Making Money

There are hundreds of things to spend money on, and a lot of things in the game are very expensive. Your Character normally starts the game broke and with minimal gear, but useful things like Implants, nice vehicles, or machine guns can cost thousands of OH$.

So how do you make money?

## At start

Your first goal is to get at least $100 so you bribe the guards at The guard post to let you cross into the Cinci Slums.
Your options are basically Physical labor or working the stalls at the Border Market. Do both, as much as you can, and otherwise bum around and try to get items, mostly drugs and scrounged ammo. Keep both of them - the people who buy drugs and ammo in the Bordertown do not give very good money for them.
Until you enter the slums, the game time doesn't really advance, so there's no real penalty for hanging out in the Bordertown. With some effort, it's possible to earn $1,000+ before you cross the border.

### There's more profit when you don't buy stuff

If your character has high Reflex and low morals, you might want to consider acquiring stuff for sale by stealing it. Especially at the beginning, this is risky because you aren't skilled, and when you're caught you can be banned from a store, have your money confiscated, or get beaten for Injury or Major Wounds. You should consider running shell games and performing other relatively low risk actions that raise your Skill/Sleight of hand before attempting theft, but once you're good at it, stealing stuff is a good way of improving your profits.

You will almost certainly get Temperament/Trickster this way.

## Next steps

After you are in the Slums, spend some time learning your way around. After you know the way to Gamble Street Market and have familiarity with it, it's safe to take errands at the Noodle Bar. You'll generally be buying things at Green Dragon Xpress and delivering them for a few dollars of profit, but sometimes you'll need to deliver Bulk Shrimp Cakes from the Fish stalls, which pays a little better.

You can also back to the Bordertown and work at the market. With a decent Charisma and Skill/Business, you can make $30-$40 per action in the markets at minimal risk, and $300-$500 per 50 actions spent in the Bordertowns.

### The Dirty White Capsule Lottery

You will often find Dirty White Capsules (DWC) in random locations, or you can buy them for about $10 for 10 capsules from the Street Sellers card in the Slums. DWC can be identified, either at the Good Doctor in the Cinci Bordertown (who charges 1 action, $1, and 1 pill to identify 7 DWC) or at Jax's place in the Cinci Slums (who charges 1 actions and 1 pill to identify 30 DWC). Identified DWC become some other drug - most often Cheap amphetamines, but there's a chance of DWC becoming Military grade amphetamines, Designer amphetamines, Anabolic steroids, Modafinil, or Anti-Psychotics - roughly 2% chance for each drug type. Each of those drugs can sell for $20 or more per pill when Working the Streets, so $10 worth of DWC contains $30 or more worth of value, if you can sell the resulting drugs.

Playing the DWC Lotto is both enormously profitable and very low investment, so it should be one of your primary ways to make money early in the game. And arguably late in the game, too.

### A Fortune in Fuel

You should be working on this storyline, possibly as a Background consideration. It's conservatively worth $80,000 if you do the simple thing and sell it to Contact/Smith, and possibly more if you decide to build Your Fuel Depot. However, your own depot requires roughly $10,000 in supplies, a Trusted Sidekick, and a large Bordertown work crew, so you may just want sell it to Smith.

### The Body Trade

At some point, the Backstreet Clinic will request that you start supplying them organs. This is illegal and questionably moral, but this is a cyberpunk game so that's part of the appeal. Investigating back alleys in the Slums is an easy way to find the required 7 organs per week, and although the quality is often terrible, you're still pulling in $2,000+ in a week.

### The Dump Trade

You'll need a Flatbed Truck for this, but if you have one, you can go to the Cinci Dump and make some money.

The unreliable way is to buy Organic Waste from the Incinerator and sell it to the Ethanol Plant. 5 actions and $450 to buy the stuff, 6 actions and around 32 ethanol to transport the stuff, and 10 actions to sell the stuff and you earn $1,200. It's pretty good money, but the Incinerator doesn't always have Organic Waste and uselessly driving back and forth to check eats into your profits. You can do a little better by setting Logistic Teams at the Dump and at the Bordertown, and then you can leave the behind and walk, or drive a Dirt Bike or other fuel efficient vehicle. However, that requires decent sized Crews in both locations and two flatbed trucks, so it's not easy when you're starting out.

The risky way is to buy rare goods, like Prescription Drugs or dead bodies, from the Incinerator, and sell them through Working the Streets. If you can afford to buy Prescription Drugs ($3,750 for 10) and manage to sell them by Making a Big Deal, you'll get paid $7,200 or more - a $3,000 profit. Dead bodies cost about half as much and sell for half as much, but you don't need to Make a Big Deal to do that, and you're still profiting to the tune of $1,500 or more. Either way, you'll want a lot of Supply and Demand saved up.

You can also sort through junk piles for valuable stuff, or at least stuff that might be valuable. Wear an outfit that has high Dressed for the wild and bring a Filter mask if you own one.

### Catfish

Growing catfish at Your Bordertown Crash Pad is fairly profitable, but it's not profitable enough to put off setting up your own fuel depot if you go down that route. Still, with a large supply of bulk shrimp cakes and Logistics Teams on both sides of the border, you can be earning $400 or more after expenses, once or twice a week. You can do better by having high quality logistics teams or a lot of crew and selling live catfish, but it's a tricky thing to arrange.

It's possible, with a lot of shrimp cakes, high Skill/Business, and large Crews on both sides of the border, to sell 4-5 loads of live catfish in a week, for $6,000 in sales and around $5,000 in profit. But if you're doing that well, you probably don't need this guide.

### The Airport

The Airport is far away, and a little confusing and intimidating at first, but there are some straightforward ways to make money there.

You'll probably want a Dirt Bike and a lot of fuel to get to the Airport, but you can buy both on the cheap at the Ethanol Plant in the Cinci Bordertown. At the Airport, build up some Familiarity and then you have two decent options for making money: doing the driving job at the Work Crews or going to the Capsule Hotel. You have to spend $30 on bribes to get into the back of the hotel, but there you can sell Basic Entertainment SensPerience spikes for $15-25 each. Since you can buy those at about $6 from random dealers in Cinci Slums, this is a reliably profitable way to make money, if not particularly quick.

## Day 50+

At some point, you're going to either work with Contact/Zane or kill him. Either way, you'll be able to add pimping to your resume. Contact/Ann likes being sent out on the streets, and she'll happily give you all the money she makes. Alternately, you can take over the stable, set up a Pimping Crew, and make serious money.

This is a reasonable estimate for the net weekly income for an established player:

 Pimping Ann every other day | $150

You're making $11,000 every week from your regular activities, plus bonus money from running errands, chasing down people betrayed K'Bo, or selling stuff from Zane's stashes.

If you install every implant at the Backstreet clinic as rapidly as you can, you need to earn roughly $5,000 each week to not go into debt. So even at midgame, you should be well on your way.