Djörk Gold Blog: Basics

A long time ago, there was a warrior on a popular PvE server who made it to level 45 before getting a mount. This was my first WoW character, and besides being clueless about how to play the character, I was also clueless about how to manage the character's wealth. As you can see from the figure to the right, I've learned a few things since then. Let me share a few pointers about WoW wealth management. As in real life, money will not bring happiness, but it sure makes the pain more bearable. There's no reason to be poor in this game. With a little time spent managing professions and inventory, you too can be WoWealthy.

Use What You Have

Every WoW character has the potential to make cash. Seriously. The most basic way to make lots of cash while levelling a new character is to take herbalism and mining as your professions. Do this as soon as possible. Starting areas are loaded with herbs and ore that go for big money. Sell all of them on the Auction House. Resist the temptation to go for professions that "mesh" like herbalism and alchemy, or mining and blacksmithing on your first character. We don't want to USE the materials we gather, we want to SELL them.

Even if you're unwilling to cater to the lowest common denominator, or if your character is already level 85 and you're unwilling to give up tailoring/enchanting, there are infinite other options for making gold in this game. Starting with Tailoring/Enchanting, we're dealing with two nice money makers. Tailoring makes money easily from bags, especially Netherweave, Embersilk, and specialty gem bags. Use the Dreamcloth cooldowns (yes, all of them) and make leg enchants. Starter 85 PvE and PvP items sell quite well also. Enchanting has two ways to cash in: 1) a) Buy/craft vellum. b) Buy/craft enchanting materials.  c) Market profitable enchants. 2) Buy items to disenchant (greens/blues) from the auction house. All levels of gear work, as long as you know the market value for the disenchant products. This brings us to point 2:

Addons

There are two essential addons you must use if you're serious about never. being. poor. again. The first is Auctioneer. Everyone complains it does too much, it's bloated and slow. Yes it is. Now give Norganna and company the donations they richly deserve for this superb product and stop the QQ. For flexible posting, nothing beats it yet. I like to customize and change prices manually for some items. There's no need to undercut Brilliant Inferno Rubies, for instance. For others, I like to let the market price float around. Auctioneer tends to price things higher, which I like.

 

The second essential addon suite is Trade Skill Master. Get all the components. You use Trade Skill Master to determine what to craft. It's automated to the point where you can just click the "Restock Queue" button once you configure how many of each item to craft, then mindlessly click the "Craft Next" button to make more profit. Trade Skill Master, or TSM for short, will even generate a shopping list for you to go to the auction house and buy the items needed to make the profitable items from the queue. I tend not to use this feature. Most of what I craft, with notable exceptions, is level 85 gear with level 85 material requirements. I tend to keep a stock on these materials, using the crafting character as a warehouse for these materials.

More Ore

Shop for bargains on raw materials. Know what the going prices for important mats for your profession are, and when you see bargains, pounce. Fear not excessive inventory. Use the mail system as 30-day-at-a-time storage. Each mail can contain 12 stacks of a material, and up to 50 mails appear in one pane of the standard mail interface. This gives you an effective 600 slots more bank space, as long as you're willing to pay for the shipping. Mails are tagged automatically with the name of the material, so if you send 12 stacks of Elementium Ore to a crafting alt, the mail will be tagged "Elementium Ore" as its mail subject. Now when the crafting alt needs elementium ore, check the mail and shift-click a mail that says "Elementium ore". Boom, 12 stacks.

 

TSM has a very nice feature called "General Buying" with which you can type the name of a raw material and it will present the lowest price per unit to you. It makes navigating through dozens of AH pages of raw materials much easier.

Mr. Data, you have The Con

I'd be remiss if I didn't point to the single finest market research resource available to WoW players, The Undermine Journal. If you want to find out historical pricing data and stock levels in the marketplace, this is the place to go. You can use its breakdown of cut gem prices to determine which cuts to purchase with your hard-earned JC tokens. You can find out what hours your competition posts auctions so you know when to post your own. The richness of the data on this site is hard to overestimate. Spend some time here and you'll understand your market better.

Keep Liquid

Once you develop a sizable enough inventory of materials to sell, make sure to never outspend your current cash position, or risk not being able to take advantage of bargains when they present themselves. This also applies to your spending. You'll get everything you want to buy in this game eventually. Waiting until you have sizable cash reserves to splurge will reap benefits. This is why I encourage first characters to go herb/mine, as they only increase your cash position. Using farmed materials to craft for a second profession doesn't make all that much money. Levelling gear tends to get disenchanted at a discount. Some can be profitable, but not compared to the profits from simply selling the raw materials.

Almost all suffice

Virtually every profession offers gold-making benefits. Simply produce what people want.

  • Blacksmithing—starter lv 85 PvE/PvP sets, Ebonsteel Belt Buckles, Pyrium Weapon Chains, Shield Spikes.
  • Tailoring—bags, starter sets, leg enchants
  • Jewelcrafting—Do I really need to say prospect and reap? JC is probably the single best moneymaker.
  • Alchemy—Work that 20% specialization bonus in either potion or elixir/flask markets. Swiftness pots sell, as do Elixirs of Giant Growth. Truegold Transmutes.
  • Fishing—I buy Lavascale Catfish at 9g. Get out there and fish your way to riches.
  • Skinning—Savage Leathers at 5g each, but it is work.
  • Leatherworking—PvP/PvE starter sets, Pack of Endless Pockets, leg enchants
  • Inscription—Profitable, lots of work to maintain inventory, lots of undercut bots. Mysterious Fortune Cards are very nice easy money. 
  • Engineering—Now that ammo is gone, Engineering is probably the least profitable profession at the moment. Pets can sell, but this depends on your realm and markets.

Unless you're a skinner/engineer, there's no reason you can't be using the materials available at your auction house right now to make money in this game. Again, it won't ensure happiness when playing, but it sure doesn't hurt! Good gaming to you.