So someone please tell me am I doing something really wrong? I'm level 19, and about half way through the main story, done about half the side quests. I have had (at best) 6000caps to my name, my average is about 2000. How can I get loads of caps? (My luck stat is 5, and i don't do so well at gambling.) I find it really annoying when there are all these amazing weapons...that I cannot afford. And cannot steal because I svck in stealth and am playing a good character.

level up a few more time and use intense training, invest in a luck implant and then go to the casinos, and play blackjack, that one does require some skill instead of luck. But the best way to make money is caravan, if you know how to play that then you can get tons of money

if you didnt kill house sell him snow globes at 2000 each. Also, kill allllll the van grafs loot the place and youll have so many caps you wont even be able to use them all. if you have a companion load them up and yourself. sell at gun runners, 188, crimson carivan, and mccarran............. also, go to the strip, the last gate where vault 21 is, and michael angelos is next door, there is a super easy quest that will give you 5000 caps. good luck:)

You don't necessarily need super high luck to do well. I did just fine with 7 and you can get that with a Luck Implant and Naughty Nightwear. Also, raiding random locations and playing Caravan are some other good ways.

You're not killing enough bad guys to loot their bodies to sell everything?
More seriously....I rarely have more than 25-30k at any one time, because I don't gamble much either. But when I spend some, I usually make it up again before very long. Basically kill everything that won't make whatever faction you want to work for mad at you, check every trash can and container, and just sell EVERYTHING, even if means a lot of extra trips back & forth. Don't forget many enemies respawn in a few days, you can always farm for cash that way.

There's a lot of good weapons that are free findables in various caves or special spots (have to fight some of course), or can be had off of certain enemies when you kill them. You just have to find them. I don't think I've bought more than one weapon at a store, plus a few of the mods.

Alternatively, you can start raising your barter skill, if you're a 'good' chr who doesn't steal or gamble much. Raises the sell prices eventually by quite a lot.

I keep all my crafting equipment and I still have plenty of caps.

The only thing I craft is repair kits....so for me it's all just more caps. But yeah, even without selling most crafting materials, there's plenty to sell to keep you with enough caps, even if you aren't filthy rich all the time. Sometimes I'll take a repair kit to a low condition, higher lvl weapon so I can sell it for more. hehe

It depends heavily on the character you play as well, say for example you played energy weapons? That's basically a money pit character that will spend uber amounts of cash on repairs for rare to find weapons without Jury Rigging, also, Ammo is obscenely expensive and not very cost effiecient... so lots of caps on that and little return,

Guns, another money pit. Though not as great as energy weapons because each shot only takes 1 ammo and most ammo can be scavenged like 10mm, 9mm, 5.56 etc... very common, but the thing is, you will use a lot of enemy weapons so they will degrade and sell for less as well as you utilizing a lot of expensive weapns you could have sold like the hunting shotgun, riot shotgun, LMG, Marksman carbine etc... if you weren't guns centric, you would have made a lot of money selling them.

The richest players by far I would say are Unarmed/Melee players.

Some of their best weapons youcan get from the Great Khans armory for dirt cheap... I got a ballistic fist for like 400 caps and repaired it with 3 kits to full hp... the kits were free to make versus buying an anti materiel rifle for 8K or a minigun for 6K, sniper for 6K etc...

it also depends where/when you buy, sell uniques for other stuff and repair degraded high tier items like if you found a super sledge near broke, make a few kits and repair that thing, sell it for a great payday lol. Do you need that tesla beaton prototype? Nope? well, repair and then sell it, like the others said, kill stuff and sell, but with unarmed and melee, you never need to buy ammo, or worry about keeping it above 50 pct condition cus they will never jam or nothin... or worry about specialty ammo like AP or such....

so if someone talks about having 100K caps (like me) and you get frustrated, that person probably uses melee/unarmed or is just very good at selling things or gambling....

I go on a "fiend run" when I am running short on caps. Go to the area around Vault 3 for tons of nice drops. RCW/laser rifles etc plus repairing all of the clothing will easily net 5k. What are all these junkies doing with such good stuff?
Quit buying ammo and just use what you have.
Take the hand loader perk , buy ammo, upgrade it and sell it back to the same store. I have played thru 2 times and finished with 100k each time. I use cheap armour and save the good stuff for the final fight.
If you are a strickly melee character, the amount you spend on repairing armour is easily offset by not having to buy ammunition...ever.

Get the special undergarment from Mick and Ralph's that has 10 speech and plus 1 luck. Buy the implant upgrade and play blackjack as someone else has already said.

Lol I never pay to repair my armor as a melee/unarmed... I don't know where you got that idea but that's obscene... i've had my Van Graff's combat armor at 100 CND for like...7 levels and it's just now getting down to 75 pct CND, I do not have jury rigging either atm, only 50 repair for kits so I don't know where you got the idea that a downside to melee is that you repair armor... there's plenty of scrap armor to use to fix your worn stuff.

Kill, loot and sell.

My current character has only been playing for 18 hours and has racked up about 13,000 caps in the "Barter Amount Traded" stat. I haven't even entered Freeside yet. Some of it was "Trickery" by killing a Nightkin in Novac that had a minigun. That minigun was nearly worthless but after applying 3 weapon repair kits to it I sold it off for over 2,000 caps.

Caps is easy to get heck before I accidently saved over my level 28 file I had 125,000 caps.

Steal stuff they won't miss it and you need it more then they will.
Get lucky at the casinos spend a 1000 caps save then keeping hitting the slots at max bet until you get 32000 caps.
Sell extra combat armor you can get 3500 caps a pop easily.
If you don't use Energy Weapons then just sell the ammo and the weapons do the same thing for guns if your focused on Energy Weapons.
Killing everybody in the Silver Rush and getting the entire loot will net you around 20000 caps.
If your able to sneak good and have a good aim with the Sniper Rifle you can shoot NCR Veterans at the different Camps and get their armor which is worth 7500 if fully repaired and the weapons too. In Real Terms you should get around 2500 to 3000 caps for the armor and 1000 to 1500 for the different guns maybe more if you get an Anti-Material Rifle that you don't need.

No, my energy weapon character is quite rich (70k?) because 80% of the weapon is for sell, since Laer RCW is the only good repair parts.

I have been actively finding materials for weapon repairing kit, but later on I just go straight to Jury Rigging because the components weight 10lbs before you craft them.

Yeah, do some "Fiend Runs" if you feels like you are short on caps; and drink Sunset Sarsaparilla/Purified Water before you use stimpaks.

I only need a few guns, everything else is sold. So just because you're playing guns doesn't mean you don't end up selling a lot of those guns. I mean, kill a bunch of Legion, there's only so many 10mm pistols I need, so off they go. But sometimes I just like to collect them. I think I have 100 weapons/armors/clothes etc. sitting in a drawer that I could sell off and have lots of caps, but I can't stop collecting them. I think it's the main reason I don't have 50-75k caps at once, during most playthrus. lol.

I also don't find most guns to degrade that rapidly. On my current playthrough (3/4 of the done) I have 50 repair kits sitting in my hotel room and I haven't used that many. Altho Sniper Rifles do seem to degrade fairly fast.

The ammo is a minor problem. I don't use the bench much so yes, even sticking mostly to buying cheaper .308 can get expensive over time, but it's not that bad.