Guide talk:Making money

Unlimited items (gel, wood, mushrooms) and statue farming
Gel is actually one of the only thing you can have unlimited amount of in Terraria, not the opposite. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.220.110.243 (talk).

You can have unlimited wood and mushrooms as well. I just meant that you can't really farm them, barring magma traps and suchlike. -Cromage 23:37, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

with the new Slime statues and Dart launcher thingummies, you can make quite an efficient farm - put the slime statue on the ground in a pit, line the walls with a few dart launchers, and hook both up to a five second timer. drop down every minute or so to pick up the spoils. more statues equals much more gel. easy, if you can find them. this also works for pirhanas, skeletons, goldfish, jellyfish, and (during a blood moon) bunny rabbits. the statues don't drop coins, but they do drop whatever else the mob would usually drop. Bomb statues are useful for this, too. for more info see Statue Wrincewind. 212.9.124.91 04:36, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

(Note: The above heading was added in an attempt to clean up its place in the discussion page, to allow the ToC to precede it as it should. Esaelon (talk) 00:58, 19 July 2015 (UTC) )

New Layout
The old layout for the selling guide seemed rather slapdash, so I thought I'd try this one out and see what people think. The new layout features different sections on what to buy, what to sell, etc, touching on inventory management and narrowing down to specific farming strategies at the end with profit analyses for each. Pictures would make it better, so anyone out there with some illustrative screenshots should chip in. MasterShizzle 07:47, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

General Tips
Is it really better to sell things you don't have a use for right now? You can simply craft more chests to hold excess items. Games in which this advice is good generally do not give the player any way to increase the limited available storage space, and/or have a lot of class-specific items which other types of characters will never be able to use. Most of the raw items obtained in Terraria have some kind of use (unless we're talking about duplicates of unique items like the Magic Mirror), while most of the decorative ones have to be actively created by the player. - Spinfx 00:26, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
 * If you're trying to collect one of each item in the game, that's a separate goal than wanting to make a lot of coins. And since you're reading a guide on how to effectively sell items I'd assume that's the goal the player in question has in mind. After all, what can you use that many raw materials for?
 * Yeah, I guess I had starting players in mind, who don't have much stockpiled yet. I suppose if you already have the best armor and items there's no need to keep the raw materials. - Spinfx 03:29, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Restoration Potions?
Why is there nothing talking about Restoration Potions? It's far more profitable than making and selling lesser and standard potions, and all you're doing is combining two potions. Healing and Mana pots sell for 2sp, but a Restoration pot sells for 8sp. That's 4sp profit just from combining the two.
 * Why don't you make a new section explaining the strategy? 00:51, 22 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Only worth doing if you have spare Lesser Mana/Mana Potions lying around. Buying Lesser Mana Potions is costly and it might be better to save extra Fallen Stars as Star Cannon ammo. darrenalilim 03:53, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Necro Helm (and EoW farming)
I noticed the guide mentions turning cobwebs into silk for a profit of 20 Copper per cobweb. What about crafting Necro Helms that sell for 90 Silver apiece?

Necro Helm (90 Silver resale) = 25 Bones (Valued @ 2 Silver, 50 Copper; 10 Copper ea. base resale) + 40 Cobwebs (Valued @ 8 Silver; 20 Copper ea. via Silk resale) [Combined = 10 Silver initial resale cost/investment]

You get 9x the base resale worth; both materials are abundant. Bones are unlimited as a farmable mob drop (unless you tore down the Dungeon for the bricks and walls). Cobwebs, while technically limited, can be found quite easily in large quantities even on a small world.

It doesn't seem like any other products made from these materials can come close to the equivalent increase of per unit worth.

Also, I'm kinda surprised EoW wasn't pointed out as a slightly more viable farming target compared to EoC due to the fact EoW can be summoned any time. EoC can only be summoned at night, limiting potential income throughput in the long run.

I also find farming Rotten Chunks and Vile Mushrooms far easier and faster than Lenses. Rotten Chunks and Vile Mushrooms can be easily acquired using a Corrupt Grass (Vile Mushroom/natural Deathweed) farm and an EoS farm (or you can just frequent your local Corruption biome regularly). Demon Eye farming, like EoC, is limited to night time while the ingredients for Worm Food can be farmed with 24/7 availability. The only real limitation to EoW farming is the fact it can only be summoned in the Corruption. If you're farming him for cash, you probably have an area set up for it though. (Be it in a natural or artificial Corruption biome). My EoC/EoW arena area doubles as an EoS and Vile Mushroom farm, actually. (The roof is my EoS and shroom farms.) However, I will admit I lucked out a bit on the initial layout on one of my worlds that made that set-up quite viable near the initial spawn point. Still required a bit of landscaping on my part. Oh, it also serves a Devourer farm for Worm Teeth (for Unholy Arrow production.)

Partial rewrite
This article is somewhat bloated with repeated info and untrue statements (as of 1.1). I'll try to restructure it so that the the different methods are written similarly, and the most important details can be immediately seen from the text. - 91.153.29.155 15:25, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Removing the Music Box section
Methods that exploit bugs shouldn't be on this list. Including the music box method is the same as adding the method were you just copy your map or download a map with lots of money on it. Keep this list bug free please. --Moxxy 23:57, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Chests farming glitch/exploit
I think this exploit can make dropped items disappear. I was trying this glitch when I accidentaly pressed T when it was selecting my Muramasa. I checked my inventory to see if I picked it up again and it wasn't there. I stopped the glitch and can't find it anywhere ever since. Restarting doesn't help. This never happened to me before I tried the glitch.

Dungeon Farming
Someone should add a section on dungeon farming to the page, I'd say. Make a small world, run to the dungeon, kill Skeletron (who drops 6 gold iirc), run in and loot chests for quite a bit of gold (most accessories sell for a gold each, as do some of the weapons). Also a good way to find statues if you plan on making a farm. I don't think I've ever seen a dungeon with less than two statues. Moses 06:30, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Lens are better than Goggles
Why are Goggles even on the list? They sell for the same cost as their ingredients - Lenses sell for 1 Silver each, the Goggles made from two Lenses for 2 Silver. Crafting isn't always the best option, you don't have to combine things just to sell them. Goggles are terrible to sell anyway because you have to craft them one by one and then cart them to an NPC, when Lenses stack to 99 - There is absolutely no reason to craft Goggles if you're simply looking to make money from Lenses. It should be replaced with simply 10 Lenses on the chart.

Glitch 2 doesn't work
Either that or I'm not reading it properly. tested with 100 copper coins and 100 silver coins.

Bug - Gold Chest Duplication
I saw it on a video on Youtube, and I thought I would try it out myself. If you place a wired switch up to an active block, then place a Gold Chest over the active block (with an item inside; if you try activating it without an item, the chest will be moved), it will spawn a Gold Chest for every activation of the switch, sometimes multiple times over. By making an area of three chests on the same level as you, and three above you, all wired to the same switch (or even a crab engine), you will quickly gain a full inventory of Gold Chests. In less than an hour, you can easily make well over twenty platinum.

Yes, it's a bug, and it's wrong to exploit bugs. But once you've beaten all of the challenges that Hardmode has to offer, there's really nothing else better to do than buy enough wire and explosives to wire your entire world to explode and start over.

And, yes. Some people DO just want to watch the world burn, thank you.

In any case, here is a crude drawing of the setup I use for this.

XXCCCCCCCXX

XXDADADAXX

XXXXXXXSXXXX

XXXXXXXWXXXX

XXCCCCCCXX

XXDADADAXX

CC - Gold Chest D - Dirt Block A - Active Stone (Wired) W - Wire {running between switch and lower boxes) S - Switch (attached to dirt block, hanging from dirt block above) X - Nothing (open air; used to emphasize what isn't there, but this mechanism can be built into or against anything) - Cyrilgar 08:19, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The point is: if you want money you can also just use an inventory editor. This guide is for people who prefer to do it the fair way. --Icke 06:32, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
 * This is quite true. However, without using any of the editors or mods, I believe this is the easiest and quickest way to duplicate items for purpose of making money in game without having to close the client.  And just because it's taking advantage of a glitch doesn't mean it isn't fair.  There have been updates since 1.1, but the bug hasn't been taken out.  I'm not saying that it SHOULD be there, but while it is still part of the game mechanics, why not take advantage of it while you can?  -- Cyrilgar 08:16, 16 May 2012 [UTC]
 * I don't see why we can't include an "exploits" section. It is a way to make money. Some people may want to know the cheap way to make money instead of the legitimate ways, and I see no reason we can't provide that information. My favourite for duplicating money (and items) is to put stuff in a chest, make a copy of the world, and send your character in to collect it. The items remain in the chest in your true world, and your character has them too. I only use this if my server eats something like the Mechanical Worm without summoning, but it is a way people could double their money in one go. Also, exponential returns if you do it right (linear returns if you're lazy). --timrem 03:55, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Skeleton now drops more
As of 1.2, Skeletons, including ones spawned by statues, may drop Skulls, Ancient Helmets and Bone Swords. Since the Ancient Gold Helmet in particular sells for 50 silver, this improves expected revenue quite a bit. [AGH is 1/8th as likely to drop as Hook, but 25 times as valuable. Thus AGH drops add over three times as much value as Hook drops over time.] --77.251.225.223 20:03, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Splitting guide
There's a note about the guide regarding layout. Why not just split the article up into different articles, each detail money making schemes according to method: Crafting, Boss Farming, etc. The main article could cover just the basic ideas, outlines of the different methods, and then just link to each relevant sub-article. Each sub-article could provide more detailed info without being quite as cluttered as the current article is.

Suggestions
The last section (misc. tips) is now completely redundant & should be removed entirely. Who thought it was a good idea to link that subsection to the same page on which it resides?! Recursive fail.. Also, why not remove the "tips" that no longer work or were fixed for being exploits? This page is long enough. I do like the "Making 10/30" sections added here. Much more professional-looking! Great idea.

Profitability
For some time, I have been considering making a list of the most profitable ways of turning various items into coins. There are many items' pages which have this information, but it is not at all in a central location and it does not appear to be updated with any consistency -- which would admittedly be quite difficult as much of the time someone may not know a page has the information to be updated!

If exhaustive, such a page could be quite long and, I suspect, may need to be broken up by the Materials of different types (ores, blocks, critters, weapons, accessories, etc.) in order to keep some sanity as to its length and the ability for it to be maintained. That may be a good idea even if the information is limited merely to most profitable item and sell-value (or perhaps a handful of such when the best items require multiple input Materials), yet limiting it in such a way would not be quite so bad.

One thing that might make the process far more intuitive to maintain would be if there was a way to pull sell-values of items to the recipe on the Materials' pages, though at the moment there appears to be no such place for that (with the exception of what has been done on, for example, the Chandelier page). Though I suspect it is not possible to automate, I am certainly no wiki expert, and so I ask, first, is there a practical means for such limited transclusion?

Second and more important: Would those with more authority with respect to the maintenance of this wiki approve or frown upon such an addition? Esaelon (talk) 00:58, 19 July 2015 (UTC)

Unnecessary Section
Should the Cheating section even be there? LordofEditing (talk) 07:51, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Neither, some people like it being there, some people dislike it being there. Anyways, it's there own risk to do it, or not. We might demolished that section if its too unnecessary. Just wait for people's and admin's surmisal. I think. -- IosKent  ( Talk Page  -  Contribs ) 08:18, 24 July 2016 (UTC)--
 * It's allowed in guides, but generally not on any of the main wiki pages. – Ferretwings  (talk ) 08:24, 24 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, ok, my observation was a little bit off topic. LOL :D...... -- IosKent  ( Talk Page  -  Contribs ) 08:29, 24 July 2016 (UTC)--

Better way to make money
As of 1.3, there seems to be a better way to make money than the jelly fish statue, and is still a viable AFK farm. Granite Golem Statues still drop their respective drops when killed by lava. The night vision helm sells for 2 gold, and is a 3.3 percent drop normally, and most likely a 0.8 percent drop, due to it's drops being reduced as it was added in 1.3. However, to make up for this, you can make something profitable over the ample granite blocks you get, Granite Lanterns. These sell for 1 silver, and only take .3 wood, .3 gel and 3 granite blocks. If you decide to attack them additionally, every 50 kills you can get a banner to sell for 5 silver (hopefully you have a banner hanging already to improve your damage output). Try out a farm using 1 or 2 statues. They are pretty strong, and could defend themselves which might lower the total earnings per hour. Thanks. Pazon123 (talk) 00:40, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Anybody can add to the guide ;) Feel free to add a section. You could perhaps name the section AFK farming the Granite Golem (or something similar). – Ferretwings (talk ) 06:27, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Crafting Template broken?
Something dire seems to have happened to the crafting template, or one of its sub-templates -- all the rows are prefixed by a redlink to "File:Y". Can someone more familiar with the templates here figure this out? --MentalMouse42 (talk) 01:39, 6 September 2017 (UTC) ETA: Figured it out:  The "image=y" argument seems to have been used as if it was a Boolean "yes use an image", but in fact it is replacing the result image with the file named by its argument. I have deleted the offending arguments. --MentalMouse42 (talk) 01:50, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Statue farming numbers -- are those up-to-date for 1.3?
The "Statue Farming" section has been there since I came to the wiki, but it has occurred to me that the list of statue yields looks like it describes the more generous pre-1.3 statues with catchable critters. I particularly note the values for bunny, crab and bird statues, which have no drops except banners now! The comments about ectoplasm underline that the text is outdated. If these values still apply to the non-desktop platforms, perhaps they should be flagged for those platforms. --MentalMouse42 (talk) 01:19, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Ore drops from Brain of Cthulhu...
I totaled up the listed drops for the Creepers and the Brain itself, I'm just not sure I believe the results. They certainly don't match the previous writer's, but I don't think they were counting the Creepers. --MentalMouse42 (talk) 02:24, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
 * ETA: A bit of experimentation suggests it's actually closer than I thought, the average might not be quite that high, but it's hard to tell because its so variable.  I also note that the BoC does drop coins, which isn't listed in its infobox.  Can anyone find its official coin-drop value? --MentalMouse42 (talk) 03:08, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

About the "Making 1 gold coin" section....
I don't think it's useful or necessary. Most choices require a lot of materials that even if they are pretty renewable, adquiring lots of them just to make money just sounds annoying; the time spent gathering for example 2000 wood for the 200 weapon racks could be just spent killing a couple Eyes of Cthulhu or mining a couple ores. The items that are actually profitable and easy to mass produce are already mentioned on the Crafting section anyways, so i don't really see the point to it.


 * Thank you for the feedback.


 * A small preface: the guides in general are currently in a state of disrepair: they contain a lot of outdated and low quality information that we have to check and clean to make them pretty again. That said, I have yet to finish to cleanup this page, so i've yet to finish to check the rest of the page (i've only checked the first sections). With that said (just checked this specific section so that i could answer your question), I do agree that this section is about selling stuff that aren't very time-efficient (unlike Fishing and Boss hunting). You're free to edit any page and remove any bad infos that are within this page. In fact, you can delete some inefficient methods that this section (and guide, if you have free time) lists. By the way, when you're making comments in talk pages, remember to put 4 "~" before submitting. -- Murrayzero (talk) 21:31, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

Dynasty Wood Lantern Section
So either the wiki auto recalculated the values of things? Or someone did a really confusing job of half-editing the Dynasty Wood Lantern section. Like, they put the old gen content tag on it correctly, but then changed all the values to 1.4 costs? That shouldn't be done. If it's being left for posterity for old gen content, then leave the old gen values there! --Kittenykat27263 (talk) 13:59, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The wiki auto-recalculated, so our spiffy templates turned on us. I've fixed it up. --MentalMouse42 (talk) 15:41, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks! :) --Kittenykat27263 (talk) 22:18, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Heart/Star generation got more selective?
I've found that in the current Desktop, not all statue spawns will produce hearts (at least) regardless of whether they are killed by traps or lava. So far testing with lava only, I've found: (editing) --MentalMouse42 (talk) 22:35, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Produces hearts: crab, slime, Wall Creeper
 * Does not: Jellyfish, Piranha, Blood Zombie, Skeleton, Bone Zombie, Hoplite, Goblin, Undead Viking, Corrupt, Eyeball, Armed Zombie