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Elin’s sandbox experience allows players a lot of freedom, but there’s one rule you can’t escape: taxes must be paid. Just like in real life, neglecting your tax duties can lead to shopkeepers refusing to serve you and guards attacking you on sight.
This means every character needs to find ways to turn their activities into income, especially through passive methods. The best strategies will vary based on your starting class and playstyle, but all will help you stay on the good side of the taxman.
Elin is in Early Access. The information shared here may change as the game develops.
Crafting
A straightforward and effective way to make money early in the game is by dirt digging at your homestead and crafting it into infinite grass or soil floors. The stamina cost for crafting is based on the difference between your skill level and item level, making lower-level items prime for mass production.
As you progress, you’ll unlock more recipes and crafting stations. Keep in mind that even if your skill exceeds the recipe requirements, there is a minimum stamina cost to create items. Therefore, not all low-level recipes will always be the most lucrative. Look for traits that enhance profitability:
- Easily obtainable materials, such as wood, stone, or scrap metal.
- Products that stack in your inventory, like furniture and tiles (as opposed to weapons and jewelry).
- Items that inherit qualities from their materials, such as expensive woods yielding expensive furniture.
Some materials can be interchanged through intricate crafting processes. For instance, using scrap metal to create nails, then using those nails with bones to produce bone meal.
Busking
Playing music in crowded areas will earn you tips from nearby spectators. Additionally, you can find performance gigs at quest boards. These gigs offer time-limited opportunities that attract many listeners, along with extra rewards if you meet a certain performance threshold.
To get started, all you need is a musical instrument. You can craft a lute at the tinkerer’s bench or purchase one from most towns using coin or furniture tickets.
Make sure to enable the feature to automatically resume your song if interrupted; otherwise, your performance may end whenever you miss a note.
A significant drawback is the initial skill grind; if your musical ability is low, you may be met with hostility. Practice at the orphanage, where the crowd is more forgiving, before advancing to the Fortune Bell Casino in Palmia.
Adventuring
Dungeons are filled with loot just waiting to be collected, and even cursed items can fetch a decent price.
Initial dungeons often yield a wealth of mediocre loot that sells well and doesn’t weigh much. To maximize your carrying capacity, bring containers to increase your inventory slots, with pouches and purses being particularly effective due to their lightweight.
- Join the Fighter’s Guild in Port Kapul early on for additional rewards when clearing dungeons and defeating elite foes.
- Learn the appraisal skill at the tinker’s camp to enhance the sell value of loot and bypass identification fees. The longer you keep an item in your inventory, the more information is revealed.
- Keep figurines and cards dropped by enemies to either build a tourism industry or sell as regular loot.
The major downside to adventuring is the necessity for extensive preparation for higher-level dungeons or the repetitive nature of low-level runs. High-level dungeons will require you to stock up on healing items and potentially level up your companions.
Sculpting
Sculpting allows you to turn basic resources like stone and metal into valuable statues. As you level up, you’ll unlock the ability to create higher-quality sculptures, but you will need to speak to a trainer in Olvina to acquire the skill.
The primary advantage of sculpting is that it automatically pauses game time if your character gets overworked, as most sculptures weigh significantly more than their base materials, avoiding crushing damage from overloading your backpack.
The only requirement is a steady supply of stone. Collect as much as you can by using a pickaxe in any dungeon.
While you can use higher-tier materials for more valuable sculptures, stone typically offers the best balance of time and profit.
While the game permits you to carve statues out of human corpses, it’s not advisable. Flesh statues are edible, though.
Fishing
Fishing isn’t the best way to make money at the beginning, as raw fish spoils quickly, making it difficult to sell. You’ll also need to buy the fishing skill unless you chose it as a starting profession.
As you advance in the game, fishing can become a viable income source. Acquiring a fridge or cooler can prolong the shelf life of your catch, and cooking stations allow you to create more valuable dishes from raw fish.
The game may inform you that fishing isn’t possible during winter; however, you can purchase a build board from Loytel and designate your fishing area as snow-free to keep the water unfrozen.
Fishing presents several benefits compared to other tasks:
- It has a low stamina cost, allowing you to leave it unattended for extended periods without risk of overexertion.
- At higher levels, it can net you rare items, providing considerable profit for lucky players.
- It’s a low-risk way to earn rare currencies like strange coins and small medals.
Be cautious when your fishing skill reaches around 20; at this level, you can start catching sharks and whales, which weigh too much to carry. Attempting to lift them may result in being crushed.
Homesteading
Villagers can be a lucrative source of income if you’re fortunate; even simple farmers and fishermen can generate some revenue.
Treasure hunters are particularly profitable. Any treasure maps you find can be stored in a shared chest, gradually converting into treasure chests filled with thousands of coins, rare items, and sometimes artifacts. You’ll need to find villagers or pets with suitable jobs and hobbies to maximize profits, but you can buy whips from the talesinger to reroll a villager’s job and hobby.
Some treasure chests may be locked. You can either pay an information broker to open them or learn lockpicking from a trainer in Derphy.
Other villagers can also produce goods for sale. Lumberjacks gather logs while cooks create meals and seasonings. Ideally, you want products that won’t spoil, favoring explorers and antique dealers.
Farming
The Delegated Farming policy on your home board automatically harvests and replants crops on your farm. If you set up your delivery chest to accept fresh produce automatically, you can maintain steady income even while away from home.
If you need seeds, gather some with a sickle, as each biome has unique plants. Alternatively, you could steal rare seeds from settlements or moonstone portals.
A dependable early crop is crim bushes. By using a millstone, you can convert the berries into powder, which has good market value and lasts in storage.
This method requires no special tools or skills, but the more farmer residents you employ, the more land you can manage.
Winter farming poses additional challenges but remains possible depending on your chosen crops and available resources:
- Without sun lamps, mushrooms can be cultivated in winter. Use a build board to keep fields snow-free for maximum visibility or grow them under cover.
- If you have sun lamps, you can grow any crop year-round, but you’ll need a power supply to support them.
You can also accept harvesting quests in towns. These test your weightlifting skills more than your farming abilities, so maintain a light inventory. Completing these will reward you with Oren, platinum coins, and furniture tickets.
Tourism and Taxes
By selecting the “open for business” policy, you can attract tourists to your homestead. Your income will depend on your economic policies and your tourism value:
- Policies like traveler’s inn increase tourism earnings at the expense of government points.
- The rip-off store and its related policies can change the type of tourists you attract while allowing you to charge higher prices for goods.
- Your primary source of tourism value comes from aesthetic items such as figures, statues, and cards. Having duplicates won’t help, so aim for a diverse collection.
If tourism is not an option, you can levy taxes on your residents through various housing board policies. The resident tax policy provides a monthly income that varies based on your homestead’s ranking and other policies. If paired with the tax evasion policy, your villagers may cover most of your tax obligations.
Guild Salaries
Each of the four guilds provides a monthly salary once you reach the first rank of membership, alongside benefits such as discounts and exclusive shops. There’s nothing stopping you from joining all guilds and collecting salaries from each.
- The Fighters’ Guild is located in Port Kapul. You move up ranks by defeating elite enemies (those with a glowing aura).
- The Mages’ Guild resides in Lumiest. Advancement comes through deciphering ancient texts with your literacy skills.
- The Thieves’ Guild can be found in Derphy. You earn ranks by selling stolen goods to their fence.
The Merchants’ Guild, situated south of Mysilia, may not be the best choice for income. Advancing ranks requires investment in shops, usually costing more than the returns.
How to Combine Multiple Methods
You can seamlessly integrate several of these methods based on your character’s skills:
- Any travel-related job can easily carry a simple instrument and busk in towns while passing through.
- Fishing specialists often end up with surplus ancient books. Deciphering these can improve your mage guild standing for additional passive income.
- Killing elite foes for the Fighter’s Guild also yields tourism-enhancing cards and figurines.
- Once a dungeon is cleared, strip mine it for crafting resources. Mechanariums are particularly useful as they produce scrap that can be used as fishing bait.
Avoid methods that compete for your time and skills—fishing and sculpting, for instance, are both time-intensive and require different sets of skills. However, a certain degree of sculpting skill is needed to craft the cooker, which can enhance your fish by transforming it into higher quality meals.
