12. I have 2 accounts if there is any way to use that for farming. I thought there might be some way to farm PvP battles but if they are all randomly matched then that won't work.

I get occasional purple drops and from chests but frankly they have all been completely worthless. Are all of the drops in this game such total crap? At least in other MMORPG's you can get decent drops and make money before you max your level.

I have factions also but haven't started there yet. And EotN Platinum but haven't installed it as I'm not sure I want to lose the Prophecies by adding it to my existing trilogy account.

Any tips or quests or missions to watch for would be helpful.

Well, personally, I would try to just level up to 20. It really shouldn't take all that long, and if you're not level twenty or can't do that, try merching, or buying items low and selling them high.

That's all I really have :P

just level to 20, you will get enough money for max armor and weapons by just playing the storyline(s).

That sucks I shouldn't have to level to 20 just to make a minimal amount of money and I don't want to be in a big hurry to level to 20.

Selling to merchants for 2 or 3 gold doesn't quite cut it, but currently that's the only income I am seeing.

You don't lose Prophecies by installing EoTN either.

No I meant losing the extra copy of Prophecies that came with the EotN platinum that I bought. It's Prophecies and Eye of the North but was cheaper than buying Eye of the North alone. (9.99 shipped at Newegg versus 14.99 shipped for Eye of the North alone)

...and as for merchanting things, I just discovered, which I had not known, that ID'ing whites and quest blues gives them their gold value and they sell for a heck of a lot more. Wow I wasted a ton of money merching whites and junk blue quest drops without ID'ing them. I didn't think there was a point to identifying a white or blue that is already described. Well, its usually worth it though sometimes a wash as it costs 4g to ID something.

You don't need lots of money before level 20. You don't even need that much at level 20. Beat the game once, then start thinking about cash.

if you are a monk, save your starter armor. If you start in proph, save the -50 cesta. Other than that, if you are like most players, your pre-level 20 time spent playing will be infinitesimally small compared to post-level 20, so don't worry about scrounding a few extra coins, because it'll be more difficult and time consuming. Learn the ropes and take a long-range outlook.

This right here. Also on Factions and Nightfall you can get a pretty nice cash income by completing the missions. On prophecies, there's collectors for armor all the way until max AL so you don't even have to buy it. That, plus end-game green weapons you can get for free will give you all the gear you'll need.

And, if you have EOTN, doing those missions can also give you quite a bit of cash.

Salvage EVERYTHING, you can also try to do missions in areas with good selling drops, such as the feather drops from Tengu outside of LA and such.

There are several early prophecies areas that can be farmed by level 13-15 chars. You arent going to rack up 100k or anything but you can still pull together 5-10k a night, even with less then max chars.

Early shiverpeaks comesto mind. North kryta also.



Cronk

Thanks, This is the kind of info I was looking for. Telling me to get to 20 doesn't exactly answer the question of how to make money before 20. As I said, I'm not in a hurry to get to 20. I'm playing several characters simultaneously and that slows things down as well.

PreSearing gold is worth about 2x as much as post gold, there are many people willing to do such a trade. You may need a moderator if you want to trade with someone you met ingame, may want to ask for help on presearing.com forums or just trade with a reputable trader found here. I wouldn't expect any established guru forum member to scam you for a couple plat, especially not the richer guys.

Good money is to be made on the incoming Halloween event - you can farm easy low level areas with practically any profession for collector drops like Charr Carvings or Decayed Orr Emblems. Complete list on wiki: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Halloween_2008
Also salvage all metal weapons you find with basic salvage kit and gather Iron Ingots, which are easily sellable in full stacks of 250.

thats because GW was intended for people to get to 20 quickly so it wasnt spent leveling *cough*runescape*cough* but unfortunately, yes most of the better drops are much later in the game.
my suggestions:

#1 find someone you trust in pre to go post then give your char the gold in post. risky, but if you find a friend who plays this and you trust him, its a great way to keep your chars in post and get your cash.

#2 when i started, it was tough to make $$ at a low level, but i merched everything i didnt use, never attempted to salvage, so basically my income was all inwards and nothing outwards. Until you get to lv 20( which could take a week or two in proph) this will probably be the best way to get cash.

#3 if you "farm" pvp, once you have/find a build that works, save you balthazar faction for zaishin keys. at 5k balth faction, it could take a little for a new pvper, but they sell for 4k per minimum nowadays. one of the easiest profession to not get into trouble with: ele. almost any fire build you use should be decent enough to win a few matches in RA if you get paired with a monk

gl cash hunting, and factions is a good ay to make cash if you know the starter island. i once knew a friend who made 100k doing the all starter quests/missions on the first island, banking the cash then making the char again. time consuming and boring, but its cash.

Well, to be honest, you're not really doing much until you hit level 20.

Umm you wont need any more money than that at that lvl. This isn't like other games, lvling is only learning how to play, its not the point of the game. I can lvl a char to 20 in around 5 hours.

You won't earn much money in Prophecy. If you need money, create a new character in Faction and do all the quests in the tutorial island, include all the secondary quests. When you finish all the quest, trade the trophies for the rune that sells for 100g each.

You can finish all the quests in that island for around 2 hours and you'll be surprised how much gold you have.

Delete the character or create a new one and do it again.

its the easiest way to earn money i think while you are still low level.

Drops get better as you move through the game. When you get to the Shiverpeaks, armors with runes will start to drop. When you get to Kryta, gold weapons will start to drop. The merchant value of the drops will increase as you move through the game, with some items merching for a couple of hundred gold and average items -- even whites -- going for 40-100g. Cash drops get bigger as you go, until you will routinely be seeing drops of 100g+. Salvageable items provide larger amounts of materials as you go, providing dozens of units in some cases. Salvageable items have a better chance of producing rare mats as you go, and some foes will even drop rare mats directly.

So don't judge your potential income based on the lousy drops in Ascalon. Just playing through the storyline will get you more than you think right now.

I just got to Shiverpeaks tonight and I'm finally seeing some improvement, though no runes or any bonus salvagables have dropped yet. Cash drops of 30+ have been a nice change compared to the 10- for most of the game so far.

I think playing to 11 or so in Prophecies on 2 characters and then starting a new character in Nightfall just made it look a LOT worse to me than it would have been had I stuck with 1 character.

It also helps to have finally figured out to ID -everything- before merchanting. I was selling a lot of whites and quest reward blues for 2-10 gold that should have been significantly more.

Dont bother Identifying low level whites. I believe someone calculated that you are loosing money on White IDs below a certain level because you have to calculate the cost of the ID kit.
Wait with IDing the White drops until whites with a base value of about 50g each drop for you and just concentrate on IDing blues, Purples or Golds until then.
Btw, a bonus for when you finally get to areas where golds drop is that you can either ID them and get one point on your wisdom title track per gold item ID, or if you are not interested in farming titles (The wisdom title track is a VERY long farm btw) you can collect the Golds and sell them to players for about 5-7K per 7 unidentified golds. It doesnt matter what level or if the golds are Max damage, common skins no one else wants or not for them. They are going for the above mentioned Wisdom title track and are willing to pay players to help them.