X4: Foundations – Making Money Tips (Early Game)

How to Make Money Early

Please note: all credit goes to El Capitan Kirk!

As a person that insists on using mods when they’re available for a game, I’ve ruined my experience of X4 many times. There are mods to reverse the cyrstal-mining nerf, but I’d suggest pirating pirate ships and opening data vaults to make some initial credits without ruining the experience and causing you to lose interest fast.

If you ever see a medium BUC or SCA ship, they’re free game to try and steal with no relation consequences early game. There may be other factions you could do this with, but these two have relations locked until you go down their story-lines, or use mods to unlock them. You could then take these ships and sell them, or use them yourself for their intended role. There are good vids to guide you in this on YouTube.

Telling a cheap, fast ship to collect wares at several places that often see conflict is another way to get good credits early on. Use the ‘repeat orders’ default order to get them to keep doing this until you stop them.

You could also search the interwebs for where abandoned ships usually spawn at the start of a game so you can put a marine in your starter ship for each one and then fly to them and claim them. I tend to only claim two or three, a miner to start mining and an L ship to sell for credits. The miner(Argon Drill) is in the NW part of The Void (hazardous clouds are in this sector, so beware), and the L ship is in on of the Faulty Logic (Xenon sector, be careful) sectors to the W somewhere.

Doing any of these, or anything similar, will leave you with a true sense of accomplishment and prevent burn-out that can come from some methods I’ve used repeatedly in the past.

If you do search the interwebs for more, definitely look up how to steal blueprints, and how to raise reputation/relations by shooting the small criminal civilian ships that sometimes spawn when you’re close to a station.

Some of this might already be known, but someone might get something out of it later.

Egor Opleuha
About Egor Opleuha 8084 Articles
Egor Opleuha, also known as Juzzzie, is the Editor-in-Chief of Gameplay Tips. He is a writer with more than 12 years of experience in writing and editing online content. His favorite game was and still is the third part of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic saga. He prefers to spend all his free time playing retro games and new indie games.

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