Simple Steps
Our kinmates often ask us how Hobbit became so rich? (Especially after he bought everyone a new, deluxe kinhouse in the best location in all of Eriador).
To become filthy rich, or at least socially secure, in LOTRO is rather straight-forward, if pedestrian. There are lots of methods, but simple, guaranteed ones are this:
- Be an Explorer and exploit every resource you come across, and after you master a given tier of crafting for that resource, sell the rest in the Auction House;
- Complete all slayer deeds for each region your complete, and sell the hides, recipes and interesting detritus in the Auction House;
- Master your non-resource craft, work daily on guild reputation, equip yourself and your friends best you can, and sell critted and guild items in the Auction House.
The central theme of my path to riches and social security is the Auction House. Master the Auction House, and you will never lack for lucre.
The Auction House
Most players misuse the Auction House. Buy low, sell high is the rule there, just as in life, and most understand this intellectually. But few have any experience as a low-end retail businessman. The Auction House is not a boutique shop where one prices the best goods for only the best sort of people, and lives off a modest number of sales*. The Auction House is Wal-mart: We Sell For Less. (Although, smartly, Wal-mart has changed it’s slogan to Save Money. Live Better.)
The key to low-end retail is volume, volume, volume. As long as you can make a small profit on each item sold, the more items you sell, the more gold you gather. And that gold really builds up. In particular, by the time you hit Forochel or Eregion, you will easily gather one-third to one-half gold just walking around killing things. The quest rewards are good, and the resource gathering is excellent. Toss in some good crafting, and a stack of ore/wood/hides, and you can easily collect 2g from your new best friend, the Auction House.
And the key to volume sales is consistency. Gather always (but not while running instances, and never, never be a varmint! — stealer of resources from those in combat; Redhead invented that phrase, and I like it), gather while deeding, gather while on the way to a solo quest, gather while on cooldown. Complete stacks generally sell better in the Auction House and are easier for you to price according to the current market whims.
And manage your bags! The gold for extra vault chests is worth the cost as long as you keep stacking up whatever comes your way: chests pay for themselves if you don’t stuff them with dresses or mementos or furniture. (Hobbit hopes he receives visitors while in convalescence; Redhead is an assiduous dress collector.)
How to Price at the Auction House
And, finally, my real secret: good pricing at the Auction House, best explained by example:
- Search on your stack: drag it into the search box in the Auction House window;
- Sort by Buyout (some prefer Current Price, but it is trickier to work from);
- Scroll down until you see the first, cheapest complete stack (100÷50÷10, etc., depending on item);
- Post your stack for 2 days, this is important: the longer your post is, the better odds of someone buying it out;
- Post your stack for a modest amount lower, e.g., if 100 Silver Ore is selling for 750s, post for 725s
Not for the weak of heart: If you are really jonesing for the Auction House, continue with:
- Make an estimate at single item cost, e.g., if 100 Silver Ore is selling for 750s, then 1 Silver Ore is about 7-½s;
- Sweep through the partial stacks, and repeat your estimate;
- When a partial stack has an item cost less than half (important!) that of the cheapest full stack, buy out the partial stack.
The second optional pass is that you may buyout underpriced goods, and later repost them as well-priced complete stacks. The important rule of half is to protect you from price fluctuations: it is quite sad to sink your precious gold into a market, only to lose your shirt later when you unwind your position (to use the lingo of real world markets).
*The Truth About The Best Sort of People
Actually, I lied. The Auction House is a boutique shop where one prices the best goods for only the best sort of people, and lives off a modest number of sales. But this is only true when you are selling the best goods (aka [Hunter’s Bow of the First Age]. That is not you (or you would not be reading this post). Hobbit is rich, but he is not that kind of rich: he is rich, wealthy, independent and socially secure. He is not the best sort of people.

I’ll make Merric read this. He has a serious money problem.
How rich is “rich, wealthy, independent and socially secure”??? I’m doing OK financially ingame, but I still sell stuff on AH and want more moolah!!
Nice post.
The approach you describe is pretty much the one I used on my first character in the game — I was an explorer and the sale of ores and wood along with hides and scholar stuff kept me financially afloat through the game.
I am now leveling an alt and I decided that I didn’t want to level any of the professions either crafting or gathering. Even the gathering professions need a lot of grinding to level up. I am trying to pay my bills without any profession and without any gathering effort. Being pigheaded I have refused to subsidise the alt from my main. Hides have been the mainstay for me. You pick up lots just doing normal questing and stacks of hides sell for a pretty penny on the AH. I was able to buy my horse the moment I hit level 35 with ready cash. I do benefit from the fact that low level crafting materials command a premium on a mature server.
One tenet of my financial policy that you haven’t mentioned is to be miserly on repairs. There is no point paying for something to be fully repaired if it is going to be replaced in a few levels.
You also forgot the second rule after selling stuff on the AH…
Don’t buy stuff that you can make or that you can gather the resources and ask a friend to make. Kinmates that are master X profession are a great resource. Make their lives easy and give them all the materials they need so all they have to do is hit MAKE.
Making money in this game is a breeze. Honestly, as long as you spend enough time in the game, you will make money. My hunter has a /played of almost 7 months now (meaning I have that much time logged in to that character), and I have over 300 gold without ever trying to manipulate the AH market, mostly because I play so much that I have nothing left to spend money on.
Explorer at low levels is certainly a good craft profession, but Tinker is an even better choice. True, you can’t collect and sell wood, but then wood really doesn’t sell well (or at least not on Gilrain) — there isn’t much demand for wood, and *no* demand for it at Supreme tier.
And in exchange, you get the ability to make jewellery, which *always* sells well, at all levels (some ppl make good money just shifting glittering platinum jewellery). For fast money making, nothing beats critted Supreme jewellery, and if you’ve got a lot of time, you can make almost as much money with critted hope tokens.
Tinkers also get the benefit of cooking, assuming you’ve got an alt to farm for you, or you can afford the start-up costs entailed in making only bought food recipes (Lembas cost more than double what it it costs to make Blackberry pies, for example).
I say this as someone who recently retrained from SM Woodworker/Forester to SM Jeweller/Prospector, and even allowing for the large amounts of gold i spent buying resources to retrain faster, has made in 2 weeks more than double what i made in 3 months as an SM Woodworker, *after* equipping myself and the lovely wife in full Glowing Aureate jewellery.