And money is so hard to earn .
It is pretty hard.
1)
ok method that can work from day 1:
just my mc, and no slaves or npc's mouths to feed:
you can hunt every now and again just outside city limits.
[it is limited to '9', but it regenerates a little each day, so you can't full hunt every single day].
For tons of meat and fur... and to process it into meals and leather.
I think using crossbow yields most furs and meats?
Sell leathers to whomever, I think Nika gives best price? or was it armor store, I forget.
The trick is to wait for famine/drought/raider to raise price of food before you sell food. [it doesn't take effect until a day after announcement when you sleep, while it is happening each day price can increase, perhaps random each day]
I once saw it reach $14 per food sold, and selling hundreds or thousands of food yields pretty good amount.
With fulling upgraded garden, and only mc to feed, plus hunting, you'll be making ton of food.
About food spoilage:
Depending if you want to stockpile the unprocessed meat, or finished meals, some of your food MAY spoil and get deleted:
" Food rations will start depleting at 1,500 if you don't own a silo. " and food silo upgrade's limit is 7.500.
upgrade = facilities > crafting > manage modules. > food silo
I am UNSURE if you have storage limit on raw meats, and I'm UNSURE if they even spoil, you could keep some meat in reserve, and craft as needed to sell during those 'hard times'.
Simple math, one successful hunt with 20 raw meat, gets turned into 40 meals, if sold at $10 a piece [famine], thats $400 from meals alone, + about 10ish skins turn into $180 gold.
^not great, BUT pretty safe if you are not yet a combat expert
This way you can split your focus very early game on grinding stats and skills, and spread out your hunting [don't hunt in heatwaves?, hunt in storms?]
2)
GREAT way I used since day 1:
Each day you can goto town hall to get a bounty, 1/6 is really easy usually 1 enemy mob, that gives $500+ from bounty and mob drops [usually decent gold, in the hundreds, and if lucky also a weapon to sell]. You also get 50 influence if I recall.
Higher the two or three super low pay npcs, like Loren, Rifle Sevant, etc. and you can probably do up to 3/6 without taking any damage... [as if you plan on hunting each day, you need to recovery hp for all teammates]. That gives higher bountry $ reward, enemy loot drops more gold, and more chances for enemy to drop weapons too.
Of course you can save scum before entiring town hall and grabbing the random generated bounty to fit your ability.
4/6 and higher will be pretty difficult with only rifles and full team of five.
What is great, is that it only takes about half the day to do that, leaving you rest of day to do whatever, train to raise stats, kill dockside criminals, train slave, upgrade house, etc.
These two combined, I reached the $35,000 needed for 'slave master' quest rather quickly.
3)
A few cheap things that can add up over time starting from day 1:
a) Juno is free slave you can aquire @ map location: Stokke Hills, can work at Nika's Clothes for 30gold per day. [minues her 2 food a day]
b) 2 free household NPCs can aquire @ map location: Kasey's Park, can assign them both to duty: SCAVENGER, to acquire 7 merchandise per day, sold = 28gold per day. [minus 4 gold salary + minus 4 food a day cost] <rarely they acquire 'c-boards' [10 turn into gold, which sells for at least $190 and 'tendstims' which also sell for $21]>
