How to make money?

[Quasarrgames]

It would appear that all my hard-grown items that i used to be able to make a living on in previous alphas now have the selling value of half a ball of bellybutton lint.

I need a scheme to make some dough. You know what i'm saying?

So, what's the best way for a novice crafter/artist to get rich? Digging for some precious metals, then making them into weapons? Making clothes out of cloth or devilstrand? making some sculptures? What is it?

[Kagemusha12]

Craft statues from wood ... wood is replenishable.

Similarly, make wooden weapons and cotton clothes (with cotton you farm at your fields (in contrast to most other plant types, your cotton fields don�t need to be surrounded by walls .... the local wildlife doesn't consider cotton to be edible)).

IMHO the best choice in the beginning, where it isn´t only about selling those things but also about trining your crafting/artist skills.
(later, of course, when you have colonists with a skill of 10+, and therefore a higher chance to produce items of good quality, you may use other materials (like silver for artistry, or steel/plasteel for crafting)) 

[loc978]

Crafting and art en masse early on works as Kagemusha said (with easily renewable resources)... but I tend to wait until mid to late game to start really relying on traders. Between scyther blades and the dozens of expensive weapons raiders drop (particularly charge rifles, plasteel, silver and uranium melee weapons), I'm always rich after the first couple of major raids.

[BetaSpectre]

Make Kill box.
Pray to the sky.
Reap the Meat/Skin
Sell.
Profit.

[Boboid]

Definitely butcher all the humanoids you can and freeze the meat.

You can either make clothes out of the Human Leather or sell it as-is, clothing is preferable.

I think dusters are the most efficient resource/value ratio because they require the most work per material.
I should probably double check that at some point.

[Mathenaut]

Clothing out of human leather will only really net well if you can make above-normal quality. Unless you have a L15 or so crafter, just sell the leather and meat.

You'll mostly be making money off of stone art or above-quality metal weapons.

[Argon]

Step 1: Allow human corpses at butchery table.
Step 2: Sell human meat and leather.
Step 3: Buy artistic or crafting neurotrainers.
Step 4: GAME THE SYSTEM!!!

-Argon

[chaosmage]

now i look at the game from a different angle ...

[winnsanity]

You are going to need a decent crafter, and art maker.  I like to have steel or plasteel swards made to sell to combat suppliers.  Then switch to taylior bench to make leather parkas only for selling.  My colonist can wear cloth or decent stuff I get from raiders.  I have 1 guy on art all the time (helps if he is passionate about it).  They level up pretty quick.  Butcher humans and sell meat.  So when trade ships come by I try to have something for each one

Combat supplier- old weapons and crafted ones
Bulk goods- sell human meat
Exotic goods- sell all clothes from raiders and leather parkas that you make.

If you have your crafters balanced enough to go back and forth you should always have something to sell.

[Mathenaut]

Essentially, you pretty much need to start the game with a passionate artist or crafter if you want to participate in the economy. You pretty much have nothing else.

[Vonholtz]

I can not believe that so many of you in game cut up humans for meat and skin to sell. this just feels so wrong......... Oh I make money in game by cutting up humans and selling there meat and skins to. LoL

One word of warring about this. Keep the human meat fare from you pawns and your meals. For some reason in alpha 9 when they are hungry they will go eat the raw human meat before cooked meals if the human meat is closer by only a little bit.

[DNK]

It's difficulty level dependent.

On Cassandra 160%, raids provide all the money I need. On like 30% it'd have to be crafting as mentioned above. Devilstrand parkas are a favorite for value:fabric amount, cloth tuques also supposedly have a high value:work ratio for when you don't have devilstrand. Wood statues to build skill, a higher value metal/stone for once it's up there.

I don't mess with human stuff, since I imagine my colonists are above that. So I imagine... but how well does one really know his colony?

[NoImageAvailable]

No need to butcher anyone when all those pirates and tribals will happily deliver various valuable goods right to your door step.

One word of warring about this. Keep the human meat fare from you pawns and your meals. For some reason in alpha 9 when they are hungry they will go eat the raw human meat before cooked meals if the human meat is closer by only a little bit.

I actually noticed something similar with potatoes lying around my hydroponics, where colonists would eat them raw while about 20 cells over there was a fridge full of fine meals. It seems the values on that need some tweaking still.

[Vonholtz]

No need to butcher anyone when all those pirates and tribals will happily deliver various valuable goods right to your door step.

One word of warring about this. Keep the human meat fare from you pawns and your meals. For some reason in alpha 9 when they are hungry they will go eat the raw human meat before cooked meals if the human meat is closer by only a little bit.

I actually noticed something similar with potatoes lying around my hydroponics, where colonists would eat them raw while about 20 cells over there was a fridge full of fine meals. It seems the values on that need some tweaking still.

I saw a post few weeks back they are a were of the trouble with raw food. They said it be fixed in alpha 10. Till then it has to be handled by playing smart.

[Endoric]

Just make sure you forbid human meat......

Works with my family... I mean in my game.... Yeah...