Money making guide

This page provides a guide on the best ways to make money in Dragon Age: Origins. Money can be earned by completing quests, selling items, stealing, or looting fallen enemies and containers. You are occasionally given the chance to ask for monetary rewards above the 'normal' quest reward, and at times the success of such attempts depends on your coercion skill. Money is used for purchasing items, making donations and bribes, and improving the strength of an allied army for the final battle.

You will be able to accumulate at least 350 prior to the Landsmeet, if you've collected all the loot items and sold everything to merchants without donating anything. This amount is enough to buy 3 or more of your dream items from any merchant. It is also possible to accumulate over 1,000 prior to the Landsmeet without making any Potent Lyrium Potions. This requires you to do all the available quests (including downloadable content), pass all the money-related coercion dialogues, steal from all out-of-combat NPCs, and sell all items to merchants, except for the items of your four main characters.

Basic Mechanics
A sovereign is a gold piece, or 1 (ie. 5 sovereigns is 5). Two coins of smaller denominations are used, silver and bronze.

Exchange


 * 100 = 1
 * 100 = 1

General Notes

 * Start as an Aeducan. By selling to Gorim in the Denerim market district, income doubles for all looted, stolen, given, or crafted items. Assuming that the sale of items makes up for at least 2/3rds of the total income (a very conservative estimate), the Dwarf Noble will have 67% more money than any other Warden at the exact same point in the game.
 * Every time there's a dialogue option to ask for money, Go for it. There's not one option in-game where you get more money by not asking. Worst case scenario is you will get turned down and/or looked down by the NPC, but these decisions will not have any long-term effects toward your ending.
 * You will not miss any important plot points for being cheap, so feel free to refuse to not offer money to people.

Making Potent Lyrium Potions
Making Potent Lyrium Potions is one of the most profitable activities in the game. For every 99 potions crafted a profit of 2190 is made. If you're a Dwarf Noble, profit leaps to 1454310.

The potent lyrium potion recipe can only be purchased from the tranquil at Wonders of Thedas in Denerim for 111750. It's useless until you have a master herbalist in the party.

Ideally, you've got exactly 113244, which is what's needed for the recipe and all ingredients for a full stack of 99 potent lyrium potions. You're also going to need ten free slots in inventory, nine for the ingredients and one for the potions.

This is what we need for one potent lyrium potion, and the ideal places to get it. Note that Figor, who's shop is off of the Orzammar Commons, will sell you flasks for 1, but requires more additional travel.

The total cost for the ingredients to make a single potion comes to 1310. It's value is 5, which means that any vendor will buy it for 125, giving us a profit of 2190. This is a rate of return of 21%.

For a stack of 99 potions, we spend 102690 on required materials, and the revenue is 12375, leaving us a profit of 216810. If we then pour all that money into ingredients, we can make 120 more potions, then more, and so on.

On the twelfth trip, you'll break 1000 by following this example, and will be crafting 813 potions. That requires 33 slots just for the lyrium dust, plus four more empty slots for one stack each of the bartender's ingredients, plus a slot for your new potions. So do what you can to free up inventory before getting into this.

Profitable Quests

 * Complete as many Job Board quests as possible. Each of these Side Quests will yield 1-6.
 * Precious Metals: For an upfront investment of 40you can earn up to 90with high persuasion (or a minimum 20if you kill Rogek). You must not complete Broken Circle before adding Precious Metals to your Journal if you wish to maximize earnings.
 * Rescue the Queen: During the prison break, earn 80-90 depending on your Coercion skill and 2 votes at the Landsmeet by asking for their money. A highly skilled lock picker is required to maximize gold accumulation.
 * Unrest in the Alienage: A highly skilled lock picker can acquire 22 in a chest in the last room of the Run-down Apartment in The Alienage.
 * A Lord's Trust: The First Task: Earn 10 (or 15 with high persuasion) during the optional subquest to return the love letters to fighter Baizyl (requires a Lockpicker). The quest requires you to at least temporarily side with Lord Harrowmont and is a subquest of A Paragon of Her Kind.
 * Thief in the House of Learning: Earn ~2.5 by selling the the book to Jertrin instead of returning it to the Shaperate for no reward.
 * Asunder: A side quest that takes place in The Deep Roads, beneath the dwarven city of Orzammar. For a reward of 25 50, the Warden must allow the Pride Demon to escape.

Coercion
Maximizing the Warden's Coercion skill gains access to otherwise unavailable persuasion dialogues which often allow stronger negotiating positions with NPCs. Nearly all Notable Side Quests listed above are benefited directly by high Coercion.

Stealing
Stealing will not net you as much money as Lockpicking but you could earn well over 5 by the end of the game simply from Stealing
 * Most of the time, you will be getting a Shard / Health Potions
 * Other times, you will get around 2 - 30
 * From yellow & orange name NPC, you could get over 2 (ex: Prince Bhelen after the Throne)

Lock Picking
Maximizing a rogue character's lockpicking skill will gain access to locked rooms and containers which may contain money or sellable items. The notable quests above should indicate when a lockpicking character is required for maximum earnings.