Currently my build is trudging through the Zoltun Kulle in act 2. I want to farm gold, and use Nephalem Valor for my item drops. Would Act1 Inferno, or act 4 Hell be better gold per time? Would the lower amounts be offset by my ability to kill much faster?
Act 1 inferno is insane amount of gold for little to no effort. Gold drops don't really increase much in later inferno acts so act 1, being that its the easiest act, is your best bet. As to the time it takes you to kill in there, I dunno, but it shouldn't be bad.
There is a post around here somewhere detailing how to farm 500k an hour from NM. It involves getting all new gear with maxed out GF and as high a pickup radius as possible and then nuking entire rooms. Each run takes about 9 minutes and you can do them forever.
Put on GF gear and run Dank Cellar from the Old Ruins waypoint in early Act 1 Inferno. You can make 300-400K/hour running it with 165+GF. Takes 30-50seconds to run it each time depending on your skills/toon. The Cellar isn't always available as it's random but it's there more than not. There's an elite in there, easy to kill usually drops a blue or 2, sometimes a rare, and a gem or two, up to perfect squares, or tomes of secret. So it's a great spot to farm gold and crafting mats.
Just do search on YouTube for Dank Cellar Gold Find and you'll get lots of hits showing you where it's at and how to run it effectively.
I have roughly 150% gold find so I see a lot of 2000-2500 gold drops with a 5 NV stack on. I like farming items too though and I can go full offense running act 2. I do the Kulle run. His blood dungeons, then I go to the nexus dungeons and grab his body.. then kill him and then belial. Nets me roughly 200k-300k per run just from gold and selling item lvl 60 and less to the vendor plus I have a good chance at getting something good to sell on the AH. Takes me about an hour to do it all at 50k dps being a barb.
So far im having tge best luck doing Maghda runs in A2 but it took me quite a while to get enough gear to do it reliably . I spent a lot of time running A1 from about Khazra staff to Butcher . Decent gold and killing the butcher is fun
If you want to farm just pure gold, go to the "Kill Azmodan" quest in nightmare act3, put on +MS +pick up radius +GF gear, and do Arreat Crater Level 1, Tower of Damned Lvl1, TP back to town, then use WP and go to AC lvl2, Tower of Cursed lvl1, tp back to town and use WP to go to Core of Arreat, then when you get to Azmodan TP back to town, don't kill him and leave game.
The goal of this is to move as fast as possible, on my DH i have 25MS (max) and ~35 pick up radius, and i forget how much GF but those 2 stats are really important, and make sure you keep over 10k dps.
My avg GPH is ~600k....the best thing about these runs though are you can not concentrate at all, i just did these runs mindlessly while i watched all 5 seasons of big bang theory. Made enough gold to get a huge upgrade xD
Just do search on YouTube for Dank Cellar Gold Find and you'll get lots of hits showing you where it's at and how to run it effectively.
The goal of this is to move as fast as possible, on my DH i have 25MS (max) and ~35 pick up radius, and i forget how much GF but those 2 stats are really important, and make sure you keep over 10k dps.
My avg GPH is ~600k....the best thing about these runs though are you can not concentrate at all, i just did these runs mindlessly while i watched all 5 seasons of big bang theory. Made enough gold to get a huge upgrade xD