Favorite way of making money/getting loot?

[Chrona the Leshy]

What are some of your favorite methods of earning money, especialy early game?

For me, I become a water baron. Get plastic bags, as many bottles as I can, and something to boil them in. Typically, there's at least one good water source near the DMC.

My other favorite thing to have happen is when near the DMC, and guards either A, kill something worthwhile (read, deer, sometimes dogmen), or B, get killed by something. I never attack them...I just take care of everything on their dead body.

Right now, I'm both earning money and waiting on certain things to pop up in the junk trading spot. 3 islabs (and batteries), a laptop (and battery, for some reason, they like to sell electronics with no batteries)....and that's about it.

I typically take myopic neg trait, then go and get upgraded in DMC once I've earned enough, so earning enough early game matters to me

[MissCreep]

Oh man, how I hate boiling water. I avoid it until I really, really have to. It's just such a pain in the butt.

I like going up north a little and hunting down dogmen so I can sell all the meat. It's much more fun than sitting around boiling water.

[RalphRoberts]

I like to take botanist and become a Tannin Tea merchant. :)

[destroyor]

Tannin tea is the fastest and most reliable way of making money without powergaming. If you want to powergame just rush elusive and kill DMC guards.

[Chrona the Leshy]

Oooh, I forgot about tanin tea. I didn't take botany this time around, and I'm not confidant enough to hunt dogmen, so boiling water it is :P

At least with an actual pot, it goes by slightly faster..

[Strelok]

I always go with myopia as well since you can get rid of it with the eye augmentations. For my early-game earnings, I take the ranged, trapping, medical, hiding and hacking skills, then I head northeast to the Anishinaabe tribal lands. I find a spot with good concealment, an office building or a forest, and I set up a campsite there with extra food, water, noise traps and sleeping bag. Then I begin scavenging nearby forest cabins, since they always give the best loot.

With the medical and ranged skills, I can identify any guns, bullets or pills that I find, and with hacking I can store iSlabs, smart phones, laptops and anything else that contains information at the campsite. Usually as the first order of things I purchase an Anishinaabe bow and a travois from the tribesmen, then make and purchase about 20-30 crude broadhead arrows (you can keep them in a makeshift sack if you have no other quiver).

It's inevitable that as you're camping and looting around this vicinity, you'll get ambushed by dogmen (especially at dawn and dusk). These are where I make most of my cash. You have to be very careful with them if you start at close range, especially if you're dragging a vehicle, but once you hit once or twice with the 'blast away' action, they go down pretty easily.

If you butcher their corpse using the trapping skill on the first turn that you kill them, you can get a 99% condition dogman fur coat, which sells for about $220. When butchered with trapping, they also drop 7 pieces of large meat, which go for $50 each at 100% condition when cooked. So if you kill the dogman, butcher him and cook him quickly, then throw all the hide and meat in the travois and head back to the tribesmen, you can typically make about $550-560 off of a single dogman.

If dogmen seem a bit dangerous to you, you can hunt deer instead and sell their meat in the same fashion. Combined with all the medicine, ammunition, guns and hardware that you find in the forest cabins around the tribal lands that you can identify and sell as well as the loot from dead Anishinaabe tribesmen and the dead Bad Mutha's/Blue Frogs that they've fought, and you make tons of money very quickly with only a little bit of luck. I usually leave the tribal lands for Detroit after only a week or so of camping with the Anishinaabe.

[mr nutter]

I pretty neat way to get money is to find DMC guards, take off your copper amulet and let the ghost kill them. Can be a little hard to do sometimes, but doesn't require anything but yhte amulet you start of with.

[Expectorate]

I dunno if it's a bug or not, but I find the wraith will only chase me, not attack guards. I had to wait for something else? to kill guards before I could loot em in my current run.

But yeah, my favourite way to make money is hacking that sweet, sweet data. Got a couple thou before I even got into the dmc that way - got the bracelet from Hatter, and boom, instant eye correction. It also fixed whatever illness I'd managed to pick up along the way too, so that was sweet. I got all my upgrades, then managed to get kicked out of the DMC due to...ahem...a pebcak error(I had all the skills and gear, I just flubbed the cues...I was having a slow morning before coffee).

Bright side, after I got kicked out, I experimented with summoning the wraith for the first time to try and have it take out dmc guards, which didn't work, but I did find a couple guard corpses the next turn that must've died from something else(disease from the swamp?) and made a ton of cash of that, plus now kitted out in all that sweet, sweet gear.

[Chrona the Leshy]

Originally posted by Strelok:

I always go with myopia as well since you can get rid of it with the eye augmentations. For my early-game earnings, I take the ranged, trapping, medical, hiding and hacking skills, then I head northeast to the Anishinaabe tribal lands.
-snip

I've never thought about going there before detroit. Nice thinking. But my question is, since I havven't been there in a long time, do they have the same variety as the detroit shop?

Once I make enough money, I make sure I'm well outfitted, as well as having all the hacking software and a cracked laptop. I rarely find laptops before reaching detroit...

[Strelok]

Originally posted by Chrona Trigger:

Originally posted by Strelok:

I always go with myopia as well since you can get rid of it with the eye augmentations. For my early-game earnings, I take the ranged, trapping, medical, hiding and hacking skills, then I head northeast to the Anishinaabe tribal lands.
-snip

I've never thought about going there before detroit. Nice thinking. But my question is, since I havven't been there in a long time, do they have the same variety as the detroit shop?

Once I make enough money, I make sure I'm well outfitted, as well as having all the hacking software and a cracked laptop. I rarely find laptops before reaching detroit...

Their variety isn't as good as the DMC junk market. ATN trading post has no software for sale, but they do sometimes sell ammo and guns. However, to find backpacks and duffel bags, I go to the junk market.

[SportyHeadShot]

with the latest update it seems like scavenging has been severely nerfed I was used to geting a fair ammount of more junk out of random houses but now its quite rare it seems like the better thing to do after coming out of cryostasis is to take down another survivor.

[IndirectHero]

Get the YpcV from King Elias or Queen Liza and sell it to Hatter. After a week you get $200,000. Medic skill is needed to identify it.