Making Money

This is the definitive list of get-rich quick schemes in Caves of Qud!

Word of Caution

water initially starts out as a resource to ration and value, but as the game goes on it becomes a non-issue, and water becomes the most worthless item in your inventory in terms of $/weight. Getting infinite water is pretty easy with these methods, but the secondary issue is being able to hold all of it at once. If you do not have enough storage capacity for the water a trader would pay you for a trade, you can only complete the trade by taking partial payment.

Dominate or Beguile

The easiest way is just to book it up to the Six Day Stilt, when you have Domination or Beguiling, take control of a merchant and have them drop all their items. As all Stiltground merchants are level one, this should be an easy feat. As your ego increases, you will eventually be able to use this technique on legendary merchants.

Note that merchants cannot restock if they're your follower, so let them go when you're done picking them clean.

Proselytize

The Proselytize skill is generally inferior to the above mental mutations, but it has the advantage of being readily available to any player who can get enough positive reputation with Mechanimists. However, without high Ego, it will often fail on most traders due to their MA. The trick is to find a low-level, low-MA creature, such as a glowfish, and proselytize it instead. Any creature that has unequipped inventory items is currently able to produce unlimited fresh water to pay for your goods. Thus, give the glowfish any cheap item, dismiss it from your service, sell it all your valuables, and proselytize it once again to get your items back. Station one such creature near every merchant you care about for a convenient ATM.

Big Game Hunting (Salt Kraken)

Kill a salt kraken, drag its extremely valuable, extremely heavy corpse to a merchant, make bank.

You will need:

• A salt kraken
• A way to kill a salt kraken
• Lots of water to keep hydrated while roaming the desert
• Lots and lots of empty containers
• A Recoiler with its location set to a merchant hub. (Seriously. A salt kraken corpse is worth 15,000 drams. Tam won't cut it.)

Steps:

1. Wander through the salt dunes until you come upon a salt kraken. Do not be discouraged if it takes a bit, they are rather rare.
2. Once you find the salt kraken, you now must kill it. There are many, many ways to do this, but attacking at range, using companions, or other low-personal-danger methods are preferable for obvious reasons.
3. When the salt kraken dies, there is a 9/10 chance for it to leave a corpse. If, unluckily, it did not drop, repeat steps 1 and 2. If it did, pick up the corpse and use your recoiler to teleport away.
4. You should now appear in the merchant hub you chose. Pick the merchant you want to sell the salt kraken corpse to. This should be a merchant with lots and lots of high-value goods.
5. Drop the salt kraken corpse, move one tile towards your merchant of choice, then using your interact nearby keybinding (ctrl + direction by default), pick up the salt kraken corpse from the adjacent tile. Repeat this until you are close enough to sell it to your merchant of choice.
6. Sell the salt kraken corpse in return for what will likely be the merchant's entire inventory.

Notes:

Killing a salt kraken is far easier than killing a dromad-aligned great saltback, the other creature with an extremely high-value corpse, but, because multiple great saltbacks will appear in a caravan, Caravan Poaching is far more lucrative.

Burgeon-Cane Farming

Using the Burgeoning mutation, summon and harvest large numbers of yonderbrush.

You will need:

• The Burgeoning Mutation at a level which will create yonderbrush
• The Harvestry ability
• Optional: the Meal Preparation skill (For those who are willing to drop a bit of profit for convenience)

Steps:

1. Find an uninhabited, empty map tile relatively close to a merchant or merchants. (The salt dunes just outside the Six Day Stilt work great for this)
2. Using Burgeoning, fill the screen with plants. Then, carefully walk through, harvesting the yondercane and making sure to avoid any aloe-type plants. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you are satisfied with the amount of yondercane you have aquired.
3. If you have Meal Preparation, build a campfire and preserve all of your yondercane into fermented yondercane.
   • (You will lose 25 commerce value on each yondercane you preserve, but this is balanced by the fact that fermented yondercane is an incredibly convenient currency due to its weightlessness and low value per unit)

Caravan Poaching

Kill an entire dromad caravan and steal all their stuff.

You will need:

• A dromad caravan which you are fine with killing
• A method of defeating a dromad caravan
• Plenty of inventory space
• Lots and lots of empty containers
• A Recoiler with its location set to a merchant hub. (Seriously. A great saltback corpse is worth 15,000 drams. Tam won't cut it.)

Steps:

1. Find a dromad caravan. They can spawn pretty much anywhere, but the rapid pace at which tiles can be explored in the salt dunes makes it particularly suitable for searching, if you need to look.
2. Somehow, kill every member of the caravan. Keep in mind that the caravan guards are almost always very well-armed, and great saltbacks can be very dangerous.
3. Mark the location of the dead caravan on your map. You will be making multiple trips back and forth.
4. Loot and sell their items. The dromad trader is an obvious target for looting, but keep in mind that caravan guards often wear fairly high-tier armor and carry fairly high-tier weapons. It may be convenient to use a recoiler here to lower the number of trips, but this step can be completed, albeit slightly slower, without a recoiler.
5. If the great saltback (or great saltbacks) dropped a corpse, pick it up. Then, activate your recoiler.
6. You should now appear in the merchant hub you chose. Pick the merchant you want to sell the great saltback corpse to. This should be a merchant with lots and lots of high-value goods.
7. Drop the great saltback corpse, move one tile towards your merchant of choice, then, using your interact nearby keybinding (ctrl + direction by default), pick up the great saltback corpse from the adjacent tile. Repeat this step until you are close enough to sell it to your merchant of choice.
8. Sell the great saltback corpse in return for what will likely be the merchant's entire inventory.

Getting the Most Value Out Of Weight

A more practical solution would be to budget weight correctly and save space in your bag for the most valuable items to get the most value per #. This is helpful in the late game deep underground where valuable items are plentiful, but your pack space is not.

Below is a table that lists all items with their commerce value divided by their own weight, and sorted from most expensive to least.

Item	Value per Pound
Hand-E-Nuke	10,000.0
Kesil Face	10,000.0
Shemesh Face	8,000.0
circle of light in the chord of Agolgot	7,500.0
circle of light in the chord of Bethsaida	7,500.0
circle of light in the chord of Qas	7,500.0
circle of light in the chord of Qon	7,500.0
circle of light in the chord of Rermadon	7,500.0
circle of light in the chord of Shugruith	7,500.0
Earth Face	6,500.0
Levant Face	5,000.0
cloning draught	5,000.0
brain brine	4,932.0
Olive Face	4,000.0
sunslag	4,000.0

More...

0 Weight Items

Items that weigh nothing are also highly valuable since they do not take up weight. Note that the majority are food and cybernetics.

Item	Value
Otherpearl	33,333.0
black mote	1,666.0
optical multiscanner	600.0
social coprocessor	600.0
taco suprema	500.0
cybernetics credit wedge 3¢	450.0
penetrating radar	360.0
holographic visage	360.0
cybernetics credit wedge 2¢	300.0
phase-adaptive scope	240.0
Schemasoft [high-tier]	240.0
precision force lathe	240.0
dopamine synth	180.0
intravenous port	180.0
custom visage	180.0

More...

Liquids

Excluding all 0 value liquids and water:

Liquid	Value over Weight	Value ($/LB)	4D	16D	32D	64D
slime	$0.1/0.25#	0.4	0.4	1.6	3.2	6.4
blood	$0.25/0.25#	1	1	4	8	16
gel	$0.5/0.25#	2	2	8	16	32
water	$1/0.25#	4	4	16	32	64
algae	$1/0.25#	4	4	16	32	64
acid	$1.5/0.25#	6	6	24	48	96
honey	$2/0.5#	4	8	32	64	128
sap	$2/0.5#	4	8	32	64	128
oil	$3/0.25#	12	12	48	96	192
cider	$3.8/0.25#	15.2	15.2	60.8	121.6	243.2
wine	$4/0.25#	16	16	64	128	256
primordial soup	$4/0.25#	16	16	64	128	256
lava	$50/0.5#	100	200	800	1600	3200
sunslag	$1000/0.25#	4000	4000	16000	32000	64000
warm static	$1000/0.25#	4000	4000	16000	32000	64000
neutron flux	$1000/2.5#	400	4000	16000	32000	64000
brain brine	$1233/0.25#	4932	4932	19728	39456	78912
cloning draught	$1250/0.25#	5000	5000	20000	40000	80000

Selling Lava

lava is one of the more common, but still valuable liquids to sell. Thus, a method of quickly gaining money is grabbing a lot of it and selling it. There are two parts to this: getting a lot of lava, and finding a suitable receptacle to hold it all.

Getting Lava

• Melting shale, such as by using a thermal grenade mk III;
• Finding shale, having 100 heat resistance and Burgeoning through any method, and spamming burgeoning until you fill the screen with aloe pyras. Cause chaos. One recipe in specific is made to do this easily: Hot Pastry with Moss Knish and Grilled Elder Flamebeard- when fire damage is caused, spawn more aloe pyras.
• Finding a giant lava weep

Lava-safe containers

Lava-safe containers are all non-organic containers that have a flaming temperature higher than lava, which is 350T.

• phial- The only container dedicated to holding liquids that can hold lava.
• All Liquid fueled energy cells- thermoelectric cells, and even cells that do not use lava for energy can safely hold 8 drams of lava at a time. Their low tier and bit cost makes them a decent container.
• gyrocopter backpack, rocket skates, and amusingly, waxflab

Anything else will burst into flames and eventually burst open after taking enough damage.

Carrying lava in unsafe containers

There is a method of having combustible containers hold lava for a long enough time to sell.

1. Harvest lava in a large flammable container, such as a 64D waterskin;
2. Drop the container and freeze it, such as with a freeze grenade mk III, to safely carry it;

This method is possible but not recommended; players require equipment and skills at a level where there are much simpler, safer and reliable ways to generate money. Players with access to Psychometry, Disassemble and a means to farm Bits can make a much easier profit by learning schematics and building complex items to sell, especially as farming lava requires an expensive amount of grenades, heat resistant equipment, and enough containers for both the lava and the water you will receive from selling it. Lava constantly emits heat, and the frozen items will eventually thaw. In addition, items that are on fire cannot be traded.