Tips on Making Money in Skyrim

As exciting as living in the wild, exploring caves and taking down bandit camps is sometimes you need a nice home and wife to return to and this requires a little bit of gold. Earning gold can happen in a variety of ways with some ways being more efficient then others. From lumberjacking to spelunking we’ve got a few tips on earning money in Skyrim, your dreams of the perfect spouse and a bed in the Proudspire Manor just got a little more real.

Tip # 1: Chop Some Wood.

A fairly easy way to earn some cash is to find a chopping block in one of Skyrim’s many village. Riverwood has one if you’re not too far in to the game or up for any exploring. Approach and activate the chopping block and your character will be well on their way to earning some extra gold.

As you chop you’ll gain two pieces of ‘firewood’ which can be sold for 5 gold pieces each. Keep activating the chopping block and watch the money start rolling in.

Tip #2: Cook Something

Sure cooking is nice when it comes to feeding yourself but you can also earn a little gold by doing so. Activate a cooking pot to begin one of your recipes by combining random meats and vegetables. Take your home cooked meals to the local general merchant and make some money.

Tip #3: Invest!

You heard right. Make your money work for you by investing in local shops around Skyrim. In order to invest you must first put points into the investing perk under the speechcraft skill tree. After that start investing the merchants gold levels will rise permanently allowing you to sell more of your goods at a given time.

Tip #4: Start A Mining Career

Mining can prove to be very useful in many ways, making some extra money is just one of them. There are nine types of ores gold, iron, silver, corundum, malachite, moonstone, orichalcum, quicksilver and ebony. Of these nine Ebony is the most rare and expensive, try to find Ebony ore deposits. After you gather your ore find a smelter, one can be found in Whiterun, and then beginning smelting your ores into ingots which sell for a little more.

Here’s a list of some vein locations:

Gold: Kolskeggr Mine (24 veins)
Corundum: Darkwater Crossing (5 veins), Blackreach (3 veins), Snowpoint Beacon (2 veins)
Iron: Embershard Mine (8 veins), Halted Stream Camp (16 veins), Stonehills (4 veins)
Quicksilver: The Tower Stone (2 veins)
Malachite: Steamscorch Mine (7 veins)
Orichalcum: Bilegulch Mine (9 veins), Dushnikh Mine (9 veins), Shrine of Mehrunes Dagon (3 veins)
Ebony: Gloombound Mine (16 veins), Throat of the World (2 veins), Redbelly Mine (3 veins)
Moonstone: Mzulft (7 veins), Soljund’s Sinkhole (5 veins)

Tip #5: Smithing

Instead of selling the ignots from tip #4 use them to smith yourself some new weapons and armor. Sell this armor to armor merchants in town and make some gold.

Tip# 6: Dungeon Crawling

Go explore the world of Skyrim, especially the caves and dungeons. These places are filled with bandits, draugr, vampires and Falmer. Try to clear out Nordic Ruins and Strongholds as these places are usually filled with locked chests and gems. You can sell the loot from these dungeons to in town merchants and make quite a bit of gold doing it. Raise your lockpicking skill to make sure you get the best of the loot in these places.

Tip #7: Work for the Dark Brotherhood

Once you find out how to join the Dark Brotherhood is quickly becomes very rewarding. By the end of the quest line you’ll have a few extra thousand gold pieces lying around.

Tip #8: Steal

Working for the thieves guild makes this a much easier task. Find some of the more rich manors throughout Skyrim and steal their best stuff then return to The Ragged Flagon and speak to Tonilia about your stolen goods, she pays a decent price.

Tip #9: Slay Dragons!

Of course this step requires a bit of work in two different departments first you need to raise your smithing level to 100 which can be easy if you check out our Smithing Guide. Second you’ll need to kill Dragons and collect their bones. Once you do those two things begin smithing Dragonscale Armor which can be sold for 2,800 gold pieces each.

Tip #10: Learn the Transmute Spell

With this spell you can change iron ore into gold ore and smelt it into gold ignots. Sell these amulets or turn them into rings or amulets.

With these tips your should be a goldenaire no time. Just make sure you spend your money wisely and raise your speech skill a bit so you get better deals from the vendors.