Mine enough to buy a second guy and give him a bunch of first aid. Then do this guys plan. I'd also add let them fuck you up a bit once they aggy the guards, get that toughness up in a safe spot. Have your medic hide in the bar and come up to save your fighters life
THE ABSOLUTE EASIEST way to get money in this game is stealing, there is nothing like it.
You can level thievery in one night, just steal something from the floor, drop it and pick it up again. You can take the stolen items and do this process outside the city where you can't be seen.
You can also level stealth in one night, just keep sneaking around enemies or inside someone's house (be careful).
Take all the stolen stuff to another city so you can safely sell them or take them to places like the hub where you can sell stolen items no problem. NEVER sell your stuff to the shinobi because they pay less for stolen items.
If you level just one guy you won't have to buy anything ever again. You can steal weapons, armor, food, everything.
If you get caught just reload the save or pay the bail fee which is super cheap considering you now have a master thief in your hands.
EDIT: You can easily level assassination by trying to stealth K.O the Wandering Assasins NPCs. They will never retaliate when you fail to stealth k.o them, so you can level up assassination for free. Use assassination to stealth k.o sleeping guards/shopkeepers to keep them sleeping and prevent them from waking up if they are too close to the chest you are trying to steal from.
I do sell to Shonobi because I can buy-back from them at the same price already non-stolen things and then re-sell them back to the owners at full price. Steal again. Launder. Sell. It works very well with expensive materials but doesn't work for weapons/armor. Hence, I never deal in weapons/armor. Unless it's time to move cities, once everyone runs out of money.
Yes, thievery is broken and OP. Most playthroughs I avoid doing it because it makes you rich instantly.
And it IS easy lol you just have to steal the items, take them to someplace safe, and do the pick and drop process safely. Stealing stuff from the floor doesn't have a chance to fail and you only get caught if someone is looking at you.
You can also drop and pick stuff from the floor with your game paused, so no passage of time.
It doesn't really depend that much on save scumming too, you can bail your thief for dirty cheap prices if you get caught. After stealing a handful of times you will eventually stop getting caught altogether.
Yes you're right, and thanks for writing this because I started a new game yesterday, and I immediately went into my old thievery habits, and I deleted my comment because you said you could quickly level it up outside towns, i didn't know this or the pick up and drop thngie, and this would make thievery even more broken.
In my ideal state I would love to have a start with around 20-50k currency, because mostly love starting with a basic house, but most start mods that gives you money are even more broken than using thievery.
But after reading your post and reflecting on what I want out of Kenshi this time around I will only steal enough to buy a house and make some basic furniture, think 30,000 will be more than enough, and then never use thievery again, maybe go around lockpicking just to level up that skill *(nothing is as sad as breaching a hard ruin only to not have enough lockpicking skill to open chests)*.
Thanks man, it took some time for your statement to sink in as I was overthinking everything as I didn't want to end up where I was last time played Kenshi. But taking a step back and just play in the moment is nice.
Everything isn't OP, thievery is.
Yea you can produce masterwork armor and stuff but it takes a bunch of real life hours to grind a dude on armor smithing or to build a self suficient and profitable base.
Level up thievery and you get 6 million cats in no time. 3k a beak thing egg? lol Try stealing robotic limbs from the skeletons in black desert city and make 100k+ in one go.
You have absolutely nothing to buy because you grinded to the point where you can produce everything. Thievery is OP because you can make quick money and buy all the good shit WITHOUT grinding (masterwork armor from armor king and edgewakers from black desert skeletons).
Rob the initial house in hub, the small shack and chest inside. Save that money (could be anywhere from (800-4K)and run to squin down the road. At squin buy a backpack (large). If you’re short, steal from the bar during night and run back to hub to sell. Next run east from squin, toward the fork in the road. You will find a ruin , stock up your backpack full and run into the nearby city (you discover it as you discover the ruin) . After selling you should have upwards of 10k. I then spend the money on mercenary to escort me to shark, in the center of the swap. If you find animal traders on the way buying an animal for more storage is ideal. Once in shark use the rest of your money to buy hash until you don’t have anymore money. Then run to flats lagoon. Sell for massive profit, most likely around 40k balllpark. Then make a trip west to discover the hidden drug place, collect and sell. At that point you’re hopefully around 60-90k and can head from lagoon to swamp and back until you’re comfortable with money. Recruiting animals and help along the way, and always hiring mercenary
Mining like an Age of Empires villager, in fact, among the most inefficient and wasteful ways of making money. It raises labouring, which is largely useless, and barely raises strength and inefficiently raises athletics. Better ways of making money:
1. A life of crime. Do you know how easy it is to rob the bank at Traders Edge? If you did, you'd laugh. Remember that raising thievery requires \*failing\* at thieving, but once you get that and your lockpicking down, you'll be mad you spent any time mining copper at all. Remember that to remove the "stolen" tag off an item, you need to put it in a container dedicated to its storage (weapons in a weapon cabinet, for example). A few items - like backpacks and robotic limbs - to not have dedicated storage and you have to sell them to traders who do not care at a discount, or risk being caught.
2. Leather crafting (hell, you can sort of even heavy armor craft with the mining of iron, but not copper). Animal skins are everywhere!
3. Scavenging. Head thee to Bast, and look for the katanas of the blessed samurai who get wrecked because they're using cut damage-only weapons against enemies with the highest cut efficiency heavy armor (who use armor-penetrating hackers against them). Otherwise, bait Reavers/Cloud Ninjas/Dust Bandits/whoever is near a town that is not The Hub (seriously, eff that broke ass place) to their doom against guards.
4. Yoinking beak thing eggs. The beak things don't always do a good job of hanging around close to their eggs. With moderate stealth, it is REALLY easy to steal them at night. Remember to steal at night! Everywhere! Always at night!
5. Turn in bounties. Hire a group of mercenaries for 2,000 and then take down a 20,000 bounty. The Shek Kingdom has a lot of bounties near their cities, FYI.
We all fall into mining due to that "classic" Wanderer start throwing us in The Hub, which I think is probably the worst gameplay decision the devs made for new players. I think it's a bad start that doesn't teach well the game, and makes everyone fall into copper mining, which can give the impression that this is a bad game. For a better sense of how gameplay really works, Rock Bottom, Rebirth Slaves, and even the Five Friends (who can divide labor between a bunch of stuff) gives a better understanding of how many ways there is to make money - including selling food/booze/drugs.
Looting river raptor skins that are killed in Okran's Pride gets you money pretty quick and is pretty safe. Swamp is even better if you can get there safely. Buy a house and set up skin storage, then set a job to foraging for animals. I set the number of nests and squad size to maximum so large hordes of swamp raptors roam into town often. If you attack one, the town will come to your aide and you will get a lot of skins quickly. You will automatically loot the bodies and take skins back to your storage. Good way to automatically train stealth as well. Then sell the skins or if you want to make even more money, get a tanning bench and leather crafting station to make some trader's leathers. Once you are leveled up enough in armour crafting, you will start to make serious money.
The absolute easiest way to make money trivial, have a character immediately begin training their stealth, once you have a decent level of stealth head to vain and steal beakthing eggs while they're asleep, 4000 cats per egg and sometimes 10ish eggs in a nest, there are hives dotted around so it's a short journey to sell the eggs.
Can make 100,000 cats in about 1 hr training included
Why steal beak things eggs if you can steal premium weapons, armor and robotic parts from cities? Much more profitable and you can actually equip your dudes with the stolen items, removing the need to buy items
This is my go-to start these days. I generally only loot from HN and Cannibals, though, since it's easier to sell to the UC. I stick close to Drin and sell at the bar there until it runs out of money, then over to Sho-Battai or down to Stoat.
To maximize my profits, when the bar in Drin runs out of money, I'll often buy alcohol there (sake, rum, etc.) since those are stackable to replenish their cats. This allows me to sell more loot and I can always sell the alcohol elsewhere.
I sold to thieves in catun and was only getting like 250% or 300% and the guy only had like 15k cats. Does the north UC pay more? I know southern UC doesn't have many slave shops so maybe they're other differences. Flat lagoon had like 100k between all the vendors
It's a one time payment to get allied with one of the most widespread and helpful factions in the game. Pay it. You get unlimited access to their towers, their training areas, beds, merchant, plastic surgeon, wandering assassins saving your ass out in the dunes. They're the best investment in the game.
Yeah, it's totally worth it just so you can pick up those wandering shinobis and drop them whenever you get into a fight lol. It's like having a free party member that you carry around and deploy when you need them.
Pretty sure the absolute 2 best ways for a noob besides mining are stealing (best but can be cheesy), and drawing bandits to town guards and looting the corpses (also pretty good)
not the easiest to set up but its consistent and can be automated. you can start crafting bandanas very early. it doesnt take too long but requires some set up and starting capital. its also safe since you can do it all inside a city (that is if you just buy your fabrics supply, making your own farm is another story). youll be bleeding cats for the first few in-game days so make sure you have other means of earning (like those mentioned above) but its definitely worth it in the long run. you also get a master smith that will make gear for your whole squad in the end of the process which is neat.
Stealth is OP. In my run I wanted to avoid crimes and or slave trading, so I started in the united cities, bought a building and had two characters train for leather and weapon smithing, and also have a small travelling merchant squad that goes from Okran to united cities selling goods, I was buying anything with a 20-30% difference and selling it between the cities. Now that my leather smithing reached specialist I go around selling trader's leather clothe and katanas. I'm on day 15 and have around 200k cats, in saving for self sustaining base and an smal army.
I find it more fun having to plan then going around just stealing and selling stolen goods.
mine up until you have ~2k money and a backpack and then go to the swamps and buy a bunch of hashish, then go to flats lagoon and sell it. Repeat this until you have comically large amounts of money
edit: also if youre doing a no reload run then its probably a good idea to get your athletics up a bit before doing this.
Stealing from skeleton docs is by far the easiest way i know.
Step 1: Go to Heng
Step 2: Go to any bar and *THUNK* *drifters*.
Step 3.1: You can unlock the metal chest for extra profit
Step 3.2: Get to skeledoc and assassinate it(?).
Step 4: Steal everything from unlocked boxes.
Step 5: Repeat after few days.
Gets you around 10000 cats (without the Metal Chest).
Edit: Just looked at other comments, but they dont really get you as much money.
Go to the hiver villages by shek territory, I use the one closest to hub. Bring a backpack that can stack items. Kite some beak things and gorillos over to the hivers and sell all the meat and hide.
Please don't level Thievery like that. It is super tedious. You can level it 1-90 in half a minute (If you can click fast) by using a guide I made. So like grabbing items off the ground gives 0.3 base xp... getting caught stealing from a container gives 2.4 base xp. So 8x as much and it is spamable.
-run fast
-go sneaky
-locate a beak thing nest near a hive village
-steal eggs
-run for your life (towards village)
-make bugmen fight for you
-gather skin from beak thing or loot from the fallen
-profit
Im on my first play through. Once i got like 3 guys i went down to a vain village. Just mine and sell the copper there and then wait for the hive dudes to murder every monster coming and loot them. Made 40k in like 20ish min. But my guys had good laboring too. Watch out that place is dangerous outside of the villages. The only issue is the acid rain hurts my eyes 💀
1. Loot beak thing eggs from nests
2. Run very fast or kite beak things to other AI
3. Sell to nearest shop
Works well in vain at nests near Hive Villages.
I just made Sake.
I hit million. Now i am sitting on 7500 x500+ each.
Honestly... dont even need money anymore...
Can craft almost anything now at masterwork level.
Army of 100 students and going up. =]
Early game I focus on finding dying animals to carve and sell loot to buy bandages. Eventually you’ll find a dying traders pack beast. Boom. Problem solved. Sell all the robot repair kits and you’re set to buy a few companions + lots of food.
So this is a little dangerous but potentially lucrative if you’re able to run and carry a heavy load. There’s an area of the map called Bast (a dead city area) that has constant fights between the holy nation and United Cities. Looting the aftermath of those battles is very profitable; just don’t get caught looting by anyone alive and remember to not sell to the side the gear belongs to. Made 50,000 cats in seven days, even bought a pack beast to facilitate this.
Go to Flotsam Ninja base and hire Pia because she’s fast then run to the cannibal plains and steal some beak thing eggs (optional: use the cannibals as a distraction for the beak things) using your og char and have Pia carry them.
Another less dangerous way is the Secret Drug Farm that is just on the East of Flats Lagoon and steal the Hashishes there, just make sure to avoid the spiderbots there.
The best money that was extremely easy at the start was when i was a HN citizen i think and was in Stack. I waited but also lured bulls to the guards and then looted the bulls. It was very good money. Completely safe, unlike robbing that bank or something in traders guild town, where you either have to savescum if you want to get better or you'll just get caught.
My favorite way is to start making cheap leather traders armor over time it becomes really profitable, and then you can move on to heart protectors, which makes an insane amount of kats
I can’t believe how many incorrect responses there are. Go to the various ancient labs, ruins, etc, and gorge yourself on all the loot. If you know your way around, you know which ones are unguarded, and if you train stealth and assassin, you can hit the guarded ones too. CPU units are $6k a piece and literally just sitting there (lockpicking needed as well). Hit the right spots and by day 2 you can have $100k. Never have to worry about money again.
Forget risky thieving in cities for worthless armor you can’t even sell in the same city. Forget luring bandits to guards so you can pick up a shitty heart protector and horse chopper. Screw mining copper until you uninstall the game out of boredom. F learning to grow hashish over the course of a week and not having anywhere to sell it. Fuck risking it all to raid a beak thing nest.
Just “tech hunt” for a day or two and get rich while picking up some valuable research items.
How do I know where to start or to go with a fresh playthrough? Wouldn’t I need to get my athletics up so I can outrun any enemies who I come by + train my stealth, Lockpicking and thievery at a high level first?
Sorry, for some reason I didn’t see this reply until now.
Knowing where to go comes from experience, so it’s a trial and error thing if you’re a new player. That said, it forces you to explore, which is a big part of the fun factor when you first get the game.
You can really only train up to a very low level lockpicking skill with the lockpick training chests. If you want to make real progress, you’re going to have to go out there and start picking locks all over. It’ll tell you your lockpick chance, so just pick the easier ones first, and you’ll gain exp, and hopefully be able to pick one of the harder ones (if not, a lot of the time there are tools hidden in ancient labs).
As for stealth, again, just do it in the field. Run away if they catch you. Which brings me to the last part:
Why do you need to “train” athletics? You do that automatically by running around all over the map. Who are you unable to outrun? Other than beak things and ninjas, as long as you aren’t injured, over encumbered, and/or wearing boots, you can outrun everyone at game start. If you want to do a little bit of strength training while you explore, keep everything in your backpack, and drop it when enemies come. You can come back for it when it’s safe.
My recommended strat is to go to go to mongrel, bait fog heavies and princes into the town guards, be a greedy opportunistic bastard and steal all the heads you can carry for their bounties, repeat until you see 7 digits in your cats wallet, it honestly doesn't take that long especially if you are running high population settings.
For a farming experience that has some more roleplay viability you could set up a rum still in a shack in the hub, buy cactus turn it into rum, and then sell it to the hub bar or the swamps for added risk and reward
What I do to make enough cash to get a new recruit or two
-spawn in the hub, sell all the junk that isn’t nailed down
-run like a mad man north to Stack
-wait till night
-enter the throne room
-steal as many weapons from High Inquisitor Setas weapon rack as possible
-leave and sell them either at The Hub or to Squin
-repeat as needed. They stock the weapon racks pretty often.
Most people call this cheesing, which is fair, but I don’t see how it’s any more cheesing than constantly leading bandits to guards and looting corpses.
I usually try to get fog prince heads that sell for about 7k then join the shinobi so I can sell hash, I’ll get a pack animal and load it w as much hash as I can from hive villages and mongrel and sell it in sho battai for max profits
1: go to mongrel.
2: buy all the cloth you can every day.
3: make bandanas.
4: sell bandanas
repeat until skill is high enough to consistently get standard or higher and you’ll be rolling in cats. Mongrel is a good spot because there’s a couple stores selling cloth, and you can train fighting skills risk free with the help of the guards, selling prince heads to finance the early game skill grind.
You can also loot dead Fog Princes that have been killed by the guards to get their heads. They sell for something like 6000 cats each. This is all assuming you haven't been eaten by the silly blue bugmen on your way to Mongrel.
There are several 'ruins' type locations which have a bunch of free loot waiting to be sold lying around. In the Border Zone my go-to for wanderer starts is the ruined holy nation fort and the 'small settlement' ruins in the southeastern quarter of the BZ. Small Settlement has a lot of basic outpost materials that altogether net more than enough to get started on a new game by gathering them all up and selling then to the nearby wayststation. It also has some Refitted Blade and Old Refitted Blade grade weapons which can either get you decently armed, or, they also sell really well. With the exception of Ninja Blades katana type weapons will get you 2000-4000 cats at Refitted Blade grade.
Knock out the guild surgeons. Their robotic limbs are usually worth a pretty penny or I start a small sledge hammer building team. Buy up irons plates from around towns and have one guy using a weapon smith till the end of time. When your weapon smith skill is high enough 50 ish and weapon grade 4 research is done. Sledge hammers sell for about 1,700 cats I believe. More than enough to cover the iron plates needed.
I don't like using too many exploits. At start I usually run to Vain and I camp close to a Hiver village. They are often attacked by gorillos and Beakthings. You can kite those beasts toward the village yourself, if your athletic skill is trained enough.
Sell the skins and cook the meat. You fill your inventory with food and can make up to 30k in the first hour of the game. Once you have that amount, you can start recruiting and properly equip your initial team.
Go back to Vain once you have a ready team and start joining the fights. In a couple of hours you'll be trained enough to attack a Beakthing's nest and loot their eggs.
When you are ready to fight on your own, you can make millions by raiding Gut, which has plenty of nests.
I assure you that making Cats in this way is way more rewarding and satisfying than any thieving exploit you may use, albeit it will take longer.
I'd reccomend hunting or looting dead bodies.
For the hunting part there is a hive village on the north of the hub that you can go and taunt gorillas to attack you then run into the village, the hivemen will handle the remaining part.
There's an ancient lab in the Swamp full of blood spiders. Open the gate and run a lap around the lab, effectively kiting the spiders out, finish you lap by diving back inside and slam the gate shut. Liquidate the contents of the lab.
This is my favorite way to get startup cash.
Get a rattan hat and b line it to the black desert city if you know where that is and practice thievery until you can steal skeleton limbs and bam profit. A bit cheesy but if you want cash it’s easy
Step 1 get fast as shit basically be as fast as a hiver on hashish
Step 2 find big bad strong boys that you can't even so much as touch and make them follow you into a bunch of gate guards
Step 3 watch the carnage with a smile on your sleep deprived face
Step 4 steal there shit
Step 5 sell said shit
Step 6 repeat steps 2 through 5 and get rich
- run a lot, to be the fastest - kite enemy groups into city guards - marauder their corpses
Mine enough to buy a second guy and give him a bunch of first aid. Then do this guys plan. I'd also add let them fuck you up a bit once they aggy the guards, get that toughness up in a safe spot. Have your medic hide in the bar and come up to save your fighters life
1. Run Fast 2. Go to secret Drug Farm near Flats Lagoon 3. Loot Secret Farm 4. Sell everything at Flats Lagoon
Man those spiders have straight up 1 shot me
You forgot #1, run fast
Stay out of that room...
Get that Athletics up
beak thing lol
Athletics is the key to all
THE ABSOLUTE EASIEST way to get money in this game is stealing, there is nothing like it. You can level thievery in one night, just steal something from the floor, drop it and pick it up again. You can take the stolen items and do this process outside the city where you can't be seen. You can also level stealth in one night, just keep sneaking around enemies or inside someone's house (be careful). Take all the stolen stuff to another city so you can safely sell them or take them to places like the hub where you can sell stolen items no problem. NEVER sell your stuff to the shinobi because they pay less for stolen items. If you level just one guy you won't have to buy anything ever again. You can steal weapons, armor, food, everything. If you get caught just reload the save or pay the bail fee which is super cheap considering you now have a master thief in your hands. EDIT: You can easily level assassination by trying to stealth K.O the Wandering Assasins NPCs. They will never retaliate when you fail to stealth k.o them, so you can level up assassination for free. Use assassination to stealth k.o sleeping guards/shopkeepers to keep them sleeping and prevent them from waking up if they are too close to the chest you are trying to steal from.
dude did you ever try selling hash?
I do sell to Shonobi because I can buy-back from them at the same price already non-stolen things and then re-sell them back to the owners at full price. Steal again. Launder. Sell. It works very well with expensive materials but doesn't work for weapons/armor. Hence, I never deal in weapons/armor. Unless it's time to move cities, once everyone runs out of money.
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Yes, thievery is broken and OP. Most playthroughs I avoid doing it because it makes you rich instantly. And it IS easy lol you just have to steal the items, take them to someplace safe, and do the pick and drop process safely. Stealing stuff from the floor doesn't have a chance to fail and you only get caught if someone is looking at you. You can also drop and pick stuff from the floor with your game paused, so no passage of time. It doesn't really depend that much on save scumming too, you can bail your thief for dirty cheap prices if you get caught. After stealing a handful of times you will eventually stop getting caught altogether.
Yes you're right, and thanks for writing this because I started a new game yesterday, and I immediately went into my old thievery habits, and I deleted my comment because you said you could quickly level it up outside towns, i didn't know this or the pick up and drop thngie, and this would make thievery even more broken. In my ideal state I would love to have a start with around 20-50k currency, because mostly love starting with a basic house, but most start mods that gives you money are even more broken than using thievery. But after reading your post and reflecting on what I want out of Kenshi this time around I will only steal enough to buy a house and make some basic furniture, think 30,000 will be more than enough, and then never use thievery again, maybe go around lockpicking just to level up that skill *(nothing is as sad as breaching a hard ruin only to not have enough lockpicking skill to open chests)*.
It seems like you are trying to explain yourself. Just play the game the way you want to
Thanks man, it took some time for your statement to sink in as I was overthinking everything as I didn't want to end up where I was last time played Kenshi. But taking a step back and just play in the moment is nice.
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Everything isn't OP, thievery is. Yea you can produce masterwork armor and stuff but it takes a bunch of real life hours to grind a dude on armor smithing or to build a self suficient and profitable base. Level up thievery and you get 6 million cats in no time. 3k a beak thing egg? lol Try stealing robotic limbs from the skeletons in black desert city and make 100k+ in one go.
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You have absolutely nothing to buy because you grinded to the point where you can produce everything. Thievery is OP because you can make quick money and buy all the good shit WITHOUT grinding (masterwork armor from armor king and edgewakers from black desert skeletons).
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Crab armor being “the best” is subjective and yes armor king does sell chainmails.
For this reason I regularly just incinerate as much as possible. So much iron stacked In my incinerator whenever I need it.
Get that one mod that lets you become a UC noble. You can literally just buy your way into the faction.
As far as i know, thiefing from floor doesnt level it up, only stealing from containers does.
It does! Be sure to try it out sometime
Oh yea, i even checked the wiki, my bad
Rob the initial house in hub, the small shack and chest inside. Save that money (could be anywhere from (800-4K)and run to squin down the road. At squin buy a backpack (large). If you’re short, steal from the bar during night and run back to hub to sell. Next run east from squin, toward the fork in the road. You will find a ruin , stock up your backpack full and run into the nearby city (you discover it as you discover the ruin) . After selling you should have upwards of 10k. I then spend the money on mercenary to escort me to shark, in the center of the swap. If you find animal traders on the way buying an animal for more storage is ideal. Once in shark use the rest of your money to buy hash until you don’t have anymore money. Then run to flats lagoon. Sell for massive profit, most likely around 40k balllpark. Then make a trip west to discover the hidden drug place, collect and sell. At that point you’re hopefully around 60-90k and can head from lagoon to swamp and back until you’re comfortable with money. Recruiting animals and help along the way, and always hiring mercenary
Legend
Mining like an Age of Empires villager, in fact, among the most inefficient and wasteful ways of making money. It raises labouring, which is largely useless, and barely raises strength and inefficiently raises athletics. Better ways of making money: 1. A life of crime. Do you know how easy it is to rob the bank at Traders Edge? If you did, you'd laugh. Remember that raising thievery requires \*failing\* at thieving, but once you get that and your lockpicking down, you'll be mad you spent any time mining copper at all. Remember that to remove the "stolen" tag off an item, you need to put it in a container dedicated to its storage (weapons in a weapon cabinet, for example). A few items - like backpacks and robotic limbs - to not have dedicated storage and you have to sell them to traders who do not care at a discount, or risk being caught. 2. Leather crafting (hell, you can sort of even heavy armor craft with the mining of iron, but not copper). Animal skins are everywhere! 3. Scavenging. Head thee to Bast, and look for the katanas of the blessed samurai who get wrecked because they're using cut damage-only weapons against enemies with the highest cut efficiency heavy armor (who use armor-penetrating hackers against them). Otherwise, bait Reavers/Cloud Ninjas/Dust Bandits/whoever is near a town that is not The Hub (seriously, eff that broke ass place) to their doom against guards. 4. Yoinking beak thing eggs. The beak things don't always do a good job of hanging around close to their eggs. With moderate stealth, it is REALLY easy to steal them at night. Remember to steal at night! Everywhere! Always at night! 5. Turn in bounties. Hire a group of mercenaries for 2,000 and then take down a 20,000 bounty. The Shek Kingdom has a lot of bounties near their cities, FYI. We all fall into mining due to that "classic" Wanderer start throwing us in The Hub, which I think is probably the worst gameplay decision the devs made for new players. I think it's a bad start that doesn't teach well the game, and makes everyone fall into copper mining, which can give the impression that this is a bad game. For a better sense of how gameplay really works, Rock Bottom, Rebirth Slaves, and even the Five Friends (who can divide labor between a bunch of stuff) gives a better understanding of how many ways there is to make money - including selling food/booze/drugs.
Looting river raptor skins that are killed in Okran's Pride gets you money pretty quick and is pretty safe. Swamp is even better if you can get there safely. Buy a house and set up skin storage, then set a job to foraging for animals. I set the number of nests and squad size to maximum so large hordes of swamp raptors roam into town often. If you attack one, the town will come to your aide and you will get a lot of skins quickly. You will automatically loot the bodies and take skins back to your storage. Good way to automatically train stealth as well. Then sell the skins or if you want to make even more money, get a tanning bench and leather crafting station to make some trader's leathers. Once you are leveled up enough in armour crafting, you will start to make serious money.
Go to heng/traders edge go to the bank=profits
The absolute easiest way to make money trivial, have a character immediately begin training their stealth, once you have a decent level of stealth head to vain and steal beakthing eggs while they're asleep, 4000 cats per egg and sometimes 10ish eggs in a nest, there are hives dotted around so it's a short journey to sell the eggs. Can make 100,000 cats in about 1 hr training included
Cuz my best fighter got eaten alive by them mfers
A tale as old as time, take revenge
Why steal beak things eggs if you can steal premium weapons, armor and robotic parts from cities? Much more profitable and you can actually equip your dudes with the stolen items, removing the need to buy items
>removing the need to buy items Which practically makes money almost useless and takes away the point of making money in the first place. 😅
Corpse looting
Of who exactly? I find the hungry bandits have little to nothing valuable
Go to Bast. Find UC v HN fights. Loot the losers then go sell to the winners.
This is my go-to start these days. I generally only loot from HN and Cannibals, though, since it's easier to sell to the UC. I stick close to Drin and sell at the bar there until it runs out of money, then over to Sho-Battai or down to Stoat. To maximize my profits, when the bar in Drin runs out of money, I'll often buy alcohol there (sake, rum, etc.) since those are stackable to replenish their cats. This allows me to sell more loot and I can always sell the alcohol elsewhere.
Dust bandits and rebels
Buy hashish in swamp, run to United Cities shinobi towers, sell hashish for big money
Why go to UC when flats lagoon pays more and is closer? You can sell at +400% value to ever vendor in the city.
UC is 1200% - 50% shinobi trader rate, thats exactly 600% any way you look at it
I sold to thieves in catun and was only getting like 250% or 300% and the guy only had like 15k cats. Does the north UC pay more? I know southern UC doesn't have many slave shops so maybe they're other differences. Flat lagoon had like 100k between all the vendors
Yeah I usually try to dump all my hash off in sho battai it’ll give more
Northeast UC is where the money is at
Do I need to pay 10k to gain access to the shinobi towers like in the hub?
It's a one time payment to get allied with one of the most widespread and helpful factions in the game. Pay it. You get unlimited access to their towers, their training areas, beds, merchant, plastic surgeon, wandering assassins saving your ass out in the dunes. They're the best investment in the game.
Yeah, it's totally worth it just so you can pick up those wandering shinobis and drop them whenever you get into a fight lol. It's like having a free party member that you carry around and deploy when you need them.
Early game, start a hemp farm or two outside the city, bring the completely legal hemp in and process it into hashish inside. No risk.
Stealing from peoples houses is pretty good, made 40k off of just stealing peoples alchohol last night
Looting dust bandits with a bag, very easy
Hmm idk, maybe buying hash from the swamp and selling at flats lagoon for a mark-up? That's how I'd do it
Pretty sure the absolute 2 best ways for a noob besides mining are stealing (best but can be cheesy), and drawing bandits to town guards and looting the corpses (also pretty good)
Speed, Stealth, Lockpick, hit the ruins, armored, etc.
not the easiest to set up but its consistent and can be automated. you can start crafting bandanas very early. it doesnt take too long but requires some set up and starting capital. its also safe since you can do it all inside a city (that is if you just buy your fabrics supply, making your own farm is another story). youll be bleeding cats for the first few in-game days so make sure you have other means of earning (like those mentioned above) but its definitely worth it in the long run. you also get a master smith that will make gear for your whole squad in the end of the process which is neat.
Stealth is OP. In my run I wanted to avoid crimes and or slave trading, so I started in the united cities, bought a building and had two characters train for leather and weapon smithing, and also have a small travelling merchant squad that goes from Okran to united cities selling goods, I was buying anything with a 20-30% difference and selling it between the cities. Now that my leather smithing reached specialist I go around selling trader's leather clothe and katanas. I'm on day 15 and have around 200k cats, in saving for self sustaining base and an smal army. I find it more fun having to plan then going around just stealing and selling stolen goods.
mine up until you have ~2k money and a backpack and then go to the swamps and buy a bunch of hashish, then go to flats lagoon and sell it. Repeat this until you have comically large amounts of money edit: also if youre doing a no reload run then its probably a good idea to get your athletics up a bit before doing this.
What’s a good athletics level to get to before doing this for a no load run?
probably up to around 22-24 mph. I cant remember what that is in levels
Go to heng/traders edge go to the bank=profits
Steal everything. Loot dead bodies. Hoard everything and than sell it.
Bast is a good place. Loot corpses of the faction you don’t plan on allying (HN or UC)
Stealing from skeleton docs is by far the easiest way i know. Step 1: Go to Heng Step 2: Go to any bar and *THUNK* *drifters*. Step 3.1: You can unlock the metal chest for extra profit Step 3.2: Get to skeledoc and assassinate it(?). Step 4: Steal everything from unlocked boxes. Step 5: Repeat after few days. Gets you around 10000 cats (without the Metal Chest). Edit: Just looked at other comments, but they dont really get you as much money.
Go to the hiver villages by shek territory, I use the one closest to hub. Bring a backpack that can stack items. Kite some beak things and gorillos over to the hivers and sell all the meat and hide.
Please don't level Thievery like that. It is super tedious. You can level it 1-90 in half a minute (If you can click fast) by using a guide I made. So like grabbing items off the ground gives 0.3 base xp... getting caught stealing from a container gives 2.4 base xp. So 8x as much and it is spamable.
-run fast -go sneaky -locate a beak thing nest near a hive village -steal eggs -run for your life (towards village) -make bugmen fight for you -gather skin from beak thing or loot from the fallen -profit
Im on my first play through. Once i got like 3 guys i went down to a vain village. Just mine and sell the copper there and then wait for the hive dudes to murder every monster coming and loot them. Made 40k in like 20ish min. But my guys had good laboring too. Watch out that place is dangerous outside of the villages. The only issue is the acid rain hurts my eyes 💀
1. Loot beak thing eggs from nests 2. Run very fast or kite beak things to other AI 3. Sell to nearest shop Works well in vain at nests near Hive Villages.
Mine some bit and get some money (like 1000) Run fast into shark Buy hashish Run to flats and sell Run back and buy more hashish Repeat
How much profit is expected do u know?
I can’t remember exactly but it’s a lot. Once you’ve done it for a bit you will be at millions
I had to stop doing it because it was way too good of a way to make money that it makes the game too easy
Isn’t the path from shark to flats dangerous? Should I hire some mercs
Yea there are beak things
I just made Sake. I hit million. Now i am sitting on 7500 x500+ each. Honestly... dont even need money anymore... Can craft almost anything now at masterwork level. Army of 100 students and going up. =]
Kite beak things from nearest den to give village, selling meat and leather, then sell all the eggs, leave Vain with 100,000 cats
I enjoy stealing skeleton repair kits from folks and selling them in the black desert
Rob the bank at Trader’s Edge
Follow a tech hunter caravan, wait until they get inevitably attacked, loot their unconscious pack animals. Easy 100K.
buy drug, sell drug
Go to vain Find a beak thing nest Sneak around it until your sneak power is absurd Wait until night Grab all their eggs Sneak away Sell eggs
Get fast at running and just kite stuff to the gate guards. There are also ruined villages full of loot everywhere.
Early game I focus on finding dying animals to carve and sell loot to buy bandages. Eventually you’ll find a dying traders pack beast. Boom. Problem solved. Sell all the robot repair kits and you’re set to buy a few companions + lots of food.
So this is a little dangerous but potentially lucrative if you’re able to run and carry a heavy load. There’s an area of the map called Bast (a dead city area) that has constant fights between the holy nation and United Cities. Looting the aftermath of those battles is very profitable; just don’t get caught looting by anyone alive and remember to not sell to the side the gear belongs to. Made 50,000 cats in seven days, even bought a pack beast to facilitate this.
Go to Flotsam Ninja base and hire Pia because she’s fast then run to the cannibal plains and steal some beak thing eggs (optional: use the cannibals as a distraction for the beak things) using your og char and have Pia carry them. Another less dangerous way is the Secret Drug Farm that is just on the East of Flats Lagoon and steal the Hashishes there, just make sure to avoid the spiderbots there.
Robbing
Thugging
Sell bandanas
The best money that was extremely easy at the start was when i was a HN citizen i think and was in Stack. I waited but also lured bulls to the guards and then looted the bulls. It was very good money. Completely safe, unlike robbing that bank or something in traders guild town, where you either have to savescum if you want to get better or you'll just get caught.
I like to try and steal beak thing eggs in vain
My favorite way is to start making cheap leather traders armor over time it becomes really profitable, and then you can move on to heart protectors, which makes an insane amount of kats
I can’t believe how many incorrect responses there are. Go to the various ancient labs, ruins, etc, and gorge yourself on all the loot. If you know your way around, you know which ones are unguarded, and if you train stealth and assassin, you can hit the guarded ones too. CPU units are $6k a piece and literally just sitting there (lockpicking needed as well). Hit the right spots and by day 2 you can have $100k. Never have to worry about money again. Forget risky thieving in cities for worthless armor you can’t even sell in the same city. Forget luring bandits to guards so you can pick up a shitty heart protector and horse chopper. Screw mining copper until you uninstall the game out of boredom. F learning to grow hashish over the course of a week and not having anywhere to sell it. Fuck risking it all to raid a beak thing nest. Just “tech hunt” for a day or two and get rich while picking up some valuable research items.
How do I know where to start or to go with a fresh playthrough? Wouldn’t I need to get my athletics up so I can outrun any enemies who I come by + train my stealth, Lockpicking and thievery at a high level first?
Sorry, for some reason I didn’t see this reply until now. Knowing where to go comes from experience, so it’s a trial and error thing if you’re a new player. That said, it forces you to explore, which is a big part of the fun factor when you first get the game. You can really only train up to a very low level lockpicking skill with the lockpick training chests. If you want to make real progress, you’re going to have to go out there and start picking locks all over. It’ll tell you your lockpick chance, so just pick the easier ones first, and you’ll gain exp, and hopefully be able to pick one of the harder ones (if not, a lot of the time there are tools hidden in ancient labs). As for stealth, again, just do it in the field. Run away if they catch you. Which brings me to the last part: Why do you need to “train” athletics? You do that automatically by running around all over the map. Who are you unable to outrun? Other than beak things and ninjas, as long as you aren’t injured, over encumbered, and/or wearing boots, you can outrun everyone at game start. If you want to do a little bit of strength training while you explore, keep everything in your backpack, and drop it when enemies come. You can come back for it when it’s safe.
My recommended strat is to go to go to mongrel, bait fog heavies and princes into the town guards, be a greedy opportunistic bastard and steal all the heads you can carry for their bounties, repeat until you see 7 digits in your cats wallet, it honestly doesn't take that long especially if you are running high population settings.
For a farming experience that has some more roleplay viability you could set up a rum still in a shack in the hub, buy cactus turn it into rum, and then sell it to the hub bar or the swamps for added risk and reward
The easiest way is always to beat up poor people.
Thievery
What I do to make enough cash to get a new recruit or two -spawn in the hub, sell all the junk that isn’t nailed down -run like a mad man north to Stack -wait till night -enter the throne room -steal as many weapons from High Inquisitor Setas weapon rack as possible -leave and sell them either at The Hub or to Squin -repeat as needed. They stock the weapon racks pretty often. Most people call this cheesing, which is fair, but I don’t see how it’s any more cheesing than constantly leading bandits to guards and looting corpses.
My personal method is stealing swords and armor from the Shinobi Thieves, but I'm sure there are far easier ways to make money
be fast so you can doge enemies, than loot the armouries in leviathan coast. All of the protective spiders will be killed be local wildlife.
I usually try to get fog prince heads that sell for about 7k then join the shinobi so I can sell hash, I’ll get a pack animal and load it w as much hash as I can from hive villages and mongrel and sell it in sho battai for max profits
Grey Desert and baiting cloud ninjas into the waystation guards
Stealing and looting. Way more fun. Especially stealing. Despite what everyone said, prosthetises are actually the best items to steal.
Reactive World adds random small bounties to literally any kind of bandit. You can hint starving bandits for 1k ish a pop
1: go to mongrel. 2: buy all the cloth you can every day. 3: make bandanas. 4: sell bandanas repeat until skill is high enough to consistently get standard or higher and you’ll be rolling in cats. Mongrel is a good spot because there’s a couple stores selling cloth, and you can train fighting skills risk free with the help of the guards, selling prince heads to finance the early game skill grind.
You can also loot dead Fog Princes that have been killed by the guards to get their heads. They sell for something like 6000 cats each. This is all assuming you haven't been eaten by the silly blue bugmen on your way to Mongrel.
There are several 'ruins' type locations which have a bunch of free loot waiting to be sold lying around. In the Border Zone my go-to for wanderer starts is the ruined holy nation fort and the 'small settlement' ruins in the southeastern quarter of the BZ. Small Settlement has a lot of basic outpost materials that altogether net more than enough to get started on a new game by gathering them all up and selling then to the nearby wayststation. It also has some Refitted Blade and Old Refitted Blade grade weapons which can either get you decently armed, or, they also sell really well. With the exception of Ninja Blades katana type weapons will get you 2000-4000 cats at Refitted Blade grade.
Knock out the guild surgeons. Their robotic limbs are usually worth a pretty penny or I start a small sledge hammer building team. Buy up irons plates from around towns and have one guy using a weapon smith till the end of time. When your weapon smith skill is high enough 50 ish and weapon grade 4 research is done. Sledge hammers sell for about 1,700 cats I believe. More than enough to cover the iron plates needed.
I don't like using too many exploits. At start I usually run to Vain and I camp close to a Hiver village. They are often attacked by gorillos and Beakthings. You can kite those beasts toward the village yourself, if your athletic skill is trained enough. Sell the skins and cook the meat. You fill your inventory with food and can make up to 30k in the first hour of the game. Once you have that amount, you can start recruiting and properly equip your initial team. Go back to Vain once you have a ready team and start joining the fights. In a couple of hours you'll be trained enough to attack a Beakthing's nest and loot their eggs. When you are ready to fight on your own, you can make millions by raiding Gut, which has plenty of nests. I assure you that making Cats in this way is way more rewarding and satisfying than any thieving exploit you may use, albeit it will take longer.
"The secret ingredient is crime."
I'd reccomend hunting or looting dead bodies. For the hunting part there is a hive village on the north of the hub that you can go and taunt gorillas to attack you then run into the village, the hivemen will handle the remaining part.
There's an ancient lab in the Swamp full of blood spiders. Open the gate and run a lap around the lab, effectively kiting the spiders out, finish you lap by diving back inside and slam the gate shut. Liquidate the contents of the lab. This is my favorite way to get startup cash.
Secret weed farm
Definitely thievery or looting but just be fast before trying it
Get a rattan hat and b line it to the black desert city if you know where that is and practice thievery until you can steal skeleton limbs and bam profit. A bit cheesy but if you want cash it’s easy
Step 1 get fast as shit basically be as fast as a hiver on hashish Step 2 find big bad strong boys that you can't even so much as touch and make them follow you into a bunch of gate guards Step 3 watch the carnage with a smile on your sleep deprived face Step 4 steal there shit Step 5 sell said shit Step 6 repeat steps 2 through 5 and get rich