Guide:Making money


 * See also: Coins.

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 whenever possible. Regular "banking" minimizes the loss of coins from Death, as death normally results in the loss of 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 the chest.

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.
 * Mud Blocks: 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 for each piece of wood.
 * Stone Blocks: Plentiful and useful for building Houses and stopping the spread of Corruption, 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.
 * Clay: Crafts Clay Pots which sell for each.
 * 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.

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.
 * 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.
 * Glowsticks: Useful, but you'll likely pick up much more than you need. Once you have a full stack, trash the rest.
 * 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 Bow or Enchanted Boomerang or better, you won't see much benefit from throwing these instead.

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:
 * 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 veins.
 * 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.

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 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.

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

Tip: never buy your Lesser potions from the Merchant. 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.

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

Skulls sell for each, resulting in   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 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  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.