The main source of most of your money in Wasteland 3 is going to be from junk. Every time you’re out and about exploring, keep an eye out for junk piles, dumpsters, and anything else you can loot. You’re likely to come across containers filled with junk that is only good for selling. While you might not have a use for it, merchants are happy to buy it. Who knows why?
How to Make Money Selling Junk
A useful tip for finding lootable containers, is holding left shift on PC to highlight containers. This will show anything and anyone that can be interacted with.
Looting random containers and junk piles isn’t the only way to find valuable junk, however. You can simply loot it off enemies that you’ve killed. They’re often carrying all sorts of random items like Bic Lighters and Melted Capacitors.
Note that you can get a lot of Scrap by field stripping weapons – which is only good for selling. Depending on your barter skill, it will either be better to strip down weapons before selling the pieces (with a low barter skill), or hanging onto the weapons to sell intact (with a higher barter skill).
Using the Barter Skill and Antiques Appraiser Perk
Taking full advantage of selling junk for money requires investing in the Barter skill. For every skill point you invest on one character into Barter, you’ll get an extra 50% from selling items. This will max out at an extra 500% sell value on items at level 10. Also, you can get the Antiques Appraiser perk at level 7, that gives you a 5% chance when selling junk for it be sold at 50x its value.