Oblivion talk:Making Money

I like this page however whoever first wrote it put a few things in the first person, I have removed accordingly. As they did come up with the formula I'm reticent to remove that comment however or add an atrition. Any suggestions? Grandmaster z0b 22:04, 26 March 2007 (EDT)

The wiki history makes it clear who added what information, so there is no need to have any additional attributions within the article, as discussed in the Style Guide. Basically, all the first person sections need to be rewritten. --Nephele 22:50, 26 March 2007 (EDT)

Thanks, I've edited that comment. Thanks for the further cleanup by the way. Grandmaster z0b 23:05, 26 March 2007 (EDT)

Hey, i'm a new user and i'm just starting to make some major edits to the website, and i spotted this article and i've made some fairly significant changes to the style, tone, layout and content. I haven't been able to change a lot of it because i don't feel confident enough about my knowladge in some area's of the subject, but as i'm starting out, i'd like to see if what i've changed is any good, thanks.--Harry howarth 19:15, 2 March 2008 (EST)

Return Trips

I've added below the formulae section a quick description of how to get 100% of all loot back to the merchants. Since strangely no one seemed inclind to mention this otherwise perfect method of making massive amounts of money very quickly.— Unsigned comment by 80.225.124.178 (talk) on 27 December 2009

EDIT: Excuse me but can you explain why those comments where deleted in better detail than was done in the histroy please. to adress the fw points raised there.

1. Yes i know the spellings bad. I'm dyslexic and dyspraxic. I rely on eithier a spellchecker or others to componsate for that fro me. i admit it's a faior point but still couldn't you have just corrected it?

2. How is it redundent. the formulae section outright suggests leavuing behind everything you can't carry and nowehere is it suggested that you should go back for the drooped items, nor are any tps given to help avoid restts and to minimise the number of trips you have to make.

3. How is it opinionated. I'm stating facts here. It is far more time efficent to make multipule trips from the outside of a dungeoun to the merchant and back than to abbandon loot inside the dungeoun. This becomes especially true at higher levels. I've just run blue blood fort at Lv 17 and come out with aproximetly 30K worth of gear, at the most i could carry 5-6K worth to the merchant on a single trip however. Whilst this is an extreme example, (the place is full of heavy armour wearing 2-handed weapon weilding mauraders after all), it's fairly true that you can treble your total income from one run this way for very littile reral time investment. it's simply vastly faster than keeping only thr high value stuff for gold acumulation.

4. Whats the point about 1st person? if it's some sort of writting rule i'm sprry, i'm a bit new round here. i was also trying to add it quickly between sessions TBH so wasn't trying to write a masterpeice. Just explain the basics of how to do it.— Unsigned comment by 80.225.124.178 (talk) on 27 December 2009

"Items that you yourself have dropped will never disappear during this respawning process. So a good hint is to always pick things up you may want to carry later and drop them again on the ground. This is especially true for weapons that are in the hands of your enemies when they fall. When an enemy archer falls, the bow he was carrying falls to the ground and can be picked up without touching the corpse. However, unless you pick up the weapon yourself and drop it again, it will disappear when the area is next respawned" says so in article, and first person is using "I" in a sentence like "when I cleared this dungeon". We don't use "I" in the articles— Unsigned comment by 166.137.136.102 (talk) on 27 December 2009

• Wooops :$. I completly missed that when running through the article. And fair enough on the I. As i said the article looked like it was suggesting leaving most stuff behind and that got under my skin a littile as it came across as very short sighted.

Still it might be worth mentioning the idea of moving loot outside the dungeoun yes? As you go as this collects it in one handy area to pick up later, means you never miss things that spawned, and might prevent a respawn issue, (forcing you to re-clear), if your forced to go do somthing else in the meantime?— Unsigned comment by 80.225.124.178 (talk) on 27 December 2009

sure if you feel like adding it. I don't see any mention of it. If u need, we'll fix the spelling errors acordingly— Unsigned comment by 71.63.13.57 (talk) on 27 December 2009

Modryn Oreyn

Seems as though someone forgot to add this source of income.

If you feel it should be added, why not do it yourself? Everyone is free to edit the wiki, so any improvements you'd like to make would certainly be welcome! –Eshe^talk19:37, 9 March 2008 (EDT)

what is it we actually forgot? Modryn Oreyn? What about him? Forgive me if i'm missing something major but i've never ventured far into the Fighters Guild before.--Harry howarth 06:45, 10 March 2008 (EDT)

Good question. I assume he meant the monthly payment from the Fighters Guild after the quests are complete, but on the other hand by the time you've finished those you probably don't need the money. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 06:57, 10 March 2008 (EDT)

Oblivion for Dummies?

I'm just passing by here, and am not a regular contributor or anything of the sort, but I think that you should consider shortening the bit about the value to encumbrance ratio "formula." It's not nearly so profound that it deserves a detailed mathematical explanation. Even third graders will start to feel a little patronized by the end of the detailed examples on how to calculate the ratio. I think it's much better to just state something along the lines of: "At some point in your dungeon-crawling it's likely that you're going to become over-encumbered from all of your loot. When this situation arises, you should begin to eliminate the items that have the smallest ratio of value to encumbrance value and keep the items that pack more coin for their weight" In fact, it may not deserve mentioning at all; almost anyone will behave this way when faced with the situation.

I'm sorry, but the formula is very simple and concise. It is clear, useful, easily applicable and there is no reason to remove it. In fact, it would probably be harder to explain the concept if we did. If a player is making a decision between item such as the two mentioned, they are unlikely to realize that they will keep the less valuable item, on average, 50% of the time. It's not that difficult! A nine-year-old could understand it easily! --HMSVictory 14:17, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

I agree with HMSVictory, though perhaps he/she was a little too curt.

You used "ratio" in your proposed explanation several times. We cannot assume anyone reading these pages to be of a certain age or having a certain level of education. That is why I added a concise definition of the ratio in words as well as rewrite of the algebraic form in a more standard and logical notation. I can't see how it can be written any clearer than what I have. HMSVictory is right, it would be more difficult to explain the concept without the formula. The reader may not in fact know what a ratio is, or may invert the calculation if he/she does.

The concept itself is not necessarily obvious. (Again, you are assuming things about the age/education/experiences of the readers.) And as for it being too long, hardly... If the reader gets the formula or written ratio definition, he/she can simple skim-/skip- over the example and on to the guidelines and exceptions—hardly an overly verbose explanation. In fact, it follows a pretty standard way of learning a concept used in books and schools—explain the concept, then give an example of applying it.

-- Enterprise2001 22:50, 30 March 2008 (EDT)

Feedback

All of the work that's been put into the article lately has clearly improved it. The issues identified by the previous cleanup tag have been tackled, so removing the cleanup tag was appropriate. I've gone through and dealt with a few minor points that I noticed.

But I'm still unsure about the Oblivion:Making Money#Dungeon Types section. Overall, the section seems redundant. It would seem more useful to merge the information into the existing list of Dungeon Types at Dungeons instead of having overlapping lists in different places. Or alternatively, reorganize the list of dungeon types on this page to make it clearly different in function from the Dungeons page list (for example, with section headers providing various types of loot, then detail recommended places to go for that loot).

Furthermore, I'm not sure about the images used in the Dungeon Types section. Images provide nice "eye candy". But they should do more than that: the images should help to illustrate the information in the text. The images here don't really do that. An image of a Land Dreugh standing in a field has no relationship to making money: Land Dreughs themselves don't carry any valuable loot; Land Dreughs in the wilderness don't even have an associated dungeon where you can loot the chests. Therefore I find the images somewhat distracting. I question whether the extra time required to the load the page and all of the extra white space required between the images are worth it.

These are issues that predate the recent round of revisions, so I'm not saying that these are new problems that have recently been introduced. In fact, the cleanup has dealt with some other concerns that I previously had with the Dungeon Types section. But given that feedback was requested, I thought I'd provide it. --Nephele^Talk 21:39, 23 April 2008 (EDT)

I admit that some of the dungeon info is redundant, but it's written with an eye to what type of loot is in each dungeon and how good the loot's value ratio is. Certainly not as comprehensive as the dedicated dungeon page (should be). That info could conceivably be added to the main dungeon pages and then transcluded (I think I got that right) here. If you think that is best Neph, go right ahead.

As for the totally new "loot centric" approach to listing places to get specific types of loot, that's also conceivable too. I was working from what was already there. (Which was... not good, and mostly specific opinions stated as cold hard fact. I tried to make it more a "rule of thumb" list instead...)

The images are there to illustrate the types of monsters/NPCs in a given dungeon type. This article is geared toward the new Oblivion player and players who may be "in a rut" and looking for some new way to make money. It stands to reason that said player(s) may not know what the monsters/NPCs look like. I agree, they may not be the best images available, (again, I was working with what was already there...) but they do provide something. :-) As for the Land Dreugh, yeah, ok, perhaps a pic of another monster actually in a monster dungeon would be better. By all means, track down a better image and replace it.

The big question remains: Add the loot info (and possibly images) to the main dungeon page, or rework this page to be loot centric instead of dungeon centric?

Not Holding My Breath, --Enterprise2001 15:26, 20 July 2008 (EDT)

More links to this page!

This page is too hard to find. Perhaps gold or Oblivion:money should redirect here? Presumably someone typing "gold" in the search box is much more likely to be seeking a page like this than the table to which they are currently redirected. 192.43.227.18 05:36, 7 June 2008 (EDT)

Why not search "MAKING MONEY"!!!!! Crowbar 18:42, 21 August 2008 (EDT)

Dungeon Diving: Number of trips

It seems odd that this article never mentions simply making more than one trip to clean out a dungeon. While it may be tedious, it does maximize the amount of gold you make per fight. If you have already gone through the trouble of killing a marauder, you should at least get as much as possible. I would make the edits myself, but I am not sure of the specifics of how long loot can be left sitting in a dungeon before it resets. — Unsigned comment by 70.184.20.129 (talk) on 5 March 2009

Wouldn't that be pretty obvious? –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 01:09, 5 March 2009 (EST)

Not necessarily. I would think a lot of people would be in a "smash and grab mode", not taking the time to think that once the bandits are dead they can take more time and thoroughly pluck the dungeon clean. Pueblonative 00:27, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Oblivion promotes the feature that players could loot numerous containers, and pick up any (playable) item they see. I don't think we need to state that again. --Timenn-<talk> 10:09, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Vampire

I find it odd that the Pale Lady is used as the picture for an enemy you may find while dungeon diving. Maybe someone should add in a generic vampire in its place? --Mr. Oblivion 05:33, 7 May 2009 (EDT)

100% or more chameleon for money

alright, i do know making 100% Chameleon is a bit expensive in itself, but its a good deal. it'll help you a lot if you have it. What you must do is put on your enchanted items with chameleon and the Grey Cowl of Nocturnal (so if they "catch" you the bounty on the Gray Fox goes up, not yours) and just pickpocket royalty, usually they have about 400 or more gold on them, and with this you can just go around pickpocketing anyone without actually having to go to jail all you do is go out of the city, when they're not following you, take off the Cowl and come back. no bounty. you're good. also, you may try it on Mage's Guild members, but if you get "caught" while being a member yourself, even as the Gray Fox, you will need to do the quest for stealing from a member.

Introduction change

I added the paragraph because in many other role playing games the first thing I look for is an infinite money cheat. Several other people I know who play role playing games do the same thing.

The reason is in many other games, the amount of money a character can make is somehow limited and often a slow and tedious process that is level dependent.

I know this wiki is suppose to be about games in the The Elder Scrolls series, but I ask patrollers to consider that many players played other role playing games before they played Oblivion. I know players shoud not make assumptions, but like me and every human they do.

I do not mention any game by name, just the generic term other role playing games. I feel there are cases where drawing a comparison between Oblivion features and simliar features in other roles play games does add value.

--Jxavier 18:22, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Rule of thumb

While the rule of thumb is correct in the equation, it should be modified slightly. Unless you're mercantile is very high and you have a good relationship with the merchant, you won't get 100 percent for an item. In fact, starting out you will be lucky to get half of the value indicated. Pueblonative 16:12, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

In this case, they're talking about the "value ratio", not the actual price that you'll get for the item. So, if a ring has a base price of 120 and a weight of 0.1, it's value ratio is 1200:1, compared to something like an Iron Arrow, which has a base price of 1 and a weight of 0.1, giving it a value ratio of 10:1. In this case, if you're at your weight limit, you're better off dropping the arrow and picking up the ring. Because it's a ratio, using the base price vs. the actual price you get at a vendor (which you probably don't know precisely while you're still in a dungeon or wherever) makes a negligible difference. —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 22:05, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Zero Weight Items

Yeah, guys, since zero-weight items take up no weight, they are inherently better from a weight ratio prospective. It's all about opportunity cost. By carry any item, you lose the capacity to carry other items. With zero-weight items, there's no loss of the 'opportunity' to carry other items, which leads to a better value ratio. Even if you don't believe that infinity is a number, then just use common sense.--Ratwar 20:59, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

How can you believe or not believe infinity is a number? "Infinity" is a term to describe certain aspects of certain formal systems. It's an invented concept in mathematics, which, among others, state that infinity is not treated as a number (check Wikipedia:Infinity). It's not a matter of whether it's there or not. You are using a defined set of properties for your mathematics, so you need to play by its rules in order to make correct calculations.

Now your explanation of the items in above comment is not incorrect, so why not use that instead of the incorrect assessment that x / 0 = ∞ ? Let me state again that zero is a Zero element (and in this case it acts as the absorbing element for multiplication). This means that 0 × x is always 0. It's one of the basic concepts for Fields. Since the latter is normally used when no other system is given in the context (like now), we should adhere its rules. Otherwise we need to enter in a lot of statements of which other system we are using. That doesn't feel right for a simple article like this.

It seems to me some people have been reading Wikipedia:Division by zero, scrolled down without reading and picked the options that may implicate you can divide by zero. Those are mathematical structures for the advanced, folks! Sure you may wish to use them, but they are hardly necessary on a simple gaming wiki. I don't think we need to implement limit functions here.

Look, of course I know what you mean. I find the statement that zero-weight items don't encumber you quite obvious. But the explanation given as to why is plain wrong. And having incorrect reasoning like that on article is perpendicular with common sense. --Timenn-<talk> 14:00, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone object if I alter the wording on the article to remove the erroneous statement?

For those not yet understanding the problems of considering infinity as a number and x / 0 = ∞, let's assume that they are:

x / 0 = ∞ leads to x / ∞ = 0. Now I may enter any number for x, and by the assumption that ∞ is a number I may enter ∞ => ∞ / ∞ = 0. By law of substitution I may replace ∞ with a new variable y. This results in y / y = 0. If I calculate y divided by y I get 1, so this leads to the conclusion that 1 = 0. I think it's safe to safe that is a contradiction, thus with reductio ad absurdum I may conclude that the assumption is wrong and you may not use infinity as a number and/or x / 0 is not ∞. --Timenn-<talk> 15:08, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Tweaked the wording. --Timenn-<talk> 15:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

New Section?

I suggest that some of these suggestions are placed into a different section (or article) entitled "repeatable quests" for quick reference. That way, if somebody wants to know which quests can be "spammed" for some quick gold they can see them at a glance. Examples: Venerable Vintage, Black Bow Bandits, Etc. Some of the other types of items can be grouped as "respawning rewards" such as the fighters guild stipend and the "goblin trouble" reward chest.

Speaking of which does anyone know if the chest respawns according to level or is set according to the level at which you complete the quest. If that is the case can anyone tell me what level the gold amount is capped at? Mathiusdragoon 14:38, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Loot Raven Camoran?

After level 22, Raven Camoran carrying the Mundane Ring (costs 21600 gold). It's possible to kill him, loot and wait for respawn. He'll be non-hostile again. Is it a bug or a somewhat a good way to make money at the end? 93.170.3.2 14:35, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

It's probably just a good way to make money. He was clearly scripted to resurrect as often as necessary, so it makes sense that they would have thought of the fact that you could loot him repeatedly. – Robin Hood↝talk 01:03, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Getting rid of money

I did the 'Uncovering mehrunes razor' quest with god mode on (must have been about level 20-23) and i collected all the armour from everybody there. Once finished, I sold all the stuff and i now have around 200000 septims. The game just isnt fun anymore, and I cant seem to get rid of all my money. Is there a way to drop it all or a cheat to remove it? — Unsigned comment by 222.155.221.217 (talk) at 21:35 on 8 October 2010

In the console, use player.removeitem f AmountToDrop. – Robin Hood↝talk 22:28, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Wrong place?

such as the Dren Plantation north of Anvil

I looked around and only find that place in Morrowind. Isn't the plantation north of Anvil some Dunmer residence. — Unsigned comment by 216.226.7.32 (talk) at 05:22 on 13 October 2010

Definitely the wrong place. My best guess is that the person meant Lord Drad's Estate, since that has quite a selection of veggies growing outside. I'll change the article to match. Thanks for catching it! – Robin Hood↝talk 05:44, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

New Method

The method i use to get money is just drop EVERYTHING in your house or some non-respawning chest. Then you go to some fort with bandits and as you progress just take everything. as you kill bandits your preferred armor and weapon will probably become available and you can just wear that before you sell it. Wondering if this is a valid method and if so how do i go about putting it in there?

Magical Arms Dealing for Conjurors

A good Methoed for making money is selling enchanted arms.

Requirments. pick a creature summoning spell with whatever level of soul (check the wiki for information), as a master of conjuration i prefer to use a Xivilai some metheod of soultrap access to an altar of enchantment (i.e. Arcane univercity, Froscrage spire if you have the plug-in) make sure you know that you can kill the summoned creature before it expires

this money-maker is for conjurors (not being 1 would simply make it more difficult).

first aquire Azura's Star.

go to the altar of enchantment.

summon the creature.

mortally wound the creature, soultrap it, then finish it off to get the soul.

use the soul to enchant the weapon with a very basic enchanment/effect. effects like drain attribute or burden are good. make its magnitude and duration as low as possible. the catch is that with a simple effect with low worth, the weapon will have many charges depending on the soul. increasing the value

repeat the procces for how ever many weapons you have,

1) harvest soul

2) enchant

3) sell weapons to a merchant (obvously one with good deals)

Weapons to choose. go to a weapons store and but simple weapons that are very cheap (iron,steel) (daggers shortswords) preferibaly. DO NOT use appearal. the acual money maker is the fact that cheap enchantments/weapons will cost about 15-30 gold and will boost the value to up to 600 in many cases. and you will also have many oppritunities to make weapons for your self.

on a personel note i would like to know if this is main-page worthy, i will register soon as clm222.

lemme know whatcha think ^^

Vampire Hunting

I feel that vampire hunting should definitely go on the money making list here's why. A.) (though it's already mentioned) you get a lot more enchanted items at lower levels. B.) Vampires are easy to kill with any type of fire damage (and leading them out into the sun also helps out a bit) C.) They give you a huge supply of black robes which are weightless and can be enchanted and equipped onto followers. D.) Once you complete the quest for the order of the virtuous blood (by completing it i mean killing Seridur and not Roland) you always get 250 for vampire dust, whereas if you sell it to other merchants the price will vary AND it's base value is only 50 so you get much more gold than just selling them to alchemists. Long story short, kill 4 vampires get 1000 gold, do the math. It's extremely profitable at low levels since you barely get any gold in leveled containers and let's be honest, who doesn't want to kill a bunch o' vampires?Lucife Decon

We already mention Vampire Dust and the Vampire Cure. Vampire Slaying is venturing too far into the realms of roleplay. rpeh •T•C•E• 09:52, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah i was planning on deleting this because I just noticed that vampire dust is already mentioned.Lucife Decon

Making money - Mages Guild only

Earlier i tried to but Summon atronach but was a lot short on gold. I had some soul gems i wasn't going to use so i thought "I might as well use these for something." I bought some iron daggers and went to an encachanting altar at the arcane university. I then enchated one of the daggers with "feather 3 points for one second" and it was worth 646 gold, using only a petty soul gem. So now i'm making some more and will have plenty of money for spells. — Unsigned comment by 95.144.87.13 (talk) at 19:26 on 4 December 2011