As I have always been a fan of having alot of money in games, I decided I wanted to try to make a business man (lizard). A noble, if you will. Im playing on master, and I will not be using any good armor. Any ideas on how I can acquire said wealth, without having to dungeon crawl? Say, level speech craft and buy / sell from town to town?

Well, you could do a dungeon crawl with a mercenary hired to do your bidding. Speech will pretty much always give you a worse price, so i don't think that's a viable solution. If you're not intending to work, I'd suggest doing all speechcraft related quests, and having a mercenary as a bodyguard at all times.

Speech will give worse prices? I just checked the skill tree, if you will call it that, and alot of the perks are 10% cheaper etc etc. I like the bodyguard idea!

Worse prices meaning no matter how good your speechcraft you will never turn a profit on buying a sword from one shop and selling it to another. It's not got an economy like Fable.

For your first bodyguard you could always do the love triangle quest in Riverwood.

You'd want a heavy guy for a bodyguard, not a stealthy character. Svard at the Inn in Windhelm would be a good shout, though you'd have to beat him in a fistfight.

Well you could always pickpocket....they made pickpocket very relevant in this game because nearly every NPC carries enchanted trinkets, or just gems, and jewelry, and of course Septims. Then with your high speech, fence those pickpocketed trinkets to people for gold.

But that makes you play a thief to enhance your merchanting.

Rely on crafting, chopping firewood and creating potions to sell. Hire a heavy armoured bodyguard for gathering ores/pelts/herbs.

Also what others are saying OP, hire bodyguards, and perhaps heal them with resto's Healing Hands?

It could work man. Especially if you pimp your hirelings out with good gear you got by being an all-star merchant.

Im always open to new ways of increasing my wealth

I think Ill hire a heavy bodyguard and only level stamina.

Pickpocket in all the major towns, you level so fast perk up pickpocket and speech.

Looks like Dragonsreach is out of cutlery. I wonder why .. :whistling:

You can marry into wealth. Marry a woman who lives at a merchant and kill her brother or whatever then you can loot everything in the store and get profits from it.

I don't think you can profit from bartering.. certainly not at low levels anyway.

I've heard you can just set your character to chop wood then walk away for a couple hours and come back with 10k earned? Haven't tried it myself.

To me the best way to make money legitimately is walk the rivers and hunt animals and harvest ingredients. Make leather from the hides, then craft armor, improve it, sell it. Make potions from ingredients and sell the potions you don't want. Repeat.

I don't tend to make much money from adventuring because I only pick up items with a 10 to 1 weight to gold ration or better. Otherwise I get over encumbered too fast and the return isn't worth it.

Get the steed stone birth sign so you can carry 100 pounds more. Helps a lot to carry more weight so you can sell more stuff.

Invest in shops should help as well as obviously investing in the speech tree.

If you aren't opposed to pickpocketing

Then you should pick like a damn fiend man. It levels EXTREMELY FAST once you get a foot hold and can easily snatch like Amethysts off of people. Also here if how I would personally approach your playstyle.

Pickpocketing.
Speech
Restoration to 50 (for healing hands to heal your team mates)
Then conjuration to summon more helpers to fight for you

After that its up to you.

Yes, hirelings are nice to have, also conjuration, for summoning more guards for your caravan, a little resto for healing, also you could start a certain quest in Falkreath, that gives you an (essential) dog by your side as long as you decide not to continue said mission, because as far as i know this guy doesnt count as follower so you can have another mercenary AND a summon with you

Marry a partner with a store they give you money =D

You could chop wood? or perhaps just pick flowers and sell them to an alchemy shop? I dunno, but look at my sig. Don't wear a hat!

Yeah buy a wardog too.

Woodcut --> get married (money gainer) --> move in with partner. I actually don't think you can viably play s businessman unless you are a thief.

I am really liking this idea, I'd like to try a character that worked like that.

You wouldn't even really have to visit any dungeons right away, just build your fortune off crafting and pelt hunting, and before long, you'll be more able as a trader, establshing your own "trading routes" from village to village and hold to hold.

I wonder, how many followers can a person have at maximum at a time?