Storing Items in Random Places

[Mochi]

I am new to Skyrim and only have a few hours in. I have to option to buy a house now but it is too expensive. I'd like to store a lot of items for now. In Fallout New Vegas, I stored everything inside the garbage bin by the saloon for the whole game. Is it possible to store my items in a random barrel in Riverwood without losing them?

[DarkEternal]

The only 100% way to be sure your items will be safe is to use chests in player owned homes. It's not that hard to get 5,000 gold in the beginning and buy Breezehome in Whiterun. It comes with one chest by your bed that is safe to store anything in.

[Mochi]

What is the best tactic to earn gold? I just sell the loot from enemies like armor and stuff. So far I saved about 2,700 gold but I'm so frugal I don't want to spend most of it haha.

[alexander_dougherty]

Originally posted by Mochi:

What is the best tactic to earn gold? I just sell the loot from enemies like armor and stuff. So far I saved about 2,700 gold but I'm so frugal I don't want to spend most of it haha.

Gold is only there to be spent, buy the first home, and get the upgrades, you can then store as much good stuff as you want.

Easiest way to raise it in the early game is to sell Dragon bone and scales, they weigh too much to cart around, and sell for a decent enough price. You can also enchant jewellery (and weapons & armour) for a good profit.

[ModerateOsprey]

Yeah, sell pretty much everything and only keep rare, interesting and the stuff that you really like.

If you get enchanted stuff, get the enchantments from them at the enchantment table - there is one in Dragonreach you can use.

I had 23 gold left when I bought Breezehome at 8ish in the morning, went out adventuring and had another 2 grand in the kitty by the evening.

[Ruenis]

To make money quickly in the beginning, give any beggar 1 gold coin. This will give you The Gift of Charity, which raises your "persuasion" and thus, your returns on sold items. But before you sell anything, you'll want to make sure you have 20 gold to take a carriage to Solitude. There, you can visit the Temple of the Divines, and activate the Shrine of Zenithar (it looks like an anvil), which raises your bartering power and thus, your returns on sold items.

If you have an amulet of Dibella, make sure to wear it in tandem with having these bonuses present. It boosts your Speech level by 15 points, which increases your returns on sold items. The "Amulet of Zenithar" has a similar effect, but the Amulet of Dibella will make you more money in the end.

Next you'll want to sell everything you won't be using/don't want that you can find. It could get a little silly, such as selling cups and plates.

Protip: In Riverwood, if you give Embry an alcoholic beverage, you will then be allowed to take everything inside the Sleeping Giant Inn that has a value of 25 gold or less. The same can be done at the Bannered Mare in Whiterun if you sell at least 1 firewood to Hulda.

Embershard Mine is a good place to loot up a few things for selling. Most Skyrim players don't bother with looting the enemy's armor and clothing, but if you bring a follower with you, you can use them as a packrat (It's easy to recruit Faendal of Riverwood, Uthgerd the Unbroken of Whiterun, or Benor of Morthal in the beginning). I always loot pretty much everything in the beginning, to speedily earn the money needed to buy Breezehome.

Hunting wolves and deer is a good way to earn pelts you can tan at a tanning rack into leather for smithing. Leather Armor is worth 125 gold (but selling it won't give you the full price early on), and takes 4 leathers and 3 leather strips to craft, which is essentially 5 leathers because 1 leather can be tanned into 4 leather strips.

Remember:

Bear Pelt = 4 Leather
Sabre Cat Pelt = 4 Leather
Cow Hide = 3 Leather (This is THEE cheapest option for the most leather yield in stores)
Horse Hide = 3 Leather
Deer Hide = 2 Leather
Elk Hide = 2 Leather
Wolf Pelt = 1 Leather
Fox Pelt = 1 Leather

Craft things you won't use to sell them for money.

Make powerful potions, no matter how useless, and sell them. They'll yield around or more than what you'd get for selling some precious gemstones.

Advanced: Go to Halted Stream Camp, defeat the bandits, and collect the spellbook "Transmute Mineral Ore" from the bandit chief's table. It's an Adept level Alteration spell that turns iron ore into silver ore, and silver ore into gold ore.

Happy adventuring! :)

[Mochi]

Thanks guys! Great advice.

[Skarmo]

I have made a lot of gold with crafting potions, jewelery and weapons (later on you can also enchant them) and selling them. Should you be able to build wooden swords (don't know if you need a mod for this), you can cut wood and make them "from nothing", which in the very beginning of the game is very helpful. Crafting is also a good way to level up!

The spell from Halted Stream Camp, like Rockford said, is a great gift.

[mikk011]

If you don't mind grinding, the base game (over)pays for chopping firewood to sell to the millers. Plus, in many places this counts as one of your good deeds for "Becoming Thane" quests.

[rexpiscator]

Chop wood, smith Gold jewelry[or useful arrows], enchant the same Gold jewelry.

The purchasers of the Firewood seem to have unlimited resources at least up to the 5k needed for a first home....

It didn't seem to matter how much wood I chopped, total was always purchased....

I even got a Follower to chop for me, just had to click on the stump when the animation cycle ended, much easier than doing it with PC...you can even time it to where the Follower doesn't seem to stop--very easy to get 5K in Gold this way.

[Aglet Green]

Alternatively, you can do what I always do: find Treasure Chest 1. It's located in a hollow tree directly across from Riverwood across the river, and it always lets you keep your stuff in it forever.

You can find the treasure map for it really close by-- a trio of bandits have it, and they are always just south of the 3 Guardian stones, just south of where the road forks.

[Tommy]

The mod Hunterborn mod lets you craft stash markers that supposedly work as Safe storage pretty much anywhere (?). I have not used this feature myself, so I can't confirm. I imagine there are other safe storage mods.

How to quickly get gold early on? Afraid I can't help you there. I probably spent my first 20+ hours of the game in the wilderness, directly after Helgen, hunting and gathering plants and Exploring a few draugr dungeons. Thanks to that I got a lot of crafted potions and poisons from alchemy to sell.

Getting speech to 50 will help you immensly, there is a perk there that makes it so you can sell any item to any merchant (except stolen items).

[Perplex]

Here is a list of places where you can store stuff without worries of them going away.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Category:Skyrim-Places-Safe

[DarkEternal]

Originally posted by Spåttpaj:

The mod Hunterborn mod lets you craft stash markers that supposedly work as Safe storage pretty much anywhere (?). I have not used this feature myself, so I can't confirm. I imagine there are other safe storage mods.

How to quickly get gold early on? Afraid I can't help you there. I probably spent my first 20+ hours of the game in the wilderness, directly after Helgen, hunting and gathering plants and Exploring a few draugr dungeons. Thanks to that I got a lot of crafted potions and poisons from alchemy to sell.

Getting speech to 50 will help you immensly, there is a perk there that makes it so you can sell any item to any merchant (except stolen items).

Cache markers can only be used outside. Never indoors or in dungeons. It limits their usefulness a bit.

[ralphtobybob]

If you go for the chopping wood option, don't worry about be overburdened. Find something else to do while your character chops. Clean your keyboard or wipe down your desk. You know you've been meaning to...

Then just waddle inside and sell the wood. I run around collecting ingredients locally first. Make some health and a few poisons and sell all the rest, especially the resist magic.
You can normally take out the bandits on the ramparts and in the courtyard of the local fort. Don't clear out the inside because one of the armies will show up to claim it. You can also follow someone or a group of NPCs who will also respond to the bandit's attack on you.
If you'd rather look around the outside of the fort or just loot, let them do all the work..

Then buy Breezewood after you sell everything off.. I collect everything when leaving Helgen and waddle through the cave and to Riverwood with a thousand in weight or more and sell it all there. That puts coin in the pocket.

You can also join the Companions and use the storage you're given until you're ready to buy a home. I keep the dragon bone because it's worth a lot more when you eventually craft with it..

There's also a mod on Bethesda's site called Staff of Shalidur, or the other way around. It's a portable home inside a staff. It feels like serious 'cheating' but having to deal with vendors who run out of money or are closed is annoying. So is having to backtrack in a dungeon because you're overburdened. Later in the game as weapons and armor increase in value, so does the weight. That's why some dungeons have an exit before the main exit at the end, so you can go dump stuff off.

With high value stuff, you can spend a couple of hours making the rounds of vendors trying to unload stuff worth 5000 gold or more with a vendor that only has a couple of thousand.
And instead of fast traveling back to your storage and having to wait until everything is open again, just enter the staff and grab more stuff or grab it all it once and waddle over to the counter.

Just about all containers that don't belong to you will respawn new contents and usually deleting the previous contents. In Solsteim, I used to dump armor and weapons and even metals in a pile inside a vacant house until a home became available.

[Mochi]

Thanks so much for the help, guys. I am now 60 hours in and I own 2 houses haha. Leveling up and earning gold is a grind and repetitive, but it is addicting. I don't even think I made a dent in finishing this game with this amount time. Now I understand why people play this for thousands of hours. You could get lost in it easily.