Well, it is just a preparation. You can make it a bit more fun by taking some of your party members with you.So where's fun in that type of activity.
The game actually gives a lot of opportunities to get some money and getting a lot of stuff for free. For example, arena in the monster city gives quite a lot of gold and is repeatable. Caches also give some gold - I think it is up to 20 per money cache, and you can sell hunger charm from artifact caches for 25.Also, the options to gain enough gold to buy the best armor are limited. So either the hero starves in the best armor imaginable or goes out in the wild but with stockpile of food. I don't understand that.
And frankly, I normally just steal the most expensive things.