Gold Without Exploits

A guide to making gold the hard way, by the rules.

Intro

As someone who is a fan of playing the games as they're designed, and not using exploits or glitches to get what I need, I thought that it would be helpful to make a guide for others who love to do the same, on any ways that can help to get gold while playing by the rules of the game.

I would like to say that this guide focuses on quests that only give a reward if you choose certain dialogue that aren't guaranteed a reward, so unless there is the possibility of not receiving the maximum amount of gold it won't be mentioned here, since each player would get the reward automatically anyways.

The quests are categorized by location to make it easier for anyone who is on a certain part of the game. Enjoy! :)

Potential spoilers ahead

Lothering

Bandits on the Road

When you first enter Lothering, you'll be stopped by a group of bandits. Refuse to give anything, fight them, focusing on the leader, and they'll give in once he gets to a certain amount of health. Persuade them to give you everything and you'll get 1g 50s and some items from the crates nearby. After you've done that go to Ser Bryant in the Chantry and ask him to pay you for removing them, as well as requesting additional help, and he'll give you 20s for the removal and give you a key to a cupboard at the back of the Chantry with some items in it.

The Unscrupulous Merchant

In Lothering, you'll encounter a quest revolving around a merchant and a few others. Side with the merchant, and he'll give you 1g. You can also persuade him to lower his prices and you'll get a discount. The downside is that Alistair and Leliana will disapprove of you siding with the merchant, and extra is that Morrigan will approve.

A Fallen Templar

In the Korcari Wild's before Lothering you can find the body of a Templar. Take his items and then later when you're in Lothering, talk to Ser Henric in the Chantry. Offer to give him the locket you found on the templar and request a reward and you'll get 1g.

Redcliffe

A Missing child

A girl named Kaitlin in the Chantry will ask you to find her brother. The boy is in a building nearby hiding in a dresser. Click on the dresser to initiate dialogue, and pass a persuasion check to convince him to open up to you about why he's there. He'll tell you why and tell you about a sword. Convince him to give you the key/sword and then go upstairs and loot it.

You have the option after to give it to Kaitlin, but you can also keep it and sell it. If you chose to give her something in return for the sword, make sure not to have Sten in your party, as he'll give her 1g if you have it even if you don't offer to give it.

Last Will and Testament

In the Korcari Wild's before the battle at Ostagar, if you found the body of Missionary Rigby and did the sidequest to get the items, you can talk to Jetta in the Redcliffe Chantry about it. If you give it to her you receive nothing, but if you don't tell her about it and choose to keep the items, then you receive two gems that you can sell.

Lost in the Castle

In Redcliffe, if you talk to the blacksmith Owen he'll ask you to save his daughter, Valena. Find Valena in the castle and tell her you've cleared the path, and she'll leave on her own. Later when you talk to Owen he'll give you shielded Dwarven Armor for saving his daughter. Alternatively, you can avoid talking to her and that will switch Owen out for a different Blacksmith once the Redcliffe questiline is finished.

The Attack at Nightfall

When night comes in the main quest to defend Redcliffe, you can kill your own allies with AoE spells and they'll drop armor that altogether can be sold for 18g. If you help them to live, and no one dies, you'll receive a helmet from Bann Teaggan.

Other

During the quest Village under Siege in Redcliffe, to defend the village from hordes of undead, if you persuade the tavern owner Lloyd to join the fight, he'll give the responsibility of the tavern over to the waitress Bella. If she takes ownership of the bar then she'll give you the items from the store inventory for free. If you don't get the items from her before the battle for Redcliffe against the undead and Lloyd lives, then you can't get the items from her after and Lloyd will still expect you to pay to get items from him.

Bella's Inventory:

• Health Poultice (x1)
  
• Lesser Health Poultice (x2)
  
• Lesser Injury Kity (x2)
  
• Mabari Crunch (x2)
  
• Lesser Injury Recipe
  
• Health Poultice Recipe
  
• Double-baked Mabari Crunch Recipe
  
• Flask (x8)
  
• Elfroot (x4)
  
• Deep Mushroom (x2)
  
• Wine (gift for Wynne or generic gift for any character)

https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Lloyd
https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Bella#Inventory

Denerim

Pearls Before swine

Sergeant Kylon in the market of Denerim will ask you to deal with some mercenaries in The Pearl, an inn in another area of the Denerim map, outside of the market. If you choose to persuade the mercenaries to leave without killing them, Sergeant Kylon will give you 2g and have another quest for you.

Forgotten Verses

During your exploration of Haven, you'll find some ancient tomes. Take them to sister Justine in Denerim and ask her for pay more than once and you'll get 12g 50s.

Orzammar

Precious Metals

In the Dust Town portion of Orzammar there is an NPC called Rogek who asks you to buy lyrium from him for 50g and sell it to mages in the Circle Tower. If you do this quest right, you can actually gain a hefty amount of excess gold, despite the initial cost of buying the lyrium. It's best to approach this quest with 50g, but with 4 points in Coercion you can persuade Gorek to drop the price to 40g.

After you have the lyrium, head over to the Circle Tower. If you've already completed the Circle Tower main questline, as long as you haven't sided with the Templars, you should be able to talk to the mage who you have to sell the lyrium to. His name is Godwin and he's on the second or third floor of the tower. He was the mage who was found hiding in the closet. Talk to him about trading the lyrium and ask for 75g, and you should get a whopping 65g for your effort. Afterwards if you choose you can blackmail him for an extra 8g. If not, head back to Gorek in Orzammar.

Talk to Gorek and when he offers to give you a finder's fee, persuade him to give you 30g. He'll give you 25g instead and that's it, you're done and you've made 90g in all, 50g after the initial cost if you bought the item from him for 40g, or 40g if you bought it for 50g.

It should be worth noting that you should have at least 4 points in the Coercion skill before attempting this. If you also have a character with 4 points in steal with at least 40 cunning you might be able to steal some gold or items back from Gorek and Godwin. The higher your Coercion the more likely you'll succeed at the Persuasion checks. The cunning is only for if you intend to steal items from them.

Lost to the Memories

In the Shaperate building in the Diamond Quarter a dwarf named Orta will ask you to help her prove the nobility of her family. You'll have to go into the Deep Roads to get the item for this. The documents are just outside of the cave where Ruck is, but once you have them and give them back to her, ask for a reward and she'll give you 5g. After you finish the main quest, A Paragon of Her Kind, you can go back and talk to her again after travelling to any place outside of Orzammar other than the party camp, and she'll give you another 10g.

Thief in the House of Learning

Talking to Milldrate in the Shaperate in the Diamond Quarter, he'll ask you to find the thief that stole from the Shaperate. The thief is in Dust Town and he'll attack you when you talk to him. Loot his body and you have two options: return the item to Milldrate for no reward or exp, or sell the item to a merchant for 2g 30s.

Asunder

In the Deep Roads there is a quest called "Asunder" to find 3 body parts, which starts immediately on finding all 3 parts. All 3 are in the Deep Roads, two are in Caridin's Cross, one in the north east and one south east, and the third is in Aeducan Thaig, near some darkspawn. Once you have all 3 parts, head to Ortan Thaig, and there will be a quest indicator leading you to an altar. Click on the altar and place the 3 parts, and a Pride demon will appear. It will give you the option to fight the demon or to let it go free, and if you choose to let it go free it will give you 25g 50s. Fighting it will only give you 235 xp, but choosing not to fight it has no in-game consequences. As a side note, no quest appears in your quest log until after you have all 3 parts. At most you'll find a codex about the parts that gives no hint of a quest.

Dalish Camp

Rare Ironbark

The merchant Varathorn in the Dalish camp in the Brecilian Forest will ask you to get him some Ironbark. The ironbark is in the first area after entering further into the forest from the Dalish camp. Take it to Varathorn before proceeding through the main questline and Varathorn will offer to make you a reward with the ironbark. You can choose to have him make you items so you can sell them for 3g each, netting 6g in all if he makes you two items, or you can tell him to keep the items and he'll give you 4g.

Lost to the Curse

Talk to Athras in the Dalish camp and pass a persuasion check to start the quest to find his girlfriend, Danya. Find Danya in the East Brecilian Forest, and she'll ask you to have mercy on her and kill her to free her of a curse. Do so, and she'll drop her scarf. Now, you can either take the scarf to Athras, and he'll give you Athras' Pendant, or you can give the scarf to the Mad Hermit, who will give you the same reward, and you can also go back and tell Athras what happened and he'll give you a second pendant as a reward, which you can use or sell for some extra silver.

Elora's Halla

Talk to the NPC Elora about her Halla. she'll admit she is worried her Halla is sick, but can't find any bites. Offer to help her by checking over her Halla. If you choose to put her Halla out of it's misery, she'll give you the antler's and you can take them to Varathorn and he'll make them into an amulet, Halla Horn. You can then sell it for 45s.

Other

1. In Lothering there is a Chasind man preaching to people about the oncoming horde of darkspawn. To get 45s you have to choose to say, "That's right, no hope for any of you fools!" then "Give me your valuables, and your sorry lives may be spared."

2. In Redcliffe, the Bartender Lloyd has several options that can net you extra money. The first option is to help the waitress, Bella, take ownership of the bar by intimidating Lloyd into helping the militia, then talking to Bella and requesting compensation. she'll reward you with 3g and she'll give you free items from her store. The second option is to accept the subquest from the miltia at the table in the bar to talk to Lloyd about free drinks. Talk to Lloyd about the drinks, and threaten him, and when he asks you to protect him refuse, and intimidate him into giving you ownership of the bar and give you his profits. He'll give you 80s, and you can talk to him again for your share of the income for the business afterwards, and he'll give you another 20s. The second option's only downside is disapproval from Wynne.

3. If you go to Orzammar, near to the door for the Diamond Quarter is a man who will give you 12s for each nug you can catch for him. There are only a limited number of nugs, but they're all found within Orzammar in different places. New nugs will spawn when you find the nugs before them, but there is a maximum of 10-12 nugs.

4. In the Orzammar Provings you can find a man in the right area behind a closed door who will ask you if you want to take part in illegal proving matches. If you say yes he'll give you silver for each fight, and after 4-5 fights he'll give you the Blood Ring, a ring for Blood specialized mages to reduce the cost of health sacrificed when you cast spells.

5. There is a man in Orzammar who will talk about nug wrangling, near the door to the Diamond Quarter. If you offer to help him, nugs will spawn in fixed places around Orzammar - not the deep roads - that you can pick up by clicking on them. If you take them to him, and there are 11 or 12 in all, with the 12th nug being bugged, then he'll give you silver for each nug you bring him.

Herbalism

To be clear, I didn't come up with this, someone else did. I'm not sure who, but credit goes to whoever did create it. If anyone knows who did please tell me so I can give them due credit.

One of the best ways, even if not the fastest, is to make Potent Lyrium potions. For this you need to have 4 points in the Herbalism skill, and to have bought the recipe from the Wonder's of Thedas in Denerim. If you don't want the Herbalism skill on your Warden, Morrigan joins you already having 1 point in it.

For this to work, you have to have also talked to the Bartender behind the desk in the Gnawed Noble Tavern and have the discount with him, which you can get by either doing the sidequests he has or by helping out the guard outside Wade's Imporium to clear out the thugs in the tavern sideroom(*). To make the potions you'll be needing to buy Flasks, Concentrator Agents, and Distillation Agents from him, as well as Lyrium Dust from the Circle Tower, so you will be doing a bit of running between with possible fights and loading screens. If you buy these items from anywhere else then you'll likely be paying more for them, and this trick won't work. Bodahn in the party camp sells the same materials but at a slightly higher cost than the Bartender does with the discount.

* needs to be confirmed

Prices
Flasks: 1s 10c
Concentrator Agent: 33s
Distillation Agent: 13s 20c
Lyrium Dust: 2s 40c

The recipe for the potion requires the following:

Per 1 potion
4 lyrium dust
2 distillation agent
2 concentrator agent
1 flask

You should try to leave a little bit of gold leftover, and you should know you should have some gold saved before you buy these because the distillation agent and concentrator agents become costly the more mats you buy, and you still need to balance out the cost to buy equal amounts of all the mats. Making 50 potions would require 100 distillation agents at 64g, 100 concentrator agents for 25g, 400 lyrium dust for 10g, and 50 flasks for 1-2g. I would suggest 20g-50g to start off with.

You might have to slowly build up to selling more and more before you can get enough to buy the more expensive items in the game, but just be sure to always have some extra gold in case you mess up and can't buy more mats for more pots. All in all this is an infinite source of gold, it just takes time and is a bit tedious. I also read about a bug with the merchants if you sell them too many of the same item, an amount somewhere around 100 or more, but I haven't encountered this bug myself to confirm.

Speaking of merchants, some merchants will buy items for more gold than others. The Wikia says Ruck in the Deep Roads will buy items for 300% of their cost, but how worthwhile that is, I'm not sure, since I've personally never tried it.

https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Merchants_(Origins)
https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Bartender_(Origins)
https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Quartermaster_(Circle_Tower)
https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Bodahn_Feddic

Tips

1. Buy all backpacks. Backpacks may cost gold, but in the long run the increased bag size will make it so that you don't run into the problem of having to leave behind loot. Here are the locations:

• Ostagar - 1 before the Korcari Wild's and 1 after for 57s 50c
  
• Camp - 1 on the initial visit, 1 before Nature of the Beast, and 1 after Nature of the Beast for 7g 50s according to the Wiki
  
• Circle of Magi - 1 from the merchant at the bottom of the tower for 6g
  
• Dalish Camp - 1 from the merchant Varathorn for 6g after having done 3 main quests
  
• Denerim Market - 1 from the merchant Gorim for 5g 50s after having done 3 main quests

2. Pick up everything. A lot of items might not sell for a lot, but it adds up.

3. Clear useless items at every opportunity. If you're leaving behind items, even gray items, that's less copper, silver, or gold in your wallet. If you have no archers in your party than Arrows and Crossbow Bolts sell for a lot.

4. Unlocking chests, stealing, and dialogue in conversations are some of the best ways to get items and gold, so having maxxed out Persuasion and high cunning (40+ to unlock all chests and for higher success chance of stealing) is preferable. Having at least one rogue who can steal and sense traps is a must. Lockpicking is a level skilled in the Rogue skill tree, Persuasion is mainly helpful for dialogue options.

5. Steal. Steal from everyone. The higher your cunning stat, the higher your chance to succeed an attempt. You can get decent amounts of gold and items sometimes from the legendary NPC's, who are colored with orange text, and all NPCs with yellow or white colored text that the steal icon will work on. Since you can steal from everyone, you definitely miss out on a lot of gold and items by not doing it, even if it does take time. A rogue needs at least 40 cunning and level 4 stealing to be able to steal from an NPC with an orange name, and the more cunning you have the higher the chance of success. Having the lvl 1 Steal ability before you go to Denerim for the first time also unlocks a questline that you might not get if you don't have it, which does net extra gold and items if you complete that questline. Your main character has to have steal, not just your companions. If just your companions have it the quest won't recognize that you're eligible and appear. You can also only steal from an NPC once, but if you fail an attempt you can just try again, assuming your stealing + cunning is high enough to succeed.

6. Crafting. Any items you get that can be made into other items that can be sold for more. Herbalism is definitely worth while, but the only money maker is the recipe mentioned above. Otherwise it's usefulness is more in the potions you can make for yourself, which can save you money from having to buy them, even if you do still buy materials. Finding potions and materials on the road will help you to avoid buying more, but potions are always good to have on the side of having a healer.

Sell Price Loot Tables

This section is going to show the sell price of all items in-game. This might take a while for me to edit.

g=gold, s=silver, c=copper

*these prices were from the sale price at Bohdan's party camp inventory
**to find something more quickly press ctrl +f on your keyboard and type it in

Gear

Materials

Item	Price
spirit shard	5s
lifestone	2s 50c
frostrock	2s 50c
fire crystal	2s 50c
frozen lightning	2s 50c
deathroot	25c
deep mushroom	12c
elfroot	12c

Gear

Item	Price
the long sight	1g 60s
longrunner's cap	70s
heavy infantry helmet	1g 20s
cailan's helmet	58s 75c
pushback strikers	2g 50s
gloves of diligence	1g 6s 25c
wade's drakeskin gloves	37s 75c
thorn	17s 25c
ancient elven gloves	49s 50c
cailan's gauntlets	68s 75c
wade's drakeskin boots	42s 25c
cailan's greaves	1g
wade's drakeskin leather armor	1g 21s 25c
templar armor	2g 54s 37c
cailan's breastplate	63s 12c

Accessories

Item	Price
shaper's amulet	33s 75c
lifedrinker	30s
earthen cinch	20s
belt of the magister lords	18s 75c
blood ring	44s 75c
frostshear	32s 25c
hailstone	17s 25c
thorn	17s 25c

Weapons

Item	Price
starfang	3g 48s 75c
spellweaver	2g 90s
maric's blade	1g 97s 50c
nug crusher	1g 25s

Gifts

Item	Price
golden scythe 4:90 black	5s 25c
sun blonde vint-1	3s 25c
alley kings flagon	2s 75c
ancient map of the imperium	2s 50c
the search for the true prophet	2s 50c
chasind sack mead	2s 25c
wilhelm's special brew	1s
ale	0c
silver bracelet	4s 25c
silver demon head ring	4s 25c
steel bracers	2s 75c
small silver ring	2s 75c
gold earrings	1s 87c

Crystals and Mabari Gear

Item	Price
small clear fire crystal	66s 25c
small chipped fire crystal	12s 50c
small flawless ice crystal	93s 75c
small flawed lightning crystal	25s
small flawed natural crystal	25s
small flawed spirit crystal	25s
large chipped fire crystal	12s 50c
large flawed ice crystal	25s
larged flawed lightning crystal	25s
large chipped natural crystal	12s 50c
large chipped spirit crystal	15s
kaddis of the lady of the skies	39s 75c
mabari war harness	1g 9s 97c
pure b* braid	1g 25s

Runes, Poisons, and Potions

Item	Price
novice dweomer rune	16s 25c
grandmaster flame rune	2g 25s
novice flame rune	15s
novice frost rune	15s
expert paralyze rune	75s
journeyman paralyze rune	48s 75c
novice lightning rune	15s
expert cold iron rune	45s
journeyman hale rune	27s 50c
novice hale rune	14s 37c
novice silverite rune	17s 50c
health poultice	4s 12c
lesser health poultice	25c
lesser injury kit	4s 12c
concentrated soldier's bane	26s 81c
greater elixir of grounding	26s 43c

Other

Item	Price
dragon scale	7s 50c
drake scale	2s 50c

[that guy]

Lothering

Bandits on the Road
With 1 point in Coercion, it should be possible for you to intimidate the bandits to provide the Grey Wardens with a "donation" of 20 silvers to end the conversation. Afterwards, you can still attack them for the other things you already mentioned.

A Fallen Templar
Ser Henric is the dead templar, and his body is found at the entrance of Lothering next to the bandits. Ser Donall is the knight from Redcliffe inside the chantry.

Bodahn Feddic
I think this deserves a mention. When you save him, you can ask for 1 gold sovereign as a reward. With 2 points in Coercion, you can raise that to 2 gold sovereigns.

Denerim

Why not mention the Crime Wave quests?

Other

Perhaps #2 can be included into the Redcliffe - Other section with the rest of the info.
#3 and #5 are the same thing... Also, I never got anywhere close to 12 nugs until after I installed Qwinn's Fixpack

[Daggerpaw]

Thanks, Tigerlily, I'm also not a cheater and I intend to consult your guide while I play the game. Note 1: use Morrigan, Dog and Sten in Lothering. :-D

[40000Aggro]

That's true, but this guide isn't for exploiting. People are allowed to choose for themselves how they want to play.

[portal1292]

exploiting is faster and easier. in other words its fun t cheat