What is the best way to earn gold for a level 80?

Question

Gold is very essential in the game. Tier 3 cultural sets cost over 100g. Many other stuff also requires a large amount of gold.

What are some good methods of earning gold fast for a level 80?

Answer 1

There are a few ways to earn gold.

1. Follow the zerg in Straits of Devastation. Players have found a way to do dynamic events in a manner results in a never ending chain. Each event rewards a good amount of exp, gold and karma. Pop a karma booster for more karma. This is by far the best way of earning gold and karma. The downside is that it is a very boring method.

2. Caudecus' Manor. This level 40 dungeon is truly the easiest dungeon to grind. A good group of players can clear this dungeon in 15minutes. Each completion rewards 13 silver as well as plenty of level dependent loot to salvage. This is a great way to farm gold and crafting mats like gossamer scraps and orichulam ores. The downside is that it does not reward karma. It can also turn into quite a grind.

3. Citadel of Flames. This dungeon's reward is not as good as Caudecus' Manner. However, I noticed it tends to drop quite a nice amount of loot bags which give crafting mats like bones and vials of blood. Selling those on the trading post can result in quite a bit of profit. One nice upside is that is is quite challenging which makes it a nice alternative to the easy yet boring Caudecus' Manor.

4. WvWvW. There are plenty of dynamic events in here. Capturing points all give good rewards. The biggest upside to WvWvW is that it has a huge fun factor.

Sept 17th Edit:

The latest patch reduced the rewards for running dungeons constantly. This would reduce the farming effectiveness of Caudecus' Manor and Citadel of Flames in story mode. It looks like the current fastest way to earn gold/karma would be to fight in WvWvW when your server is evenly matched with the opponent.

Answer 2

One of the easiest, and most efficient, ways of farming for gold, is by farming for particular items and then using the Trading Post to sell them.

Crafting Materials:

Farming these can grant you an extraordinary amount of money, but you will have to watch the Trading Post and test differing zones for the most efficient items.

The Trading Post is primarily based on casual players. These players, which consist of about 70% of the player base, are the primary buyers on the trading post. By watching crafting materials, you will begin to detect patterns in prices that typically demonstrate the average level of casual players.

For the time being, I would focus on crafting materials above Tier 3, which will net you a pretty penny on the Trading Post.

I would also make note of Orichalum Nodes and farm these whenever they are up.

Answer 3

Currently the most reliable way to earn gold quickly is to do CoF in explorable mode, especially Path 1 and, to a lesser extent, Path 2. Path 1 can be done in under 10 minutes and Path 2 takes only a little longer (more difficult as well though).

If you're not familiar with CoF runs, I'd suggest taking a look at Strife's excellent guides and having a go with your friends, guildies, or just a PUG - the easiest way to find one is to use http://gw2lfg.com/ and try to /join <name> of someone looking for group members (beware the freakish elitists out there who get upset if you're not perfectly equipped and the run takes 10 instead of 8 minutes...). The number of charr carvings you're rewarded decreases if you do multiple runs of the same path on the same day with the same character, but you still get a nice 26 silver per completed run, plus several Bags of Wondrous Goods with more money, among other things. With a good group, you can make several gold per hour this way.

Another nice way to make gold, though one that is less reliable and requires some crafting skills as well as some "starting capital", is to "craft and play the market". The Spidy site is a great resource for this, with up-to-date prices on items and very informative crafting break-downs that show you all the needed components at a glance. Just beware that firstly, some recipes (like this one) don't consider dungeon trophies to "cost" anything, so if you don't have them, you can't craft it, which makes the assumption of your "profit" somewhat misleading, and secondly, that if you craft an expensive item and match the lowest seller, you may be sitting on it indefinitely if there's nobody who wants to buy it for that price. So inform yourself about an item's desirability before you commit to crafting it for a profit.