Overview
Do you save your gold very efficiently? What am I saying, of course you don’t.This is a very simple guide for how to make the most of your gold. It includes tips for enchanting, smithing, and bartering. Everything written has been tried and tested by yours truly. I’ve also included some tips to get a better return value for your items. And don’t worry, it’s not essential that you follow this guide to a ‘T’. All of these tips are optional, but they all definitely help!
Starting out (Smithing)
When starting a brand new game, you want to find the Transmute Ore spell first. The quickest way to find it is in the Halted Stream Camp. It has a large magicka cost this early in the game, so you might want some potions to help replenish your magicka, or get some items to reduce the cost and quicken the recharge rate.
You then want to collect every scrap of iron, silver, and gold ore you can find. Iron is usually the way to go, as it can be easily purchased from blacksmiths and gathered from mines (Especially Halted Stream Camp, as you need to go there for the transmute spell). Remember, every bit counts!
It also helps to immediately transmute the iron ore into gold, then crafting it into ingots. Smithing gold ingots takes two gold ore, so this will half your carry weight…or just give it to your follower. After all, they’re sworn to carry your burdens.
After collecting your ores and ingots, visit as many nordic tombs as you can. They have burial urns that contain gems and gold. Collect a good amount of gems before going to the next step.
(Prowler’s Profit will help a great deal with collecting gems. Visit the Abilities section for more)
Remember: Collecting the ores and gems is the slowest process in this guide, so be patient!
With all of your gold and gems, you want to create the most expensive items you can. Listing from the most valuable to least:
- Gold Diamond Necklace [1200]
- Gold Diamond Ring [900]
- Gold Emerald Ring [700]
- Gold Ruby Necklace [550]
- Gold Sapphire Ring [500]
- Gold Jeweled Necklace [485]
- Gold Ring (2) [75]
- Gold Necklace [120]
These values will be severely reduced when bartering, so you won’t get the full value from your items. However, we can help that with enchanting!
Quick note: (To help grind enchanting, create a lot of gold rings. You get 2 per gold ingot, giving you more items to enchant. Doing this is not essential for this guide, but higher enchanting (with perks) makes enchantments on items more valuable, so it definitely helps.)
Increasing your value (Enchanting)
Before we start enchanting, you need a lot of soul gems…like, a LOT. Court wizards and teachers at the College of Winterhold have lots of soul gems, but we run into a Catch-22: we can’t get the soul gems without gold, but we need them so we can make items to sell to get gold. The cheapest way around this is to collect soul gems wherever found, and buying empty ones from wizards (Also buy the “Soul Trap” spell). Then go around Skyrim, casting the spell on animals and killing them. Again, this is best done when searching for ores/gems. It’s a long process, but a worthy one! Soon, you won’t have to rely on collecting them yourself, but just buying them from wizards and vendors.
Once you have all your items and soul gems ready, you can move on to enchanting! But before you enchant, you need to gather a lot of variously enchanted items to learn them. You can do this while gathering the crafting ingredients for smithing. Pick up any enchanted item you would like to learn, but keep an eye out for these:
- Banish
- Fortify Archery
- Fortify Blocking
- Fortify Destruction
- Sneak
These enchantments have the highest value. We are only focusing on enchanting rings and necklaces, but the others are the highest value for where they can be applied. Here’s another list showing what can be enchanted on what:
- Helmet – [Fortify Archery]
- Armor – [Fortify Destruction]
- Gauntlets – [Sneak]
- Boots – [Sneak]
- Shield – [Fortify Block]
- Any weapon – [Banish]
- Necklace – [Sneak]
- Ring – [Sneak]
Remember, the level of enchanting has no effect; Adding perks to enchanting increases the power and value of each enchantment. Once you have enchanted everything, you can move on to bartering!
The big payoff (Bartering)
Once your items are crafted and enchanted, it’s time to sell them! This section is the most straightforward, but keep reading…there are some things you want to keep in mind.
When selling to vendors, always, always, ALWAYS try to get more gold in the process. It’s totally OK to buy items while selling yours, but make sure you’re the one making the profit! Also, watch carefully for these items, so we can keep the gold-saving ball rolling:
- Soul gems (empty or full)
- Iron, silver, or gold ore/ingots
- Leather or leather strips
- Gems of any kind
- Rings, necklaces, or circlets (not enchanted, for enchanting later)
I know collecting iron ingots and leather seems pointless, but trust me, there’s gold to be made! With these, you want to craft a bundle of iron daggers, then enchant them with “Banish”. These have a high return value!
Making the most of it (Abilities)
I’ve listed some abilities that will assist you in your journey. As always, they are completely optional, but provide a huge boost to help you make more gold:
Prowler’s Profit:
This will let you find more gems where they are to be found. You can get this ability by joining the thieves guild, and completing the quest “No Stone Unturned”. It’s notoriously known as a very long and tedious quest, but the payoff is worth it! (There’s also a mod to help find them, called ‘Stones of Barenziah Quest Markers’. [Link here][www.nexusmods.com]).
Gift of the Gab:
Obtained at the Bard’s college, you will gain a 15% boost to leveling your Speech skill. To get this, you must complete the quest “Tending the Flames”.
Seeker of Sorcery:
All spells cost 10% less magicka, and all enchantments are 10% more powerful. This is a more late-game abiltiy, as you can only get this ability from the ‘Black Book: The Sallow Regent”.
Shrine of Dibella:
Gives you +10 Speech for 8 hours.
Shrine of Zenithar:
Gives you 10% better prices for 8 hours.
Resting:
Sleeping in any bed will give you a 5% increase to all leveling, and resting in a bed you own will give you a 10% increase to all leveling.
The Lover Stone:
This standing stone will give you +15% to all leveling.
Keeping it up
If you keep this process up, you won’t be collecting the crafting ingredients as much. With all the gold you make, you can just buy them, craft them, and sell them again. Here’s some tips to make sure you stay making a profit:
- Make sure you invest perks into Enchanting and Speech! Smithing is optional.
- Stash away extra gold ingots and gems. When the time comes, you can reset your Smithing, and use them to level up your smithing all over again, and invest the perks even further!
- Dead draugr contain lots of gems and gold, similar to burial urns!
- Last, but certainly not least, HOARD ALL GOLD! Even if it’s only two coins, they add up over time!
Hopefully this helped you on your journey through Skyrim! Now get out there and make some gold!