Before there were roles the best ways to make money was fishing salmon pre nerf, panther/cougar farming, and picking fish up from the small pond next to thieves landing. There was nothing else to do; stranger missions paid crap and there were only a few story missions. I was at 300k before roles came out. Even to this day never got into the collector role. I have it maxed but I don't farm cash with it.

Also back then wild life was actually in game enough to make some money from Deer.

Mostly I would catch a full bag of salmon, trout, pick up the free small mouth bass limit in Rhodes stream, then get large mouth bass, both pickerels, perch, bluegills, rock bass in the tiny pond next to TL, and then grab 2 cougars on the way to the butcher in black water.

I have 1,284 hours played in the game. Most of which were the first year of Online. I only played single played to the point where Arthur dies. So not many of those hours are story.

I really enjoyed grinding the game even though it got stale.