Guide:Making money

Earning money is essential in Terraria - it allows the player to purchase items from the NPC characters. Certain items, such as the Autohammer and Tiki Totem, are extremely expensive. Therefore, it is important to have effective ways of earning money. There are three main ways of earning coins in Terraria:


 * Fighting bosses - summoning and defeating various bosses.
 * Farming and crafting - gathering resources, crafting items, and selling those items to an NPC.
 * Mining - searching for valuable ores underground.

Crafting and Farming
The following tables show different ways of making money. In this case, they compare the resources needed to earn in profit. For example, crafting and selling Ale is very simple since it only requires one item, Sand Blocks. However, it does require a lot of repetitive digging (50 blocks). Instead, some people might prefer selling Fish Bowls, since harvesting Goldfish is more interesting.


 * See also: Guide:Gardening


 * Left column - item sold to the NPC
 * Right column - raw ingredients required for crafting

Note: the Sand Blocks are not used directly; you need to craft them into Bottled Water or Mugs first.

Eye of Cthulhu and Eater of Worlds
Demonite Ore occurs sometimes in the wild, but the best source you've got is from defeating Eater of Worlds or the Eye of Cthulhu. You'll need all the best equipment you can get, plus some decent armor. Check out the Eye of Cthulhu guide and the Eater of Worlds guide for some great ways to make these fights go easier. Once you fight them a couple times and craft everything you can from the spoils, all the rest is more money for you.

Your payoff here is Demonite Ore that sells for each, a great profit indeed and well worth any ammunition and potions you expended for the fight. The earnings are bigger for the Eater of Worlds, but the fight may take longer and generally requires better equipment. The drops are randomized just like other enemy drops, so your mileage may vary. Even if you get horrific luck with drops, running bosses is well worth the time and effort and can be a lot more exciting than life on a potion farm.
 * For the Eye of Cthulhu you can look forward to getting, on average, about 58 pieces of ore. That's  after sale, plus the coins he drops and the Unholy Arrows.
 * For the Eater of Worlds it's more complicated, but also a bigger payoff. You have 50 segments to destroy: 49 of those will drop 1-3 Shadow Scales and have a 50% chance to drop 2-5 ores. The last segment will drop 30-59 more ores. All told, that averages to 98 Shadow Scales and about 130 Demonite Ore, a gain of.

By the time the player reaches high tier, they will have a defense of around 25. This statistic drastically reduces the damage the EoW and EoC do, and the player can easily destroy the two bosses. With lots of ammunition and good weapons (such as the Minishark or Night's Edge) they can make short work of both bosses, making more money than they could ever need. It is possible to defeat EoC eight or more times in one night, which sums up to.

Expected Profit: Varies

The Destroyer
In hardmode, the player can fight The Destroyer and easily win if they have good enough gear (palladium/cobalt gear is adviced as a minimum). After crafting everything you need with his Souls of Might, you can just sell them. They sell for each, and you would normally get 20-30 of them per kill, which would sell for a maximum of. Besides, The Destroyer also drops 20-44 Hallowed Bars which would sell for a maximum of. It is possible to kill it up to 10 times in one night with the help of the Golden Shower and any of the starter hardmode sets, using the Headgear for extra magical damage.

Maximum Expected Profit (10 kills): Up to  per night on singleplayer.

Wall of Flesh
Using post-hardmode gear, you can farm the Wall of Flesh quickly and cheaply with a Flamethrower or a Golden Shower (Golden Shower is preferable since farming gel harder than waiting for the Mana to recharge). Since you can summon him in day or night you can make more money than other bosses, unfortunately the amount of summons is based on guide respawns and voodoo demon spawns. Drops just for killing him, a Pwnhammer which sells for about , and a random other item which sells for.

Expected Profit: Varies (Estimated per day)

Golem
When you get the Picksaw from the Golem, you can move the altar located inside the jungle temple. You can make a box with Spiky Ball traps to easily farm the Golem. Sit back, and enjoy the loot!

Expected Profit: plus the item(s) he drops.

Statue farming
The following statues spawn items or monsters (which don't drop coins, but will drop items), allowing you to make gold without even working for it:
 * Bomb Statue
 * Slime Statue
 * Jellyfish Statue
 * Skeleton Statue
 * Piranha Statue
 * Fish Statue

One of the easiest setups for a statue farm is to connect the statue to 1 or more 1 Second Timers (or a Crab Engine). Except for the bomb statue you should then either place the statue in a shallow layer of lava (recommended) or connect a few Dart Traps to kill the spawned monsters. Once you click the switch, all you have to do is stand still, or even return from time to time to collect the rewards. (Except for Bomb Statues, which will stop spawning when there are 3 Bombs, so you need to stay close to collect the bombs.)

In addition, using Bunny Statues and Fish Statues during a Blood Moon will spawn their corrupt counterparts, which drop coins and rarely Bunny Hoods. The normal spawn limit for Statues is 3 mobs at a time, but when Goldfish and Bunnies change to their corrupt counterparts, they don't count towards the Statue's spawn limit, so you can have seemingly endless amounts of them on screen. This does not affect their actual spawn rate.

Expected profit (when using a Crab Engine and Lava):
 * The Bomb Statue will yield per stack, or about  per minute.
 * The Slime Statue will yield  per stack, or about  per minute, plus the sell worth of Slime Staffs. Not so fast but if you find it; then you will at least have Ammo for your Flamethrower. Slimes also drop Slime Staffs, that are be worth, depending on prefixes.
 * The Jellyfish Statue will yield  or about  per minute.
 * The Skeleton Statue will yield  per stack, or about  per minute.
 * The Piranha Statue will yield  per stack of Hooks and  per Robot Hat, or about  per minute.
 * The Fish Statue will yield per stack, or about  per minute.

Useful Glitch
Note that this glitch involves "cheating" the game in some way and may detract from your enjoyment. Use at your own risk!

Requires:
 * A full stack of any item
 * A vendor of some kind

If the full stack of item is 99 of them, make a stack of 95 of an item. Sell them as a stack. Buy them again by holding right click. Now you get 99 of the item without using any money. An effective way to use this glitch pre-hardmode is to use a Safe. You get 4 extra items each time you use this glitch and selling 4 Safes gives you 16 more gold. It is also extremely effective with Souls of Might in Hardmode. Selling 970 Souls of Might, for example, will yield 19 extra souls, netting 38 gold per transaction.

Killing Monsters
Once in Hardmode you can buy Gold Dust to craft items which will increase the amount of money monsters drop on death.

Unicorns
Once you enable Hardmode, it may be a good idea to kill Unicorns. They drop Unicorn Horns, which sell for 30 Silver Coins each. It's pretty effective because unicorns spawn quite regularly in The Hallow.

Mimics
It's very effective to kill Mimics because they drop 10 Gold Coins by death, and you can sell the items they drop for even more money. And it's easy to kill them by using a continuously swinging sword with enough knockback to keep the Mimic at distance or killing them using a ranged weapon from a distance.

Handling money
When trying to accumulate coins, there are many small steps to take that can make the task much less of a chore:
 * Get a Chest / Piggy Bank / Safe to use as your "stash" and get into the habit of throwing all your coins into it whenever possible. Regular "banking" minimizes the loss of coins from Death, as death drops at least half the coins in a player's Inventory.
 * To quickly get money from your stash to your inventory, just throw it on the ground and pick it up from there. The game will convert all the coins into largest possible denominations. If you've got nothing but coins in your stash chest/piggy bank, the "Loot All" option is even faster.
 * As of 1.0.6, using the "Quick Stack" button at your stash will automatically convert stacks of 100 or more coins into the next largest denomination, provided you have coins of each type already in your "bank".

What to keep
The following items can all be used to craft more profitable items, and should not be sold as-is or discarded:
 * Lesser Healing Potions and Lesser Mana Potions: Keep these around to eventually make full-sized Healing Potions and Mana Potions out of, then Restoration Potions if you can.
 * Wood: Wood has no value when sold on its own, but is used for so many profitable items that it should be saved. Even when you don't have anything to combine it with you can just make chairs (or tables) and sell them, earning for each piece of wood, or if you have access to a sawmill you can craft kegs instead, which boosts that value to slightly over  per piece of wood
 * Stone Blocks: Plentiful and useful for building Houses and stopping the spread of Corruption (pre-hardmode), but you can always get more. Craft 100 excess Stone Blocks into a Statue and sell them for, a 0.6/block return.
 * Sand: Crafts Glass, then crafts Mugs, which then crafts Ale, which sells for each. Glass is also needed to make Bottles, a necessary ingredient for potions. You'll also find quite a few bottles in chests, so keep those as well. In hardmode, normal sand becomes somewhat of a rarity due to corruption and hallow spreading everywhere and turning all deserts to ebonsand and pearlsand respectively.
 * Clay: Crafts Pink Vases. They sell for each, which equals 3.5 copper per block.
 * Cobwebs: If you're saving up for Necro armor, keep in mind that you don't need too many of these -- a full set of the armor requires only 135 cobwebs, barely more than half a stack. All the rest should be turned into Silk and sold for a net profit of per cobweb.
 * Vile Mushrooms: Crafts Vile Powder which sells for per bag, or  per mushroom.
 * Goldfish: 2 Goldfish and 1 Bottled Water crafts the Fish Bowl, which sells for a whopping each.
 * Lens: 6 lenses allows you to craft a Suspicious Looking Eye and summon the Eye of Cthulhu for big cash rewards.
 * Glowing Mushroom: Glowing Mushrooms can be kept to make Lesser Healing Potions in to Healing Potions, as well as Lesser Mana Potions into Mana Potions; increasing value.

What to discard
These things are going to clog your inventory to no end, and are almost impossible to make money off of. If your inventory is full and you're deciding what items to take home and sell, go ahead and trash these:
 * Dirt Blocks: Useful for growing some plants and handy as a plentiful building material, but will never be more than that. You can always get more.
 * Mud Blocks: Mud is used to grow mushroom grass or chlorophyte, both of which are valuable, or as a building material. Mud can be crafted from dirt when standing in or near water.
 * Glowsticks: Useful only for temporarily lighting underwater areas. Not worth much, either.
 * Wooden Arrows: Very common in pots and chests, only pick them up if you'll use them as ammo, to craft better arrows, or you've got nothing more valuable to keep in that inventory slot.
 * Shuriken and Throwing Knives: You'll find a lot of these in chests underground, but in such small amounts that they're not worth carrying. If you've got a decent ranged weapon you won't see much benefit from carrying these.

What to sell
These raw items are worth selling as-is. When your inventory is full and you need to choose, try to keep these around and toss something else:
 * Accessories and Weapons: The less you use something, the less likely you are to use it in the future. Most accessories will sell for great amounts of coins and will not stack, so go ahead and sell them. As stated before, if you can find one thing you can find ten more. If you've got multiple copies of an accessory then you'll probably find many more copies in the future, so don't worry about something being gone forever. Possible exceptions are swords required to craft the Night's Edge, which you may want to keep duplicates of so you'll still have use of them even after sacrificing them to craft it.
 * Ores: Excess ores can be sold once you're kitted out and your house is decorated from top to bottom. It may however, still be a good idea to keep your gold, copper, and iron ores because you will need these for hardmode items later on. Meteorite ore should be crafted to bars before selling for better profit. Note that copper and iron bars are required to craft hardmode boss summoning items.

Marshmellows
All you need to farm Marshmellows is a campfire, a Merchant in a snow biome, and lot of wood. You buy a marshmallow, put it on a stick, roast it, and sell it for twice as much as you bought it for.

Torches
Farming Torches requires Wood and Gel.

Torches are just about the easiest and simplest thing to farm. Wood is plentiful and can be easily regrown, and a long, flat surface outside can serve as both a tree farm and a place to kill slimes for gel. Simply flatten out a huge expanse of dirt, wait for it to grass over, and start planting acorns. Torches have the added bonus of being able to be crafted anywhere, and what you don't sell remains useful throughout the game so you'll likely be making lots of torches anyway.

Torches sell for each and are produced in stacks of 3. The limiting factor is going to be Gel, i.e. you'll run out of it before running out of wood. Gel sells for each. Wood is worth each (if crafted into Chairs) Crafting torches therefore "costs" and will yield   ( for each torch), for a profit of.

Each stack of 99 Gel together with 99 Wood will create 297 Torches. The crafting will net you  more than selling the chairs and raw gel.

Torches can sell for quite a bit more when upgraded to tiki torches, but this diminishes your wood resources a lot faster. Each wood spent on a tiki torch would be worth, the torches themselves worth. The total profit from each tiki torch is.

Another fast way to make money using only Wood is to buy some Torches from the Merchant for, then craft them into Tiki Torch and sell them back for , making a profit of for only three wood.

Lesser Healing Potions
To produce these you'll need: Once you've gotten a little further into the game this becomes a good option. If you haven't yet started a farm for Glowing Mushrooms then making Lesser potions is still quite good, and will suffice until you can start growing shrooms. As with torches, the fruits of your labor will be useful to you throughout the game: having a lot of healing potions on hand is always good.
 * An Alchemy Station
 * Sand, for making bottles
 * Mushrooms
 * Gel, by the truckload

Expected Profit: and  per 30

You'll need twice as much gel as mushrooms, but mushrooms are harder to come by unless you specifically farm for them. See the gardening guide for more on that. Two gel are only worth, a mushroom is , and 2 bottles are for a total cost of  for 2 potions. They sell for each, giving a net profit of  for 2 potions, or   for a stack of 30.

Tree farms work well for farming gel, as the flat open spaces seem to spawn tons of green and blue slimes.

Healing Potions
A Healing Potion requires:
 * 2 Lesser Healing Potions
 * 1 Glowing Mushroom

Advantages:
 * Healing potions are extremely profitable, selling for each.
 * Glowing mushrooms are easy to farm in large quantities, requiring very little maintenance compared to regular mushroom farms (which must be regularly "weeded")
 * Healing potions are more effective at healing than their lesser equivalents, and most players will be making them for this purpose anyway.

Expected Profit: and  per 30

As mentioned earlier, 2 Lessers cost in raw materials, and Glowing mushrooms are  each. Subtract this from the sale price and our anticipated profit becomes   per potion, or   for a stack of 30. Actual profit is slightly higher, as Lesser Healing Potions can be found in pots and chests all over the place, as well as bosses and dungeon shelves.

Tip: Never buy your Lesser potions from the Merchant. Lesser Healing Potions cost when purchased from the merchant. If you purchase Lesser potions and sell Healing potions, you will spend and gain, a net loss of  per potion you craft.

Shine and Night Owl Potions
Shine Potions and Night Owl Potions use the following: Both kinds of potions sell for just like Healing Potions. They are an excellent source of income to supplement a Potion economy, as they use largely the same ingredients as healing potions and the additional ingredients are easy to find. Daybloom and Daybloom Seeds can be found everywhere on the surface as long as they're harvested in the daytime, while Blinkroot can be found everywhere underground. Night Owl Potions are useful to make before you find Glowing Mushrooms, while Shine Potions use all the spare Glowing Mushrooms leftover from the Healing Potions.
 * An Alchemy Station
 * Sand, to eventually transform into Bottled Water
 * Daybloom Seeds and a place to grow them, either grass or clay pots
 * Glowing Mushrooms or Blinkroot Seeds

Expected Profit:  per 30

The cost in ingredients is higher, but this balances with the fact that all the ingredients are so easy to farm. Daybloom and Blinkroot is particularly easy to find and grow, and is almost more plentiful in the wild than standard mushrooms. Both herbs are each, glowing mushrooms are, and the bottle of water is. This gets you  per Shine potion in profit, or   for 30. Night Owl Potions net  per potion, by contrast, so if you're overflowing with both Glowing Mushrooms and the fast-growing Blinkroot, make the Shine potions and either sell the leftover Blinkroot or combine it with Cactus to make Swiftness Potion.

Obsidian Skulls
Obsidian is worthless on its own, but you can make Obsidian Skulls from it. They require 20 Obsidian per Skull. You'll need: If using a generator you'll also need: You need about 2 1/2 stacks of Obsidian for a full set of molten gear, so you're likely to be farming this anyway. The most common way is to grab Obsidian as you can find pockets of lava underground and leading water to it from above, then mining from underwater. The Earthwelling technique is a great method that requires a bit more preparation but is easier to mine once it's done, especially for very large lava pockets. Finally there's the Obsidian generator, which is outlined here. Players may or may not agree with the ethics of using a generator, but regardless of how you feel it's a very efficient way to get lots of Obsidian in a hurry.
 * A large portion of Lava
 * A source of Water
 * A Nightmare Pickaxe or better
 * At least one Bucket

Expected Profit:  per 250 Obsidian minimum, more if you get lucky modifiers.

Skulls sell for each, resulting in   per chunk of Obsidian, putting it in the top tier of ores. Every so often, you may get a skull with a modifier on it; they sell for more than ordinary skulls. Obsidian Skulls don't stack, so to avoid a lot of trips back and forth just make a spare furnace and set it down within range of a selling NPC. Once you're in the buy/sell menu you can scroll down your crafting list to make skulls and immediately drop them into the NPC's inventory to sell them.

Ectoplasm
Expected Profit:   per stack of 99 ectoplasm

As of 1.2, enemies in the Hardmode Dungeon (after killing Plantera), when killed, have a chance to turn into Dungeon Spirits. They drop 1 to 3 Ectoplasm, which sells for each. If you get a large amount, you can easily profit, as each dungeon spirit drops a couple of Ectoplasm, and that makes it easy to make tons of gold. You can also make Spectre Armor and other things, so you can sell those for even more gold. The only hard part is farming the Ectoplasm, as Hardmode Dungeon enemies are stronger than the average enemy. It takes time, but it's worth it.