At lower levels, I sell everything I don't need. Now I'm better at cooking I sell meals. Or go mining for a while and sell everything. Always to the Tool Vendor, because he pays the most.
Selling sparkly rocks to the tool vendors is usually the most profitable way to do it at the moment, and takes the least amount of effort. Metal rocks are not really worth mining for vendor-selling profit at this time. As with all things in Glitch, this could change in the future. ^_^
That said, I'm not much of a miner. I tend to sell random drops from harvesting, watering, and petting trees to the vendor. I also raise piggies for meat and butterflies for milk, but most of that gets donated or turned into food.
I don't have the Smelting Skill, so I sell all my metal rock. But If I could smelt, I would make those fancy ingots and sell them.
Some ore I crush for powders, it depends on what my priority is that day: favor or currants.
I gather a lot. I walk everywhere and gather everything. Of course I have the tree and animal skills to get lots of bonus items while gathering, so that helps. This converts into food for energy for more gathering. I don't usually sell what I cook. It's also a good supply of donation material.
If need a lot of currants fast, I go mining, usually in Ajaya Bliss. It's simple and only requires that one step process of mine > sell. There was a time when I tried doing the crushing to compounds into powders thing, but it's just too complicated for me. Mining metal into ingots seemed to get me a nice profit, but also complicated. I prefer the KISS philosophy: Keep it Simple, Silly.
I harvest from trees and squeeze chickens, then sell all the music blocks (I have a full set so don't need them) to a tool vendor and auction any stacks of things I've collected and don't need.
Personally I make money by mining, collecting resources, selling some left over produce etc.
At the end of the day though once you have the house you want theres nothing else that really takes a lot of money and the more skills you learn the less you have to buy!
Its still useful though and somewhat fun to have a large amount of currents so all I can suggest is make things for yourself and then sell what you don't need.
Eventually keeping mood and energy up become a lot easier so you make things just for fun and money anyway xD.
I don't even know how I get currants anymore. They just kind of happen to me. I guess I sell meals to the vendor if I ever get under 20k, which I don't.
Lately - playing the auction market. Made myself 100k in a couple hours that way... and it's something I can do while not in the game world, which is nice for during those stupid conference calls you have to attend but have nothing to add to. Not that I would *ever* do that. Nope! Not me!
I mined during beta - mostly for donation materials, but also cash. It got very boring very and I left the game for a month or so because it was just this tedious thing. Came back at launch - got all my mining skills and have been in the mines maybe a dozen times... ha! Fortunately, with even just a few of the animal & garden skills, I've been able to make enough to do everything I want and then some just through my wanderings from point a to point b.
For actual currants, I sell basic harvestables at auction -- bubbles, cherries, beans. Music blocks, gems, and ingots go into the shrines, and prepared food goes in mah belleh.
I've focused on crops, specifically those used on making Awesome Stew. I get plenty of extra goodies from planting, watering, gathering and clearing, and I sell those if I'm low on currants.
I play the auction market. i.e. I buy and sell. When I first started, I mined a lot of rocks for the rares and sold them to vendors, and squeezed every chicken I came across as they often dropped music blocks which I also sold to vendors.
I'd say, it gets easier the more skills you have and as you level up and get a bigger energy boost east day. It helps if you follow a couple of skill branches to the top, then you get the greatest rewards from your skills. You can always purchase stuff produced by skills you don't have from the auctions when you need to.
Personally, I have a lot of growing and cooking skills so I make a lot of awesome stew and I sell all the excess music boxes I get whilst harvesting.
I rarely have more than about 6 or 7k in currents. I sell surplus produce and also music boxes, as well as other stuff I craft (I'm a nono dealer, I'm not proud)
At first I mined to get easy quick money, but once I got a house and built up AK skills, I just get a very easy passive income from the animals and crops. I sell what I don't need to buy what I can't make. If I need some extra cash, I might go mine, but it's so tedious and I rarely need to. I always seem to have enough cash now.
i sell ingots and extra produce from my garden and spare herbs, but the largest part of my income is by far selling what i gather from trees and animals. when i'm done with the skill tree i will make money mining, but for not most of what i mine and all my bonus blocks go to donaation.
i don't have to do it that way, but i like having a system.
Most of my money comes from mining. I donate gems and music blocks. Food normally gets consumed or used for recipes. :) Thankfully I already have my house in Salatu so I'm just waiting for my skills to be learned and I'm working on getting larger bags. That's about it atm.
You can get quite a few currants wandering through the Ancestral lands, all coins are super-charged there.
Also, if you have higher level Animal Kinship skills, just comb housing quarters and such, milking every sing butterfly... faster than mining and also more profitable.
Also also, selling metal ingots (plain smelted from metal ore) is quite profitable too.
Auction - I auction everything. I feed piggies, and sell the seeds. I sell music blocks and beans. I sell meat and milk. I don't waste time running to vendors, as there is always someone willing to buy at auction.
AK7 and Meat. You can learn a rewarding level of Animal Kinship faster than mining, usually have maxed out Mood, get to explore, don't have to compete for nodes and can make money just as fast as Mining 4, especially with Remote Herd Keeping to help out. If you combine this with high levels of Teleport to quickly get to remote spots with large numbers of piggies, it is especially easy. (Note- Milk is not as rewarding because of its lower value and the nerfing of Cheese-making.)
Regarding the auction of Meat, Milk and Sparkly. All the current prices for auctioning are below the Tool Vendor price. This means that if you post a competitive auction, not only is the value less, but you are also paying the listing fee and the AH cut out of your profit as well.
For example, currently there is 60 Meat up for 430c. The listing fee for that is 6c, and the AH cut is another 34c. Total profit for this stack, 390c... If you take it to the Tool Vendor, you would get 480c for 60 Meat. This 90c difference from one stack will cover the cost of teleporting, the difference on the other stacks is profit. If you're not stuck in Ajaya Bliss or Neva Neva, it pays to Vendor items yourself.
I don't have that much in the way of currants, but that's because I donate a ton to speed up learning, so I guess I'd otherwise sell that stuff.
It tends to be surplus harvested stuff from animals & trees or bonus rewards like musicboxes and gems. I only really mine when I intend to grind it down to make something so I don't have surplus ores and I only cook to consume myself or to give away so I don't tend to donate cooked food (just "raw" harvested stuff like meat and eggs).
Nibbling pigs and milking butterflies with AK6. Seriously, nibbling piggies is the highest income per unit energy and also highest per unit time of any activity my character is capable of. Costs just 2 energy to get 3 meat from a pig worth 30c in the time it takes to hit 2 keys on the keyboard. There is no wait bar to do this and you can do it twice per pig. That's 4e spent for 60c income in under a second with the keyboard shortcuts. That's not even counting the high chance of getting a super harvest.
Butterflies are similar. No time bar to slow you down, can milk twice and no need to massage at AK6. Income is less, but the c/e ratio is still the 2nd best return of anything I've tried. When you factor in the zero time it takes to do you can be making bank while just walking from point a to b. The other perk to butterflies is that I think milk sells for the same price to all vendors, so no need to go out of your way to find a tool vendor.
I like working on a continent completion achievement while molesting all the pigs/butterflies along the way and end up rich and with an achievement. For me it beats staring at a progress bar mining.
Nibbling pigs is indeed the highest c/e I've found - 3 meat at 8c per to the vendor for 2 energy = 12c/e, there's something else to consider.
Pigs are a limited commodity - you've gotta do a lot of wandering to find enough pigs to keep you busy. While mining, you can pretty much travel a circuit you know. Rocks stay still. They don't wander off. They don't wander into other pigs, or into chickens, or other players. You never get to a rock and have it be one you already mined - every rock can be mined, no matter how many times you've mined that spawn that day.
I have AK (at V, not VI so far) and I do nibble pigs (I've got a ton at my house with a meat collector, too) but my main income comes from mining. In a 4-hour in-game day I can make 39k while still donating my daily limit twice times (once during the day I mine, once right after midnight before I go to sell the surplus) while just barely capping out my food for the day on Awesome Stews and coasting to midnight on Earthshakers and No-No. That's counting the cost of Earthshakers, Awesome Stew, No-No, and Extremely Hallowed Shrine Powder for donations. I mine Beryl and Sparkly, ignoring Dullite and Metal.
+1 for ancestral lands, especially at lower levels when you might not have skills to do other things. Make sure you have not come close to maxing out your coins for the day, also best to do it when you are a little low on energy... the coins there will easily replenish your energy and provide you with some currants... it's easy to get 2-3k in a session there. You might also pick up some random goodies that you can sell, like a Focusing Orb.
Before I started selling crops and meat and milk at vendors, I checked the single item price at the Tool Vendor. He didn't give me more currants for those items, so I've been selling at the nearest vendor.
I'm not sure why people are going out of their way to sell crops and collected food at the Tool Vendor.
Edit: there must be a fraction of a current difference that shows up when selling quantities. I tested some items and found that grain and milk did not sell for more at the Tool Vendor, but meat and cabbage did.
@Thatkindaorc I don't doubt that mining is higher credits per hour when grinding long term. But let's be clear -- it's a grind. You have to keep chasing down the next sparkly rock, which confines you to one area and you are either running your circuit or watching a progress bar. There is very little room for doing quests, exploring or whatever.
Pigs/butterflies is something you can do on the move. In fact you have to be on the move. It's perfect for generating income while you hunt down ghosts, or get 100% completion in a zone. While focusing on other activities, I am able to donate 1200 favor per day and still have excess to sell to vendors for profit.
So when grinding Mining IV may be the best, but when doing anything else, Animal Kinship pays dividends.
Oh yeah, I don't discount that. I make a ton of cash just by harvesting every tree, squeezing every chicken, and nibbling every pig while I do other stuff. Animal Kinship and Gardening are great skills for turning the stuff you do anyway into profit. When you've got the skills supporting them, randomly grabbing crap from everything that passes by makes you money - almost everything in Glitch is profitable after you've been playing for a few weeks.
But for dedicated making currants (like this thread seems to be looking for), you can't beat mining sparkly and beryl, selling to the vendor, and buying meat (when it dips to or below 7c or so) to donate at shrines (with EHSP of course).
I sell stacks of bubbles, fruit, vapor, etc. at the auctions because with gardening V I get a lot in a couple of minutes and without using much energy.
I could also sell more items, but since I already own a 50k home, I prefer to donate to get the icons.