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.

(Note: Make guide on improving value to weight ratio in inventory)

Domination or Beguile

The easiest one is just the book it to the Six Day Stilt, when you have domination or beguile, and beguile a merchant and have them drop all their stuff for free. They're all level one so there is not much difficulty in doing so. When your ego increases, legendary merchants are also eligible for this.

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, including Chimerae and True Kin, 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 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, proselytize it again to get them back, and repeat until you have enough water to buy whatever you want. Stationing one such creature near every merchant you carry about completely eliminates the need to gather loot for sale.

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
• Lots and lots of empty containers
• A Recoiler with its location set to a merchant hub. (Seriously. A Kraken corpse is worth 15,000 drams. Tam, dromad merchant won't cut it.)

Steps:

1. Wander through the Great Salt Desert until you come upon a salt kraken. Do not be discouraged if it takes a bit, they are rather rare. Trust me, they are out there.
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, you now must 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 step 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 appear in a caravan, Caravan Poaching is far more lucrative.

BurgeonCane 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 portion of the Great Salt Desert just outside the Six Day Stilt works great for this)
2. Using a combination of Burgeoning and wait 100 turns, fill the screen with summoned 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 Saltback corpse is worth 15,000 drams. Tam, dromad merchant 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 Great Salt Desert 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, and this is very useful.
4. Steal and sell their items. The dromad trader is an obvious target, 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 one 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
Kesil Face	10,000.0
Hand-E-Nuke	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
Null Face	4,000.0
sunslag	4,000.0
warm static	4,000.0
timecube	3,000.0
mental aggregator	2,265.0
tri-hologram bracelet	1,500.0
Kah's loop	1,500.0
phial of brain brine	1,233.0
phial of sunslag	1,000.0
dazzle cheek	999.0
psychal fleshgun	900.0

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
Schemasoft [high-tier]	240.0
phase-adaptive scope	240.0
precision force lathe	240.0
dopamine synth	180.0
intravenous port	180.0
custom visage	180.0
equipment rack	180.0
bionic liver	180.0
Skillsoft [high sp]	180.0
Schemasoft [mid-tier]	180.0
Skillsoft plus	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
algae	$1/0.25#	4	4	16	32	64
acid	$1.5/0.25#	6	6	24	48	96
sap	$2/0.5#	4	8	32	64	128
honey	$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
primordial soup	$4/0.25#	16	16	64	128	256
wine	$4/0.25#	16	16	64	128	256
lava	$50/0.5#	100	200	800	1600	3200
warm static	$1000/0.25#	4000	4000	16000	32000	64000
sunslag	$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: getting a lot of lava, and finding a suitable receptacle to hold it all.

Getting Lava

• Melt shale, such as by using a thermal grenade mk III;
• Finding a giant lava weep
• Fine shale, have 100 Heat resist and burgeoning through any method, and spam 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.

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 mainly 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 lava and Drams. Lava constantly emits heat, and the frozen items will eventually thaw. In addition, items that are on fire cannot be traded.