Depending on the difficulty level that you are playing on, gold may or may not be something that is in short supply. Regardless, it never hurts to have enough money in your pocket to cover any unexpected purchases or a hefty resupply for high level crafting ingredients. For most people, you are probably here because you need more gold to buy your first house in Skyrim. Sadly there is no bank to get a mortgage from, so you have no other choice, but to save up the money yourself. Here are some steps you can take to make gold in Skyrim easily.
1. Gather and Sell
If you see something that looks like it might be worth some money, take it. Even if it isn’t worth much, it will still add up if you completely fill your inventory with stuff you find on your adventures. When you are fighting enemies, they tend to drop weapons and gear. Even if the stuff is no use to you, take it anyway, it can be sold for a lot more than the junk you find sitting on top of tables and shelves.
Stores only have a set amount of money to purchase goods with. This is why it is often good to sell what you have up until the vendor has no money left. Then purchase any goods that you might need. When you buy goods, it will add to the vendors money. Essentially allowing you to trade goods for goods with a vendor.
A vendor will resupply its money every few days, so if you have taken all the money there is and still have some more junk to sell. Wait or sleep for a few days and come back to the vendor and they will have more money again.
2. Increase Speech
Your speech skill will influence the prices that you get in stores. It is worth your while levelling your speech skill. Even if it only gives you a few percent more, it will add up nicely when you are selling large amounts of stuff.
3. Loot Humanoid Enemies And Boxes
All humans and some human like enemies often keep money on them. When you kill one, make sure to loot their body. They might only have a few gold coins on them, but after killing a large group of enemies you could come out with a few hundred gold from looting them all.
Any non abandoned buildings usually contain a lot of boxes, chests and other containers. Humans tend to stash their gold in places like this. Make sure to dig around and you will likely find some nice gold staches inside random containers. Abandoned buildings and ruins also have coins sometimes, but generally abandoned ruines will contain a chest at the very end rather than having gold hidden around the place.
4. Sell Stolen Goods
The thieves guild contains a person called a fence. This person is willing to buy stolen goods from you. Break into a house and steal some valuable goods. Take all these things back to the fence and sell them for some very easy money without getting in trouble for having stolen goods in your possession.
5. Alchemy
Some of the potions you create using alchemy can be worth a lot of money. As you level the skill up, they become even more valuable. A super simple potion involes blue mountain flowers and blue butterfly wings. You can sell these potions for over 200 gold if your skill is high enough and the ingredients are very easy to find.
6. Get Married
Yea i know, what a totally unrealistic method :P. When you get married, your partner will run a store during the day. Every 24 hours they will deposit 100 gold into a chest because they love you. Its fairly easy to get married and it works out to be a really easy passive income to take advantage of. This is a super easy way to make gold in Skyrim and should definitely be used as soon as possible.
