******************************************************************************* DEAD ISLAND A Money Making FAQ/Walkthrough by Ice_Shield Version 0.8 E-mail xMarineSnowx@gmail.com ******************************************************************************* 0. Version History & Contact 1. Introduction 2. Getting Started 3. Items Involved 3A. Brand Champagne & Diamonds 3B. Alcohol & Molotovs 3C. Cellphones 3D. Oleander & EXP 3E. Safes and Cash Registers 4. Money Making/Farming Tactics 4A. Act 1 4A1. Hotel 4B. Act 2 4B1. Warehouse 4B2. Supermarket 4B3. Mayor's Office 4B4. Abandoned House 4C. Act 3 4C1. Gun Shop 4D. Act 4 4D1. Laboratory 5. Q&A 6. Credits ******************************************************************************* 0. VERSION & CONTACT ******************************************************************************* ===== Version History ===== Version 0.8 (Sept 16th, 2011): + Updated Money Making/Farming Tactics with a money scale + Added Gun Shop to Act 3 and Hotel to Act 1 + Added on Square option to Laboratory Version 0.7 (Sept 14th, 2011): + Created FAQ + Created Version History & Contact + Created Introduction + Created Getting Started + Created Items Involved and all subparts + Created Money Making/Farming Tactics and all subparts + Created Q&A + Created Credits ===== Contact ===== If you spot any errors, have additional information to give me or just wanna say hey, you can email me at xMarineSnowx@gmail.com If you wish to have this hosted on your site, please also send me an email. This FAQ is only to be used by GameFAQs. Please don't sell it or all of that other crap, although I don't know anyone stupid enough to buy a user written FAQ. ******************************************************************************* 1. INTRODUCTION ******************************************************************************* So I wrote this guide after being on the GameFAQs forums and realizing that the majority of players either (A) Didn't have enough money to enjoy the game, (B) Duped all of their inventory to make money or (C) Didn't do A or B. I've seen people come up with ideas on how to make money in the game, and some of them are good while others can be improved a lot. I've come up with my own way of making money in the game and it's pretty wonderful, so I decided to make this guide, to make a compendium of money making techniques. So, here it is! I am going to assume that you, as a player, already know how Dead Island works. I'm not going to explain how items are repaired or any other gameplay knowledge that does not deal with money making. If you need help with these things you are looking in the wrong FAQ. ******************************************************************************* 2. GETTING STARTED ******************************************************************************* *THIS FAQ WILL NOT DEAL WITH DUPLICATING ITEMS! Anyone who suggests to me that you can duplicate items, tells me that this FAQ is pointless, or insists that I am "ignoring" item duplication will be ignored. If you want to duplicate items, go ahead, but I will not tell you how nor post ways to duplicate items/money/weapons/whatever. DON'T ASK! Some of these ways to make money will revolve around being at a certain part of the game. That being said, there will be ways someone in Act 1 cannot take part in because you need to be at Act 4. The farther you are along in the game, the better it is to make money, due to the many different ways you can choose. Note that this is not always the case, since some ways will change due to storyline and may increase or decrease the "payoff" of the area. A key note to also remember is that money dropped is related to character level and skill points distributed. If the player has a skill that increases total money found, they will obviously work better in situations where you pick up more money as opposed to finding items and selling them. Likewise, a person of a low level will find less money, so a situation where items are found and sold prove to be the best. Finally, some ways to find money that are listed involve randomosity. This means that you could get lucky and find rare items constantly, or that you could go for a long while without finding any rare items. The ways listed will always be the best ways to help you beat out that randomosity. ******************************************************************************* 3. ITEMS INVOLVED ******************************************************************************* Some of these ways to make money will involve looting places in hopes of finding certain items. Here I'll be listing items which are key to making money and the reasons why they're "worth it". ================================ 3A. Brand Champagne & Diamonds = ================================ Brand Champagne: A semi-event drop (meaning it can only be found in certain locations) that can be traded in to an NPC (Svetlana) for 100xp and 1 Diamonds. Diamonds: A rare event drop (meaning it can only be found through an event or in a container that is programmed to only drop Diamonds. Champagne and Diamonds are famous in the game because they can only be found in certain locations, they're worth a lot, they revolve around certain quests, and finally they're needed to create certain weapons. Champagne can only be found in certain fridges that are sporadically located around the game map, mostly in areas that hard to access. Diamonds can only be found in one container and the rest must be traded from Svetlana. Svetlana is located on the Resort area (the beach, Act 1) of the game and can be found at the very far left corner of the map. More specifically, she's in the very last bungalow at the top right of the map. She will activate a continuous quest in which you'll have to bring her Champagne. For each bottle of Brand Champagne she'll give you Diamonds and 100xp. So, Champagne is theoretically worth $1500. ========================= 3B. Alcohol & Molotov's = ========================= Bottles of Alcohol can be found all around the island. There are about four quests in the game which use Alcohol to complete, and I'm not talking one bottle for each, I'm talking copious amounts. There's one quest that requires 15 Alcohol to complete! There are also at least three quests that involve trading in Alcohol for explosives. These quests are continuous so you can complete them multiple times. Now the reason I'm talking about Molotov's is because for every three bottles of Alcohol you collect, you can get 1 Molotov from a continuous quest, which means that in total you can collect a crapton of Molotov's. Molotov's are worth upwards of $400 each, so it's nice to collect alcohol whenever you can. Besides having extra Molotovs is never, ever a bad thing. ================ 3C. Cellphones = ================ Cellphones aren't something you're going to spend time hunting; you're going to find them all over the island, all of the time. Each Cellphone is worth $42 and you can easily find ten in a minute if you're looking through a bunch of luggage. Since they're so easy to be found (especially in Act 1) and you don't really need them, they should be one of your first sources of income if you're strapped for cash. ==================== 3D. Oleander & EXP = ==================== Now while this isn't really for money, it's more for EXP, and it's one of the easiest and fastest ways to make a lot of EXP. Right after you meet the NPC named Ope you will start a quest which involves you to gather 5 Oleander in exchange for some money and 1000xp. The money is only $1, so don't get too excited. However, this is an NPC that sells Oleander. In fact, it's $112 for each Oleander. So, 5 Oleander comes up to $660. Mathematically, thit means that each $660 is worth 1000xp, and that each $2 will gain you about 3 exp. You have $20,000? That's worth 30,000 exp! So, if you really wanted to, you could call this guide a Money Making / EXP Farming Guide if you wanted too, considering money directly equals EXP. That's why I've included this. ============================== 3E. Safes and Cash Registers = ============================== Throughout the game you'll find Cash Registers lying around. In the beginning of the game you'll find your first one right next to the first workbench you encounter in the game. You probably opened it up and found around $300. That's about 30x what you'll find on a zombie at the beginning of the game! Later on in the game you'll find a safe. Safes are never locked and can be opened by anyone. There's a chance you'll find a wristwatch, or light fluid, but most of the time you'll find money. How much money? Well, at least $2k. Remember that higher levels will make you find more money. Around level 30 I was finding about $3-4.5k per safe (that contained money, which was 80% of the time). ******************************************************************************* 4. MONEY MAKING/FARMING TACTICS ******************************************************************************* Now it's time for the good stuff. I've broken it down to different Acts, and while you may be in Act 2, you might not be far enough into Act 2 to be able to do it correctly. That being said, I'll make notes (as good as I can) to the earliest you can achieve these methods in each act. Also, remember, item duplication will not be mentioned. I will grade each tactic by a couple parameters; Profits : How much money you can gain Difficulty: How difficult it is to complete Luck Base : How much the tactic relies on "luck" on things like looting items Repetitive: How quickly and often you'll complete the same actions I've created the following list on the best ways to make money on a scale. You can use the find codes (ctrl+f) after each to quick find. Per Hour Act Area Located FCode $310,000 (Act 4) Laboratory (4D1) $90,000 (Act 2) Supermarket (4B2) $70,000 (Act 3) Gunshop (4C1) $65,000 (Act 1) Hotel (4A1) $48,000 (Act 2) Warehouse (4B1) $30,000 (Act 2) Abandoned House (4B4) $24,000 (Act 2) Mayor's Office (4B3) Remember that money may vary depending on your level so someone level 40 will find items and money that is higher value than someone who is level 10. Some of these ways are also very luck-based, so I took the lowest and highest value you could find in an hour and averaged it. From the scale, you can obviously see that Act 4 has the best way. Since that's plenty of hours into the game, the earliest way is the Hotel at $65k an hour. Act 2 also has the second highest with the Supermarket at 90k an hour. =========== 4A. Act 1 = =========== Starting off in Act 1, you should first play out the game and get a "feel" for how you'll need money. Normally I wouldn't post things like how to make money so early in the game, but I found Act 1 to be the one place where I NEEDED money. I'd suggest doing a few of the main quests to "open up" the game. ===== 4A1. Hotel ===== Profits : $7-$15k per trip (10m), $42-$90k per hour Difficulty: 2.5/5 Luck Base : 3/5 Repetitive: 2/5 Eventually through the questline you'll get access to the hotel. Once inside you will find a few cash registers (and zombies) in the first area. Loot the registers to find about 1k per register (there are three or four registers). Now you can exit this part of the hotel and pick one of two ways. If you're feeling lucky you can run along the right hand side of the hotel and loot bags and hope for large sums of cash or rare items, or you can go back into the hotel and reloot the cash registers. You may have some luck with the bags but I find that the registers work just fine. Is it worth it? So early in the game I would say yes if you need money. I don't know why you would need to farm more than 10k or so but it definitely helps to go farming when you need it. =========== 4B. Act 2 = =========== In Act 2 you'll start in the city. The first thing you should do is complete quests that lead up to unlocking the Church and the Warehouse, in which the Warehouse is located south/southeast of the Church, which should be surrounded by zombies as indicated on your mini map. ===== 4B1. Warehouse ===== Profits : $400 per trip (30s), $48k per hour Difficulty: 1/5 Luck Base : 0/5 Repetitive: 5/5 Starting at the Warehouse, loot all of the weapons you can find. You should find a hammer, a baseball bat, and a knife all in the warehouse. Now Fast Travel to the Church and sell the items. Fast Travel back to the Warehouse and the weapons should reappear. This is the easiest way to make money in the game because it requires fighting no zombies, relies on no luck because the items will always be there, and can be done faster than any other way. The downside of this is that it's very, very monotonous and the reward isn't that great per trip. Yes, $400 every 30 seconds may seem nice especially when you don't have to fight zombies, but you'll start getting sick of this method before you even earn $10k. Is it worth it? No, but if you're in a pinch or don't like doing monotonous tasks, sure. ===== 4B2. Supermarket ===== Profits : $5-$10k per trip (5m), $60-120k per hour Difficulty: 2/5 Luck Base : 4/5 Repetitive: 2/5 As you proceed through Act 2 you will come across a quest that involves you raiding a Supermarket. The Supermarket will be FULL of gun-wielding humans, which gives it the 2/5 difficulty rating, but you only have to kill them off once, which is why it's a low rating. Inside the Supermarket you'll come across a bunch of cash registers (5 or so off the top of my head) and a bunch of coolers which can contain Champagne (and I mean a LOT of coolers). The goal here is to run in, grab what's in the cash registers and coolers (hoping for Champagne) and then run out of the place. Then you go back in and repeat the process. Since each trip takes a good five minutes, it takes quite a few runs for it to start getting annoying, but by that time you'll have raked in a bunch of cash and a few champagnes. Is it worth it? Yes, if you're at that point of the story, but you have to go through the Sewers to get there. If you know your way there, go for it, but if not you might want to stick to another tactic. ===== 4B3. Mayor's Office ===== Profits : $2k per run (5m), $24k per hour Difficulty: 2.5/5 Luck Base : 0/5 Repetitive: 3/5 Along your questline you'll receive a quest to go meet the Mayor. After this quest you'll have another quest to go back to meet him again. After you arrive back at the Mayor's Office you'll find it to be quite different than before (keeping it spoiler free). In the Mayor's room you'll find a briefcase containing Diamonds. This is one of the only places in the game where you can find Diamonds to loot, let alone that it's programmed to always be dropped. What's even better is that when you Load Last Checkpoint the Diamonds will reappear in the briefcase! You'll have to fight off some Walkers, Infected and one Suicider in the path to the Mayor's Office, but you'll always get the Diamonds. There are a few bags here and there to check through so you can rake in an extra $500 per run. It does get a little repetitive after you do it a couple of times. Is it worth it? If you need Diamonds, yes. This is the only sure-fire way to get diamonds in the game. If you're looking for money instead of diamonds, go with other methods as they're quicker, easier and involve less fighting. ===== 4B4. Abandoned House ===== Profits : ~$1k per run (2m), $30k per hour Difficulty: 2/5 Luck Base : 5/5 Repetitive: 3/5 As soon as you get into the Church you can start a sidequest where a man wants you to put his wife and child "out of their pain". You then have to go off and find their Abandonded House (which is actually somewhat of an apartment) and kill off his family (that's what the quest tells you from the beginning). Once you get into the house and kill his family you'll find the true treasure; two coolers which can be full of beautiful Champagne. They're in the rooms with the wife and child. When you're finished just walk out and back into the place and you'll be able to reloot the coolers. Your first run through you'll be greeted with a dozen or so zombies, including a few Infected, but it isn't that bad. With every run-through thereafter you'll only have to fight off around 4 zombies, so it's not that difficult. Since there are two coolers that can contain Champagne you'll be making on average about $1000 per run (or two champagne every three runs). Is it worth it? If you need Diamonds, yes. If not, somewhat, because it does rely on luck. If you're feeling lucky then go for it. If not, I would stick to another method. =========== 4C. Act 3 = =========== Act 3 for me seemed so quick that I don't really know if it's worth it to farm for money. It would probably be better to just go finish the Act and start on Act 4 for the Lab. This Act took me no more than an hour and a half to finish. Nonetheless, if you need to farm money, you can take a look at this trick. ===== 4C1. Gun Shop ===== Profits : $2-5k per trip (3m), $40-$100k per hour Difficulty: 1.5/5 Luck Base : 5/5 Repetitive: 4/5 Technically this is in the city, but you must be in Act 3 in order for this to work, so I've included it here. Go around the city and to the south you should see a building with a bunch of people trying to get inside. You should have gone by this place when doing the Cerberus quests. Once inside you'll get a Fast Travel location called "Square". Once there, head outside and go west/northwest until you see the Travel to Sewers portal. On the next block to the left is the Gun Shop. You may need to do a quest to get access to it. As you go into the gun shop there'll be a back hallway containing one metal chest and a cash register. Simply loot the contents and walk back out. Repeat. If you manage to see a weapon worth keeping or worth a lot of money in the metal chest, keep it. Is it worth it? Somewhat. The ability to always find a metal chest is great if you're looking for weapons. If not, you can make a chunk of change this way, but you're better off waiting until the Lab in Act 4 to get the big moolah. =========== 4D. Act 4 = =========== Act 4 has the BEST way to make money in the game. It's BY FAR the most profitable and there's no reason to do any other ways once you get to the Lab. ===== 4D1. Laboratory ===== Profits : $8.5-$12k per run (2m), $255-$360k per hour Difficulty: 1.5/5 Luck Base : 3/5 Repetitive: 2/5 NOTE: I have received a few emails that starting in the Abandoned House named "Square" makes more money than Jungle River. Since I don't have my game on me at the moment I can't check out the claim. I've been told that Square contains two fridges in which you can get more champagne from. It is up to you if you want to choose Square or Jungle River. If hype lives up to Square, it would more than likely add on at least $50k per hour. Credits go to PhoenixAssassin and White Knight 01 for the information. This is the end-all be-all techniques to making money. You not only profit money per run, you're also getting Champagne (Diamonds) and a crapload of Alcohol (which means Molotovs). Not to mention that there's an NPC that sells Oleander, which is involved in a continuous quest to where you gain 1k exp per 5 Oleanders. So, you can take your profits from this and get tons of EXP. To do this you need to complete the first couple of quests in the laboratory where you'll gain access to the other half of the laboratory. Once you gain access to the second part of the lab (where you save a guy from like three zombies) you can do this whenever you like. Please take note that it may take you a couple trips to get down the "feel" of the run. Start off by storing all of your weapons except for one with Jin. Travel to the Jungle River. Pick up the two bottles of alcohol and now travel to the Lab. When the loading screen goes away you'll instantly be attacked by an Infected literally right behind you. The good thing is that the game is programmed to give you a few seconds before damage starts getting taken off so you can take him down with a hit or two. Once the infected is down run into the lab. Go into the room with the Workbench and to the left of it you'll see a Safe. Open it up and grab the cash if it's in there. Once that's done, run past the janitor named Joel Dirt and grab the two bottles of alcohol in the room directly behind him. When this is done run into the lab on your right, then into the next door on your left with the NPC. In here you'll find two fridges which will either contain nothing, lemon juice, alcohol or Champagne. Hope for Champagne. When this is done, get out back to the hallway you were just in and run across into the second part of the lab (past the double doors) and go into the first room on your right. In this room you'll find a Safe against the back wall. Hope for money. Exit this room and go into the room immediately on your right. In here you'll find another Safe and another fridge. Hope for Champagne and money. If you've completed a couple more quests you can additionally go into the "quarantined" room on your left which will contain another bottle of alcohol. When this is all done run back to the map and travel back to Jungle River. Repeat the process. It sounds like a lot, I know, but once you get in there you'll realize what to get and where to go. It goes like this; Start at Jungle River +Alcohol +Alcohol Travel to Lab +Kill Infected +Safe +Alcohol +Alcohol +Fridge +Fridge +Safe +Safe +Fridge +Alcohol Repeat back at Jungle River In the end you'll get: +5 Alcohol (4 if you do not have access to the "quarantine" room) +3 Safes +3 Fridges which can contain Champagne or Alcohol I was averaging around 3.5k per safe and about two safes had money in them per run. For every three runs I got about four champagne. I also got about one extra alcohol per run from the fridges. In three runs that's 21k cash, 18 alcohol and four Champagne/Diamonds. Do this as many times as you want. When you're finished go back to the Resort area (the beach) and trade in your Champagne at Svetlana for Diamonds and your Alcohol for Molotov's from Harlan. I suggest Harlan since he only requires 3 Alcohol per Molotov while other NPC's require 5. Why Jungle River? Because you get two alcohol right after arriving. All other places didn't have anything right off the get go. Why Molotovs? Since Alcohol is received anyway, there's no point to keeping it (unless you're Logan) so you might as well make some Molotov's off of it. Now, if you want to turn that money into EXP, listen. The Janitor Joel Dirt in the Lab will sell Oleander for $112 a piece. Later in the Act you'll find someone to trade that Oleander (5 of them) for 1000 EXP (and $1). Since you'll be making about 10k per run, that's 15,000EXP per run! NOTE: If you continue with the quests in Act 4 you will complete an escort mission. After this mission is over all NPCs will vanish in the Lab which means you can no longer buy Oleander from Joel. I am unsure if other NPCs sell Oleander so you may want to hold off on that quest. Also, all doors will vanish in the Lab after this escort quest, which will make running through this loop a lot easier. Is it worth it? Yes. Yes yes yes. If you convert all of the money into EXP, including the diamonds to money to EXP, you'll be making roughly 500,000 exp per hour. Level 47 is 2m EXP and level 50 is 3m EXP, which means in four hours you can level from 1 to 47 with almost no zombie fighting whatsoever. ******************************************************************************* 5. Q&A ******************************************************************************* Q. I have a better way to farm money! A. Does it deal with duplicating items? If so, no. If not, feel free to email me, but if it isn't any better than any other technique in that Act, it's not worth adding. If it is I'll credit you! Q. Why don't you just duplicate? Lolol. A. Duplicating isn't something I like. I like being able to look at the resources in a game and play it how it was intended, not how it wasn't. If you have such a big hatred of people working for their gaming satisfaction because they won't cheat, you seriously need to prioritize your time. Q. Something you listed is incorrect. A. It could be that the game was patched to fix whatever got changed. I would assume that the Oleander quest will get patched to 100exp instead of 1000 pretty soon. If you do notice anything incorrect, send me an email and I will update it with a credit going out to you. Q. Champagne? Diamonds? Svetlana? A. Svetlana can be found in the top left bungalow on the Resort Area (beach) of the game, in Act 1. She is literally the last thing you'll find at the north east part of the map. Literally last thing. She'll give you Diamonds for every Champagne you give her. Q. I can't find Champagne! A. I've noticed places have different payout rates for Champagne. For example, the Supermarket gives less Champagne than the Lab does for some reason. I can almost always find one Champagne in the three fridges at the Lab but I can do three trips at the Supermarket and not find one Champagne in all of the freezers. Must just be my luck. Q. Why do you need all that money anyways? A. Repairing legendary weapons costs thousands and thousands of dollars. Fixing or creating a Developer weapon costs 10,000 and 10 Diamonds. And as listed you can exchange money to EXP at a 1:1.5 ratio. Q. Why don't you have any ways listed for Act 5? A. Once you're in Act 5 you can't go back, so I felt no reason why anyone should pick a "point of no return" point to start farming money. As for Act 1 and Act 3, I don't have my game on me so I don't know any specifics for those areas. They'll come in an update later in the week. Q. My game corrupted after I listened to you! A. Game Corruption may have a link to having an excess amount of items in your inventory. For this reason, if you do decide to trade the Oleander for EXP you should follow some precautions; never buy more than 99 Oleander in one sitting. Never turn off your game when the "Oleander taken" text is on the left side of your screen. Always save the game by exiting to the main menu. If you are not trading in the Oleander for EXP, nothing in this guide will make your game corrupt; NOTHING. ******************************************************************************* 6. CREDITS ******************************************************************************* Basilmarket - Just letting you know that HolyMythos is awesome ;) GameFAQs - For their site, which would leave me so much less of a gamer without Dead Island Board on GameFAQs - For being awesome and helping me with the game when I needed it Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 & 2 Board - Just so that I can say "Hollah" and that this FAQ has it written in document that I am the owner of the Knack. Hell, it was on a fortune cookie! I am the rightful owner. In closing, I'd like to thank you for reading my FAQ. If you have any questions remember to contact me at xMarineSnowx@gmail.com