Effective ways for making cash?

[Trozana]

Wanted to ask around if anyone knows how to effectively make cash in this game as I'm currently aiming for the different money achievements.

[Tahnval]

I don't. And I'm currently on ~$36M.

There are a few things I've picked up that are of some use;

Your personal junkyard is a goldmine. Fix all areas, buy all workstations, employ maximum staff and ensure they're very satisfied (they do more work then). I keep everyone on default hours and pay everyone $200 per whatever amount of time it is. Double the market rate for a new starter and well above the market rate for even experienced staff. Everyone's always very satisfied and the money flows in. $90K to $250K per area. 9 areas. Lots of money.


The big crusher is the key to obtaining large quantities of scrap, as long as you avoid minivans. Tractors and tanks are far more efficient for obtaining scrap, including the more valuable scrap. I currently have about 180 tonnes of scrap I could sell and I've already sold many tonnes of scrap.

Selling scrap only when it's at a particularly high price is a good idea for making cash. You'll get a popup in the bottom right of the screen, showing one specific material fetching a much higher than normal price (around double) for 30 minutes. Copper and brass are good ones for this, especially if you've been crushing some tractors and tanks. You don't have to pay storage costs, so just keep it until the price is high.

Junkman orders are bonus money if you're going to be doing those things anyway, so keep an eye on those. It's not much (IIRC the maximum extra amount is $30K), but it's an extra.

The "gather money from containers" junkman orders are a particularly fast and easy bonus money, albeit only ~$10K. Just go to the motel area. Every room has containers with free cash in them. Every single room. Usually several per room. The rooms also contain items for renovation and items for scrapping. Drive your lorry up, park it and stuff it full of things. While getting free cash from the containers and bonus money from the junkman order.

Shipping containers are always profitable. You'll get stuff to renovate and stuff to sell at the pawnshop and it's always worth more than you paid.

The automatic renovation perk hugely decreases the time taken to renovate items. Unless you want to manually renovate stuff for fun (which I do sometimes), auto is the way to go for faster profit.

It's possible to unload scrap from a vehicle directly into the cage at the stock exchange, so that's the way to go if you've picked up multiple items for scrapping. Just back the vehicle close to the cage, open the cage, open the cargo section of the vehicle and drop the items from the cargo section. They'll all go straight into the cage. Far faster than unloading into your inventory, entering the cage and dropping from your inventory.

If you don't mind a bit of cheese, you can summon any vehicle almost anywhere (default 'R'). So you can, for example, fill your inventory with items to scrap, summon a vehicle, put items from your inventory into the vehicle, leave it there, fast travel somewhere else, get more scrap, repeat until vehicle full of valuable scrap, fast travel to stock exchange, summon vehicle on the road outside, back it up to the cage, unload.

The big moneymaker is the personal junkyard, followed by the large crusher. The rest is stuff you like to do for a change from the large crusher and while your personal junkyard is making the big money.

[Adr_RebeliaGames]

Originally posted by Tahnval:

I don't. And I'm currently on ~$36M.

There are a few things I've picked up that are of some use;

Your personal junkyard is a goldmine. Fix all areas, buy all workstations, employ maximum staff and ensure they're very satisfied (they do more work then). I keep everyone on default hours and pay everyone $200 per whatever amount of time it is. Double the market rate for a new starter and well above the market rate for even experienced staff. Everyone's always very satisfied and the money flows in. $90K to $250K per area. 9 areas. Lots of money.


The big crusher is the key to obtaining large quantities of scrap, as long as you avoid minivans. Tractors and tanks are far more efficient for obtaining scrap, including the more valuable scrap. I currently have about 180 tonnes of scrap I could sell and I've already sold many tonnes of scrap.

Selling scrap only when it's at a particularly high price is a good idea for making cash. You'll get a popup in the bottom right of the screen, showing one specific material fetching a much higher than normal price (around double) for 30 minutes. Copper and brass are good ones for this, especially if you've been crushing some tractors and tanks. You don't have to pay storage costs, so just keep it until the price is high.

Junkman orders are bonus money if you're going to be doing those things anyway, so keep an eye on those. It's not much (IIRC the maximum extra amount is $30K), but it's an extra.

The "gather money from containers" junkman orders are a particularly fast and easy bonus money, albeit only ~$10K. Just go to the motel area. Every room has containers with free cash in them. Every single room. Usually several per room. The rooms also contain items for renovation and items for scrapping. Drive your lorry up, park it and stuff it full of things. While getting free cash from the containers and bonus money from the junkman order.

Shipping containers are always profitable. You'll get stuff to renovate and stuff to sell at the pawnshop and it's always worth more than you paid.

The automatic renovation perk hugely decreases the time taken to renovate items. Unless you want to manually renovate stuff for fun (which I do sometimes), auto is the way to go for faster profit.

It's possible to unload scrap from a vehicle directly into the cage at the stock exchange, so that's the way to go if you've picked up multiple items for scrapping. Just back the vehicle close to the cage, open the cage, open the cargo section of the vehicle and drop the items from the cargo section. They'll all go straight into the cage. Far faster than unloading into your inventory, entering the cage and dropping from your inventory.

If you don't mind a bit of cheese, you can summon any vehicle almost anywhere (default 'R'). So you can, for example, fill your inventory with items to scrap, summon a vehicle, put items from your inventory into the vehicle, leave it there, fast travel somewhere else, get more scrap, repeat until vehicle full of valuable scrap, fast travel to stock exchange, summon vehicle on the road outside, back it up to the cage, unload.

The big moneymaker is the personal junkyard, followed by the large crusher. The rest is stuff you like to do for a change from the large crusher and while your personal junkyard is making the big money.

❤️👍🏻👏🏻👌🏻🤗

[Adr_RebeliaGames]

@Tahnval You described it perfectly! I'm just wondering how you did -36 million, the plot makes a debit of 2 million, but it's only in the plot computer's meter.

[Trozana]

Originally posted by Tahnval:

I don't. And I'm currently on ~$36M.

There are a few things I've picked up that are of some use;

Your personal junkyard is a goldmine. Fix all areas, buy all workstations, employ maximum staff and ensure they're very satisfied (they do more work then). I keep everyone on default hours and pay everyone $200 per whatever amount of time it is. Double the market rate for a new starter and well above the market rate for even experienced staff. Everyone's always very satisfied and the money flows in. $90K to $250K per area. 9 areas. Lots of money.


The big crusher is the key to obtaining large quantities of scrap, as long as you avoid minivans. Tractors and tanks are far more efficient for obtaining scrap, including the more valuable scrap. I currently have about 180 tonnes of scrap I could sell and I've already sold many tonnes of scrap.

Selling scrap only when it's at a particularly high price is a good idea for making cash. You'll get a popup in the bottom right of the screen, showing one specific material fetching a much higher than normal price (around double) for 30 minutes. Copper and brass are good ones for this, especially if you've been crushing some tractors and tanks. You don't have to pay storage costs, so just keep it until the price is high.

Junkman orders are bonus money if you're going to be doing those things anyway, so keep an eye on those. It's not much (IIRC the maximum extra amount is $30K), but it's an extra.

The "gather money from containers" junkman orders are a particularly fast and easy bonus money, albeit only ~$10K. Just go to the motel area. Every room has containers with free cash in them. Every single room. Usually several per room. The rooms also contain items for renovation and items for scrapping. Drive your lorry up, park it and stuff it full of things. While getting free cash from the containers and bonus money from the junkman order.

Shipping containers are always profitable. You'll get stuff to renovate and stuff to sell at the pawnshop and it's always worth more than you paid.

The automatic renovation perk hugely decreases the time taken to renovate items. Unless you want to manually renovate stuff for fun (which I do sometimes), auto is the way to go for faster profit.

It's possible to unload scrap from a vehicle directly into the cage at the stock exchange, so that's the way to go if you've picked up multiple items for scrapping. Just back the vehicle close to the cage, open the cage, open the cargo section of the vehicle and drop the items from the cargo section. They'll all go straight into the cage. Far faster than unloading into your inventory, entering the cage and dropping from your inventory.

If you don't mind a bit of cheese, you can summon any vehicle almost anywhere (default 'R'). So you can, for example, fill your inventory with items to scrap, summon a vehicle, put items from your inventory into the vehicle, leave it there, fast travel somewhere else, get more scrap, repeat until vehicle full of valuable scrap, fast travel to stock exchange, summon vehicle on the road outside, back it up to the cage, unload.

The big moneymaker is the personal junkyard, followed by the large crusher. The rest is stuff you like to do for a change from the large crusher and while your personal junkyard is making the big money.

Thanks for listing up all these things! There are some things in this list that I haven't bothered trying out yet but maybe I'll just take a look at how effective they might be. While I usually drive vehicles near the scrap exchange, I haven't thought about just dropping them in there from the car directly. Fascinating to see that you already farmed up to 36Mil. I only bothered to farm up to 2Mil. so far while also having paid the debt for the junkyard.

[Tahnval]

Originally posted by RebeliaGames:

@Tahnval You described it perfectly! I'm just wondering how you did -36 million, the plot makes a debit of 2 million, but it's only in the plot computer's meter.

~$36M total, my bank balance showing in the top left of the screen while playing. I paid off the scrapyard debt ages ago.

I've just played quite a lot. It's a game I like to dip into, to play for half an hour here, an hour there.

I was at ~$34.4M a couple of days ago when I posted the funny screenshot of my pickup parked in midair.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198107440980/screenshot/2487751203400083711/

Since then I've sold some of my scrap when the price was good, made some money from my junkyard, restored some things, did some junkman orders, sold some stuff to grandma...all the usual things while playing. Balance is now 35,713,718.

[Tahnval]

Originally posted by Trozana:

[..]While I usually drive vehicles near the scrap exchange, I haven't thought about just dropping them in there from the car directly. [..]

I had only intended to reverse the vehicle close to the cage in order to reduce walking between unloading from the vehicle to my inventory and unloading from my inventory into the cage. It was only then that it occurred to me to see if the middle steps could be skipped. Unloading directly from the vehicle into the cage seemed like something that fit, something that should work that way. I was often throwing stuff into the cage from the ground before, especially stuff I'd sent via the conveyor belt as that would already be on the ground near the cage. So I was thinking of unloading directly from the vehicle into the cage in terms of throwing it straight from the vehicle into the cage.

[Adr_RebeliaGames]

Originally posted by Tahnval:

Originally posted by RebeliaGames:

@Tahnval You described it perfectly! I'm just wondering how you did -36 million, the plot makes a debit of 2 million, but it's only in the plot computer's meter.

~$36M total, my bank balance showing in the top left of the screen while playing. I paid off the scrapyard debt ages ago.

I've just played quite a lot. It's a game I like to dip into, to play for half an hour here, an hour there.

I was at ~$34.4M a couple of days ago when I posted the funny screenshot of my pickup parked in midair.

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198107440980/screenshot/2487751203400083711/

Since then I've sold some of my scrap when the price was good, made some money from my junkyard, restored some things, did some junkman orders, sold some stuff to grandma...all the usual things while playing. Balance is now 35,713,718.

Impressive result! I've never seen anyone earn so much money. Much respect for that! I remember the pickup truck - it made me laugh