Guide:Making money
Money allows players to buy items from NPCs, reforge items at the
Goblin Tinkerer, and functions as ammo for the
Coin Gun. This makes money management important to ensure that you can get the items and benefits you want.
This guide will focus on how to get more money during general play, efficient methods for direct money farming, and how to get the most value out of your money.
Money efficiency
You will get a lot of money over the course of your playthrough, both from direct coin drops and from items you can sell for more money. This money can accomplish a lot, if used wisely, so it is worth focusing on how you plan to spend your money as well as how you get it.
Regularly deposit your money into a Piggy Bank or
Safe. When you die, you will lose most or all of your coins depending on world and character difficulty, but not any coins in storage. It can be difficult to get large amounts of coins back - best to not lose them at all. Items can be bought from NPCs using money directly from your personal storage, so storing your coins this way has no downside.
Happiness
NPC item prices and reforge costs vary based on how happy the NPC is. A maximally happy NPC will sell at 3/4 (75%) the price and buy at 4/3 (133.33%) the price of normal. This makes your money 1.33x as valuable, and items you sell for money 1.78x as valuable in turn.
Since you can sell any item you want to any NPC that has a shop, happiness is especially important for selling. One especially happy NPC is a major boost to the value of everything you sell, while selling to a homeless NPC can cut the money you get back in half. There are a few options for making especially happy NPCs to sell to:
- Early on, Arms Dealer and Nurse in the desert is a great and easy option with a 1.26x sell multiplier, while the Golfer with the Angler and Zoologist or Painter in the forest can get a perfect 1.33x sell multiplier with some more work.
- Once you have the Mechanic, you can put her, the Goblin Tinkerer, and the Dye Trader in the underground snow biome to max out the Goblin Tinkerer's happiness.
Due to the high prices and randomized nature of reforging, the Goblin Tinkerer is usually the most important NPC to keep happy.
The Tax Collector stores money over time, and will give you more money when happy. In ideal conditions and with 20 NPCs, he will gather 13 SC20 CC per minute and will max out every 4 real-world hours. This is useful as passive income in Hardmode.
The Skeleton Merchant and Traveling Merchant are not affected by happiness. This makes them less valuable to sell to, though as the Skeleton Merchant can spawn while you are exploring, he may be your only option.
Don't dig up and get fixed boi disable the happiness system entirely. This means effective prices on these seeds are higher compared to other seeds.
Priority spending
Focus on cheaper purchases and items that can benefit you now. Reforging tends to be much more expensive than normal item purchases, while arguably having less impact. If you find that money is tight, try reforging less times and accepting more modifiers.
The price of reforging an accessory to have one specific modifier is 38x its sell cost on average. For weapons that can access all modifiers of their respective class, they cost 68-70x the sell cost of the weapon on average. If you are willing to accept slightly worse modifiers (for instance, Armored instead of Warding, or Demonic instead of Legendary), you can cut these costs in half or down to a third. This can let you avoid money farming entirely, or you can just wait on reforging for the best modifier until you get an excess of money.
Weapons such as the Starfury that sell for 1 GC and have no modifier restrictions cost an average of 70 GC to reach their best modifier. If you instead reforge to either their best modifier or Demonic or Godly, stopping at whichever you get first, this average cost goes down to 21 GC60 SC. This difference is enough to buy some 240 Dynamite, which is enough to blow up space for an optimized enemy farm that could give all kinds of useful drops or be used to get more money. As for the modifier, Demonic and Godly provide 2/3rds the value of Legendary, providing around 1.2x more damage instead of 1.3x.
If you are using the Coin Gun, it can use up far more money than reforging, or it can be fairly cheap, depending on ammo. It fires 7.5 coins per second, of whatever denomination you use. Using Silver Coins has a very manageable cost, and with them the Coin Gun is an average weapon against the mechanical bosses. With Gold Coins, you will need to support the costs with a strong money farm, but it remains a strong weapon up to the Lunatic Cultist. You can get more value out of your coins through ammo conservation bonuses; combining an Ammo Box, Adamantite armor with the Mask, and an Ammo Reservation Potion will half the rate that you use ammo.
Earning money while mining
Normal spelunking provides money from enemies, pots,
chests, and a wide variety of items that can be sold for more money. You can get more money from mining by knowing what to gather, keep, and sell.
Effective mining
The goal when mining is to get as many valuable resources as possible, as quickly as possible. Spelunker Potions and controlling lighting through Glowsticks or Flares will allow you to scout a large area for valuables, while boosting mining speed or using explosives can let you quickly move to new caves or collect ores faster.
1 stick of Dynamite costs 20 SC before happiness, which is fairly expensive early on. However, medium and larger ore veins provide more than enough ore to make up the cost. Dynamite is also much faster than mining early on, making it easier to find valuable loot such as Life Crystals.
Mining will generally fill your inventory and then some. You can effectively get "extra inventory" by equipping extra accessories and storing loot in your Piggy Bank, which will let you bring back more loot. Alternatively, if you find a Skeleton Merchant, you can sell items to him, though he will not pay as much as a happy town NPC will.
What to sell
Almost every item you get can be sold, but some are better choices to sell than others. In general, the more an item sells for, the more common it is, and the less value the item has to you, the better it is for selling. If you have something you want to craft, do not sell the materials you need to craft it, you can get money in other ways.
Here are common candidates for selling:
- Ores and bars are the ideal choices, being both common and high sell value.
- Duplicate accessories and weapons, particularly from chests.
- Gems have great sell value, but can potentially also be crafted into gemcorns for a gem farm, covered below. Gem farming takes a while to give better returns than selling up front, however.
- Life Crystals.
- Food items, particularly fruit from shaking trees.
In Hardmode, you get more good options for selling:
- Hardmode ores.
- Crystal Shards and Gelatin Crystals from the Hallow.
- Ichor and Cursed Flames.
With weapons and materials, try testing them out before you sell them. You may find them to be more useful to you than selling them would be. It is never worth it to reforge an item hoping for a higher sale price.
Silt, Slush, and especially Desert Fossil are useful blocks to use with the Extractinator. Doing this has chances for more ores and gems, as well as giving money directly. This is especially useful for getting gems to start gemcorn farming or Sturdy Fossils.
Crafting and shimmer
Some materials have higher sell values when crafted than when sold directly. Some of these recipes require only one material, making them easy options that should always be used when possible. Others require multiple materials, making one resource a limiting factor. Below is a list of useful crafting recipes for making more money; if one material is the bottleneck for multiple recipes, higher recipes are better, and multiple material recipes listed here are better than single material recipes for the same material. Also included are the factor by which the recipe multiplies profit, e.g. 6/5 (120%) means 20% more money than just selling the materials.
- Multiple material crafts
- Hellstone + Obsidian yields Hellstone Bars for 16/3 (533.33%) profit.
- Crystal Shards + Pixie Dust + Bottled Water yields Greater Healing Potions for 12/5 (240%) profit with an Alchemy Table.
- Souls of Flight + Any material used exclusively for wings, such as Beetle Husks or Bone Feathers, yields Wings for 20/11 (181.82%) or 8/3 (266.67%) profit.
- Jungle Spores + Shadow Scales / Tissue Samples + Bones yields Void Vaults for 11/1 (1100%) profit.
- Stingers + Bottled Water yields Flasks of Poison for 11/1 (1100%) profit.
- Hooks + Chains yields Grappling Hooks for 25/2 (1250%) profit.
- Flinx Fur + Gold or Platinum Bars + yields Flinx Fur Coats for 2/1 (200%) or 3/2 (150%) profit.
- Single material crafts
- Meteorite yields Meteorite Bars for 7/3 (233.33%) profit.
- Chlorophyte yields Chlorophyte Bars for 6/5 (120%) profit.
- Souls of Night/Light yield Keys of Night/Light which can then spawn Biome Mimics for high profit dependent on world difficulty that can be further increased with a Flask of Gold.
- Flounder yields Sashimi for 10/3 (333.33%) profit.
- Rock Lobsters yield Lobster Tails for 2/1 (200%) profit.
- Any food crafted from a single critter, besides frogs and gold critters, increases profit.
- Jungle Spores yield Jungle Hats for 225/4 (5625%) profit.
- Strange Plants can be turned in to the Dye Trader for 135/8 (1687.5%) profit.
- Spider Fangs yield Queen Spider Staffs for 25/6 (416.67%) profit.
- Lunar Fragments yield Monoliths for 20/3 (666.67%) profit.
There are other options for increasing sell value; for instance, Mining Potions sell for more than Antlion Mandibles, or Monster Lasagna sells for more than Vertebrae or Rotten Chunks. These aren't worth it. You are better off finding any other use for these materials, as their sell values are too low compared to just using Mining Potions or summoning bosses (more on that below).
Shimmer allows you to get more value out of some crafted items by selling their components instead. This largely affects the following:
- Anything crafted from bars.
- Anything crafted from gems.
- Fruit that can be shimmered into Ambrosia for 5/2 (250%) times the sell value.
Passive money farming
This section will cover methods that can get extra money with minimal player input. The focus will be on how quickly these methods produce money in the background and how quickly you can harvest this money, with the methods ordered in terms of investment required to start them.
Gem Trees
Gemcorns will grow below the surface and can be chopped down for Gems and more Gemcorns. Both of these sell for a lot of money, particularly Amber and Diamond selling for 40 SC apiece at max happiness. Using Amber for your gem farm will also help with crafting Crate Potions. Gem trees require 17 tiles of vertical space to ensure maximum growth rate and size, and Smart Cursor can be used to place Gemcorns at an optimal spacing, holding your cursor behind you as you plant.
Dynamite is your best option for clearing out the necessary space for the farm, then a flat line of stone is the easiest to place on. If you want to use torches, check where Smart Cursor tries to place Gemcorns, then place torches in those spots and only those spots; any closer to trees and you could prevent trees from growing entirely. The stone bridge itself can be coated in Illuminant Paint to make the gem trees easily visible from a distance.
On average, a Gemcorn will grow in 32 minutes and provide 1.46 gems and 2.15 gemcorns. This gives an average profit of 1 GC4 SC per tree, but with very high variance. This is not a viable money generation method with only a couple trees, and you will need to invest early gems back into the farm as gemcorns if you want to quickly reach a large farm size. With 40 gem tree locations, however, you can average over 1 GC per minute, and you can increase the farm size almost arbitrarily high.
You should use your best axe and placement speed buffs, such as from Builder Potions. The best Pre-Hardmode axe choice is the Light Axe of Regrowth, which can chop down each tree in 40 ticks[1]. In Hardmode, the Pickaxe Axe with mining speed buffs can chop down each tree in 5 ticks instead. For placement speed, you will take 10, 8, or 5 ticks per Gemcorn planted, depending on your level of placement speed buffs.
For larger farms and faster collection speeds, you will likely want to run back every 20 trees chopped or so to pick up dropped gems. There is a limit of 400 dropped items that can be present in the world total before older items start despawning, but waiting for items to fall from each tree chopped will drastically increase the total time spent harvesting in the farm.
As this farm will be underground and may have enemies spawn in it should you not bring NPCs nearby, you may want a Hunter Potion as well.
Statue farming
Functional statues can spawn one enemy each every 30 ticks[1], and most enemies can drop items that can then be sold for money, albeit at a reduced rate. Each individual statue provides very low earnings per second, but you can also do other things for money generation while farming statue enemies, such as normal enemy farming or fishing. Statue farming is not a viable money-making option when done actively, and for this section it will be assumed that you are killing statue enemies entirely through minions.
Use a 1/2 Second Timer or better for spawning statue enemies, trap them with blocks, and use minions to kill them. Minecart tracks limit where the player can be, and killing through only lava or traps prevents most statue enemies from dropping anything.
Theoretically, you can spawn statue enemies, teleport them, and kill them all within the same tick. This would let you farm every single statue you have, up to a total of 300 with 600 kills per second. However, the resulting setup is complicated and unless you are playing in the no traps seed, you do not have that many statues available. However, you can stack various statues to multiply how much money you get out of them total.
Due to statue spawns not dropping coins, statue critters not being catchable by a Bug Net, and many extraneous bonuses that can occur with most enemies (such as spawning Dungeon Spirits or dropping souls) never happening with statue-spawned enemies, the only things that matter for statue enemy farming is how fast you can kill and how valuable their drops are. Below is a table of the average value of sellable materials from killing statue enemies, assuming neutral happiness and crafting Hooks into Grappling Hooks before selling:
This content is transcluded from Statues § Enemy_statues.
Statue | Enemy | Money per kill |
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11 CC |
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6 CC |
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8 CC / 17 CC |
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43 CC |
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7 CC |
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8 CC / 17 CC |
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2 CC |
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0 CC |
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72 CC |
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9 CC |
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43 CC |
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30 CC / 49 CC |
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50 CC |
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21 CC |
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1 SC5 CC / 1 SC30 CC |
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25 CC |
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35 CC |
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10 CC |
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43 CC |
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4 CC |
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78 CC |
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2 SC13 CC |
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10 CC / 20 CC |
The money gained per statue enemy killed is very low, but you can spawn and kill 2 enemies per second per statue with an ideal setup; thus, the average per-second earnings are twice the per-kill earnings of each statue you include, should you be killing enemies efficiently. The returns still pale in comparison to active farming, however.
Active money farming
This section will cover methods for actively generating money, focusing on how much money can be generated per second on average where possible. This section will also be in approximate order of investment required.
Extractinator
Silt, Slush, and Desert Fossils can be processed at an Extractinator or Chlorophyte Extractinator for ores, gems, and money. They can be fed in at a rate of 6 blocks per second. Below is the average coin and item value returns per second for each block type at a normal Extractinator:
Average coin returns per second of extractination Source Coins Item value (neutral happiness) Silt/Slush 14 SC52 CC 9 SC79 CC Desert Fossil 12 SC71 CC 10 SC58 CC
Sturdy Fossils are not considered in the above totals, as they sell for relatively little even when crafted into Bone Throwing Knives and have much better crafting options. Saving Amber is also useful for gem farming and Crate Potions, but will reduce profits slightly.
For quickly harvesting silt and slush, you can put minecart tracks or torches below a large pile and break blocks to let them fall and itemize themselves. Alternatively, explosives are great for collecting all of these blocks quickly.
Fishing
Fishing offers a wide variety of loot that can be sold, especially from crates. Fishing up more items, and more valuable items, is the best way to improve money gains from fishing; most of the money available comes from opening crates, so you should always use Crate Potions and Fishing Potions, as well as anything else you can use to boost fishing power. As everything can be sold, you should avoid using Sonar Potions, and just focus on fishing up as much as possible.
With an optimized fishing setup, you can remove much of the downtime of generating fishing catches. By tossing the bobber down, bouncing it off of a block, and having it resurface on top of you, the reel in-recast time can average less than 15 ticks[1] total. At 125 fishing power, the time to generate a catch averages 91 ticks, with a standard deviation of 10 ticks. With the consistency in fishing catch timing, it is possible to reduce the time spent reacting to catches as well - in total, it is possible to average 2 seconds per fishing catch, or potentially even less at high fishing powers with good timing.
In Pre-Hardmode, the best places to fish are in the cavern layer within another biome or the desert. What biome you fish in in the cavern layer should depend on what useful fish or items you want to get, though the cavern layer Corruption does provide slightly more money than other biomes. Make sure you are in some biome, though, as biome crates are a major source of money when fishing. In Hardmode, the cavern layer Hallow biome is the most lucrative fishing location by a wide margin, due to the high sell cost of Chaos Fish along with the biome crate there always including money, ores, and/or bars. Prismite also has a high sell cost, but can also be used for Lifeforce Potions while the Hallow remains the most lucrative place to fish. Potions and bait from crates should also not be sold, due to low sell value and high value when used by the player.
Lava fishing has the highest value per catch, but its catches are much slower, to the point where water fishing in most areas is more lucrative relative to the time involved. Even at very high fishing power, lava fishing takes more than twice as long to generate catches as water does, and while every crate you get is a valuable biome crate, you only get 1/6th of the crates of water fishing.
Good earlygame fishing can average around 30 SC to 40 SC per second net profit, while lategame fishing with full Angler gear in the underground Hallow can average 1 GC50 SC per second or more.
Etherian Raid farming
The Old One's Army event does not drop coins, but the Dark Mage drops many sellable items. As the Dark Mage can spawn repeatedly until the tier 1 event is completed, he can be killed many times for his drops. Farming later tiers of the event is much less profitable, as the other bosses are worth far less money and are harder to kill.
The Dark Mage is worth 7 GC67 SC/14 GC81 SC/16 GC6 SC on average in sellable items depending on difficulty, not accounting for happiness. During wave 5, after passing 50% wave completion, a Dark Mage will spawn every 40 ticks[1] provided one is not currently alive. They will always spawn from the left portal along with a normal enemy spawn; this means that with enough raw damage output, a total of 35/18 Dark Mages can be killed in an event for almost 3 PC in raw item value. Due to the extreme DPS required to kill Dark Mages in 40 ticks[1], this is best done in early Hardmode before fighting any mechanical bosses.
The amount of damage required depends on the difficulty, but for Master mode, the fastest setup uses a Demonic, Godly, or Ruthless Clinger Staff, Legendary Fetid Baghnakhs, and Demonic or Deadly Nimbus Rod. Using loadouts, switch to a max magic damage loadout and place 2 Nimbus clouds over the left portal and the Clinger Staff over the right portal. Then switch to a max melee crit loadout, holding Fetid Baghnakhs, and sit on the crystal stand skipping the wait between rounds. When round 5 starts, move to the left portal, wait for wave progress to reach 30-40%, and switch back to the max magic damage loadout, place the Clinger Staff on the left portal, switch back to the melee loadout, and stand in front of the portal swinging the Bagnakhs as Dark Mages start to spawn and die. The right portal is left entirely undefended here, but the wave ends so fast that the crystal survives.
This setup uses melee Mythril armor and a Warrior Emblem for the melee loadout, with all accessories reforged to Lucky, while the magic loadout uses a Mythril Hood, Meteor Suit and Leggings, a Sorcerer Emblem, and all accessories reforged to Menacing. The other accessories can be anything, especially if you use a mount for mobility, and strings are a good option due to how cheap they are to craft and reforge. For buffs, a Sharpening Station and Crystal Ball are important stationary buffs, Pumpkin Pies or Bacon are good food options, Ale or Sake gives Tipsy for extra melee damage, and a Magic Power Potion are enough for consistent kills on Master mode. Flasks of Ichor and Wrath and Rage Potions are also good damage boosts for Legendary Mode.
In total, this setup averages 4 minutes on Classic, 2 minutes on Expert and above to complete an event, and earns 2 PC68 GC/2 PC67 GC/2 PC89 GC value in item drops in that time. On Expert and above, this is better than even optimized fishing setups, though money can only be earned this way before defeating any mechanical bosses. The event also drops Defender Medals, which can be used to buy sentries which are then sold back, but this is a relatively small part of the money gain for the event; it is better to save the medals for later tiers to get new armor sets and sentries more quickly. If you do plan to monetize Defender Medals, make the Tavernkeep maximally unhappy by either speaking to him in an evil biome or rendering him homeless before talking to him, then buy and sell sentries within the same window; this gives 7 GC50 SC in value per 5 Defender Medals.
In Pre-Hardmode, the DPS requirements for farming Dark Mage are generally very hard to reach; a Demon Scythe is the best option here due to the lack of ammo requirements, along with a Crimson Rod, but most likely you will be limited to around a third to half the rewards of farming this event in early Hardmode. This does mean that sentries become more relevant, though; their attack speed is too slow to fit within the 40 tick[1] window for the fastest kills, but they can help out with slower kills. Ballista and Explosive Trap sentries are ideal here due to their high damage and pierce; you can stack Explosive Traps on the left portal by placing them on a block above and then actuating it repeatedly.
Enemy farming
Enemies drop money. Killing a lot of enemies will give a lot of money. Using a Treasure Magnet to more easily collect money and drops will help. You can also collect critters through a Bug Net and sell them.
How much money you get from enemy farming will depend on how fast you can spawn and kill enemies, what enemies you farm, and your game difficulty. Expert Mode and above provides 2.5x as many coins per kill as Classic does, with for the worthy providing 3.5x instead. This section will assume an optimized enemy farm that can spawn and kill 1 enemy per second on average, or spawn and catch 1 critter per second.
Most critters are easy to catch, and can be farmed early on near towns for a fair amount of money, especially with cooking them at a Cooking Pot. Doing this is a solid source of earlygame money, but due to requiring the player to actually reach critters before catching them, they are hard to optimize. Optimized critter farms can manage around 20 SC per second with cooking the critters obtained. Depending on your critter farm, you may want to use a Guide to Critter Companionship. Living Wood Walls can also spawn Gnomes, which can petrify into Garden Gnomes for a luck boost or to be sold for 1 GC. Similarly, Gnome farming can be difficult to optimize, but has very high yields in Pre-Hardmode.
Enemy coin drops are randomized with a set of multipliers. On average, this means that an enemy will give 1.47x as many coins as listed, 1.91x as much with the Midas debuff inflicted, or 2.87x as much with both Midas active and a Blood Moon active. When a player has a nonzero luck stat, they have that chance of rolling enemy coin drops twice. With a positive luck stat, the game chooses the larger coin multiplier, and with a negative luck stat, the game chooses the smaller one. When a luck roll occurs, an enemy will drop an average of 1.69x as many coins as listed, or 3.42x as much with Midas and a Blood Moon.
In Hardmode, it is always worth using Flasks of Gold to inflict Midas, provided you are farming with a melee weapon or whip. For luck, use an appropriate torch and a Garden Gnome for 6-8% more direct money drops on average. You can also use a Bloody Tear to summon a Blood Moon for 1.5x average money drops, particularly useful for farming Biome Mimics from extra Souls of Night and Light, but these can be difficult to obtain.

Mimics are an especially notable enemy during farming, due to their extreme gold drop rate. They account for a large portion of early Hardmode money farming despite being uncommon. When Biome Mimics can spawn, they will overwrite some Mimic spawns, but drop less money. One option around this is to simply not include evil biomes or Hallow in your enemy farm, but another option is to trap the Biome Mimic, as only one of each type can be alive at a time. Biome Mimics are only able to move through blocks during their stomp attack, and only if they cannot see the player; so a small hole above your head, big enough to see through but small enough to block the Mimic's movement, will render them harmless. The Celebrationmk10 seed triples the spawn rate of Mimics, drastically increasing money production.
Hardmode leads to many universal drops, such as Biome Keys and Souls. You can get Souls of Night and Light to drop from enemies anywhere by creating an artificial biome. However, this will cause Biome Mimics to start spawning, which drop much less money than their default counterparts while reducing their spawn rate. If you are not looking for Biome Mimic drops, you can trap a Biome Mimic above you by abusing their limited ability to move through blocks. Only one type of Biome Mimic can be alive at a time, restoring the normal Mimic spawn rate. For better comparison in the tables below, souls and Biome Mimic conversion will not be factored in, but including an evil or Hallow biome for souls drops is worth an extra 27 SC91 CC/81 SC20 CC per second on average if these souls are then farmed as Biome Mimics during a Blood Moon later.
Enemy drops such as Lenses or Vertebrae can be used for boss summon items. Bosses drop far more money than most enemies, especially in Pre-Hardmode and in Classic mode. If you plan to farm bosses as well, this will influence how much effective money you get out of enemy farming.
Below are tables of various environments and how much money farming them can earn. The tables are split by raw coin drops and the value of item drops, with money gained being averages per second. Coin drops do include the universal 1.47x average multiplier, but not the Midas debuff or Blood Moon bonus. You can treat their effects as 1.3x and 1.5x coin drops respectively if you are using them. Item drops assume neutral happiness, account for random modifiers, and assume materials mentioned in the crafting section are crafted for higher profit. Luck is not included in these numbers; each +0.1 luck averages +1.5% coins and +4% chance of some item drops, with a +4% increase in rare enemy spawn rates as well.
Condition | Coins | Item value |
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1 SC49 CC/3 SC72 CC | 1 SC10 CC/1 SC69 CC |
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3 SC68 CC/9 SC20 CC | 5 SC/8 SC6 CC |
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2 SC97 CC/7 SC44 CC[b] | 2 SC4 CC |
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1 SC97 CC/4 SC92 CC | 2 SC12 CC/2 SC61 CC |
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1 SC32 CC/3 SC31 CC | 96 CC |
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2 SC10 CC/5 SC26 CC | 40 CC |
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1 SC27 CC/3 SC17 CC | 56 CC |
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4 SC69 CC/11 SC73 CC | 4 SC8 CC/4 SC32 CC |
Condition | Coins | Item value |
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6 SC76 CC/16 SC91 CC | 31 SC95 CC/54 SC67 CC |
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29 SC31 CC/72 SC68 CC | 25 SC91 CC/44 SC90 CC |
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98 SC64 CC/2 GC46 SC61 CC | 42 SC16 CC/45 SC93 CC |
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26 SC1 CC/65 SC1 CC | 20 SC2 CC |
You can see how important Mimics are to making money from enemy farming in Hardmode. As Spider Walls prevent Mimics from spawning, they offer much less money from farming than other farming setups, and unsafe Dirt Walls, with their massively increased Mimic spawn rate, provide more money than even the post-Plantera Dungeon.
Event Farming
Invasion events, the Pumpkin Moon, and the Frost Moon raise the spawn rate drastically to an average of 3 enemies per second, with a lower spawn cap. Coupled with unique enemies, these events can be extremely lucrative, though due to the higher spawn rate you need much higher damage to get full farm efficiency.
For invasion events, it will be assumed that you can kill 2 enemies per second, or 2/3rds of maximum efficiency.
Invasion | Coins | Items |
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5 SC13 CC/12 SC81 CC | 51 CC |
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73 SC34 CC/1 GC83 SC35 CC | 19 SC92 CC |
The Goblin Army is a decent money farm in earlygame, while Pirates are a great money farm in Hardmode. Martian Madness is much less lucrative by comparison, while also being more difficult.
While much harder to evaluate directly, the Frost Moon and especially the Pumpkin Moon are the best money-making options from killing enemies in the game. The final wave of the Pumpkin Moon can net as much as 9 GC per second on average if using a specialized setup such as a highly-buffed Last Prism or Zenith. Even without this, though, the event still provides huge amounts of money and is the second-best money-making method in the game behind farming money via the Lucky Coin.
Boss farming
Bosses drop large amounts of money and valuable items, making them worth a lot of money if they can be killed quickly and reliably. This section will cover the average money gained from killing each boss.
In Classic Mode, bosses drop money in the same way as normal enemies, while in Expert Mode, bosses drop money from Treasure Bags, which only give 1.06x as much money on average. This means that Classic Mode bosses can actually drop more coins on average than on higher difficulties when using Midas and a Blood Moon, but most bosses will also drop more items on higher difficulties such that higher difficulties still get more money per kill. Eater of Worlds is an exception to this, due to it dropping coins during the fight itself even in Expert Mode.
In Expert Mode and above, all Hardmode bosses besides Queen Slime have a 1/16 chance of dropping developer items. This adds an average of 1 GC65 SC94 CC in item value to each of these bosses, and is not included in the table below.
Master Mode gives 2 GC25 SC more value per boss kill throughout the entire game by selling relics and the secondary exclusive Master drops. The Eater of Worlds and Brain of Cthulhu have higher yields from their Treasure Bags on Master Mode, but this is to balance out the lower yields from killing individual segments/Creepers. Master mode-exclusive items will not be included in the table below to save space.
Boss | Coins | Items |
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1 GC47 SC/2 GC65 SC | 3 GC92 SC/7 GC71 SC |
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4 GC41 SC/7 GC95 SC | 6 GC28 SC[h]/8 GC71 SC |
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7 GC88 SC/21 GC9 SC | 12 GC81 SC/19 GC70 SC |
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7 GC35 SC/13 GC25 SC | 25 GC97 SC/26 GC17 SC |
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7 GC35 SC/13 GC25 SC | 6 GC13 SC/9 GC44 SC |
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7 GC35 SC/13 GC25 SC | 2 GC91 SC/5 GC31 SC |
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7 GC35 SC/13 GC25 SC | 56 SC/3 GC68 SC |
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11 GC76 SC/21 GC20 SC | 6 GC77 SC |
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8 GC82 SC/15 GC90 SC | 5 GC41 SC/15 GC60 SC |
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17 GC64 SC/31 GC80 SC | 35 GC21 SC/37 GC71 SC |
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22 GC5 SC/39 GC75 SC | 10 GC71 SC/17 GC92 SC |
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22 GC5 SC/39 GC75 SC | 15 GC1 SC/35 GC51 SC |
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36 GC75 SC/66 GC25 SC | 6 GC60 SC/11 GC92 SC |
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36 GC75 SC/66 GC25 SC | 7 GC37 SC/19 GC73 SC |
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14 GC70 SC/26 GC50 SC | 5 GC21 SC |
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1 PC47 GC/2 PC65 GC | 50 GC/1 PC18 GC |
As you can see, bosses tend to increase in value as the game goes on, and some bosses are more valuable to farm than others. The Eye of Cthulhu, Eater of Worlds, Brain of Cthulhu, and Destroyer are standout options for money farming.
Lucky Coin farming
The Lucky Coin provides the single fastest method of making money in the current version. It effectively generates 1 SC22 CC for each hit done on an enemy, which includes minion hits. Thus, Lucky Coin farms aim to get as many hits per second as possible, using as many minions and enemies as possible. With the more simple designs, 4 PC per minute is possible, and when fully optimized, a Lucky Coin farm can generate 1 PC per second.
A general guide to building Lucky Coin farms can be found here, while information on a fully optimized farm can be found here.
Old version caveats
In no version, there are several version differences compared to modern versions that change the best ways of making and using money. Below are differences unique to older versions:
- Happiness does not exist in these versions, making it harder to buy everything and selling loot less valuable.
- Silver, Tungsten, Gold, Platinum, Orichalcum, and Titanium were more valuable when sold as ore rather than as bars.
- Crimtane, Meteorite, Hellstone, and Chlorophyte were more valuable when sold as bars rather than ore.
- All gems except Diamond could be crafted into Stained Glass for extreme profit margins.
- Dynasty Wood could be bought from the Traveling Merchant and combined with Torches bought from the Merchant into Large Dynasty Lanterns. These sold for 1.5x as much as their bought products and can be crafted indefinitely for
- Light Discs have a far higher sell price than their components, making the Destroyer a much more powerful money farm option.
- Statues have the same drop rates as normal enemies and killing statue enemies with lava does not prevent drops, making statue farms far faster and easier.
- Critters cannot be cooked.
- Bee armor sells for much more than Bee Wax, particularly the headgear.
- Without Shimmer, Lucky Coin farms farmed Arapaima instead. Their AI was also different, causing them to chase after the player even without line of sight.
Shimmer is not available in older versions, but it did have money-making exploits in 1.4.4 that have since been patched, based around the materials for items selling for more than the item itself.
- Copper tools from the Merchant and 1 Second Timers from the Mechanic could be shimmered and sold directly for large profits.
- Sand and Iron Bars obtained from shimmer decrafting could be crafted into Glass Kilns for a profit.
References
- ↑ Not including the Blood Moon coin drop multiplier.
- ↑ Lava Slimes drop lava in Expert and above. Besides potentially lowering spawn rates, this also risks destroying coins. Item drops from Underworld enemies have high enough rarity to survive.
- ↑ Brick walls are used here, along with spawning a Spike Ball near the waiting area beforehand to prevent more from spawning. Slab walls are slightly worse for farming while tiled walls are significantly worse due to Blazing Wheels.
- ↑ This is the ideal farm for pure caverns due to Geode drops. Besides Granite enemies, which account for 2 SC50 CC of both coins and items income apiece, these numbers are very similar to pure and ice cavern farms.
- ↑ Post-Plantera, with brick walls. Dungeon Spirits are included here, as very few other environments can spawn them.
- ↑ Underground, natural Dirt Walls behind Pearlstone spawning tiles, with a Corruption or Crimson biome present to prevent Gnome spawns. Blocking Gnome spawns with Corruption or Crimson is more important than what blocks are used for the spawning surface, though doing neither will lose around 12% money per second. The natural dirt walls are by far the most important here. Also assumes Pixie Dust is the limiting factor for Greater Healing Potion crafting.
- ↑ Pre-hardmode
- ↑ Worth 1 GC80 SC more in Crimson worlds due to Crimtane's higher sell price.