Maybe I'm just bad at battling but I'm really struggling at getting some cash flow, spending everything I gain on healing. I'd really want to unlock my 3rd party member. Any other ways to gain gold as a newbie?

the most reliable way to get gold is by sending your pets out on missions. it takes time, but you get gold as a reward from completing the mission, and you get additional rewards in pouches you can open. they also can have potions or pet equipment, and very rarely an essence. ^^

if youre battling a lot, selling pet equipment you don't need is a pretty good way to build up some gold too.

As mentioned, Missions are the most reliable way to make gold for the most part, especially once you have all six mission slots unlocked and a good set of 10+ mission pets (two for each stat)
Missions give double their base payout when you get exceptional completion, and two mission satchels.
Mission satchels can give more gold, healing items, equipment, and rarely essences (regular or enhanced)
You can site-sell both healing items, equips, and you can broker equips and essences

Selling equips you won't use to the site isn't so profitable at lower levels, but it can build up (high level gear and Lost Grove gear do site-sell for pretty good prices)


there's the guide to making gold here and the guide to mission pets and missions here


Another method is scale farming- nurturing a lot, buying items from the scale shop with those, and selling those items on the broker (lesser mutators and dyes often go for like, 30k+, for example)


Also not spending gold (a major drain on my gold when I was new for instance was healing my pets with the Healer- if you just either wait for ~15 mins outside of battle for tick healing or use healing items from mission satchels, you make no gold loss, unlike with the Healers)

Thanks, I hadn't reaized they heal so fast, that'll certainly make a difference. Also I grinded for a lesser genetic mutator and put it up, if that sells I'll have enough to expand my party!

I've reached the "enigmatic grotto" part of the elf quest, with the hermit. I'm wondering if I should push on with the main quest, or try to do the Nightfall Bandit dungeon for rewards. Which one will make me progress faster, with rewards and XP? Maybe I should keep the dungeon for when I can just blitz through it?

the dungeons for each of the zones (Red text) are something you should hold off on for now. they have a large level spike and it might be better if you clear the next part of the map to progress further.

dungeons don't progress the rest of the site, you can only clear them once a day and they just give good rewards (Nightfall Bandit is ~10k gold while the next dungeon is ~40k daily yield if you do every puzzle for optional bosses. The last "dungeon" is grindable.)