Guide:Making money

See also: Coins

General Tips
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 or buy a piggy bank to use as your "stash" and get into the habit of throwing all your coins into it before leaving your base. Regular "banking" minimizes the loss of coins from death.
 * Thus far in Terraria there are no saleable items that are unique. In other words, if you can get one then it's possible to get ten more. Keep this in mind when you feel like hoarding items you never use because you "might need them later": Items with no purpose are more useful as coins.
 * While some methods of making coins are much faster than others, all of them require a certain amount of time to really work. The best ingredient to accomplish anything in Terraria is patience.
 * Whether it's earning your first platinum coin or buying that shiny new set of clothing, always grind for a goal. The effort will seem smaller once you've got a way to measure your progress.
 * To save time when making a withdrawal/deposit at your stash, simply throw the stashed coins onto the ground and let your character pick them up again. The game will automatically crunch everything down to its largest denominations, saving you the hassle of having to craft copper into silver, then into gold, etc. Only recommended for single player.

What to Keep
The following items can all be used in some way to make more profitable items, so if you're looking to maximize your income you should think twice about selling or discarding these:
 * 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.
 * Mud: Mud is much rarer than dirt but is still quite easy to find at any point in the game. Mud is used to grow mushroom grass, which is a very profitable venture. Most players will start at least one small mushroom plot to make potions, so keep an extra stack or two in your base. Once your mushrooms are up and running it's safe to discard.
 * 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 7.5 copper for each piece of wood. No other wood-only items are as profitable.
 * Sand: Sand is all over the place in large amounts and can be turned into Glass, which should then be turned into bottles.
 * Bottles and Bottled Water: Both sell for only 4 copper each, making them very impractical for serious moneymaking, but they're used to make every potion in the game and potions mean serious money. If you have extras it's best to hold onto them.
 * Clay: Clay is harder to get in large amounts compared to mud, but is still easy to find in small pockets just about everywhere, especially on the surface. It's also easy to harvest at any point in the game. Use it to make Clay Pots to sell for 20 copper each or can be used to grow plants.
 * Mushrooms and Glowing Mushrooms: Easily the most profitable crops in the game, but not as is. Glowing mushrooms especially are used for some very high-end farming ventures, and you'll usually have a lot of them once your mushroom farm is up and running. Only sell these if your other potion-making materials are exhausted.
 * Cobwebs: After a long cave-exploring trip you're likely to have picked up a lot of 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 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 20 copper per cobweb. As of 1.0.6 you can also use cobwebs to make silk, and indirectly, banners, and Chinese Lanterns
 * Vile Mushrooms: A couple trips through the corruption can sometimes leave you with whole stacks of these. Selling the mushrooms gets you 10 copper, while making them into Vile Powder gives you 20 copper per bag, or 1 silver per mushroom.
 * Goldfish: as of 1.05, Goldfish are a hot commodity: two goldfish and a Bottled Water combines to make a Fish Bowl which sells for a whopping 20 silver a pop.

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 leave these behind:
 * Dirt: Useful for growing some plants and handy as a plentiful building material, but will never be more than that. Use what you need when you need it, then throw the rest away. You can always get more.
 * Stone: Again, something that you'll have metric tons of but have no use for in an economic sense. The only saleable items stone is used to make are Wooden Arrows (with wood) and Furnaces (with wood and torches). Furnaces will only let you break even, so are not worth the time it takes to craft them. Arrows sell for only 2 copper, or 5 silver for a stack of 250, making them a woefully inefficient way to make money. Unless you are undergoing massive building projects requiring equally immense amounts of bricks and stone for statues, discard.
 * Wooden arrows: Very common in pots and chests, only pick them up if you'll use them as ammo or you've got nothing more valuable to keep in that inventory slot (wood, for example). Each arrow sells for 2 copper and is crafted in stacks of 3, which gives you 6 copper per piece of wood and stone invested. You can make more profit by simply discarding the stone and making chairs or torches from the wood.
 * Glowsticks: At only 4 copper each, glowsticks are another item that can easily be left behind in favor of something more lucrative. Sticky Glowsticks are kind of a novelty, but are the exact same price as regular glowsticks and waste gel to boot. You're better off saving your gel to make potions.
 * 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 Silver Bow or Enchanted Boomerang or better, you won't see much benefit from throwing these instead. Making Poisoned Knives is somewhat profitable but rarely worth the effort: Vile Powder is 20 copper a bag and will make 20 knives at 12 copper each, a net gain overall. The downside is that anything less than a multiple of 20 is wasted, and that extra 2 copper per knife isn't worth carrying powder around all the time unless you use it regularly.

What to Sell
These items are worth hanging onto for sale as is. When loaded down and you have to choose, take these and toss the fluff.
 * Ores: Early on you're going to be using these to craft, but once you're kitted out and your house is decorated from top to bottom you're not going to need all those stacks upon stacks of copper and iron ores. Meteorite should be smelted, as Meteorite bars sell for more than the ore used to make them, but every other metal is either as good or better to sell in ore form. A Spelunker Potion will make the gathering process a lot faster, as they reveal a surprisingly large amount of ore pockets.
 * Accessories: 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.

Farming Strategies
The following are specific examples of things to actively make and sell. All of these have a decent profit over time, but some require more effort than others.

For the best ways to acquire large amounts of plants and mushrooms, see Guide:Gardening.

Torches
Farming torches requires: 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.
 * Wood
 * Gel

Expected Profit: 21 silver and 28.5 copper per 99

Torches sell for 10 copper 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 is worth 1 copper each and wood is worth 7.5 copper each when making chairs, so each stack of 3 torches gets you 21.5 copper more than selling the raw materials alone, a net profit of 21 silver 28.5 copper per stack of 99 torches.

Edited: this is not correct, and if you try to sell torches you will notice that this cannot be correct, as 99 torches sells for 9 silver 90 copper. This is less than the above net profit. the actual earnings per 3 torches is correct but you multiply it by 33 for total profit earned making it 7 silver 9.5 copper more per stack of 99 torches than selling raw materials alone.

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: 15 silver and 75 copper 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 2 copper, a mushroom is 5 copper, and 2 bottles are 8 copper for a total cost of 15 copper for 2 potions. They sell for 60 copper each, giving a net profit of 105 copper for 2 potions, or 15 silver 75 copper 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 2 silver 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: 52 silver and 50 copper per 30

Tip: never buy your Lesser potions from the Merchant. As mentioned earlier, 2 Lessers cost 15 copper in raw materials, and Glowing mushrooms are 10 copper each. Subtract this from the 2 silver sale price and our anticipated profit becomes 1 silver 75 copper per potion, or 52 silver 50 copper 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.

Shine and Night Owl Potions
Shine Potions and Night Owl Potions use the following: Both kinds of potions sell for 2 silver 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: 49 silver 80 copper 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 20 copper each, glowing mushrooms are 10 copper, and the bottle of water is 4 copper. This gets you 1 silver 66 copper per Shine potion in profit, or 49 silver 80 copper for 30. Night Owl Potions net 1 silver 56 copper 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: 6 gold 75 silver per 250 Obsidian

Skulls sell for 54 silver each, resulting in 2 silver 75 copper per chunk of Obsidian, putting it in the top tier of ores. 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.

Fighting Bosses
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 muster, 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.

Expected Profit: Varies

Your payoff here is that Demonite Ore sells for 8 silver each, a stonking 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 takes 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 4 gold 64 silver 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 11 gold 38 silver.

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.