View Full Version : maximizing your cash flow
This is a post of my own idea, to help other users maximize their cash flow within the game.
during acts 1 and 2(pre-keep):
loot everything you can get ahold of. Weapons and armor are more valuable than gems and such. But there are gems that are worth thousands of gold, IE: Rogue stone. crafting armor and weapons from the ore you find/pick up is good too...Some weapons and armor will show that they sell for like 10,000 gold**note that these values will increase once you get your keep, and only in your keep(well maybe like one or two other merchants, but i can't remember where)
Act2(after you get the keep):
you have your keep now and a gold coffer for the keep. you cannot withdrawl these funds yet. but know that you don't want to if you want to upgrade your fort. If you don't have enough funds in the coffer, the money will come out of your pocket. Start selling off those weapons and armor you had been saving from earlier( values of them should increase beyond 10000 to their true value or will cap at 20000 gold) you can choose to sell these, or wait until later, but know that in act3 the value hasn't gone up from what i've seen so far. Sell all the extra loot, stones, spells, misc junk you've picked up... it helps to have a character with you that has a high lore... so you aren't wasting money on identifying items, 100g a pop gets expensive on high loot areas...
Act3:
your knighted, and coffers increase, you can now withdrawl coffer funds into your personal pocket, if you want. with this in mind, the better your roads and security on patrols around the keep and surrounding areas, the more money will accumulate in your coffers, taxes and tithes also bring in money for the coffers... When you quest for the belt of ironfist, you will bring in mad amounts of magical items, loot, and stashes of gold. Kill the dragon and you can have the loot returned to the keep by the greycloaks and peasents, this will give you a nice 170,000+ gold into your coffers... sell off all the extra loot, armor, weapons, stones, spells, etc to your merchants.. you'll get alot of magical items, ingots and gems from the dragon stash too, so have fun at crafting =D
also it helps if you managed to have gotten your copy of Neverwinter Nights 2 on pre-order.. you would have gotten access to an update from bioware that gives you a custom history feat, "Merchant's Friend" having this feat gives you a 10% discount on items from honest merchants, also gives you access to a special stash of magical items sold only to you from the merchant in the Blacklake district, near the academy...lots of goodies in there...
anyone else have ideas, suggestions, or guides for money making feel free to post. =)
stickied this one, nice post :)
thanks cal1s. :)
also wanted to add something.. Merchants only have a certain amount of gold that they can buy stuff off you with. So in the event that you have more to sell and it tells you that the merchant doesn't have enough money to buy the items off you, just go to another merchant. Money stocks do resupply after time for these merchants, so don't be discouraged..
will work on making a list by act/city of merchant locations you can go to.
The merchants for your Keep are Deekin and the Drow female that you rescue by the Fire Giants.....
I thought I would add to this thread as well. For anyone that has not played NWN1, Keep all bags of holding that you can. These reduce weight, let you carry much more, there for sell more items. You can buy them or get them as loot. They are a fantastic. You will have to unload less often and have more items to sell. I'm greedy so I loot everything! Also. I keep a bag of holding for my uber finds to dress up my henchmen. Mainly the ones not with me at the time.
Regards
Liso
yeah, only that there's only one "bag of holding" in the game so far, and it's located inside a locked chest in the keep. but there are plenty of merchants that sell the "magic bags" that are -80% weight redux and will serve the purposes just as well. :)
yeah, only that there's only one "bag of holding" in the game so far, and it's located inside a locked chest in the keep. but there are plenty of merchants that sell the "magic bags" that are -80% weight redux and will serve the purposes just as well. :)
Oops! Thanks for clearing that up. I meant magic bags hehe.
It'd be nice if you could also sell some of your party members into slavery, heh. Say, Casavir, Elanee and Neeshka :D
I don't like the paying limit merchants have (5 or 10 or 15000 per a piece of something)
It'd be nice if you could also sell some of your party members into slavery, heh. Say, Casavir, Elanee and Neeshka :D
Casavir although a real snoozer is good for melee, Neeshka is to handy if you have no rogue skills. Elanee can get sold for 1 copper! lol Qara can be sold to. Matter of fact. I'd pay to get rid of her :p Everyone else I can deal with. Qara stays in the Inn. I never even level her up. haha I really can't stand her
Casavir although a real snoozer is good for melee, Neeshka is to handy if you have no rogue skills. Elanee can get sold for 1 copper! lol Qara can be sold to. Matter of fact. I'd pay to get rid of her :p Everyone else I can deal with. Qara stays in the Inn. I never even level her up. haha I really can't stand her
Hey, I say I've killed 80% of the enemies in the game thanx to Quara's spells! She irritated me at first, but when I figured how efficient her spells were, she got in my party and was never ever left behind. Guess Sand would be a replacement if you decided to sell her, but I just don't like having to know exactly what spells I will be needing and that memorising stuff.
Lol. About Elanee, we got a deal. For a copper, I'd even make a home delivery of her.
Hey, I say I've killed 80% of the enemies in the game thanx to Quara's spells! She irritated me at first, but when I figured how efficient her spells were, she got in my party and was never ever left behind. Guess Sand would be a replacement if you decided to sell her, but I just don't like having to know exactly what spells I will be needing and that memorising stuff.
Lol. About Elanee, we got a deal. For a copper, I'd even make a home delivery of her.
Gee, you are nice. :p I agree Qara is very useful, I however hate how she almost always uses AOE spells and blows up chests and everything else in sight! She is very powerful, however, and even as a Paladin, I have always agreed with her. :D I am barely able to be called Lawful Good. I even released the Imps. :p I would not sell any of my companions unless I could trade them in for different ones though. I'd sell Bishop though just because he is a coward who runs off or betrays you. Oh...also because I know how much you like him. :D Lol, just kidding. But all of the companions have their uses...
wasnt this about cash flow???
Could anyone tell me how to get as much as money possible from the castle?
wasnt this about cash flow???
Could anyone tell me how to get as much as money possible from the castle?
Raise your road security as high as possible - the higher your road security, the more merchants you attract and the more merchants means more cash for your keep. That means doing as many of the road upgrades as you can as quickly as you can.
That's the short answer. :D
Here's the long version: ;)
The cash you get from Nasher at start is NOT going to be enough to do everything you need to do, and your initial revenue from merchants is only 2500 per time period so you are going to have to find ways to supplement that cash.
Here's what I recommend doing in rough order:
Talk to veedle and build the merchant shop (10000)
Exit keep and recruit Deekin, Orlen and Katriona
Return to keep and build smithy (10000 - 2500 from cash flow)
Talk to Kana inside keep and do the following:
- assign Katriona to Training - keep her there until you hit 25% time - i did and my men hit best of the best in training at 25% and I got the option to build the Captains company right after that.
- assign the Greycloaks to train and garrison the keep
- set farmers tithes to zero (low taxes encourages growth)
- set merchant tithes to zero (low taxes encourages growth)
Exit the keep
Recruit Edario, Jacoby, Pentin, Calindra
Return to keep, talk to Veedle and do the first road upgrade (10000 - 2700 approx)
Go to Courtyard
Talk to Jacoby - do the first weapon upgrade (5000 gp)
Talk to Edario - do the first armor upgrade (3500 gp)
(If they tell you they don't have enough ore - go outside to the farm area outside the keep and see if Calindra and Pentin are there - if not they will show up in another turn or two, if they are there, talk to Calindra and tell her you found some ore) NOW go back and talk to Jacoby and Edario
Once you have established a supply of ore for Edario and Jacoby, go ahead and alternate talkng to them and Veedle and complete all but the last armor upgrades (can't do the last one until act 3 anyway) and complete the first 3 road upgrades and the first 3 fortification upgrades. I alternated them but you can do the roads first if you prefer. Those six upgrades plus the smithy and merchant shop will take you to 17% complete. Save the 3 interior renovations until last - those last 3 (Library, West Wing and Captain Suite) will take you to 25% and freeze the construction process until you complete the Rites of Purification at the Ruins of Arvahn.
Somewhere in the midst of all this your supply of cash from Nasher is going to run out , and the small amount of revenue you get from the keep won't be enough (you'll probably take in something like 32,000 by the time you finish everything above and hit 25%). So where is the extra cash going to come from? You'll probably need to start dipping into your own funds and selling off those magical items you've been hoarding. Sell the spare weapons to Jacoby and spare armor to Edario. They offer the best prices by far! The other alternative is CRAFTING! Sometime after you do the last road upgrade, ask Jacoby about his inventory. The guy is STOCKED. He's got 50 planks of Duskwood and 25 longbow molds. BUY THEM! Take them back to the Sunken flagon and make 25 duskwood longbows! Now return to the keep and sell them. You can buid them earlier if you wish, but its a pain lugging all of those bows around. If you wait until after you do the three road upgrades, you get the best price on the bows - I raked in almost 175,000 gp just on those bows! I did the same again with his 25 planks of Sheraden wood and generate another 35,000 gp. Be careful though, as doing all this will drain Jacoby of his merchant cash. Buying some of his stock will increase what you are able to sell him but not by a lot.
When I started the keep, I had about 150,000 gp in personal funds, Nasher's 70,000 and a huge hoard of magical items. When I hit the 25% time freeze I had 180,000 gp in personal funds, had done everything except the last road road upgrade (repairing the bridges and adding watch towers) and the interior towers. And still had a good supply of magical items to sell. My cash flow was still a paltry 3900 gp per time segment but it was definitely on the rise.
From this point on, you will need to focus on the following:
A) Increasing road security and maintaining it when it reaches high/very high;
B) Increasing land security and maintaining it;
C) Increasing your Greycloak unit strength while maintaing high levels of civility, morale and training;
D) Finding more ore;
E) Generating more cash to pay for everything
To help with (A) Finish the last road upgrade as quickly as possible (it's not cheap either - it's a whopping 100,000 gp) and start on the towers. To generate more cash, resort to further crafting. Jacoby has a large supply of adamantine, mithral, and darksteel ore - 25 ingots each - Consider buying some of his full plate molds and his entire supply of ingots and craft some armor. If you need more molds, go talk to Fibba in the docks district. Like Jacoby, she has 25 of every mold available. Craft what you want for your own characters, and then sell off your old armor to Edario. Depending on your PC, you should have some surplus adamantine and/or mithral. Don't let it go to waste. Don't bother crafting weapons out of mithral to sell - they don't generate enough cash. Craft mithral armor for sale instead. You might even consider doing some minor +1 or +2 enchantments on it to increase it's value - you should have more than enough obsidian for the +1 and diamonds for the +2 are easy enough to come by. Save the star sapphires (+4) and blue diamonds (+5) for yourself and your prime npc's. Use the emeralds (+3) for npcs you aren't sure about as well or craft +3 items for sale.
Assigning the three extra sergeants you will find/recruit will help with items (A), (B) and (C) above. Note: Jalboun of the Twin blades should ONLY be assigned to special missions - he does it especially well and he has a negative impact on recruiting, training and land/road security if assigned to those. Light of Heavens on the other hand can be put ANYWHERE - she is simply the best of the best when it comes to sergeants. She outrecruits anyone else, provides the biggest boost in road and land security when she patrols and she trains troops faster than anyone. You can ONLY assign her ONE role though, and imo it's not cut and dried that she HAS to be assigned to recruiting. Bevil is almost as good a recruiter as she is. Once you assign Bevil, his assignment is FIXED. It can't be changed.
One last thing, increasing the number of Greycloaks can actually decrease your cash flow. (It does cost money to house and feed them.) If you get the roads improved and get those extra troops patrolling it should work out positively. Once you get a substantially large enough force, you can ignore Kana's arguments about splitting the patrols between land and roads. :)
Hope that helps out a little.
That doesnt help a little, that helps A LOT!!!!!! Thank you very much kgambit. I wish I could help you as much too.
Very nice guide there kgambit!
I'll be using it when I get to that part of my new game :p
Thank you. :D
The "cash flow section" needs some tweaking. That's the next thing on the "to do" list. lol
haha ..
take a break mate :)
dont want you to get burned out too quickly ;)
cheers,
cal1s
Thank you. :D
The "cash flow section" needs some tweaking. That's the next thing on the "to do" list. lol
haha ..
take a break mate :)
dont want you to get burned out too quickly ;)
cheers,
cal1s
:D
no worries ... I'm actually going to get back to PLAYING this game again for a while.
Nice guide kgambit! I had plenty of cash the first time through also, but I didn't realy know what to spend it on first. I wasn't sure when this "attack" would come, so I did all the defenses first. Economicaly, it's better to do the shops and the like first. Make sure they know to look for and remember all the ore deposits they can find. That's something I didn't realize until too late.
Nice guide kgambit! I had plenty of cash the first time through also, but I didn't realy know what to spend it on first. I wasn't sure when this "attack" would come, so I did all the defenses first. Economicaly, it's better to do the shops and the like first. Make sure they know to look for and remember all the ore deposits they can find. That's something I didn't realize until too late.
Good tips, Lurchman. I'm hoping I can get some more info about the ore deposits themselves too. It appears the ore deposits may be typed, which explains why you get a mix of ingots from Calindra where you tell her about the ore. (either that or the ingots you get are simply hard scripted no matter how many deposits you find)
I'm also trying to determine how many ore deposits are required to do each weapon and armor upgrade. I've read various suggestions (one deposit for one upgrade or two ores for armor and one for weapons) but so far none of them fit exactly. From my run-thru, I found 8 ore deposits before the keep, got 2 ingots each of darksteel, cold iron, mithral and alchemical silver from Calindra and 250 gp each and was able to do three upgrades for weapons and three for armor. Also complicating things is the fact that the first two armor upgrades are actually LEATHER armors, while the third is scale and the fourth is chain. So do you actually need to have found ANY ore for the first two armor upgrades? Probably but it does seem a little wierd. Very confusing.
*sigh*
Something not explicitly mentioned so far is the crafting of essences.
In my second play through, I saved just about every craftable item till I got Sand, gave him the mortar and pestle and had him convert those items to essences.
They are worth a whole lot more than the base items.
I also did some more planning regarding where I sold what.
Having played once, I knew that some merchants could run out of gold, and also knew that some merchants became unavailable at some point in the game.
Thus I spent the time in CH 2 to go to locations that would soon become unavailable and sold stuff there until they were out of money.
The different areas max out at three different levels (5,000 gold; 10,000 gold; and 20,000 gold) so I used three different magic bags to store stuff based on their value.
This way I could easily figure out what to sell to whom.
I had a heck of a lot more gold to use building the keep this time.
Not sure if this has been mentioned before but if you have given Shandra a Magic Bag before Ammon Jerro joined your party, you can store all the magic items in the magic bag on her first. After Ammon Ferro joined your party, you will find that beside the items already in the magic bag, the same items will also appear in Ammon's inventory.
So you will get twice the number of magic items which you can sell later in the game. Tried that twice in OC, works for me both time.
If I could sell Qara and Bishop both for a copper apiece, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I can't stand either of them.
If I could sell Qara and Bishop both for a copper apiece, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I can't stand either of them.
Problem is trying to find a buyer. Maybe Johric would give you a decent price, but boy your paladins would take a MONSTROUS alignment hit for THAT!
Okay, latest tip on maximizing your cash flow:
Don't just disable those traps - RECOVER them! I came out of the gem mines with over 2 dozen traps, and a number of them were expensive, deadly traps. Once I've sold them, I'll edit and post the dollar figure.
I netted about 5000 gp from the gem mines traps - not as much as I thought I would. But that 5000 gp bought me some extra star sapphires later on.
:)
ball lightning
01.31.08, 21:13
I basically sell everything i have which i'm not using, or isn't a potion, book or gem.
Problem is trying to find a buyer. Maybe Johric would give you a decent price, but boy your paladins would take a MONSTROUS alignment hit for THAT!
Okay, latest tip on maximizing your cash flow:
Don't just disable those traps - RECOVER them! I came out of the gem mines with over 2 dozen traps, and a number of them were expensive, deadly traps. Once I've sold them, I'll edit and post the dollar figure.
I netted about 5000 gp from the gem mines traps - not as much as I thought I would. But that 5000 gp bought me some extra star sapphires later on.
:)
How do you do this? I never see that option, to recover the trap that Neeshka disarms.
Sean
How do you do this? I never see that option, to recover the trap that Neeshka disarms.
Sean
Hold down Shift and right-click the trap to get the recover option and pray you don't get a critical failure. :D
Hold down Shift and right-click the trap to get the recover option and pray you don't get a critical failure. :D
At what point? Before she disarms? Since after, there is no indication of anything to right-click anymore.
Thanks
Sean
Of course, before she disarms. :d If she already has started to disarm, you can cancel it and replace it with recover.
Yes, obviously before she attempts to disarm. It can be tricky sometimes to cancel a disarm attempt that's in progress, but it can be done.
Just so we're clear, we're not talking about huge amounts of money gained this way. But there are enough traps that recovering them and selling them can help defray expenses. Crafting stuff and selling it is a MUCH better way to go imo. :D
Well, you can do both actually, and at higher levels Neeshka will evade a lot of the critically failed attempts on disarm trap.:) Sure most traps sell cheap, but she also manages to disarm some of the more expensive ones. :eek::D
laclongquan
09.24.11, 02:37
I dunno, new patch seem to prevent this money bounty. I am a core difficulty
I am just after patrol the Docks. Money always around 3-4k. If I buy all the craft materials I will go broke. My best Appraise is 8: eagle's splendor + heroism + blessed of wauken.
About the only profitable thing I can make is adamantine armor. Darksteel doesnt seem to make even.
Neeshka recover all the traps she scan but at 3gp a minor spike trap
So I want to ask if there's any reliable way to make money in early game.
laclongquan
10.29.11, 06:31
Well then!
After the end of chapter 2 I can make some conclusion about maximizing our gains.
1. Try to save expensive loots until you can get Appraise 9 (base) and upward. With Greater Heroism, Grobnar's Inspire Competence, and a +CHA spell/item/whatever, that skill can be pushed into 20+ and more.
2. Merchant has two number of GP: Merchant GP which is that one's total amount of GP he can pay through all the interaction. And the amount he can pay EACH deal. It's pretty hard to gauge the first number but the second number you know already 5k, 10k, 20k... So save expensive loots for when we can get our own keep, with two smith/merchants who buy/sell at 0 margin, meaning an Adamantine Full Plate got sold at 9100 at that level of Appraise, for example, will be bought at that exact amount. The pair of them, at the end of Act 2, got more than enough GP to fund our rebuilding efforts in the Keep, which is around (410k+55k+48.5k=) 513500GP. Sand is a good merchant while he's there but the Elemental Merchant replace him is horrible: buy low sell high, worst of the Dock.
Generally, sell the loot<5k in worth before the Keep, if at all.
3. Contrary to Financing the Keep section, Adamantine Banded Mail = Full Plate, in price, with half the cost, so make Ad.Banded Mail and sell. And dont enchant those Adamantine suit beyond +2, or it will be wasted.
4. Choose the rarest and highest level wizard spell during level ups, since we can buy some. And buy them from shopkeeper is 70% cheaper than scribe from one and transfer to another to learn.
5. Enchant +2 increase more value than enchant +1, around 100%, so it's probbably economically better to enchant +2 than enchant several +1 to sell stuff.
6. Availble of shops: After The Trial you will lose access to the following area Weeping Willow Inn, Swamp Cave - The Mere of Dead Men, The Graveyard, Bandit Camp, Maiden's Glade, Shandra's Farm, Highcliff, North Coast - Lizardfolk Cave, Skymirror Lake, Bonegnasher Clan, Eyegouger Clan. Act 3 you lose Dock DIstrict access. So shopping and retrieving items stored there should be done before approriate time.
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