Crowns are tight in The Witcher 3‘s early hours. Repairs, crafting diagrams, and that 1,000-crown Potion of Clearance add up fast. The good news: the game showers you with sellable loot from the start, and the difference between broke and comfortable is mostly knowing what to keep, what to sell, and who to sell it to. Here’s the money game, start to finish.
The Golden Rule: Merchants Pay by Category
Every merchant type pays best for its own category of goods, and general merchants lowball almost everything. Sell:
- Swords to blacksmiths
- Armor pieces to armorers
- Alchemy ingredients and herbs to herbalists and alchemists (but read the “keep” list below first)
- Jewelry, gems, and valuables to jewelers or merchants in Novigrad, who pay far better than village traders
- Books you’ve already read to bookkeepers (check for unread lore first)
Prices also vary by region. Big-city merchants in Novigrad generally have deeper pockets than a war-torn Velen trader.
What to Loot (and What to Keep)
- Loot every battlefield: the weapons and armor enemies drop exist to be sold. Weight is the limit, so prioritize items with a good value-to-weight ratio.
- Keep all alchemy ingredients and crafting materials early on. In this game, potions and bombs only need to be brewed once (they refill with alcohol when you meditate), so ingredients are worth more as future brews than as pocket change.
- Never sell: anything marked as a quest item, your witcher gear diagrams, or mutagens.
- Dismantling items sometimes yields materials worth more than the item’s sale price, but dismantling costs a fee, so it’s a mid-game move, not an early-game one.
The Reliable Income: Witcher Contracts
Contracts, the monster-hunting jobs posted on notice boards, are the game’s intended income stream, paying a few hundred crowns each. Two tips:
- Negotiate. Most contract givers accept a haggle; pushing the offer up modestly almost always succeeds and adds up across the game.
- Read every notice board you pass (the yellow exclamation icon). They feed you contracts, treasure hunt leads, and points of interest at the same time.
Treasure hunts (marked as such in your quest log) are the other big earner. Scavenger hunt gear you don’t use sells or dismantles well, and the chests along the way carry crowns and gems.
Early-Game Money Tips
- Places of Power runs double as loot runs. The guarded chests near them usually hold valuables.
- Play Gwent with innkeepers carefully: the buy-in is small, wins pay, and you’re building a deck that later wins high-stakes matches.
- Don’t buy what you can loot. Food, basic weapons, and common crafting materials all drop constantly; save purchases for diagrams, maps, and the occasional key ingredient.
- Sell extra trophies. You can only wear one monster trophy at a time, and the rest are pure sale value.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do merchants run out of money? Yes. Each merchant has limited funds that replenish over time. If a merchant can’t afford your loot pile, sell in batches across a few vendors or meditate a day or two.
Is there a best single item type to farm? Not really. The sustainable pattern is contracts plus battlefield loot sold to the right vendor type. Old exploit-style farming loops from 2015 (like the infamous cow-hide farm) were patched out long ago.
Does difficulty affect money? No. Loot and rewards are the same on every difficulty level.