Money and Gear - Am I doing something wrong?

[Brother Alpha]

I'm still very early in the game, but it still feels like I'm not getting any useful gear and money is incredibly rare. Today I opened a chest I needed a lockpick to get to and it contained 14 gold. That's it. That's an insultingly low amount of gold for a chest behind a locked door.

Am I missing something? Is there hidden loot I need to be search for?

[Kira]

Loot is fairly random in BT4. It's almost meme-worthy, to be honest, how disconnected the loot sometimes feels from the effort needed to obtain it.

There are chests that take the solving of multiple puzzles to get to, and they still might only contain an Apprentice Sandals or 14 gold or something.

The loot found in chests does scale a little bit with your progress, so harder areas are more likely to yield better stuff, and there are a couple of chests with fixed loot that have very valuable contents, but as a general rule in BT4 do not expect miracles from random loot chests, because you might be disappointed.

Now, the stock found at vendors consists mainly of two different types of items. You have "leveled gear" that is typically armor and weapons that will get progressively more expensive as the quality of the item improves. Let's say you have an Arming Sword that gives you a +5 bonus, if you want to swap it for one that gives you +7 bonus, you'll have to pay a fortune. I'm usually very frugal with this sort of item because you might find a better quality item as a random drop in the next fight. I tend to pick new weapons or armor up if my characters learned a new skill for example, like if my rogue learns Thug I will generally get them a Blackjack, if my Bard learns Eviscerating Gash I will generally get them a Long Axe, and so forth, but I will not be hung up on the item quality too much, I'll just get something affordable to get the extra effect from the attack.

There are also unique and special items at vendors (boots, elven seeds, puzzle cogs, crafting recipes, rare crafting components, rare booze, mercenary tokens, relics, trinkets, bombs, potions, even a unique/elven weapon or two) - these are typically not that expensive. You can reasonably buy everything you need even if you totally ignore money in the game otherwise. These items will often have a much bigger impact on your gameplay than upgrading a specific leveled gear for a character.

I do sometimes invest in a good piece of gear for specific builds, but this is more the exception than the rule. Most characters will do just fine with whatever you find in your adventures.

Also, note that money does stop being a problem around midway through the game, and you are almost guaranteed to have top-tier gear by the end of the game no matter what you did earlier.

[Chilkoot]

Originally posted by Brother Alpha:

Am I missing something? Is there hidden loot I need to be search for?

You're not missing anything - the economy was pretty poorly implemented, TBH. There will be a tipping point where you go from not having enough money to buy any meaningful upgrades to having more money than you could possibly use.

The optional side-zones like Mangar's Tower will normally provide better loot (and tougher fights!) than the main quest zones. If you're light on both gear and cash, check those areas out.

[Brother Alpha]

I was really hoping I was doing something wrong. I feel very under equipped.

[svdp]

Originally posted by Brother Alpha:

I was really hoping I was doing something wrong. I feel very under equipped.

Well, it's a bit of a mixed bag. While it's true that at the start, money/gold is very hard to come by, it must be said that at the end you'll be inundated with money. So you'll begin with almost nothing, and end up with far more money than you can actually use it on anything. So Kira and Chilkoot are right that it's a bit unbalanced and poorly implemented, though more problematic is the latter, me thinks. Because, I've always found that having no money and the gold being difficult to get by when you're just starting as poor, newbie adventurers that haven't proven anything yet, is more or less normal. And at least you know that, if you persist and do quests and explore and battle, gold coins will come increasingly your way. That's how it should be, in an RPG.

In contrast, having heaps of money without having anything to do with it is rather off-putting, exactly because you have nothing to look forward to. If rewards are in gold, but you can't do anything with that gold, then it's not much of a reward. And believe me, by the time you will be lvl 20-25, you'll have heaps and heaps of gold. I suggest to spend it on gear, even if it's only marginally better than what you already have, because otherwise it will just sit there in your pouch. And even then you'll still be left with a mountain of gold coins. So being frugal, as Kira advised, is a good thing if you're not yet lvl 10-15, but after lvl 15 you can (and should) steadily become more and more lavish with your skeatt-spending.

Anyhow, while I think it's pretty normal to have some trouble getting enough gold as starting adventurers without any repute (as of yet), that said, there ARE some ways to get more money more fast.

First of, you have the skill "Cavity search" on the skilltree of your rogue. It's a passive; Cavity Search gives you a 25% chance when killing an enemy to find bonus Gold Skeatt.

The second way is to use "Blazing Star", I'll give you a link where it's perfectly explained here:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1091980/discussions/0/3199241400264088007/

As for more general hints: keep exploring and doing quests, and by the time you reach lvl 10-15, you'll see your financial situation improve drastically. ;-)

Hope that helped!

[Kira]

To be honest, depending on how soon you can clear Haernhold, it's possible that you go from a "poor and can't afford high-level gear" situation straight to a "have all the best gear in the game" situation without ever crossing the "I have some gold, I can now choose to upgrade a piece of gear or two" realm... 🤷‍♀️