When you first begin, it can feel difficult to make enough money to purchase the equipment and provisions you want. Healing items are expensive when you only have a few thousand gold to work with, and anything better than Recruit-type weapons quickly adds up to tens of thousands of gold.
Fortunately, with just a few changes, it is easy to begin earning extra gold early in your adventure so that you always have enough money on hand to purchase what you need.
1. Skip the Recruit’s weapons…mostly
The first armories in the game all have Recruit’s weapons that increase your default damage, increase your max HP, and increase your EXP gains for only 1,500 gold per character. It’s a tempting offer that you should refuse.
It may seem cheap at first, but 1,500 gold per character quickly adds up, and you will benefit more from giving one character a more powerful and more expensive early-game weapon like the Runic Sword, Sanguine Blade, or Unwavering Spear.
The EXP gains are not as important as they seem. Many other items, including shields and accessories, can give EXP increases, and there are consumable items and repeatable missions to help you level up anyone who is falling behind.
However, if you find yourself struggling with the beginning of the game, you could consider buying a few pieces to help you out. After all, they are a significant damage increase over the default Bronze weapons. You might also find it helpful to keep some spare Recruit’s weapons in your inventory for later in the game if you want to quickly level up a character you had previously decided not to use.
2. Use the Plunder Valor Skill
The Thief class (Travis) has the Plunder Valor Skill ability by default. You can spend 1 Valor Point during a battle to steal gold from enemy units. Stealing gold will permanently give you a few hundred (or even over a thousand) gold to take with you.
Offensive and defensive Valor Skills are very important during the mid and late game battles, but you can mostly disregard them during the early game to instead spend extra Valor Points on Plunder to get the extra gold you need to equip your army. You can steal from every enemy unit on the map, and that includes reinforcements that show up periodically if you have not defeated the enemy commander. Take advantage of the remaining time limit and Valor Points you have remaining.
You can also Plunder enemy units in the Sigil’s Trial optional training missions, so there is an infinite source of Plunder if you don’t mind repeating battles.
3. Complete Deliveries
Do not forget to complete the Restoration Request deliveries every time you liberate a new town. Each delivery will reward you with hundreds of gold, Honors, and an item.
You can also complete Auxillary Requests at each town for even more gold and Honors, but I do not recommend completing those deliveries until you have cleared a whole region. It is more difficult (slower) to earn the items you need after your initial exploration, and you are better off saving those items to complete Restoration Requests for towns you have not liberated yet. However, you could consider completing Auxillary Requests earlier if you really need the money.
4. Use the Golden Egg
The Golden Egg is an accessory that doubles the money a unit earns in battle. There are multiple Golden Eggs available throughout the game, but one is available near the very beginning to give you early access to this feature.
As soon as you complete the first mission on the mainland, complete the Restoration Requests at Ouvrir Harbor (the first town you arrived at) to unlock the option to Board a Ship from the harbor. If you board the ship, it will take you back to Palevia (the starting island) and you can access additional towns.
Near one of the towns on Palevia is a sidequest; a man has lost his chickens. Accept the sidequest and run around the island finding the chickens (they are very obvious) and then return to the man to receive the first Golden Egg.
For additional money-making and other early game tips, check out TitaniumLegman’s videos for new players!