Metaphor: ReFantazio lets you snag thousands in fantasy dosh pretty early on, all you have to do is smack some dogs and worms around with an abacus

If you've been playing Metaphor: ReFantazio, like me, you've probably been trying to stay frugal while you bid for democratically-elected place in the monarchy. It can be a little hard, even if you shop on Idlesday, given your funds will be spread between items, armour, blessings, and appraisals.

Short of starting a lemonade stand in Grand Trad, I actually stumbled (alongside a lot of other savvy adventurers, mind) into an easy money-making scheme during the early game. And by early game, I mean the first couple of dozen hours—this is an Atlus RPG, after all, everything's relative.

How to make money in Metaphor: ReFantazio

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The best way to make money that I've found is the Merchant archetype. You unlock this bad boy by getting your Wisdom to level two and increasing your bond with Brigitta, who you unlock as a follower after completing "A Bullish Embargo", which is an optional dungeon that's given to you around the same time as the first major one in the city.

If you're anything like me, you'd have seen this Archetype and gone "pshh, hogwash, a class that uses money to attack? Useless!" Okay, you might not have said hogwash, but the Merchant is absolutely easy to underestimate. What makes this thing sing is its hero passive, Alchemy.

The passive reads: "Chance of winning a small sum of money each time an enemy is stunned or defeated in overworld combat." Big whoop, one might think—only, the "chance" bit is sort of a lie. If you're of a high enough level to insta kill an enemy in overworld combat, you're pretty much guaranteed to get a bounty of 500 reeve.

It's a pretty simple method of farming lots of money:

• Head to an area with lots of enemies, such as the low-rank bounty like "Man's Not-So Best Friend" in the Tradia Desert, which you can complete at the same time
• Smack the plentiful sandworms and packs of roving dogs to collect their cash
• Use the handily-placed cat in the heart of the desert to teleport back to the entrance
• Rinse and repeat with all of the freshly respawned enemies

The only hiccup is that you need to be a high enough level to slap these worms and dogs around willy-nilly.

To kill monsters in overworld combat, your party needs to be three levels higher or more than them—most enemies in the desert are around level 11, so you'll need to be level 14-15 before you go make bank. There's also a high-level bird to watch out for. Still, by the time you unlock the Merchant you're bound to be set in that regard.

I was able to do about five runs and make around 140k reeve in the span of 20 minutes before I got bored—but if you're a determined JRPG fan you've probably spent longer grinding.

If you don't want to grind, though, then this is something you can keep in mind no matter where you are—if you find yourself in a dungeon where you've outlevelled the mobs, and you're at least Rank 2 with More as a follower, you can just pop into the main menu and make the switch to rake in the free cash, then change back when you're fighting tougher monsters.

Granted, this isn't mandatory by any means—Metaphor: ReFantazio gives you plenty of dough to be getting on with. The real advantage of this farm is how cheap it is in terms of time. You can rinse and repeat the Tradia Desert, devastating the local ecosystem, repeatedly, all in the span of one "Day". Tie it in with finishing up the bounty anyway, and you've just turned a crummy, low-rank quest reward into the most time efficient payday you've ever had.