Oh, shiny-shiny gold coins, why do you slip through our fingers like sand? Why can’t you stay in our ESO characters’ inventories just a little longer? These questions are nothing new – players have been asking them ever since the game launched. Tamriel is never short on things you need to buy, so you always need more gold. But maybe it’s time to change the perspective: it shouldn’t be about spending less – instead, it’s about how to get more ESO gold.
This detailed guide offers an overview of activities that can help you increase your in-game income. It will help you spot more gold-making opportunities in your daily routine so you can finally afford all the things you’ve been planning: leveling up professions, buying gear and mounts, improving your housing. With more coins to spend, you’ll have many more options to choose from. Sounds like something you’d be happy to have? Let’s see how you can make it happen!
Questing and Daily Activities
Questing is such a common activity for ESO players that it’s only natural to wonder if it can be turned into a solid source of gold. And the short answer is: yes, it can! Many quests reward you with gold directly, along with valuable items you can sell for extra profit. But not all quests are created equal – let’s break down the two main types and see which of them can boost your income:
| Type | Examples | Good for gold? |
| One-time quests | Main storyZone questsFaction quests | ❌ No |
| Repeatable quests | Crafting writsGuild dailiesZone dailies | ✅ Yes |
So if you’re thinking about adding quests to your gold farming routine, it’s best to avoid one-time ones. They are designed with different goals in mind: they move the story forward, help you level up, and reward you with decent gear.
Repeatable quests are a whole different story. Not only can you complete them daily to stack up consistent gold, but they also reward you with useful gear and valuable resources along the way. Take crafting writs, for example: they’re among the most profitable dailies, offering a steady flow of coin, materials, surveys, and a chance at lucrative master writs.
Guild quests are another noteworthy type of repeatables. These high-yield dailies provide enough gold to matter, alongside loot you can sell at a good price. To get the most out of guild questing, focus on the Fighters, Mages, and Undaunted guilds.
Farming and Resource Gathering
To clear things up, farming simply means gathering large amounts of a particular resource. The most profitable targets are usually high-demand materials used in crafting. You can either use these mats yourself to create valuable items or sell them in bulk to other players – either way, the profit is well worth the effort. So, how do players prefer to get gold in Elder Scrolls Online through farming in 2025? Let’s take a look:
- Raw materials
- Nirncrux
- Motifs and Trait Pages
| Type of items | Description | Where to farm |
| Raw materials | That includes ore, wood, cloth, alchemy ingredients, and more. They’re perfect for farming because they are both in demand among crafters and straightforward to obtain | Zones rich in multiple resource types like:Khenarthi’s Roost CoastlineThe Hollow City in ColdharbourBetnikh in Carved Hills. |
| Nirncrux | Raw materials found in Craglorn can be refined into Nirncrux used to craft powerful Nirnhoned gear | Craglorn. Shada’s Tear is an example of a popular place to farm it. |
| Motifs and Trait Pages | Rare style items always attract collectors | DLC zones like Murkmire, Southern Elsweyr, and Deadlands |
The most successful resource farmers never start their routine without the right tools – and they always stick to optimized routes. If you’re on PC, check out these essential addons:
- HarvestMap – Track and display previously gathered resource nodes on your map
- Votan’s Mini Map – Enjoy easier and more precise navigation
- Master Merchant and Tamriel Trade Centre – Check item values before deciding what to sell or keep
As for farming routes, they tend to go in and out of favor depending on the meta, so it’s always worth taking a look at what the community recommends. As of summer 2025, some of the most popular suggestions include circular paths in Craglorn, The Hollow City, or Khenarthi’s Roost.
Crafting and Selling Items
Crafting is often seen as one of the most reliable answers to how to get gold in ESO. Just gather raw materials and turn them into something useful – that’s crafting in a nutshell. It’s especially easy to build a steady income by focusing on consumables, upgrade materials, and style items, all of which are always in demand. Here are the professions that tend to pay off the most:
- Alchemy – Endgame content like trials and PvP simply doesn’t work without high-end potions such as Essence of Spell Power or Witchmother’s Potent Brew. Power leveling is unimaginable without XP-boosting potions made from Perfect Roe. There’s always a market for these flasks.
- Enchanting – Glyphs created with runes are used constantly by high-level players, but even newcomers need them to improve gear. It’s a steady business at all levels.
- Blacksmithing / Clothing / Woodworking – Gear crafters always stay busy – and get paid well. Traits like Nirnhoned and Sharpened fetch premium prices. But It’s not just about performance: collectors will pay top gold for visually appealing cosmetic sets too.
To get the most out of your crafting efforts, avoid dumping raw materials on the market. You’ll earn far more by selling finished goods. Join an active trading guild for a better reach, and if you’re on PC, use addons like Master Merchant and Tamriel Trade Centre to track prices, follow trends, and stay competitive in the marketplace.
Trading in Guild Stores
If selling goods is how you plan to make gold, joining a trading guild is practically a must. Unlike many MMOs, Elder Scrolls Online doesn’t have a centralized auction house. Instead, players sell their items through guild stores, which are accessed via NPC kiosks located throughout Tamriel. Being part of a trading guild gives you far greater reach and a real chance to move your inventory.
You can be in up to five guilds at once, but the quantity matters less than quality – it makes sense to join guilds that mean business. Each guild sets its own tax rate, policies, and priorities when it comes to bidding on kiosk locations. Larger, more organized guilds are the go-to for serious sellers. And location plays a huge role – some hubs offer much better traffic than others. If your guild owns a kiosk in one of the following cities, you’re in excellent company:
- Mournhold (Deshaan): Many players consider it the most profitable trading hub in the game. It enjoys massive player traffic thanks to its central location, compact layout, and convenient crafting stations. Items listed here often sell within hours, and prices tend to be competitive.
- Rawl’kha (Reaper’s March): A favorite among veteran players and flippers. It offers a clean, tight city design with everything you need nearby: banking, crafting, and a high-traffic vendor strip. Both high-end gear and consumables are in high demand here.
- Elden Root (Grahtwood): A key location in the Aldmeri Dominion. It’s a bustling hub with several kiosks positioned near essential services.
Guilds often bid millions of gold each week to secure a spot in these hubs. But it’s worth it – these locations consistently lead to faster sales and higher profits. If you want reliable income, join a guild that has the resources to control one of these key cities regularly.
Dungeon and Trial Farming
PvE might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you’re thinking about how to get gold in ESO fast, but some activities have strong potential. Direct gold drops in most instances are nothing to write home about, but the loot… The loot in PvE is where the real value lies: it’s plentiful and includes such valuable things as set items, motifs, fragments, and more. So this is surely not an opportunity to neglect, but you should know what to focus on to not waste your time. Let’s compare PvE activities to see which fits the goal best:
| Activity | Description | Difficulty | Group Size | Good for Gold? |
| Public Dungeons | Shared zones, open to anyone, respawn loops | 🟢 Low to Medium | Varied, solo-friendly | ✅ Excellent – fast, recyclable loot & gold |
| Group Dungeons | Instanced group content with bosses | 🟡 Medium to Hard | 4 players | ⚠️ Moderate – valuable loot, but more time-consuming and requires a team |
| Trials | High-tier instanced group content with bosses | 🔴 Hard | 12 players | ⚠️ Moderate – very valuable loot, but takes more time than any other PvE activity |
As you can see, team-based activities aren’t perfect for gold farming. They take a lot of time and effort to complete – not every team is capable of defeating harder bosses in dungeons and trials, for instance. Besides, the loot is random and is shared unevenly, so it’s safe to say that it’s not the best approach to earning coins in PvE.
Public dungeons, on the other hand, have a great advantage of being solo-friendly. That means that you don’t have to rely on anyone: you can bring along a friend or two to clear the dungeon faster, but it’s absolutely not necessary. The loot might be not as valuable as in team-based activities, but there’s lots of it and there’s always a chance of getting something truly rare.
Now let’s see which public dungeons are best for gold grinding:
- Crimson Cove (Malabal Tor) – lots of humanoid mobs with direct gold drops, valuable gear drops like Spinner’s Garments
- Forgotten Crypts (Deshaan) – compact layout, high mob respawn, often drops valuable Mother’s Sorrow staves and undead-themed items
- The Vile Manse (Reaper’s March) – high mob density, compact, valuable loot
Stealing and Fencing
If breaking the law in Tamriel isn’t a no-no for you, you can take a cue from the Thieves Guild and start picking pockets of NPCs around you without getting caught. Stolen goods can then be sold to the guild’s vendors in Outlaw Refuges – a process known as fencing.
It isn’t the most lucrative way to get gold in ESO, so either do it if you enjoy the gameplay, or as a side activity alongside other gold farming methods. Keep in mind that there’s a daily limit to how many stolen items you can fence – it increases as you level up your Thieves Guild rank, but it takes time.
That said, here are several popular stealing routes to consider:
- Vivec City (Gold Coast): Dense with NPCs carrying high-value items. Pickpocket nobles and residents for motifs, recipes, and valuable loot.
- Windhelm / Valenwood / Stros M’Kai: Minimal detection risk, fast respawns.
Events and Daily Login Rewards
The only real connection between events and daily login rewards in terms of gold farming is that neither should be your primary strategy. But they are still worth mentioning as they let you earn some extra gold with little effort. So let’s see how you can benefit from them.
Let’s start with Daily Login Rewards. The idea is simple: log into the game several days in a row and get a special reward. There’s a dedicated monthly calendar that shows all the rewards you can obtain for not missing a single day for a certain period. The rewards are expectedly not very impressive, but some items (mostly furnishing) can be sold at a decent price. Sometimes you even get direct gold payments that can go above 10,000 coins – just for logging in! So, in our view, the best way to treat these rewards is as a little passive income bonus that can exceed your expectations, but shouldn’t be relied on.
Events are nothing like that: they require much more active involvement. They can enhance a particular aspect of gold farming: bonus currency gains, increased loot value, or extra spawns of rare style pages or items. Here are some examples of lucrative events:
- Crime Wave Mini-Event (May 2025): Fencing limit raised, their price is 25% higher. Pickpocketing also yields special pouches and safeboxes with tradable loot and gold.
- Anniversary Jubilee (April 3-22, 2025): All activities drop Jubilee presents that include motifs, recipes, unique style items, and rare transmit crystals. All can be sold to collectors at a great price some time after the event’s over.
- Zeal of Zenithar Event (Summer 2025): Reduced travel cost, 50% cheaper repairs, doubled crafting inspiration. Completing crafting writs and using event tickets the right way could make you lots of gold.
Buying Gold Safely
If getting gold via gameplay doesn’t seem the best option to you right now, it doesn’t mean you have to go without it. You can simply order a delivery of coins from a reliable seller – it’s a common practice that you shouldn’t overlook. But it looks like there’s no way to get any currency via the in-game store – so how to buy ESO gold exactly?
Since real money is involved, it’s crucial to find a trustworthy seller who won’t scam you. There’s no simple way to find a solo seller like that, unless you know them personally – and most players don’t. So it’s better to look for an online store specializing in game services. To operate successfully, these businesses need to build a solid reputation – one-off scams aren’t part of that.
The signs of a reliable online store include:
- They highlight customer reviews by giving links to Trustpilot and/or major forums, so that you can see what people think of them and how store representatives respond to criticism
- They must be easy to reach: a live chat or a contact on a popular messenger like Discord is a must
- Communication should be clear and helpful. If they don’t respond in a live chat for hours, or if the replies are rude or leave you wondering what to do next, that’s a good reason to reconsider doing business with them
Take ArmadaBoost, for example – one of the biggest ESO service stores on the market. Their website featuresTrustpilot reviews in several places, and you can easily contact them via live chat to ask questions. They’re a popular go-to for anyone who wants to purchase ESO gold. So if this option is on the table for you, check them out!
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To sum up, if you’re looking to become a tycoon in the world of Elder Scrolls Online, your best bets are farming popular resources, crafting and selling through trade guilds, running public dungeons, or simply buying gold from a trusted seller.
That’s not to say that other methods are worthless. Use them as supplements to your main strategy and they’ll be worth your while. So don’t disregard daily login rewards, stealing and fencing, and event farming.
In the end, it all comes down to what fits your playstyle. ESO is a game and games are meant to be fun – otherwise, what makes them special? Don’t be afraid to mix things up and try new approaches – you never know what gold-making method will become your next new favorite!