One of the best ways to make money in ArcheAge if you’re not wanting to focus on PvP is to run trade packs. Those who are interested in PvP can make a lot of coin by intercepting trade pack runners from opposing continents (or if you’re a pirate), but that’s a post for another time. Anyway. Trade packs. There’s a lot more involved than simply making a specialty pack and delivering it, at least if you want to get your monies worth from the pack. There are a few starter pack runs you do to get your donkey and eventually your large scare crow, but none of those reward big money (especially since so many others are doing the same run).
I’m going to talk about my own experiences here, and yours may vary. First, my housing zones. I own a house in Arcum Iris, which is great because there’s a specialty workbench there. It allows me to craft two things currently. One uses 60 turmeric and 50 dried flowers, the other uses 50 dried flowers and 30 eggs. Now, you get paid based on a few factors. One is the distance you have traveled. Since you can’t port or use gates or other means of instant transportation ideally you’re looking for carriage rides, blimp rides, a fast ship, or as a least resort, your donkey. If you’re just looking to do a handful of runs a week, the donkey option isn’t so bad. You’re not going to be incredibly wealthy, but you’ll make more than enough for yourself.
You’ll also earn more depending on what sort of zone you drop off at. I tend to look for PvP zones that are in peace time. That includes Cinderstone and Sanddeep on the West, and Ynystere on the East. I also have a non-pvp alternative if the zones are not in peace time. You CAN also go during times of turmoil but I wouldn’t suggest doing that unless you are well prepared.
On the East, carriage rides are in abundance. You’ll want to use those to get to where you need to go. Link shows all of the carriage and airship rides on that continent. On the West you’ll find a surplus of airships. Remember the goal is to try to get to where you’re going in the shortest amount of time possible (and alive). The more people who are dropping off your particular product at that destination to the gold trader, the less value your items will have. I get on average 5g-8g for a 20 minute walk, so I try to run 4 trade packs a day on average.
There are of course other ways of doing this. You can go cross continents and trade to alts if you want (I have not attempted this). You can go with a guild outing. You don’t NEED to do trade packs at all, but it’s a fun relaxing way to make some extra coin.
I’ve dedicated portions of my farm to each type of trade pack I want to make (for now), to earn some money to afford supplies for a clipper. Once I have the coin for that I’ll probably swap the crops around some. I also have a few spare items growing, like yata (trying to get them to breed) and pine in the hopes of RNG shining down on me and giving me a thunderstruck tree (I doubt it).
Have no idea where your trade pack can be turned in at? Open your map, go to merchants (make sure all is clicked) and put a check by gold trader. That’s the person you’re looking for in whatever zone you want to deliver at. Remember, generic trade packs don’t have a quest. You just make a specialty pack (at a workbench, you can also mark these on the map) and pick a trader to deliver it to. If you don’t want gold, and you want tokens or resources, you will need to look into cross continent trading.
A few other handy posts I read up on before making my trade pack exploration runs. Remember most of the information is actually NOT for the NA version of the game, so it may be outdated, and wrong. For example the pack values, and the names of the packs.
Have fun, and good luck!
Bear in mind that (unless things have changed since Alpha) the donkey will get a carrot-based speed boost at level 20, which makes them a MUCH more attractive option at that point. At that point and with the buff they’re not quite as fast as carriages, but close, and the buff can be reapplied every minute at the cost of a carrot.
I tried riding my donkey everywhere to level it, but in the end the fastest thing to do was simply to fight stuff with it out. It’s a little tedious to get it to 20 but not terrible.