It’s not terribly hard to make money in Crimson Desert, but there are a lot of things worth buying - food, materials, crafting recipes, keys, ammunition and the like - to the point where turning a healthy surplus can be a surprisingly slow process. This page will help you fatten your purse by pointing out short-term ways to score silver and, with luck, a long-term investment you can make to earn passive income as you explore!

Page Breakdown¶

Currency in Crimson Desert¶

Crimson Desert has three forms of currency - shiny metal that serves no purpose other than as fiat currency. Similar to games like Dragon Age: Origins, the standard coinage you’ll regularly find comes in copper denominations, and when you get enough copper your currency will magically be upgraded to silver. Gather 100 copper coins and you’ll magically replace it with a silver coin, which is the main cash-in-hand currency in the game. No need to visit a moneylender or a bank (more on this later), the conversion is instantaneous and, in a rare bit of mercy, all your coinage is confined to a single inventory slot!

A third denomination of currency does exist, but it’s not for spending, but rather, investing: Gold bars can be purchased at a bank for 500 silver (ouch!), and then invested to earn passive income… but before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s discuss how we reach the lofty goal of getting 500 silver.

Early Game Money Farming¶

There are lots of sources of coin in the early-game, but all of them require work and there’s no get rich quick scheme we’ve found. Still, there are arguably better ways of earning money than others, so while you can just collect flowers and bugs and sell them, we’ll focus on more productive forms of wealth generation.

Robbing the Bank¶

Seems pretty obvious, actually. Visit the bank along the northwestern edge of Hernand and head upstairs and you’ll often find the upper floor occupied by only one clerk or guard. Once upstairs, head behind some shelves to find more shelves in the corner of the room housing a total of ten Strongboxes. Put on your Mask and steal all ten of them. Hidden back here, you shouldn’t get caught and can just wait out the duration of the crime. You will need ten open slots of inventory space, as each Strongbox takes up a slot, but they’re not long for this world - open them and each one will give you between 1-5 silver. It’s a safe, quick way to earn roughly 25~ silver and if you’re fretting over the Contribution loss from the theft, you can just donate to beggars to (slowly) counter the reputation hit. The only downside is you can only do this once, as the Strongboxes don’t respawn.

Hunt Bounties¶

Another simple way to make money, after you advance quests in Hernand (do the tutorial side quests, advance the main questline a bit, etc.) you should start seeing bounty notices around town - just look for purple markers on your minimap while in and around Hernand. Read the notice to get the bounty marked on your map and hunt them down - if you capture the bounty alive you can earn between 1-25 silver. Check out the linked page for more info, but most bounties aren’t hard to capture, it just takes a bit of time to bring them in on horseback after apprehending them. Again, you can’t repeat these and all bounties aren’t made equal, but it’ll reliably fatten your wallet and get you a good bit of contribution.

Kill Bandits¶

Now for the unsexy - but repeatable - way to earn cash. Kill bandits! And by bandits we mean any hostile humanoids that dwell throughout the countryside. They spawn in great numbers and alongside junk they often drop weapons and armor which sell for tens of copper on the low end to several silver on the high end. In addition to coin pouches (which can be opened in your inventory for more coins), it can add up to the point where killing a couple dozen bandits can result in you gaining dozens of silver coins… not to mention EXP which will level you up. Enemies further away from Hernand tend to be stronger and this often correlates with more lucrative drops, but not so much that you need to feel bad about culling weaklings around the city of Hernand itself. If you clear occupied camps or strongholds, you may also obtain Contribution, so there’s a lot of upside here!

Rob Lioncrest Manor¶

The best way to get a ton of cash early - aside from getting lucky and stumbling across a Treasure Trader Goblin, anyways - is to rob Lioncrest Manor. You’ll find this estate in the hills northwest of Hernand, and provided you have a Mask you don’t really need to worry about any other preparations.

Go up to the estate, then head to either side and climb to a second storey window, which you can open and climb through. Surprisingly the guards will toss you out on your ear if you try to barge in through the front door - imagine! Once inside, head downstairs to find a large room with a fireplace in the corner. Extinguish the flames in the fireplace, then steal from the fireplace to get this Gold Bar - be watchful of wandering guards and other NPCs who might snitch on you, but if you get caught you’ll just be fined and lose your Mask - you get to keep the Gold Bar. Easy starter fund for future investing.

Investing Gold Bars at the Bank¶

Running around and killing enemies isn’t the most inventive way to earn cash, but it’s in service to a grander scheme: investment banking! Your goal is to get 600 silver, after which you can visit any bank in the game. You will need 100 silver to buy a “Personal Strongbox Permit” and another 500 to buy a Gold Bar, which is the substance of investing.

When you finally get a Gold Bar, visit the bank and pick the option “Deposit Gold Bar”, then pick and “Investment Strategy”. There are three types of investments:

Investment Strategies¶

You can set this once per investment period, which is roughly every three days. Just return to the bank every three days or so and collect in silver coins your share of the investment! You always want to set the investment strategy to “High Risk”, as you can just save scum the results - just visit the bank, note how long it’ll be before the payout occurs (this will be to the right of the “Applied in” text on the bank menu). Save around an hour before this timer expires and just check the bank and if you don’t get an ROI you’re keen on, reload and try again. You can speed up the rate at which you get paid by sleeping in a bed for up to twelve hours at a time - you can’t do this repeatedly, as you have to spend some time awake after resting, but it does burn time.

A single high-risk payout will earn you hundreds of silver, which you can then reinvest until you have several Gold Bars generating you income, quickly making monetary woes a thing of the past!