Roguefort: Money-Making Guide

Vendor Prices

Each item shows its value on its card. Vendors pay you a share of that value:

Price Modifiers

• Unidentified gear sells at half price. Identify Rare and better drops first (see Gear and Flora).
• General traders pay nothing for common flora, planks, logs, or stone.
• Each vendor has a limited purse that refills over time. Selling everything in one shop empties it, so split big sales across two or three shops or towns.
• Standing lowers your prices in a faction’s towns. It only affects what you pay when buying.

Higher standing also unlocks more quests that pay better. Choose one faction early and keep raising it.

Trophies

Trophies drop from notable kills. They have no crafting or quest use, so selling them is always safe. The right buyer pays 100% of their value, while a general trader pays only 25%.

Where to sell: butcher, beast handler, or chandler.

One Alpha Pelt sold to a butcher earns more than a full pack of common herbs sold to anyone.

Cooked Meals

Meals are the best early earner. Quests and hunting supply meat, a few farm plots supply crops, and you know every meal recipe from the start. A finished meal is worth much more than its ingredients.

Meal Tips

• Sell meals to a healer. The game counts meals as consumables, not food. A general store pays 25% for them; a healer pays 40%.
• Try a cheese merchant. In the selling code, a cheese merchant pays 60% for any consumable with an effect. Meals have one, so a Miner’s Pasty can fetch ~27. The in-game help doesn’t mention this and a patch may change it, so check the trade window.
• Hunter’s Roast and Shepherd’s Skillet need no bread. Hunting, foraging, and your farm cover every ingredient, so the whole sale is profit.
• Build a stove. Hunter’s Roast needs well-cooked meat, and only a stove makes it. A campfire gives plain cooked meat.
• Bread costs 2 to 4 gold. Bakers in larger settlements are the cheapest and stock up to 14 loaves. To bake your own, grind wheat into flour at a workbench, then bake 2 flour into a loaf at a campfire or stove.
• Don’t buy meals to resell. A baker charges 46 for a Miner’s Pasty, and you’ll get 18 back.

Aged Cheese

Cheese is the main money-maker. A cheese merchant pays 60% of a wheel’s value, or 90% for the cheese in demand. That value climbs steeply with tier, age, and quality.

Production Chain

1. Cheese Vat: mix milk with a culture to get curd. Cultures come from cheese merchants and beehives, or you can combine two spoiled milks into one at a workbench.
2. Cheese Press: press curd with flora, following a recipe you know, to get a wheel. All tier 1 recipes are known from the start.
3. Age the wheel: your pack works, but a Cheese Cave is much better. It ages up to 5 wheels at 2× speed and adds +15 quality on collection. It costs 10 planks and 8 stone. Racks in a Working Cheese Cave add +20 instead.
4. Sell it, deliver it for a commission, or eat it.

You don’t need a full homestead. A vat can go at camp or anywhere outside a settlement.

Tier Values

Quality

Quality multiplies a wheel’s value:

Quality comes from a Cheese Cave (+15), a Working Cheese Cave rack (+20), and your affineur rank. Your rank rises with every cheese you make and adds up to +10 quality and up to 20% faster ageing.

Worked Example

• A Masterwork Sagefold Reserve is worth 78 × 3 = 234 gold.
• A cheese merchant pays ~140 for it, or ~210 when Sagefold is in demand.
• A Masterwork tier 4 wheel (300 × 3 = 900) sells for ~540, or ~810 in demand.

Raw milk, by comparison, is worth only 3 to 28 gold.

Cheese Tips

• Don’t sell raw milk. Turn it into cheese, even if that’s only Whey Curd.
• Check each town’s cheese in demand before you bring a load. Getting 90% instead of 60% is a free 50% raise.
• Take commissions. Head affineurs in cheese caves ask for specific cheeses. They pay on top of the wheel and raise your standing.
• Collect blueprints. Tier 2–4 recipes come from loot, shops, and commissions. Each recipe you learn is a new product line.
• Make the top recipe in each tier. Golden Whey Reserve (40) is worth more than any other tier 2 cheese (24). Sagefold Reserve (78) beats every other tier 3 cheese (60).
• Season Wheels age only in a cheese cave or the Reserve Cellar, never in your pack. Eating one gives a day-long buff and a permanent bonus, once per run for each kind. Eat your first of each kind and sell any later ones.
• Hold on to what you need. Keep the spell wheels you use. If you plan to affinage a legendary, save a Rare and a Legendary cheese.

Gear and Flora

Gear value rises fast with rarity:

• Identify Rare and higher drops before selling. Unidentified gear goes for half.
• The cheapest way to identify is Affineur’s Nose. You can make this cheese from turn one at a workbench with 2 Wild Garlic and 1 Fresh Curd. Eat it, then choose the item. A scholar, archivist, or copyist charges 25 gold per item, and a blacksmith charges 40.
• Keep the gear you’ll wear and sell the rest to a blacksmith (40%).
• Salvage pieces worth only a few gold rather than selling them. Lock your best gear before you use Salvage Junk.

Rare Flora

Dungeon mushrooms are the only flora worth selling directly. Sell them to an herbalist or alchemist (40%):

Other flora, such as herbs, spices, and flowers, maxes out at about 16 and earns more pressed into cheese. Some rare mushrooms hide when you get within 2 tiles, so sneak up on them.

High-tier cultures are valuable too (Dragonblood 400, Moonculture 300, Moonsalt 220), and alchemists buy them. Still, you’ll usually want them for tier 3–4 cheese.

What Not to Sell

• Fish. Even epic deep-water fish are worth just 20–35. Fishing rewards skill and food, not gold. If you have to sell, fishmongers in coastal towns buy fish.
• Raw materials like wood, stone, hides, and silk sell for 25% or less. Craft with them or save them for set gear.
• Catalysts and rare materials like Curd of Ages or Heart of the Land are worth more to you than to any shop.
• Common herbs. Press them into cheese instead.

Quests and Paid Work

• Tutor lessons. Each of the 15 tutors teaches one trade and pays out gold, XP, and kit. Finish them early.
• Quests. Right-click anyone with a quest marker. Bounties, deliveries, cheese commissions, and dungeon clears are generated from that person’s trade and your standing. Higher standing brings more offers that pay better.
• Pick up quests before clearing dungeons. Clear and find quests count work you’ve already done. Collect a region’s quests first, then clear its dungeons and turn them in.
• Flora jobs. At Neutral standing or higher, cheese-cave apprentices pay you to gather flora. Herbalists may also offer flora commissions.
• Treasure maps mark a cache on your world map with an ✕. Travel there and Dig.
• Creature gold. Tougher creatures drop more gold: Famine Cantor 28, Leviathan 20, Revenant and Ghost Ship 15, Giant Squid and Mimic 12.
• The Old Mouth auction house lets you sell to other players at player prices. It takes 5% of each sale, and an unsold lot costs you its deposit, so price with care.

Homestead Income

A homestead earns no rent or interest, but it keeps producing while you’re away.

Livestock

A dairy herd feeding a cheese cave is the strongest long-term income source in the game. Buy animals from herders, or tame them with a taming rope, which is used up on every attempt. Fence in a pasture and keep its trough full. Better feed makes animals happier and their milk better.

Start with a Dairy Cow, the best common milker for the gold. The Golden Cow is the best upgrade for volume. Rarer breeds give rarer milk for higher-tier cheese.

Mines

• A Mine produces gold on its own. It needs a blueprint and costs 18 planks, 27 stone, and 38 gold.
• Each extra mine adds less than the previous one, so 2–3 is usually enough.
• The Deep Veins track in the Ledger adds +10% mine gold per rank.

Workers

Each human worker costs 1 gold every 5 turns (~200 gold per 1,000 turns), plus a Cottage and food. Workers save you time rather than earning money directly.

• Prospector (38 gold to build): mines gold veins into Gold Nuggets worth ~3 gold each, and the veins run out. Once wages are counted, it rarely pays for itself. Build one only next to a large cluster of veins.
• Crop-Tender: keeps your farm plots harvested. Crops never spoil, and they feed both your meals and your workers.
• Golems (Marble Golem blueprint): draw no wages. Once you have the blueprint, they’re the cheapest source of wood and stone.
• Before a long trip, make sure your purse covers wages. Unpaid workers stop eating, get upset, and may quit.

Other Notes

• Bee Boxes (wild honey about every 400 turns) and Silk Weavers (spider silk every 60) supply crafting, not sales.
• Kills by turrets, ballistas, and catapults pay only a quarter of the gold. Traps, soldiers, and companions earn the full amount.
• Items you drop near your home fire never rot.

The Ledger

Open the Ledger from the panel hub (Shift + E) and spend spare gold on permanent upgrades.

What to Buy First

• Counting House rank 1 (100 gold) once you have about 5 workers. It saves ~100 gold per 1,000 turns, so it pays for itself in about 1,000 turns.
• Deep Veins ranks 1–2 as soon as you own a Mine.
• Later ranks (1,600 / 2,500) take a long time to pay back. Buy them when gold is piling up with nothing better to spend it on.
• Deep Niches and Cooper’s Art are endgame gold sinks for ageing Season Wheels.

Gold Find

Stacking gold find adds up if you kill a lot. These are the sources in v0.32.4.

Perks

Tradition Upgrades

• Bloomy: Diplomat’s Aura (+6%), Market Tap (+4%), Open Palm (+2 gold per kill), Faction Blessing (+20% gold from faction quests), Silver Tongue (-5% buy prices)
• Veined: Treasure Sense (+7%), Signpost Reader (+5%)

Gear Sets

The gear affixes Fortunate and “of Fortune” also add gold find.

Gold find only increases gold drops. For most players, cheese and trophies still earn more than a kill build, so treat gold find as a bonus on top rather than a replacement.

Plan by Stage

First Days

• Complete the tutor lessons for their gold.
• Sell every trophy to a butcher, beast handler, or chandler.
• Plant a few farm plots. Cook Hunter’s Roast and Shepherd’s Skillet from hunted meat and crops, then sell them to healers.
• Make any milk you get into Whey Curd (16) instead of selling it raw.
• Make Affineur’s Nose to identify drops for free.

Early Game

• Build a Cheese Vat and a Cheese Press at camp.
• Buy or tame a Dairy Cow (80) or a Dairy Goat (50).
• Press tier 2 wheels (Golden Whey Reserve if you have Sunpetal) and age them for 500 turns.
• Sell to cheese merchants, favour the cheese in demand, and take cheese-cave commissions.

Mid-Game

• Build a Cheese Cave (+15 quality, 2× ageing speed).
• Age tier 3 wheels, starting with Sagefold Reserve, to Superior or Masterwork.
• Identify spare Epic gear and sell it to blacksmiths.
• Raise your standing with one faction for discounts and better quests.
• Buy or tame a Water Buffalo or a Golden Cow.

Late Game

• Feed a herd of rare milkers into a Working Cheese Cave and press tier 4 wheels (300 base, ~810 each at Masterwork when in demand).
• Build Mines once you find the blueprint, and buy Deep Veins ranks.
• Age Season Wheels. Eat one of each kind for the permanent bonus and sell the extras.
• Use the Old Mouth’s auction house when you want player prices.

Tips and Mistakes

• You can find the spider silk for a taming rope in dungeons.
• Before bringing a load, check which cheese is in demand: 90% vs 60%.
• Split each big sale over two or three shops so you don’t empty one purse.
• Spend on things that earn their cost back: a cheese cave, livestock, recipes, and early Ledger ranks.
• Collect a town’s quests before you clear the dungeons near it.
• Bigger packs save trips: Traveller’s Pack (30 slots) for 100 gold, Adventurer’s Rucksack (38) for 400, up to an 88-slot pack for 40,000.
• A Germinator turns a plant back into seeds, so you can farm the flora your best cheese needs.

Common Mistakes

• Selling trophies to a general trader. You lose 75% of their value.
• Selling meals to a general store instead of a healer or cheese merchant.
• Selling raw milk or common herbs instead of pressing them into cheese.
• Selling unidentified Rare+ gear at half price.
• Fishing for money. Fishing is for skill and food.
• Building a Prospector next to only a few veins. It won’t cover its wages.
• Dying with a full purse. On Wayfarer, you lose some gold when you die, so spend it on upgrades before risky dungeons.