History Main / MoneyGrinding

* Running out of resources in ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpires'' leads to sending all your villagers to farm/chop wood/mine/ etc.

** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV'' gets special mention given its multiple parties up until the final chapter when they all converge into one team. For every chapter except the final, you play as a different group of the playable cast and they each have their own inventory and gold reserves. When the chapter ends, the party's gold in that chapter ''will not carry over into the next one'', which means that the start of each new chapter must be spent grinding gold as well as levels for the new party.

* Taken UpToEleven where ''{{Farmville}}'' and ''{{Happy Farm}}'' are games ''entirely about grinding''.

* Required if you want to have all the weapons before the end of the game in ''[[RatchetAndClank Ratchet & Clank]]''. There's usually one weapon that costs far too much and will take a ton of grinding to get.

* Not only popular on ''WorldOfWarcraft'', but is also has some huge MoneySink items as well (mostly mounts, which are pretty much cosmetic). A new name might be "Harvesting Those Money Spiders".
** The single biggest motivation for grinding gold in ''WorldOfWarcraft'' is learning higher riding skills and getting faster or more versatile mounts, though. These provide a level of convenience that frankly is insane. Additionally, money grinding becomes much simpler when you reach the level cap, because quests give higher monetary rewards in lieu of experience points.

* In the ''GrandTheftAuto'' games, the more powerful later game weapons (your first real reason to hoard money) have prices well within the four-digits, with some of the heavy-hitters reaching the five-digits. Also, in later games, you have to buy certain assets to advance the plot. Missions will typically NOT cover your expenses, so odd jobs will often be necessary to proceed. It doesn't hurt that completing most of these grants bonuses akin to LevelGrinding, but [[ThatOneSidequest the difficulty, on the other hand]]...
* ''AirForceDelta Strike'' has optional Stand By missions available for the player to take on as necessary to increase the characters' bank accounts so they can buy new aircraft.

* ''TheLegendOfZelda'' series provides many opportunities to gain rupees.
** PhantomHourglass and SpiritTracks has plenty of VendorTrash to sell for easy rupees.
** It's even worse in some games, because in those, if you kill an enemy with a Light Arrow he will reward you with 50 rupees (not a fortune, but still a lot of rupees)

* Running out of resources in ''AgeOfEmpires'' leads to sending all your villagers to farm/chop wood/mine/ etc.

* Frequent in ''DragonQuest'' games, you often have to buy new equipment as well as [[ForcedLevelGrinding leveling up]] just to survive.
** ''DragonQuestIV'' gets special mention given its multiple parties up until the final chapter when they all converge into one team. For every chapter except the final, you play as a different group of the playable cast and they each have their own inventory and gold reserves. When the chapter ends, the party's gold in that chapter ''will not carry over into the next one'', which means that the start of each new chapter must be spent grinding gold as well as levels for the new party.

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* Actively encouraged in ''VideoGame/MarvelAvengersAlliance'', where the player sends up to seven heroes on Remote Operations to earn Silver (the main currency of the game). Remote Op durations range from three minutes to 24 hours of real time, but twenty 3-minute missions earn more Silver than one 1-hour mission.

* In the ''GrandTheftAuto'' games, the more powerful later game weapons (your first real reason to hoard money) have prices well within the four-digits, with some of the heavy-hitters reaching the five-digits. Also, in later games, you have to buy certain assets to advance the plot. Missions will typically NOT cover your expenses, so odd jobs will often be necessary to proceed. It doesn't hurt that completing most of these grants bonuses aking to LevelGrinding, but [[ThatOneSidequest the difficulty, on the other hand]]...

* In ''{{Earthbound}}'', you can do this when you first play as Jeff to get items that you're not meant to buy until later.

* In ''ChronoTrigger'', you need an alternate currency (Fangs, Petals, Horns, Feathers) to buy useful equipment from the prehistoric village. Cue beating up that one elusive Nu over and over again to deck out your entire team in what's best.

* Many {{MMORPG}}s have a boss or MoneySpider that is disproportionately profitable for its level or degree of difficulty. Expect to see overleveled characters clearing their spawn zones repeatedly even if the exp is negligible.

* Frequent in DragonQuest games, you often have to buy new equipment as well as [[ForcedLevelGrinding leveling up]] just to survive.
** DragonQuestIV gets special mention given its multiple parties up until the final chapter when they all converge into one team. For every chapter except the final, you play as a different group of the playable cast and they each have their own inventory and gold reserves. When the chapter ends, the party's gold in that chapter ''will not carry over into the next one'', which means that the start of each new chapter must be spent grinding gold as well as levels for the new party.

* In {{Earthbound}}, you can do this when you first play as Jeff to get items that you're not meant to buy until later.
* In the GrandTheftAuto games, the more powerful later game weapons (your first real reason to hoard money) have prices well within the four-digits, with some of the heavy-hitters reaching the five-digits. Also, in later games, you have to buy certain assets to advance the plot. Missions will typically NOT cover your expenses, so odd jobs will often be necessary to proceed. It doesn't hurt that completing most of these grants bonuses aking to LevelGrinding, but [[ThatOneSidequest the difficulty, on the other hand]]...

* Both somewhat averted in the first 4 ''GranTurismo'' games and played almost straight in 5. While the earlier GT games had allowed you to sell cars at variable values, 5 for the most part seems to have nearly abandoned this trope by making you work hard to win money in particular races. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that 5 had an online experience system that multiplies your experience points and prize money up to 200%, which seems to drive the selling-the-car concept out of the question.

* Both somewhat averted in the first 4 ''GranTurismo'' games and played almost straight in 5. While the earlier GT games had allowed you to sell cars at variable values , 5 for the most part seems to have nearly abandoned this trope by making you work hard to win money in particular races. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that 5 had an online experience system that multiplies your experience points and prize money up to 200%, which seems to drive the selling-the-car concept out of the question.

*** The common workaround is to either buy expensive equipment and hang onto them to sell later or spend all of the gold on Tokens at the [[GoldenSaucer Endor Casino]] before ending the chapter, both of which will carry over into the last chapter.

* Many ''FinalFantasy'' games. Especially the early ones, though ''FinalFantasyXII'' is a pretty bad offender as well.
** In the prequel to ''DissidiaFinalFantasy'', ''Duodecim'', sweet fancy ''Moses'' will you be doing this. In Quickbattle, the maximum amount of gil you can get from an opponent--fighting a lvl100 opponent (worth base 1100 gil) on a gil bonus day (doubles that, so 2200 gil) while wearing a specific set of lvl30 gear (worn as a set, Gold equipment will increase gil earned by 50%, so 3300 gil) and taking up one accessory slot with a non-combat accessory (the Beckoning Cat, which cannot help you in a fight but will, among other things, increase gil earned by 20%) will yield 3990 gil per encounter. To put this in perspective: A lvl30 sword will cost between 40K-60K gil. Level 60 swords? 130K+ gil. Level 90? 150K+. Level 100? 180K+ gil. And that's just one of your four equipment slots. For that one character. You have 31 to outfit. Even doing that game's equivalent of exploiting VendorTrash and [[MoneySpider Money Spiders]], which will if done right yield roughly 125K gil per encounter, it still takes hours upon hours upon hours of grinding to get enough gil.

* In ''PlantsVsZombies'', this may be done in minigames or sometimes survival mode to get money for upgrades. Often uses marigolds and upgraded magnet-shrooms.
* ''MassEffect2'' had an infinite source of money on Tuchanka, where you could bet money on Urz in the varren fights and he would win most of the time. That grind is extremely slow and boring, but before enough {{DLC}} have been released, it was the only way if you wanted to purchase all available upgrades.

* Running out of resources in ''AgeOfEmpires''leads to sending all your villagers to farm/chop wood/mine/ etc.

So what do you do? You go grinding for money. Basically you go around killing various [[MoneySpider Money Spiders]] and search many places in the world to search for money. Or perhaps go item farming to sell [[VendorTrash certain items.]]

* Taken BeyondTheImpossible where ''{{Farmville}}'' and ''{{Happy Farm}}'' are games ''entirely about grinding''.

* You have to do this in ''{{Alundra 2}}'' to get the best upgrades.

* In ''ChronoTrigger'', you need an alternate currency (Fangs, Petals, Horns, Feathers) to buy useful equipment from the prehistoric village. Cue hours of hunting dinosaurs and frogs to deck out your entire team in what's best.

* Done literally in ''AgeOfEmpires'', where farming is one way to gather resources.