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First off, you'll need a Guile Rating of 5 or higher, so don't even think about doing this without this prerequisite. Besides, if you're like me, you prefer a silver, social grace and finesse combined with moderate melee fighting power an' highly specialized magical skill than brute physical or mystical force to get you through the world...

First off, until you're rich enough to actually afford the best of stuff... You might have to sacrifice your morals (If you're going for a good character, like I am doing right now.) and become a major thief. Then again, what are a few pangs of guilt compared to rescuing grateful merchants an' travelers (And your killficiency percentage an’ survivatastic quotient.)? Oh! An' you might have to turtle your progress in the story a bit, as well. Think of it as training, I, for one, have no qualms spending a few game-days (hours) hunting for bandits in the Greatwood Entrance an' Lake areas. Of course, you'll want to use your bow (Free decapitation tinglies on the road to becoming an economic powerhouse!) as efficiently and as much as possible if you want to up your Guile quickly enough.

Okay, now that you HAVE your Guile, what'cha gotta do now? You remember those traveling merchants we talked about earlier? Namely the ones carrying crate loads of Emeralds an' Beer Kegs? Those are the ones you have to hit up, my friend. You see, through your well-honed silvery tongue, you are going to be able to fleece literally millions of gold from these an' like merchants in trading them their own Kegs. That's right, you buy up their entire stock of Kegs, sell them back to them at a profit, an' eventually you'll be able to move up to those lucrative Emeralds and the gold will REALLY start flowing... As long as you take the emeralds with you after you're done filling your pockets at the merchant's expense.

Of course, this only works if the merchant doesn't run away from you, if you're evil, dress as non-threatening as you can an' be quick on your feet; if you're good you shouldn’t' have a problem using your riches to spread your own special brand of slashy benevolence across the monstrous population of Albion as you buy the best stuff you can get your grubby lil' hands on, spoil your wife into easy nooky for days an’ days of red-hot-monkey love, an' secretly scoff at Lady Grey's riches, 'coz you KNOW she ain't got as much as you got, playah!

This has been discussed many, many times in this forum. And you don't have to wait for your guile to be at 5, and you don't have to wait until you can afford beer kegs.

I can do the same thing right after the Queen Bee quest and in Bowerstone South, so you don't even need to find the best travelling salesmen.

Spoiler

I started by getting somewhere around 800 gold and going to the guy right at the entrance to Bowerstone South. I can't remember now what item I bought, but look for something that he has a bunch of, has close to his max number, and is selling cheaper than the normal price (price is in green). Buy them all, sell them back. You don't have to have a high Guile skill, just having him go from full to empty will change his price enough to make a profit. Aso, get as many of the item from elsewhere too. For example, if you are buying mana potions, buy all the mana potions from the Guild store too.

Once you get some money you can move to a pricier item like kegs/barrels/etc. Once you have some cash to spare, go to the armourer and buy armour and a decent weapon. Save the game, then run to Oakvale (don't bother killing anything unless you want to, just run past all bandits and get to Oakvale).

Use the same formula for your first choice and you're set. Eventually you can move to chololates/roses/emeralds/etc. The merchant in Oakvale across the square from the tavern sells emeralds. Find out how many he has (make sure he is at or close to his max, if not, sleep until he gets more) and figure out how much you need to buy them all. Once you have that much, buy them all and sell them all, you will get more profit than your other deals even with a low guile score. You can also sell multiple items at once, so if you've been buying/selling roses or chocolates you can continue to do this. But make sure anything you want to sell to him he already sells on his own and you'll be fine.

Once you have enough spare cash to buy another batch of emeralds, go sleep for 6 days until his new shipment comes in. Buy the new batch and now you have more to buy/sell. You can rinse and repeat until you are making hundreds of thousands of gold on each transaction if you want to.

And I was able to do this from scratch, right after Queen Bee quest (just to get some starting gold) with all my stats at 1.

LOL, you don't need any guile. There are many hints referring to this kinda business. For one, there are merchants that say "Some scallywags trade between the shops to earn themselves gold!" and some other things. Also, if you read the description of crates and barrels etc. it says that you can make a tidy profit by trading between shops. Also,if I'm not mistaken, it also shows it on the loading screen when you load a game.

These strategies are mentioned in the sticky FAQ as well.

SWC