So I've put about 20 hours into the game, and I think I've done a little less than half of the game so far. I went with a charismatic character hoping that would make items cheaper to buy and easier to sell. However, that hasn't helped me at all. Ammo and stimpacks are rediculously expensive where I basically spend all my caps just to be able to use my gun. So, have you guys found any good ways of making a large amount of caps? About all I've done are pack all the guns I find from enemies to Piper and sell them to vendors.

P.S. Don't tell me about the infinite caps glitch. I don't want to exploit in this playthrough

Lol 90 hours in and I JUST got to a point where I have a lot of caps. You do a quest, get caps, spend it on ammo and stimpaks and do the next quest. Like a mercenary. Caps are hard to come by.

When you get a settlement build a scavinger station and assign a settler to it. Check the settlement workbench for stuff. Caps doesn't seem so needed ... (very hard difficulty)

There are plenty of ways to get lots of caps depending on how you like to play.

You can get fortune finder/scrounger. I've found that at only rank 2 of each about 70% of random desks have 10-15 caps in them and about 40% have a bit of ammo, which can add up. I would have never taken this in prevous games, but looting stuff only takes a nanosecond in FO4, so the extra drops add up quickly.

You can use charisma and trading to get lots of caps. High charisma will make your stuff sell for more money. Get a suit, hat, and glasses that boost charisma by at total of +4 and wear them while selling stuff. If you are going to sell expensive stuff or buy something pricey eat graqe mentats first to make the price really good (they are craftable at chem stations).

But the easiest way I have found to make caps is by creating a massive water purification center in Sanctuary. With rank one science you can build industrial water purifiers and large generators, slap them in the river, and just sit back and let them manufacture purified water. My settlement is far from being optimized and it produces over 2000 caps worth of water per day, not even counting the food and trade it generates.

This is not necessarily how to make a lot of caps but a way to save some.

Cook meat! There are so many critters you kill, save and cook their meat to use for healing instead of stimpacks. The healing amounts are very good and many also give bonuses to AP, END and other stats for short periods. Once I figured this out I haven't purchased a stimpack since, and haven't had a single problem healing up. I still carry stimpacks because I have them on a hot key in case I get into trouble, but I mostly heal up with meat. Also, cooking it removes the rads that you get from raw meat so that's another thing you eliminate. The only trade off is that cooked meat has weight that adds to your carryweight total.

Another thing I've learned is find and craft weapons that raiders use because you seem to fight a LOT of raiders in this game at least early on. Basically the guns made from pipe that use .38 ammo. Get at least the first rank of Gun Nut and you can actually craft some pretty damn good weapons, and I seem to always have a ton of .38 ammo. 10mm also seems to be pretty abundant so I basically have a beefed up rifle and 10mm pistol with glow sights and large mag and haven't had to buy any ammo at all.

Also, I'm a loot-a-holic and pick up everything not tied down. I've been able to find pretty good armor that has already been crafted and beefed up, so I sell almost every piece of armor I loot. Use a companion to help you haul it all back to your base if you need to.

This will be controversial to many, but to save time I wait to loot an area after it's been cleared as opposed to looting it as I go through it. Once it's cleared and I start loading myself and companion up if I go past my weight limit I just use TGM so I can still run and loot it quicker and get everything out in one haul. I don't feel it's cheating that much as I could make 2 or 3 trips if I needed to to get it all hauled back to base, this just saves a little time and monotony. It's not like I'm really "cheating" that much and going through combat in god mode, I'm just hauling off loot back to base. Obviously, if you don't like to "cheat" ignore this method.

Hope that helps!

I have found as much Charisma clothes I could find. I get +5 Charisma when I put them on which brings my total to 11 along with Barter rank 2. I put them on when I go to vendors and get great deals. I'm also strictly using rifles and shotguns so I sell all ammo that I don't use which brings in a lot of caps. Cook up steaks and other food and sell them for a decent amount because I have plenty of stimpacks and water for HP. I sell a lot of heavy weapons that I come across.

Also a good way is to collect all weapons whenever your doing a mission or clearing a building and stash them near a door or in a obvious location then you can just go back and forth selling everything.

If you build a water purification plant, you can use purified water instead of stimpacks.

Plus you need purified water for the recipe at the cooking station,

that makes vegetable starch, which you can break down for adhesive(!).

Take one or two ranks of the medic perk, and purified water heals a lot.

I have 80 stimpacks because of this method.

But doesn't P-Water have a weight, unlike stims? Wouldn't having a number of them start to weigh you down too much/ get in the way of looting? I think just selling the water for proper stims is the better idea, just from a carry weight standpoint

But to answer the OP; Settlements. Sell water, sell food (some are actually not too badly priced. I think Mutfruit goes for 5 caps?), load-up on scavenger stations and sell what they find. The traders don't make much, so just use them as vendors to quickly sell everything to.

explore, loot, kill, sell what you dont want. you should entirely be able to live off the land and never need to buy anything. One cannot thrift themselves into prosperity but controlled spending helps.

Watch the "junk". Junk includes Gold bars worth 400 caps apiece. Yes you need gold for crafting sometimes but if you're focused on caps, you might be able to grab some of that junk and sell it instead.

I just carry around 10 purified water or so. That will last me a couple of quests, then I can go restock.

The water is automatically put into you workbench. I like to carry both stims and water.

Stims for a sticky situation and water when I have more time and space to heal.

And rank 3 Lifegiver for the rest lol.

[Edit] - And I would rather carry a bit of water around, than looting one extra pipe pistol or whatever.

High charisma, right perks and settlements with excess purified water:D

20 hours in and a little less than half of the game?

I'm 45 hours in and have barely scratched the surface. I guess it's about play style.

Anyways, cook. Be a chef. Selling meats that have been cooked seems to be one of the easiest ways to make money in the in game economy. Deathclaw steaks are 50 caps!

Loot the root cellar in sanctuary, sell gold bars, build water purifiers and sell water, cook everything.

Cash registers. Pre-war money. That is all.

Most registers will have 13-26 or something like that pre-war money in them... With no barter perks, or magazines, or charisma they are worth 4 caps each... So basically you come across a cash register and it has 20 pre-war money, you are basically looting 80 caps from it. You get a couple barter perks and magazines and it gets bumped up to 5 or even 6 each and you start rolling in cash.

That and sell heavy weapons. Especially legendary heavies...

And grenades. I don't use grenades so they just pile up and pile up and eventually I just have a stack of like 60 of them in my weapon box... 60x25... Caps galore.

Go to Diamond City. Go to the Bar in the upper stands, do the quest for Cooke regarding a drug deal. Selling all of the chems of should net you around 7,000 caps.

I don't find myself needing to buy stim packs. Exploring interiors of buildings yields a lot of gear, and caps.
I'm playing with a luck of 2, and don't want for much of anything. I can't afford the fancy weapons, but I'm not really finding myself needing them.

Lots of good suggestions in here - I have found the fact that I have to keep an eye on my caps and ammo to make the game much more entertaining. I do sell off the ammo I don't use to be able to buy the ammo I do use and don't find as much - I like my .50 Sniper rifle (very hard to find ammo for it), and the plasma cells, once I found and upgraded a plasma gun.

If you collect a lot of chems you don't use, sell those, they add up. I only use Stimpaks and Psychobuff, I sell almost all the Jet I find, and I find a lot. And some of the meat you cook has some excellent buffs - extra AP, HP boost, carry-weight boost, etc.

Lastly, I have tons of fusion core- so I don't worry about powering my various suits of power armor too much. When a core gets down under 25%, just sell it