500g + 48 days = 1 Million Gold? (Guide)

How did you get here?

From Gaia Guides & Resources	30.2%	[ 891 ]
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I searched some key words and found it.	10.6%	[ 312 ]
Redirection from Teh Hoarding Guild.	1.9%	[ 56 ]
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By stalking Jace.	9.1%	[ 267 ]
I have no idea how I got here.	21.7%	[ 640 ]
Total Votes:			[ 2947 ]

[Jace Quin]

New User Guide



Welcome to Gaia. If you’ve only been around for a few days, a few weeks, a few months, then
this section may be especially helpful to you. As you may have already realized, not only do
many people feel no pity for newbies but some veterans actively hate them. So here I have
some tips for you on how not to act so new and blend in better, etc. This first post has the tips
and the second and third posts have, respectively, a quick-ish guide to all of the things you can
do to get gold around the site that are not Vending or Exchanging and a more in-depth
explanation of the same. So, on to my tips.

• The first thing you have to save up for to not be so n00b-ish is hair. There are some very rich
  Gaians I know who keep their avatars with just the ugly gray underwear on them, but you can
  tell they aren’t n00bs because they don’t have the haircuts that are options when you sign up.
  So buy yourself a different haircut as soon as you can.
  
• The second thing is that veteran Gaians might dress up their avatars with the event items
  they just earned for a while, but you’re not going to see them wearing cheap christmas stuff in summer.
  You probably also won't see them wearing many of the lame quest items long after they come out, either.
  
• Third, but possibly most important, never beg. Ever. Most Gaians work hard to earn their fake
  gold and pixelated items so they aren’t going to donate to you just because you are new and
  poor, especially not since nobody probably donated to them when they were new and poor. If
  you are looking for a donation (although you shouldn’t be, after reading my Guide because it’s
  here to teach you to make your own gold, after all) you should try the Charity & Quests
  subforum of the Exchange. Which you can get to by clicking here.
  
• The next thing is that if you don’t know something, do ask. Ask, not demand. And be polite.
  And be sure that you are asking in an appropriate place.

I think that’s about it.

[Jace Quin]

Everything to do on Gaia to earn gold that isn’t Vending, Exchanging, or Hoarding.

Explanation of all the standard gold-earning activities on Gaia.


Freebies:
I'm talking about the daily chance and the quests available and things like that.
Always collect the daily chance on each heading page (Home, My Gaia, Shops, Forums,
World, Games). The Daily Chance only gives out Commons (regular items) and gold but every
little bit counts. Every time Gaia has a promotional item (like for a movie or whatever) do the
quest, watch the trailer or whatever to earn the prize. Often you can do these quests multiple
times (usually three). Do so. Whenever Gaia has an event, collect all the free items they're
giving away. You never know, sometime in the future your free item may be worth thousands
or millions of gold. And if you're feeling really gritty you can try the "game" Dumpster Dive
which allows you to perform only one action (dive) and rewards you with an item donated by
another Gaian. You can dive once every five minutes with no daily limit but try to remember that
every item is donated by another Gaian so consider tossing some donations in sometimes
instead of just diving in.

Cash Tree:
You can earn small amounts of Gaia Cash by watching advertisements via the
Cash Tree in the site header. Clicking on the tree will direct you to a page
inviting you to watch videos or participate in other offers to earn cash. To
determine the best items to buy with your cash to gain the greatest amount
of gold there's a simple formula. x/y where x = the gold amount an item can
be sold for and y = the number of cash the item costs. Dividing x by y will give
you the ratio of gold to cash for that item. You want to determine the item with
the best (most gold to least cash) gold to cash ration before buying anything.
If possible save your cash until a new RIG is released and buy a bundle and
sell it immediately. New and popular items (such as RIGs which are also released
on a convenient schedule) will pretty much invariably have the highest gold to
cash ratio.

Alchemy:
Alchemy can be both lucrative and incredibly dangerous. Much like it was centuries ago when
people toiled to turn lead into gold through use of very dangerous caustic chemicals it is possible
to create valuable commodities such as the accidental refinement of phosphorus or you can have
it literally blow up in your face like potassium in water. So in order to turn lead into gold instead
of recklessly adding a spark to pure oxygen you have to do your research. There are a number of
threads in the Alchemy forum which you can find out the components necessary to craft a
particular item without buying the formula. Before crafting something or you even start buying
components determine whether the cost of crafting it will be more or less than what the item you
are creating is worth. Many Alchemy Items have negative value. Creating them will cost you a lot
of gold for an item worth much less. However there are Alchemized Items that have a positive
value. The most profitable Alchemized Items are made from trash and game items which you
can collect yourself and essentially create gold for 'free'.

Fishing:
Always fish with the free bait the daily chance gives out because fish are worth
more than bait. Even if you only use the basic rod and fish at Bass'ken you can
earn gold from your fish and chat to make friends. Another note about fishing, you can trade in
your fish for fish-related equip-able items such as gills and helms. You can also sell your fish in
the Market Place, sometimes for more than Logan will buy it for, you can also do so with
the equip-able items as well as your trash. In addition to the above fish can be used as Alchemy
Components in low skill level Formulae such as Golden Magical Giftboxes, Alchemist Case,
and Philosopher's Cache. These Alchemized Items are worth much more than the sum of their
components even if you were to purchase the components from the Market Place.

Gambling:
Yeah, you can gamble on Gaia. I recommend you play Slots or Black Jack with the free
tokens the Daily Chance gives out. I find Black Jack is more profitable ticket-wise but if you
don't know how to play the game then Slots is just fine and sometimes you might get a huge
reward for spinning. Tickets are worth more than tokens. You can sell tickets in the Market Place
or use them to buy items from Prize & Joy and then sell the items on the Market Place for gold.
Some Alchemy Formulae call for Tickets which can be earned from Gambling.

Games:
Games are fun and give you gold for highscores (and low ones, too!).
So if you're bored you can do Jigsaws, play Pinball (and earn items as well as gold), play Word
Bump (and earn school credits as well as gold), play Electric Love Factory (which grants gold
and a couple of items for exceptionally high scores), play Tiles, or play Frontier Skies.
Jigsaw will sometimes give out random items for completing puzzles as well as gold. Difficulty in
puzzles counts toward how much gold you get so don't always go for easy puzzles. Pinball is
fun and you can earn items as well as gold. Word Bump you can earn gold and school credits.
School credits can be used to buy special items from Edmund at H & R Wesley. You can also
sell the school credits or the items you buy after earning them. Electric Love Factory can earn
you items as well as gold. In Tiles you try to create long strings of similar tiles and progress
through levels to earn gold. In Tiles you earn gold for progressing and not for your score. In
Frontier Skies (a game vaguely reminiscent of Oregon Trail) you go on an adventure after
choosing a guide, a ship, and spending your starting loot wisely on food and ammunition and
when you eventually reach the end you earn a prize dependent on the guide you chose. Of
course, the amount of gold you get for playing games (excluding Frontier Skies) goes down
the more times a day you play but it resets daily. And, as always, you can chat with other
users while you play games (with the exception of Frontier Skies). Some Alchemy Formulae call
for game items such as School Credits which can be obtained from playing Word Bump.

Towns:
Towns are a place to 'physically' congregate with your Gaian friends. Your avatar
shows up and you can move it around as well as chat. You can also earn gold in towns. You can
earn gold by shaking trees, rocks, and bushes. You can also catch bugs and pick up trash. You
simply click on an item to collect it, but if you're too far away you might miss! Bugs and trash can
both be traded in. Bugs can be exchanged to Moira at Durem Depot for inks. (Inks, in turn can
be traded in for tattoos or to color bouquets.) It usually takes 50 bugs to make one ink but
sometimes you get rare bugs that make an ink by themselves. Trash can be exchanged at the
Gambino Hat Shop for equip-able items which you can use on your avatar or sell in the Market
Place. Another thing you can do in towns is pick flowers. You can make pretty bouquets at the
Flower Shoppe and equip them or sell them in the Market Place. You can also sell flowers.
In addition to the above trash from towns can be used as Alchemy Components in low skill level
Formulae such as Golden Magical Giftboxes, Alchemist Case, and Philosopher's Cache. These
Alchemized Items are worth much more than the sum of their components even if you were to
purchase the components from the Market Place.

Rally:
Rally is theoretically a racing game that allows you to earn a very minimal amount of gold by
playing and requires you to own a Gaian car to play. For the most part Rally is used as a
permanent hangout of so-called Rallyers. As the game does not give out a lot of gold I wouldn't
recommend playing it or going in unless you just want to hang out.

zOMG:
zOMG is Gaia’s version of a MMORPG. It is in the Open Beta phase of
testing (which means that everyone signed up with Gaia can use it) so you will probably
encounter some glitches or errors or things that will change due to the developers tweaking. You
can still earn gold, ingredients, recipes, create items and more by playing. You can get gold
directly by completing quests or by killing monsters. You can also get gold by selling ingredients,
recipes and items created from recipes in the Market Place. In addition to the above zOMG
drops can be used as Alchemy Components in low skill level Formulae such as Golden Magical
Giftboxes, Alchemist Case, and Philosopher's Cache. These Alchemized Items are worth much
more than the sum of their components even if you were to purchase the components from the
Market Place.

Bumping:
You can earn gold bonuses by chatting in the forums. You can also earn gold
by not chatting in the forums, this is generally referred to as "bumping." The amount of gold per
post goes down the more times you do it a day but it resets everyday.

Polls:
While you're chatting in the forums pause to answer some polls and earn gold
bonuses for doing so.

Voting:
Go vote and comment in the Arena. You can earn gold bonuses for voting
and commenting. The amount of gold per comment/vote goes down the more times you do it in
a day but it resets daily.

Journaling:
Go write in your journal. Your friends can see what's on your mind
and- guess what- you earn gold for posting in your journal. The more times you post daily the
less gold you get each time but, as with everything else, it resets daily.

Profiles:
You can earn gold bonuses by commenting on people's profiles. However
"drive-by" commenting will probably make people mad at you. Try to keep your comments
meaningful and courteous.

Marketplace:
I've talked about it a lot already but haven't even explained it. The Marketplace
is an E-bay -esque place to buy and sell items. You can sell your items here (all of them, unlike
in the shops which don't buy non-shop or game items). You can also buy items. I suggest doing
this because you can usually save money on the shop price.

Selling Services:
If you have a talent (such as drawing) exploit it. You can open a shop in
the Mini Shops section of the forum and sell drawings or banners or animations or whatever
for gold or items. You can also become employed by a bumping agency. I've never bothered
with this but I'm pretty sure it's something along the lines of, people pay the agency to bump and
you get paid for bumping for the people that paid the agency.

Booty Grab:
There are two ways to earn gold from Booty Grab. One way is to play. The
best place to look for games of Booty Grab is in the Aquariums forum. Go there, pick a thread,
and start checking out people's signatures. Pretty much everyone in the Aquariums forum has
their aquarium in their signatures, aquariums that display the words: "Booty Grab" inside the
tank instead of showing fish are available to play. Depending on the fish that have triggered
inside the tank you can earn from 50g-1,000g+ per game. Behind the words "Booty Grab" you
should be able to see some fish moving around in an abnormal fashion. These are the fish that
have triggered. If you see that the triggered fish are cuttlefish or some other common fish you
may want to look for a better-endowed tank. The other way is to have people play your tank.
You must have it in your signature for this to happen. If you want to display it: Go to your
aquarium, click the gear in the upper right corner of the tank, and then select "Show in
Signature" and save. If you do not have expensive, high-trigger fish, don't expect to earn a lot of
gold from your tank. Buying "trigger-fish" may pay off over time but it requires a substantial
investment not only of gold, but also of time. Your tank has to be seen to get played, so you'll
have to post in the Aquarium forum a lot.

[Jace Quin]

More In-depth on the Above

A few more in-depth tips and tricks on the gold-making methods explained in the previous post.



Alchemy
As of the time of this writing it is possible to use Alchemy to earn gold and to
level up without loosing gold. This is not an easy task. The point is that it is
possible to do. Turning certain game items, zOMG loot, and 'trash' from
Towns can earn you gold if you collect the ingredients or even if you carefully
buy them from the Exchange or Marketplace. You will need to monitor prices
and keep track of what you spend on the components if you want to earn gold
in this way. Similarly if you want to level up without recklessly wasting gold
you will need to research the formulae you can create for experience at your
level and determine what you can create that will be worth an equal or greater
amount than what the components cost you. You also have to keep in mind
that many Alchemized Items are extremely difficult to sell and even if an item
has sold for 4,000,000g in the Marketplace before it doesn't mean that you
will be able to sell it at that price so if you can create that item for
significantly less then it's selling price it leaves room for error and low offers
but most importantly room for profit if possible.
To determine the cost of the end product of an Alchemy formulae you must
add the cost of the formulae itself (F), the cost to attempt to craft (G), to the
total cost of the components (H). To calculate the value of H look up the cost
of each component required by the formula, multiply each cost by the number
of that component that you need, then add together those numbers.
F + G + H = Cost of the end product (C).
Alternately, especially if the formula has a high difficulty to craft, substitute G
for 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, etc compared to the number of attempts it may
potentially take to successfully craft the item.
Now look up the market price of the end product you are thinking about
creating. We'll call the market price M.
Now calculate the value of M - C = P where P is the difference between what
the end result can be sold for and how much you had to spend to create it.
If P has a negative value immediately move on to a different formula. Is P has
a small positive value deeply consider how difficult the item may be to sell
and whether that amount will be worth the effort to sell. If P has a large
positive value proceed to procure the components necessary and craft the item.
To look up the components for Alchemy Formulae and other Alchemy
Information I recommend Lei_Trigar's {Ultimate Alchemy Formula Guide},
Vampryn's Alchemy - Formulae Details & More, Milky Mint's
What Makes What? A Guide to the Use of Components, Winter Hue's
The Alchemy Formulae & Item List, and Nikko Roseus'
Alchemy Component List.

Fishing
Alright, the first step of making money at fishing is filtering your casts. Sometimes you'll get a
"bite " and you reel it in and it's trash. Which can be lame, in some people's opinion. So trash
can be pretty easy to get rid of if you know what to look for. I know that trash does not fight very
much at all and is easy to reel in. I have been told that it never pulls to the right but I'm not sure
if I'm observant to do more than speculate on this. So, if you get a bite and you realize it's trash
simply point your mouse way off to one side to deliberately lose whatever's caught on the line.
Another way to optimize fishing is to fish at "twilight" or "dawn" which happens pretty
frequently on Gaia time, which runs twice as fast as normal time. You get better fish at these
times of day, just like in real life.
Another thing to think about is switching lakes. Bass'ken lake has the easiest (and therefore
cheapest fish) to catch. Port D'Gambino has sort of medium fish and Durem Recclaimation
Facility has the hardest fish. If you want to fish anywhere other than Bass'ken you may want to
invest in a better fishing rod. I suggest buying one from the Market Place. I say this only if you're
good at or like fishing on Gaia. If you like fishing then it's a good investment.
Different fishing rods are better for different reasons. Basic fishing rod is kind of flexible,
casts okay, and has a reel in range that's straight and kind of narrow. Strength rod is not as
flexible and doesn't cast as far but it's harder for the fish to pull away from and the reel in range
kind of bells out at the bottom so it's harder to loose fish as you reel them in closer. Distance rod
is very flexible and easier for the fish to get away from, it has a long cast distance which can get
you better fish and the reel in range is funnel shaped but only gets as narrow as the basic rod
range gets. The performance rod is kind of the best of both worlds, it's flexible but not too
flexible, it casts fairly far and the reel in range bells out at the bottom and the top but not as
much as the Strength or Distance rod respectively. Plus rods are even better. To get a plus rod
you can trade in your current rod, plus far, far too much gold for a better rod. Or you can buy
one in the Market Place or Exchange forum. The best fishing rod is the Angelic fishing rod and
while these can be purchased in the marketplace for exorbitant sums you can also earn one by
catching 75,000 fish and/or trash.
I may as well talk about fishbait now. Grade F is the cheapest and worst. Grade D is second
cheapest and a little better than Grade F. Grade A is the most expensive and best. But most
expensive is not always the best financially. Better bait attracts better fish but wont help you
much if you're a terrible fisher so I guess you have to go on a case-by-case basis. Try it once
and if your haul is good enough to justify having bought it (the total amount you can sell the fish
for is greater than you bought the bait for) then it's right for you. If not, stick with the free Grade
F bait. When buying bait going to the Game Exchange or Market Place is not a bad idea.
When selling your fish and trash you may as well do it in the Market Place, you can get better
prices there than you can in the store. Especially since some people go to crazy lengths to get
5000 cans for a tin hat.
The next thing to maximize profits is to consider Exchanging your fish. You can exchange
them for other fish (not the best idea, believe me) or equipable items such as gills. These items
may be worth a lot more than the fish you make them out of. You can also exchange the trash
you collect from fishing.


Gambling
Gambling, there's not much more that I can tell you about gambling. Playing Black-Jack is
more time consuming but a better pay-off as far as I'm concerned. Slots has a small chance for
a large pay out but Black Jack has a good chance for many small pay-outs. The Black Jack
game Gaia has is pretty well explained but there are some things I can tell you. For example,
never hit on seventeen or above unless you think the computer has a better hand. I often don't
hit on 16 or above when playing Jinx or Cardbot because I noticed I tend to bust more when
playing against them. I also never, ever double-down. You're risking more because you double
your bet and you only get to hit once that hand.
Cheating. The dealers cheat. Russel Ace has the cheat "Pocket Ace", but he's not very smart
and I've noticed he wastes it on times when adding an ace wont let him beat you. Jinx has the
cheat "Fresh Start" but sometimes this isn't very helpful. Cardbot can use both of these skills.
Unlike when the dealers cheat you cannot affect your own hand. You can only affect the dealer's
hand. I recommend saving your rage for when they have a ten or an ace showing. I always do
the redraw option instead of peeking.
Beating the dealers is always cool. You get a bonus for beating each of them. Twenty-five
tickets for Russel Ace, fifty tickets for Jinx and one-hundred tickets for Cardbot.
The computer never hits on seventeen or over so if you have a twenty and they have say, ten
then they hit and get eighteen you win without them busting. The computer always hits under
seventeen though, even if they've already beat your hand. They lose by busting a lot.


Games
I've pretty much said everything there is to say about games but to get started in Frontier
Skies you may want to check out this guide: Frontier Skies Guide


Towns
You can go and make gold by wandering around in towns. Shaking bushes, rocks, and trees
can get you a few gold. You can also pick flowers, catch bugs and pick up trash.
Flowers are possibly the most useless item in all of Gaia. They aren't worth that much.
Usually less than one gold each. You can turn them into bouquets and equip them but, again, not
worth that much when you sell them. I recommend not bothering to pick them at all.
Bugs are actually useful because you can turn them into ink. It usually takes fifty of the same
color bug to make into ink but sometimes you catch special bugs that may be worth one or more
inks by themselves. Consider carefully the prices of ink and what this bug may go for on the
marketplace before exchanging it, though.
Trash is also somewhat useful. It can be turned into paper hats. It can take fifty, a hundred,
or a hundred and fifty of one kind of paper to make a hat. Some hats are worth more than
others. Some trash is pretty much useless (newspaper), I recommend learning to recognize it
and not picking it up.

Bonus Gold
Concerning posting in Forums, voting in the Arenas, answering polls, Journaling, and
Commenting people's profiles: You can get more gold by spacing out these activities. The closer
together you post in forums for example, the less gold you'll get. But if you post many times a
day with significant amounts of time in between you'll get more gold for each post.

zOMG
Explaining the intricacies of zOMG in and of itself would take up a great deal of space and as
the game requires a lot of time to earn gold and I only enjoy playing for fun I thought I'd provide a
couple of zOMG guide links to help you out. Bria's Guide to Your zOMG Adventures
created by Bria_Teragram or Complete Maps, Rings, Monsters, Items, & Morecreated
by Heen-san or Tome of zOMG Tactics created by Z741 and for
even more guides zOMG! Guides & Resources.

[Jace Quin]