Constantly broke

Been playing for... I don't know, actually, but I am at level 6 as of last night. One thing I have noticed is that money is really hard to come by. It got to the point last night where I had to choose whether I wanted to repair my sword or my armour. Both were broken and cost well over 50 orens to fix up.

Is this just me? I feel I am doing all the side quests I come across, and explore quite a bit but I am constantly broke and just barely scraping by. Some loot sounds from the description like it should fetch a decent price when selling, like rings. "Sells for a large amount or can be disassembled... bla bla"... and then merchants offer 2 orens for it. Is there a specific place where things like that can be sold?

Different merchants will buy stuff for different prices. Try to sell stuff in the major towns, they usually offer more.

Hoard any loot you find and sell it. If you're selling to a blacksmith or armorer you can make some pretty good money that way.

Sell excess crafting and alchemy materials. You get way more than you have any real need for, and some sell for a good chunk of cash. If you're really hurting for money early on make sure to burn beehives and sell the honeycombs to an herbalist.

I have more money than I know what to do with at this point.

Buy sea shells for dirt cheap. Dismantle into pearls. Sell pearls for great profit. The only issue I found was blacksmith/merchants running out of crowns to pay me.

@anund: 1. loot literally everything from everywhere. Especially beast pelts (so kill all da wolves, deer, sheep and bears!)

2. Sell armor, weapons, trophies and crafting materials you don't want to armorers/blacksmiths (10-15 Crown difference from merchant prices for the same items).

3. Sell junk you dont want (pelts = $$) to merchants (preferably the Ringo-lookalike you saved in White Orchard, he gives a couple Crowns more).

4. Sell alchemy materials you don't want (eespecially honeycombs you should burn and collect in swampy wilderness) to herbalists (1 honeycomb = 18 Crowns).

5. Go do the fist fighting + horse racing side quests (crank up the betting amount to maximum and you'll get 140C per contestant)

6. Always haggle when there's a haggle option on side quests. Go up really high then drop down big chuncks until they say yes.

7. Investing in level 2 Axii will allow you to Jedi Mindtrick some people into discounts (like a dude who sells passes into Novigrad)

8. Grab a pen and paper, compare the selling price of an item with the dismantling cost+selling price of its ingredients, and pick the better deal!

All I did was loot everything and sell 80% (dismantling the rest) and I'm currently at almost 20k gold. You don't really need gold for anything except crafting anyway, so it's no big deal.

Also in case you weren't aware, stealing in front of guards and getting knocked out takes a hefty portion of gold. I did it and lost 4k, so you may be broke because of that.

hmm, I think I am too stingy with selling my stuff. I keep wanting to dismantle everything for crafting materials, but that costs money. Maybe I should just sell more stuff then.

@anund: You are bound to swim in materials in no time. Just make it a habit to only dismantle items that produce materials that seem rare (e.g. gold or certain embers), sell the rest and you'll be fine.

You are more short on cash in the beginning of the game than further in. At this point i have about 28000 crowns (lvl 29 atm).

You dont really need to dismantle the stuff that you get since you get a lot of materials just by looting stuff from chests, barrels etc.. Points of interests are especially valuable for getting loot that you can sell for lots of crowns.

Though the most important thing when selling your stuff:

1) Always try to sell armor and swords to blacksmiths...and if possible to one who works in a big city like novigrod or at the blood baron and so on (if you sell armor and other valuables to the npc´s in small villages they will pay far less for the stuff than the ones in more prosperous places).
2) Dont dismantle valuable stuff since you can get hundreds of crowns for a piece of armor or for a sword
3) On lower levels replace the stuff rather than repair it (that way you will save a lot on repair costs)

On higher difficulties there is a need for cash besides crafting materials namely food which is one way to generate health since meditating doesnt generate it. It is nice to have enough money so one can just take a trip around merchants and buy all of their food.

I don't have a lot of money either but it definitely matters what you're selling to which merchants.

As everyone are saying, things will change. I'm level 17 and I have around 4K at all times. Just loot everything and sell what you don't need. You won't be doing an insane amount of crafting, and when you do the materials aren't hard to come by.

Haven't really run into this problem. I either find/craft all my armor and weapons, and selling ones you don't need to the right merchants gets you a lot of money. I also decided that I wasn't going to ransack every nook and craney in the game, and its been working out well for me. Still wish there was a junk system. How could they not include a junk system? Its 2015

Look for bigger saddlebags so you can collect more stuff.

How much game time?

There's always the exploit for crowns you can do if it's really interfering with your enjoyment of the game. Also, keep an eye out for pelts. Most of them, like bear pelts, sell pretty well.

I got like 260 for the shrieker contract, but that's the most i've been paid. In truly non-witcher fashion i even declined payment a few times! Was tempted to with the shrieker but it was just too much damn money. The multiple currencies is also a bit annoying (was picking up money left and right before realizing it had to be exchanged). I want to try to play legit but it's making it a little hard. They could still introduce some balance changes.

I also wish you could do a proper buyback if you accidentally sell something, but hey, seller's market.

Anyone having issues should make their way to Novigrad and hit up the merchants. One sells a saddle bag that increases you to 130. This really helps. Also they have lots of crowns to buy things. So you can fill up and then fast travel back there to sell it all. Also the materials thing is a great advice. I was looking through it and was finding I have 50+ of a lot of stuff. So I started selling it all down to 5 or 10 depending on the material. That ended up giving me a lot of crowns. Also the bank is in Novigrad to exchange the other currencies. By the time I got there and did that he gave me over 2000 crowns for the exchange.

Good tips in this thread, glad to hear I'm not the only one having money problems early on in Wild Hunt. I feel like the economy could definitely use an update...something just doesn't feel right about being a total bad ass who can do things no one else can do, can raid a camp full of bandits, kill them all and then steal their stuff, but then can barely afford to keep my gear in good condition or buy a couple of low level crafting materials from a poor merchant. So far, this aspect of the game hasn't been very fun to me. I'll give it some more time though, from the sounds of things the money part will work itself out eventually.

I'm on Death March, almost level 8 and the highest I've been was 600 crowns. I initially hung onto everything, but eventually starting selling some junk. I was dismantling a bunch of weapons and armor but wound up with way too much common material. So I figured I should start selling to actually have enough to craft. What are all those materials for if I don't have the money to use them?

I can say I got lucky with a couple side quests. Wound up getting into a fight, and a guy had 200 crowns to loot. In another seemingly random cart during mystery solving, I found another 200. So loot a lot!

I've been broke a lot but I assumed it was just the difficulty level.

Yep you don't have too much money, at least early, but you make it work. I like it because it makes those haggling for more money and taking rewards more real and worthwhile. I really like it that way but I'm sure money will start coming in later. Also crafting is then at a premium and the crafting is great so far.

I did the first fighting side quests things and bet max on everything. Gave me a solid bit of money and on hard it was still easy

Do Witcher Contracts. Drive the price up as much you can. Been working decently for me.

hah, I was just thinking about how much I love being broke in this game. Different change of pace. I dismantle as much as I can until I have no cash then sell what's left. Basically I am a hobo Witcher at this stage.

Ya I am having the same problem I am early on but I find I am spending all my cash repairing weapons and armor.

@anund: The more you play, the less prevalent this issue is. Plus, weapons don't 'break', they simply weaken, so really, while it's best to fix them, you'd still be fine using them as they'll be powerful enough. I recommend always selling your weaker, previous armor and weapons, and later on when it comes to craftsman, buy all the repair items, which in my experience has been infinite, where you can buy it, quit out of the shop menu, go back in and buy more. You're technically still early in the game. One of my issues was that you can't sell all the stuff because everyone has a certain amount of money they can give you in return, so you could sometimes be stuck with items you don't want. And I didn't like that the weapons can weaken, but over time, these things aren't that big an issue. Most of the stuff you want you'll most likely pick up along the adventure as well, so you won't be buying much stuff, other than maybe ruins to attach to a new weapon. Everything with the shops is about selling and buying; craft items, you have to give them money as well. I had the issue with it because it feels like an attempt to make it more realistic, but it's already unrealistic to the extent it's just kind of unneeded to me. Anyways, later on you won't care as much. Also, where I'm at in the game, I kind of stopped rummaging through everything as I feared I would just end up with stuff I didn't want or need, and I didn't like the one time I became full of items Geralt walked slow, and I refused to drop stuff before I could sell it.

Pick up any and all blue tier or higher weapons and armor. Sell weapons to blacksmiths and armor to armorsmiths for maximum profit. Also sell extra monster parts like drowner brains as you can always get more.

Later on when the monster contracts flow in you can make a lot of money doing those.

I didn't feel like I had a decent amount of money until I was level 10. I have had over 10,000 for a while. Just keep playing and you'll get there.

@anund: If you're not worried about cheesing the game you can do the cow trick. If you kill the cows in the first village, they'll sometimes drop 2xCow Hide which sell for 27. If you meditate for a couple hours, new cows show up for you to murder. So if you keep doing this until you get bored you'll have a bunch of early cash. As a bonus the mutilated cow corpses don't despawn.

Dimeritium ore, ingots, and plates sell for a good amount of crowns. Just make sure you unload those at the merchants in Novigrad to get the most amount. The merchants who are hard up on money won't offer as much.

I have over 4K now. Money ain't no thang now.

This is something I don't see recommended enough. Make sure you're going to Novigrad semi-often to convert your Orens and Florens to Crowns. There's a decent amount of money to be had doing that because I think you get two crowns for 1 oren/floren.

Yeah as it turns out if you don't sell stuff you won't make much money.

Birthdays was the worst days, now we sip champagne when we thirstay.

I'm surprised to hear about money problems, I've just had a steadily increasing pile of cash ever since the start... Are these kinds of numbers irregular?

EDIT: Sorry about the link, the comment editor isn't working properly for me at the moment.

@tobbrobb: Nah you really do start piling it on once you get out of the early game expenditures. I'm bumming around Novigrad with over 35k in my pockets.

No one ever seems to mention this so I'll keep saying it. You won't get a ton of money from side quests and the main story. Your primary means of making money is going to be selling loot and witcher contracts. Always drive up the contract too. It's hard work so get payed for it. You should make at least 300 crowns per job.

@tennmuerti: Lol ok. I was surprised because I haven't even been selling materials/alchemy stuff or exchanging currency at all. So going broke looked next to impossible with that extra backup money.

I'm actually kinda disappointed that money is so abundant later on. Geralt is always talking about how broke he is and is always in need of crowns, except I'm rolling in cash now. It felt much more fitting as a Witcher to be scraping for cash to justify taking on all these shitty jobs, and there's just not enough worth buying anyway.

I'm actually thinking the next time I play I'm going to avoid hoarding loot to sell and get as far as I can on the cash I get naturally.

@zeik: Agree on the slight disappointment. Just went to Skellige with over 19k; spent 6k in various recipes, designs and maps and didn't even care. Past the initial bits money stopped being an issue, especially since repair prices basically stay the same no matter what weapons and armor you are wearing. I now worry about weight more than value of random items i pick up.

I was broke for a while in the beginning of the game but have finally reached a point where I'm getting enough money to get by fine once I started doing Witcher Contracts.

Yeah the money thing changes real quick. I have 2k on me right now. I wish you were always kinda broke (loved that) but it would be so fucking hard to balance that in an open world game where you can go do a whole bunch of different missions and sell all manner of stuff you find.

Does currency trade very well? Is that why everyone is rich? I'm sitting on ~500 fl/orens. I'm maybe 30 hours in now and never been to big city and still really broke. Recently I had 600 crowns which was huge but I spent that on some diagrams. How much are you all hoarding? Generally speaking I don't go into villagers houses and just pick up what I get from the land, bandits, exploration and monsters. I dismantle most everything and sell what I need to gamble, repair, buy diagrams, etc.

I'm just going to echo what everyone else is saying an tell you to loot everything you can get your hands onto. Money is definitely in short supply in the early stages of the game but if you loot everything and do you best to hold off on expensive repairs (upgrades come pretty quick) you should be able to afford the important things in life ( ie. Gwent cards)

Currency trades VERY well. If you have 500 florens you could probably get 700 or so just for that. Really as you level up money becomes easy to get. Negotiate every witcher contract possible (I never work for less than 290-300), sell all those crappy weapons from bandits for 15-20 crowns to a blacksmith, etc etc. I am over 7k crowns now and I am only level 15. Eventually you just reach this sweet spot where you can finally start doing most content you run into, chests drop legit upgrades, you don't need to dismantle for mats anymore, and you find enough repair items/get the patterns you don't have to pay those exorbitant repair fees.

@geraltitude: Haven't even touched the money trading. Personally I finally took to selling some crafting stuff (since you have so fucking much eventually and you don't need a ton of it since a lot of stuff autoreplinishes) and just selling stuff I grab. Are you doing Witcher Contracts? As others have mentioned, you make some good money on those. Even early on, making like 300 per contract. I banged out 3 before I went to the city, ended up selling some stuff there, and now I sit with 2k. Had 3 actually but blew 1k on this respec potion just to have it (aint no thang!) for later since the ability point system is real complex and I'll probably want to mess with it again later on.

I'm kind of stealing everything I find though. You find a lot of junk that way but you do find some real excellent stuff just sitting around in barrels and that so it's worth your time.

Some crafting stuff is really valuable, so keep that in mind. You can make good money selling your extra.

Also: make sure you're selling to the right vendor. For example, armor crafters pay the most for armor. Herbalists pay the most for herbs. Blacksmiths for weapons, etc. Others might buy the stuff they don't specialize in but they won't pay you top dollar.

Yeah I'm level 15 and have like 10k, but was perpetually broke up until like level 10

I've say get a good pair of saddlebags early and loot every single thing you see and just sell a bunch. The only thing I really use money for now is crafting, repairing and the odd merchant who has gwent cards, so it's not like it's a super valuable resource any more.

Im level 6 right now in Velen and im playing on the Hard difficulty. I feel like Im looting everything and still don't have enough of them orens. Im glad to hear that the dinero isn't a problem in the later parts of the game. Im going to try to sell some herbs I have too much of but I feel like Im gonna need them later.

@geraltitude: exchange rate is 1:3. You have 1500 crowns in your pockets, when you go to novigrad go to the "central" square and get them changed from the dwarf banker

sell hides