If you’re reading this, chances are good that you’re a Guild Wars player who wants to make as much gold as possible. Whether you’re a new player simply seeking to learn how to get cash to upgrade your gear or a veteran with a hefty wish list (“15k armor,” black dye, a Rune of Superior Vigor, and a Celestial Sigil to get a Guild Hall), the author hopes this guide will provide you with all the information you’re after. There are a variety of ways to make money in Guild Wars; this guide will touch upon each, hopefully providing you with several options that are both fun and profitable, regardless of how advanced your characters are.
This first section of the guide is mainly aimed at newer players who might not yet know all the basic information about making money in Guild Wars. Veteran players probably will want to skip down to later sections where the good farming spots and other strategies can be found.
1.1 Farming Basics
In Guild Wars, many money-making strategies involve “farming,” or repeatedly killing certain mobs in order to loot their gold or sellable items. The basic procedure is simple: go into an area, kill the mobs there, loot what they drop, sell unwanted items to a merchant back in town, and repeat.
Usually, the most profitable way to farm is to enter an area by yourself, without other human players or NPC henchmen in your party. Remember, having other players in your party causes gold to be split among them, as well as loot drops. Even if you bring a party of henchmen, they will still take their share of the gold, and item drops in the area will be reduced to simulate the henchmen taking their share of the items.

With that in mind, the best farming spots typically are places that have easy-to-kill mobs yet worthwhile item or gold drops. In addition, some good farming spots have barrels, wreckage, or other containers that may reveal a large sum of gold when opened. Many good locations for farming are listed in Section 2 of this guide, and each of these locations is marked as a “Farming Spot.” Most of these farming spots will yield upwards of one platinum (i.e. 1000) per hour in pure loot and gold. You’re also

bound to get many crafting materials (via salvaging; see section 1.2) no matter where you farm, and selling these when the economy is right can increase your gold income to titanic proportions (see section 1.3).
When farming, be aware that the developers of Guild Wars have programmed the game to discourage farming the same area over and over. Originally, this anti-farming code would cause loot drops to be greatly reduced, or disappear altogether, if a player entered the same area five times in a row. The anti-farming code is less strict now, and unless you spend a great deal of time farming the same area in one sitting, you probably won’t notice it at all. Still, if you’ve been farming the same area for an hour or two straight and notice the loot is declining, you’ll want to move to another spot to keep the cash flowing.
1.2 About Kits
Beginning in pre-Searing Ascalon, you’ll encounter merchants who are willing to sell items called “kits.” In pre-Searing, the two available kits include a “Salvage Kit” (can be used ten times, costs 50 gold) and an “Identification Kit” (can be used twenty-five times, costs 100 gold). Once you reach post-Searing Ascalon City, you’ll be able to buy salvage kits that have 25 uses (costs 100g), as well as expert salvage kits (costs 400g). Ideally, you should keep a salvage kit, identification kit, and expert salvage kit in your inventory at all times.
The primary purpose of kits in Guild Wars is to increase the value of items found while adventuring. Using a normal salvage kit on an item will turn it into some type of “common” crafting material – bolts of cloth, or tanned hide squares, for example. Using an expert salvage kit on an item has the same effect, but it also has a small chance to produce a “rare” crafting material instead, such as bolts of linen or leather squares. If they’re of the right type, materials can be used at armor crafters to make armor for your character. Perhaps just as importantly, materials often can also be sold to trader NPCs or other players for more gold than the original item could have been sold.

Identification kits serve a similar function. The weapons, salvageable armor, and shields, and focus items that you find during your travels may occasionally have the “Unidentified” tag beneath their name. If an item identifies as “Improved Sale Value,” you’ll want to hold onto it; its sale value at a merchant will be especially high. If it

identifies as “highly salvageable,” you can use a salvage kit on it to produce more than the normal number of crafting materials. If identifying an item reveals that it has a rune attached to it (salvageable armor) or an upgrade component such as a hilt or grip (weapons), you’ll need to use an expert salvage kit on the item if you wish to recover the rune or upgrade for your own use (Note: this process can fail). For a more complete discussion of how to get the most out of kits and crafting materials, see section 6.2 of this guide.
1.3 About The In-game Economy
Guild Wars’ in-game economy is unique among online role-playing games. As in most games, the amount of gold that players are willing to pay for items shifts from time to time according to supply and demand: if lots of people want to sell an item, but few want to buy it, the sellers won’t be able to charge as much for the item due to competitive pricing. Likewise, if an item is very rare but in high demand, the sellers can charge exorbitant prices. This is basic economics.
Guild Wars takes this rule a step further by including non-player characters (NPCs) called “traders” who will buy and sell certain types of items (runes, dyes, and crafting materials) at prices based on supply and demand. These trader NPCs make their first appearance in post-Searing Ascalon City and are available in all towns (though not outposts) beyond that. These NPCs are very important to anyone “farming” for gold because they provide a place to sell the crafting materials, dyes, etc., that comprise a major portion of the loot.
Trader prices are directly controlled by how many of an item that type of trader has. If more players have sold an item to that type of trader lately than have purchased it, both the purchase price and sale price of that item will drop. Likewise, if many players have purchased that item lately, both the purchase and sale prices will rise. The purchase price for an item is always much higher than the sale price. Also, the prices at a given type of trader are the same from city to city at any given time; they all use the same supply-and-demand formula.

You can use this constant flux of supply and demand to your advantage in all sorts of ways. For example, if you’re looking to sell an item to a trader but find the price is too low for your liking, you can always hold onto the item until it rises. This simple fact is one reason why it can be very difficult to pinpoint exactly how much money it’s possible to make “per hour” in Guild Wars: the in-game economy largely dictates how much gold can be made at any given time.
In addition to traders, there are also NPC “merchants” in Guild Wars, whose prices for the various items do not change. The fact that buying and selling also occurs between players via the trade channel and the trade command further complicates matters. The presence of merchants, traders, and other players as potential sources of buying and selling items allows thrifty Guild Wars players to use a variety of tricks to make sure they get the most gold from selling their items. For more info on using the in-game economy to your advantage, see section five of this guide.