Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 6/21/11
Other than rune disenchants, there's a lot of plat to be made from selling artifacts. They especially sell better on PVP shards since opposing-faction artifacts are more difficult to obtain.
Puzzles and Cairns [LINK] are a nice way to make some platinum, but you can only do them once, and usually you'll want to keep the gear yourself if you're leveling. You need plat strategies that provide a sustainable income.
The fastest method to collect artifacts is by cheating (e.g. fly hacking) which I will cover later. This method, however, is completely legitimate and can be done at very early levels.
There are two artifacts on the top peaks of the Sanctum bridge that are often overlooked by the Guardians. I like to create level 7-10 Defiant's on multiple shards and run them to Sanctum, park them on top of the bridge, and then use Mighty Leap to jump back and forth from each side of the bridge. Remember when I said that the jumping skill was invaluable? :)
Here's a video of the location and how to get up the side of the bridge:
After you create a new Defiant character and leave the tutorial instance, remember that there's a fatigue zone all around the newbie zone. You can't simply swim across the water channel to the Guardian side. However, if you look on your map there's a small island North North East of your starting location. Head towards the long stretch of land until you're on the northern tip closest to the island, and then swim straight for the island. You'll fatigue yourself just a little bit, but you'll still be able to swim across. Then just swim towards Sanctum and watch out for NPC aggro (there's not much, most mobs are closer to land.)
After you reach the Sanctum bridge, just climb around the edge on the South side of the bridge and hop onto the main road leading into town. In the early mornings, no one is there.
You can easily jump onto the bridge from max distance and get on top of the bridge without ever aggroing the guards. Don't fall off though, it's a pain in the arse to start again from the beginning. Once you're above the guards, you never have to worry about them attacking you.
Then it's a simple matter of logging in and logging out throughout the day to collect the nice white, green, and blue artifacts that drop in those two locations on top of the bridge arcs.
Due to the difficult of obtaining the opposite faction artifacts, even many of the white artifacts can be sold for 1p a piece on the Defiant side. Once your bags are full, you can just let the guards kill you and you'll respawn at the training zone near Meridian.
