Lionheads Fable III has more emphasis on making large amounts of money than any of it’s predecessors. Whilst Fable and Fable II were certainly made a lot easier by accumulating money. In Fable III millions of lives can depend on you making enough gold to get through the war at the final part of the game.
Firstly, this guide assumes that you want to play a kind-hearted, good ruler and not only make Albion a far better place but also allow as many people as possible to survive the war. If you would rather play a more ruthless, evil ruler then the guidelines are less important.
As an evil ruler you can become King/Queen with no money to your name at all. Once you are king or queen, carry out every money-making scheme you can. Your people will suffer in more poverty, harsher conditions and more misery than before, and you will break all the promises you made to your allies, although what do you care… you’re evil.
As a good ruler, some pre-monarch work needs be done. Ideally you should aim to have around 8 million gold before you become the ruler of Albion otherwise you will have the 365 day countdown to make enough gold and who needs that stress. If you want to make all the changes you promised to your allies and the people then you are going to have to pay for these with your own money. 8 million does seem like a horrendously large amount of gold, but money can be made a lot more easily in Fable III. As long as you follow the guidelines below those millions take no time at all to make.
Step 1 – Play the game as normal until you have played enough and earned enough Guild Seals to unlock the ‘Entrepreneur’ skill, which will enable you to buy shops and stalls. Increasing the rank of your lute playing, pie-making or blacksmithing is also handy for padding our your cash at the early stages.
Step 2 – If you are short on cash at this point, earn a few thousand gold by performing jobs. The job you take makes very little difference although if you do find one makes you more money or you enjoy one job more than the rest, do that one more. I tend not to choose pie-making as you are charged a small fee every time you break a bowl.
Step 3 – Once you own enough gold, buy some of the stalls around Albion. I started in Brightwall as I have not got to Bowerstone yet, and some of the stalls there are only around 1 thousand gold each. For every stall or shop you buy, make sure you adjust the prices to ‘highest’ to make sure even more cash is flowing your way.
(Don’t worry about people not liking you because of increasing the prices, as soon as you get to be the king and once you give that 8 million back to the treasury they’ll love you again.)
Also, at this stage don’t buy houses to rent them out. As an Albion landlord you need to pay to repair any houses you’re renting out or tenants may refuse to pay you the rent they owe. Ultimately, it’s effort you don’t need to make at this stage.
You can buy shops, stalls and houses from the map screen, so you do not even need to personally visit each store to buy them. If you are unsure which properties are houses and which are stalls/shops; the information pane for houses will have a state of repair percentage, whilst shops do not.
As soon as you own shops or stalls you will gain an income every five minutes.
Step 4 – As your shop fees start coming in, buy more and more stalls as you can afford them. You will have to start buying the cheap stalls first, though after a while you will be earning enough to buy the more expensive stalls.
Step 5 – It won’t be long before you are earning around 2,000-3 thousand gold every 5 minutes which is a large amount of money just from buying cheap stalls. At this point you can start purchasing the smaller of the shops for around 30 thousand gold. These shops can net you around 1 thousand gold every 5 minutes by themselves.
Step 6 – Once you’re buying the more expensive shops such as the pubs and pawnbrokers for around 120 thousand gold which give you around 5 thousand gold every 5 minutes, your ‘5-minute’ income starts looking very attractive.
Step 7 – At this stage, you should start investing in houses/caravans and renting them out. By using the map screen I was able to buy whole areas at once. Buy each house, increase the rent to ‘highest’ and repair the buildings to full. At this stage you can easily afford the repair costs, and this additional rent money can increase your income and therefore exponentially cut the time it takes to make your gold.
Depending on how long you’re playing the game, you may need to return to those areas to pay repair costs, but these will be a drop in the ocean compared to what you will be earning in fees by now.
I earn about 25 thousand gold every 5 minutes and I have not yet bought every shop, let alone the houses so my income is set to at least triple or even quadruple.
If you follow the above steps, you will make more than enough gold. Enough to secure both the lives and the livelihoods of all the citizens of Albion.
To read my review on Fable III, please click here.
