1 Gold Every 10 Minutes, Level 42+ (at Scarlet Monastery)

Okay well I've known about this little "problem" if you will.

The second you turn 42 head on over to the SM graveyard. This is the instance on the left side inside the Scarlet Monastery. (Please do not do this in a group or you will greatly reduce the amount of loot dropped.)

Ok well at level 42+ your aggro is small enough that you can sneak by all of the humans in the first part of the graveyard. Make sure to ignore them...there not worth your time. Ok well now you'll go up some stairs into the normal graveyard portion of the instance. Here's where the skill comes in. There are 3 main types of mobs here. Elite zombies (31-32), Elite polterguists (32- 33), and best of them all (non elite) Unfettered spirits (level 31).

Ok well ignore both the elites...there not worth your time. The spirits roam in groups of 3 and are very easy to defeat, the thing is these non-elites drop loot like elites. On average you'll get 5s a kill plus random loot that usually includes 1-3 silk.

In 2 hours i gained 18g and filled all my bags with uncommons and 2 rares. Plus over 150 silk cloth.

2 Gold Every 5 Minutes, (at Scarlet Monastery) SM

I farm the boss Arcanist Doan in Scarlet Monastery, he drops Hypnotic Blade, which sells for 1g 27s, and Illusionary Rod, which sells 1g 59s I think. He also drops Robe of Doan, 40s, and Mantle of Doan, 30s.

You should be about level 40, which is when I started farming, that's what I did when I wanted my mount. Smile

Arcanist Doan is level 37 and is in the Scarlet Monastery, located in the far right SM instace, the boss you gotta kill to get the Scarlet Key. Just Stealth directly to him, avoiding all the other mobs.

Strategy to kill him:

He's immune to cheap shot, so I suggest ambushing/garroting him. He spams Arcane Explosion a lot, which hits you for 200 damage, so you better have a lot of hp for him. When his hit points reaches 50%, he'll put up a blue barrier and charges up Detonation, that is when you better get the heck out to the other side of the room before it hits you for a good 800 damage. How to avoid this is to engage the fight while when he walks to a corner of the room, so when he starts casting Detonation, you have around 5 seconds to bolt to the other side and dodge it. Or you could just simply resist it. An important part during this portion is to use first aid while he's busy casting Detonation, and when he's finished, you should just run around a little for your first aid to finish up before confronting him again. Now just hack at him, use a potion if needed, until he dies. =) He'll drop 2 items: a Hypnotic Blade/Illusionary Rod AND Mantle of Doan/Robe of Doan. Which is nearly 2g per round. It takes about 5 minutes for this whole sequence.

Now. How to get him to respawn all the time? Just have a pal to group up with, he can be doing anything he wants on the other continent if he wants. After you kill Doan and come out of the instance, have him make you party leader, then he leaves the group, then he invites you again. There the instance is reset, with a new Arcanist Doan for you to kill. =)

200-2,000 Gold An Hour - Location: Dire Maul - West

This is best done with two players...pref a rogue & hunter, but can be soloed by hunters, priests & really crafty rogues.

Location: Dire Maul - West (best to use south entrance to the west side).

In every instance made in all of Dire maul there is a chest spawn & usually a Dusty Tome spawn. In west, there are four spots that the chest spawns, two of which can be gotten very quickly & with few mobs. There are also two Dusty Tome spawn locations (that I know), but only 1 location is easy to get to....just so happens it is about 3 feet from one of the chest locations.

In each chest there is a lvl50-55 green, some are pretty good, also some change & 1 in about every 25-50 chests have a blue BOE usually worth 60-100g. All the greens dc into Greater eternal essence & illusion dust, Or you can vendor most items for about 3-5g a piece or sell on the AH. The Dusty Tomes are where the real money is though....90% of the tomes will give you a junk book "nat pagles extreme fishing..." and pocket lint - the rest of the time you will get one of any of the blue class books (each sell in AH from 45g-90g) and an equal chance to get Furor's Compendium of Demonslaying (Warriors epic book) = anywhere from 1500g to 2400g. I have found several now and all sold within a few hours on AH for 2000g

http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/object.html?wobject=416 

Now the strat... You enter west on south side. The tome & chest spawn location is in the initial room you come into, before you get to Shen'dralar Ancient. As you are looking at the room from the portal, the chest will be across the room on left side (there is another spawn location on the right side - but after you do this a while, you will see it is more profitable to only look for the left side one).

If you use an Ornate spyglass you can position yourself on a corner right next to the instance portal (bout 15ft from it) and look down to the south west corner with the chest & tome. (for the first while you will want to run down and make sure nothing spawns till you know exactly where to look). If you dont see the chest or tome, run out the instance and reset it...round trip on an empty instance is about 30seconds or less. IF the chest spawns in that spot(bout 25% of the instances) there will be 3 to 4 tree creeps guarding it. The easiest way to get to them is to have a rogue position behind the chest ready to take it & have another class move up and agro the three trees then turn & run out the instance while the rogue loots. Once you get used to it, you can loot and be back to reset in under 2min.

Hunters can solo this by using Eyes of the beast & taking the agro to the other side of the instance, then dismiss their pet, grab the loot & move to a safe spot to feign death.

Screenies for those that have found this confusing...sorry I did not have them up before....

This is where you should stand to use spyglass...

Here is what you should see thru spyglass...approx....was in a hurry to get the screenies so I did not wait to find chest...but pasted in a spot where you will see them...

DM West is easy enough to move around once you learn your agro range and stay close to the south wall.

I will try to update this with pics, but I am not that great with photo stuff.

25 Gold Every 2 Hours (in Wailing Caverns as a lvl 40+)

This probably isn't the most easiest strat to start, but i did notice that once i started it, i made quite a lot of gold. Basically, what you'll be doing is, selling savory deviate delights, which sell for 50s in my server (Cenerion Circle). Ok, since this takes steps, im going to provide them now

1. You must have a cooking skill of 85, and a fishing skill of 30 (? you'll be fishing in the walling caverns, I don't think it needs to be very high, people on thottbot said it has to be 30)

2. Once you have those two down, you'll need the recipe called Savory Deviate Delight. You can get it by grinding various mobs in The Barrens, or, you can do what i did, and buy it in the AH for about 30-40g. Here is the link http://thottbot.com/?i=678

3. Now you're ready, head over to the barrens, and go to the walling caverns, an instance in the barrens (levels 18-21 i think).

4. Start fishing inside the walling caverns with your selected fishing macro, or just fish, and don't use a macro at all. It really doesn't matter where you fish, it doesn't have to be directly inside of the instance portal, but i did find that i got a little more Deviate Fish (the fish you are looking for) inside the instance of walling caverns. *The Deviate Fish don't ALWAYS drop, but it seems to be about a 50/50 chance of getting them*

5. Make as many Savory Deviate Delights as you can, and you can sell them for 50 silver a piece in the Auction House.

Suggestion: You might want to be over level 40 to try this out, because you're going to pull a lot of aggro while in the walling caverns if you're lower, and you'll have a harder time fighting off those elites.

The best thing about this is that you can go afk, i wouldn't suggest going afk all night, id be too afraid that id get a PM from a GM or something.. and get banned. Otherwise, you're probably going to be fine if you're afk for about 2-3 hours.. or however long you feel is right. Anyways, last night i popped in a movie, put a fish macro on, after the movie was over, i checked my inventory and there were 45 Deviate Fish, made the Savory Deviate Delights, and sold them all for a total amount of 25g.

Oh yes, i forgot to mention, the Delights can make you transform into a pirate, an assassin, a blob, it can make your cast time a lot faster... its random every time, but pretty interesting, and in my server, i noticed that a lot of level 60s like to buy these out and entertain lower levels in Iron Forge. I know this is a lot of work to get it started, but i feel it's well worth it in the end, feel free to post problems and questions you may have. If this is a re-post of some sort, im sorry, i searched for it and didn't find anything on it, it can be deleted if needed, no big deal.

600g Easy at Level 60 rogue/druid (in LBRS)

I will explain this in detail to the best of my limits.

You have to be a Rogue/Druid class Level 60, for this to work, not sure if its been posted or not but anyway here I go.

Item you will hunt for, Plans: Arcanite Reaper my server kil jid sells for 350g min

Ok first things first, Optional items that you can use to speed up the process: Ornate spy glass

Step #1 make a /target Bannok macro ( type /macro, make a icon then type /target bannok and put it on your hot key)

Step #2 What you need to do is make your way up to LBRS in BRM

Step #3 Stealth, and make your way over down to lbrs past the wolfs down to the path of the 2 bridges, then head to the trolls and all the way down to the entrance of the firebrand orcs.

Step #4 from the firebrand orcs make your way along the path to the entrance of the spiders do not go into spider area stop before !!!. All this time you should be spamming your macro key looking for the rare spawn Bannok Grimaxe (Firebrand Legion Champion) http://www.thottbot.com/?n=615450

Step #5 Bannok has 3 know spawns that he spawns at, All three are soloable. In spot closer to spiders you have to be in the corner behind that catapult sh*t or whatever and pull him there with your bow/gun. Noone will come with him if done right

Step #6 if you made your way all along the path to the spider entrance and didnt find him make your way back and reset instance (before exiting invite random player 1 make him leader, exit instance, leave party, enter)

Now the after doing this couple times and getting hang of it you can make the trip faster by using ornate spy glass from the ledge before hitting the bridge near the orcs at the top

First, I look at the carpet close to the lava, just by the left wall, then I look at the carpet in the right right corner (the right corner closest to you) ^=cliffsuptop, ~=lava .=fillers to make it look right X=spawnpoints |=walls

_____ __
(spot2)X |
|
_ |
.| |
.| |
.| ...|
.| ...|
_|X(spot1) |
...|
~~~~~~
~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~lava ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^second wolf grp

cliff ME

With this way it saves you the long trick of going all the way down and can be done in about 2 mins in and out but only problem with this is you do not see the 3rd spawn spot near the spiders.

Bannok is a pretty rare spawn and has a spawn percent sometimes is close to 5% sometimes is close to 20%. So it can be one of 40 resets or each 5 resets. He has a about 6-10% chance of dropping plans which sell for different prices on different servers but either way sells 100g min any server.

9 gold profit in 15 min (selling several items)

I recall a thread from a few months back discussing the viability of large glowing shards utilizing player made products.

Well, I modified the strategy a bit, and over the course of the day fine tuned it. It requires

So, here we go.

The simple formula is Icy Cloak -> disenchant to Large Glowing Shard.

Icy Cloak: http://www.thottbot.com/?i=5035 

The recipe for this is sold by the trade goods merchant in Southshore for the alliance, I do not know for the horde.

My costs were simple.

Frost Oil - 1 per 1gp - 1.3gp
Mageweave - 20 stack for 80 - 90sp
Thick Spider Silk - 2 for 80 sp
Thread - 4.25sp each

So, approximate costs were 1.3 + .70 + .8 + .085 = 2.9gp rounded up on the high end, 1 + .6 + .8 + .085 = 2.5gp on the low end.

The Large Glowing Shard sells on Deathwing for 4gp a pop. Or as an enchanter, you can enchant +3 1h striking for 5 using this.

For those individuals who like to do this on a self-sufficient basis, the Frost Oil formula is sold by a goblin on the north wall of where the Alterac Crushridge Elite ogres are. Also, if you don't have a herbalist, Khadgar's Whisker and Wintersbite are moderately affordable on Deathwing, dropping the production cost of frost oil down to about 70 sp. If you have a alchemist or an alchemist buddy, that's another 30-60sp of end item profit. Frost oil requires a 200 skill in alchemy.

Thick spider silk can be easily farmed by those 38+ in dustwallow marsh, in the Darkmist cave. They also drop decent vendor loot (3-5sp each) as well as Shadow Silk, which can be used in tailoring to produce 38+ Shadow Priest gear that sells moderately well.

In 15 mins Saturday, I bought, tailored, disenchanted, and put 8 shards up on auction. Remember, shards have no value, hence the AH does not charge you a fee for putting them up

for auction. I logged in the next day, all had been bought out at 4gp.

This is a simple method to constantly auction with no loss. It's a proven formula, at least in terms of large servers where enchanting is in moderate to high demand (refer back to the post on disenchanting Green Lenses).

Anyway, thought I'd put this up so others can utilize this. Thanks.

Beginners Guide to Making Gold in WoW

Not as complete as I want it to be, but I'll try.

Farming is the process of either running around killing mobs and collecting drops, or running around gathering raw materials.

Contents:
Vendor trash
Raw materials
Recipes
Items
Vendor Farming
First Aid
Alliance
Horde
Miscellaneous Vendor Farming Products

Farming loot falls into the following categories:
Vendor trash

Vendor trash (grey item name) is completely useless loot which NPC vendors will nevertheless buy from you for good money. No one knows why the hell they want this crap, but some of it can bring in quite a bit of silver. The trick is knowing which to keep and which to throw away, especially when your inventory is full. Some addons can remember vendor prices for vendor trash, so you know which is worth more and which less. Good examples of vendor trash which bring in some nice money are Speckled Shell Fragment, Basilisk spine and Soft patch of fur.

Raw materials

Raw materials are used (and used up) in crafting, and can be broken down into the following categories:

1. Food
2. Herbs
3. Ore
4. Leather
5. Cloth
6. Ingredients
7. Items?

Recipes

Recipes are pieces of paper which teach you specific crafting abilities. Depending on the profession, they have different names, such as Recipe?, Plan?, Schematic?, Formula?, and Pattern?. Some recipes are easily found, some are sold by vendors, some are sold by vendors on a timer, and some must be found by grinding. Items

Uncommon and Rare Items are any items which are not white or grey. White and grey items are typically either vendor trash or some kind of raw material. Uncommon items are green, and rare items are blue. Epic items are purple, and Legendary items are orange. If you're not going to use these items yourself, you can either disenchant them or sell them.

Vendor Farming

Vendor Farming is the most morally dubious form of farming. It involves knowing where to buy skill books and recipes, actually getting to the vendors selling them (they're usually far out of the way), and then unloading those books and recipes on the Auction House. The easiest products to vendor farm are first aid recipes.

Vendor Farming is a kind of service. You're making things accessible to people in a hurry! Many people will happily shell out an extra gold or two rather than waste ten minutes of their time finding the proper vendor.

Some aggressive people farm vendors on timers, and camp that vendor 24/7 to prevent anyone else from buying. Since they subsequently charge insane prices for these products, it's very hard to call this practice a service. It's a monopoly, and a form of scheming.

First Aid

First aid skill books available for sale from NPC vendors include: Expert First Aid, Heavy Silken Bandage, and Mageweave Bandage. You can buy up a dozen of any of these (they're not on a timer) and unload them at the Auction House for double the vendor price. People always buy these, since they're either too lazy to spend twenty minutes running (or five minutes flying) to the vendor, or they don't even know where to get them in the first place.

Alliance

The first aid vendor for the Alliance is in Stromgarde in the Arathi Highlands. He is in the Alliance-controlled portion of Stromgarde, which is on the right-hand side immediately next to the entrance.

Horde

The first aid vendor for the Horde is in Brackenwall Village in Dustwallow Marsh. Balai Lok'Wein is under a tent next to the western entrance of the village. Miscellaneous Vendor Farming Products

* Frost Oil Recipes * Deepdive Helmet Schematic: There is a little hut on a cliff in Azshara with an npc that sells the engineering schematic for the deepdive helmet. He sells it for 35 silver and on my server these plans fetch around 8–10G on the AH. People dont know its available on a vendor. Easy way to get there is to swim along the east shore of Durotar into Azshara and you should see the hut on the cliff as soon as you get there. The plans respawn after

about a half hour or so. * Mechanical Dragonling Schematic: NPC vendor in the Hinterlands * Mithril Dragon Schematic: Use the Tarren Mill flight path, then just run around to the back of Durnhold Keep to the entrance there.

Crafting involves either creating new items, or improving existing items. It typically takes an assload of money or time to skill up your crafting, especially if you're going for enchanting. You need a constant and changing supply of raw materials to skill up, and you need a lot of gold to buy new recipes (from vendors or the Auction House) once your existing recipes stop giving you skill points.

Contents:
Raw materials
Recipes
Professions
Raw materials

You can get raw materials from the Auction House or by Farming. If you buy from the Auction House, beware of Speculators.

Recipes

You need recipes in order to advance skill in your chosen profession. You can buy recipes from NPC vendors or from the Auction House. You can also grind to find a recipe, but they are very uncommon drops.

Beware! Many Auction House recipes are actually available from NPC vendors; they're just in out-of-the-way places far from civilization. Schemers exploit this by camping out vendors and buying recipes as soon as their timer runs down. It can sometimes be difficult to obtain a recipe except through dealing with them.

Professions

1. Alchemy
2. Blacksmithing
3. Cooking
4. Enchanting
5. Engineering
6. Leatherworking
7. Tailoring

Speculating is a very lazy and parasitic method of making money in WoW. It can take many different forms, but the basic concept is: Buy low, sell high. Speculating involves doing almost no work aside from sitting in IronForge/Orgrimmar and constantly bidding on auctions. Some people frown on this as unfair, manipulative, and mean. Some see it as a natural extension of the economy.

Contents

Price Fixing
Tips
Pitfalls
Money Makers
Day trading
Equivalencies
Crappy Greens and Disenchanting
Faction-Specific Items
Personal Accounts
Ethical Concerns
Price Fixing

One method of speculation is Price Fixing. It is a little risky, especially when the item you're controlling has a high listing fee at the Auction House, but the profit margin can be extremely high if you're lucky or skilled. Price Fixing also requires a large grubstake in order to take control and maintain it long enough for you to cash out.

The basic method for price fixing is:

1. Choose a market.
2. Choose a price point.
3. Buy out everything below the price point.
4. Start relisting your product at a substantial premium above the price point.
5. Continue buying out other auctions (or raising their bids) to keep your artificially high prices competitive.
6. Profit.

Tips

1. Don't list all your product at the same price. Vary it a little. Don't list at exact 1 silver denominations. Take a hint from retailers and list at 99 silver, 99 copper instead of 1 gold. 2. List using two or more characters so the takeover is less noticeable. 3. The weekends are generally a bad time to list, as everyone has the time to grind and find things themselves. 4. Don't buy out product that is very close to your price point. Let it sell and save yourself the trouble of picking it up and selling at a loss (due to AH fees) 5. Enchanting reagents have no listing fee. Within reason, don't compromise on price; just keep relisting at high prices until it sells. 6. Sell at gradations of price. The higher priced product will make your cheapest offerings look more reasonable, and when they're gone, the next cheapest will then be attractive. 7. When possible, overwhelm the market to push other people's product listings off the first page. 8. Don't try building up your stock quickly. Spend a few days bidding on items with no buyout. You'll find that you win a surprising number of auctions cheaply.

9. If someone starts undercutting you, either wait them out, let the market crash and rebuild your stock, collude with them, or buy them out and start listing even higher. 10. Don't try to control the markets with horrible listing fees. It is almost impossible to make a profit in the Silk cloth market, since the listing fees are so freaking high. 11. Don't try to control ore or common herbs unless you know what you're doing and you're willing to risk some cash. Low level ore is too common, and high level ore is generally too expensive. Low level herbs such as Peacebloom are both common and in low demand. 12. Looking at other sellers on the auction house as competitors is wrong because there's almost always more demand than there is supply when it comes to lower level trade goods. 13. If the prices get fucked up and nobody is buying what you have to sell at a reasonable (read: high) price anymore, don't give up and list for lower. Keep 4–6 auctions at your standard price and relist if they don't sell. If you do this enough, things will correct themselves. Don't sell for less unless you need money now. And, really, if you have so little money that you desperately need more you shouldn't have been doing this in the first place. 14. Set a buyout price! People hate waiting. 15. Don’t set your initial bid price too much lower than your buyout. That’s a good way to lose money. Conversely, you can bid on the low bids that other people set, and then sell them back at a profit.

Pitfalls

Price Fixing can bankrupt you in several ways.

1. Overestimating demand.
2. Underestimating supply.
3. Insufficient cash to control the market.
4. Lack of patience and dedication.
5. Intense competition at just below your price point.

The only way to really undercut a price fixer is to buy out all stock, and relist at a 5 silver or smaller price diference. If you have enough stock listed at close enough – but lower – than mine, you'll drive me away from that market. Someone did it with Mageweave (which is almost a loss at the best of times due to 30s deposit on listings) and I've since sold off the 50+ stacks I had at an incredible loss. If you list mageweave 10s lower than me, I lose way more than I would stand to gain by buying you out and relisting. --Lukano

Money Makers

Many people have reported great success price fixing the following products:

* Wool

* Linen
* 6, and 8 slot bags
* Ghost Mushroom
* Copper bars
* Greater Fire Protection Potions

Day trading

Some markets fluctuate over a period of hours or days. Before you decide to invest your time and money, learn the pattern of a particular market. It varies per server depending on the size of the economy, secondary economies from large guilds, profession distribution on that server, and other factors.

* Felcloth
* Arcane Crystals?

Equivalencies

In an economy with intelligent, informed traders, you would expect two equivalent products to command the exact same price. Not true in WoW, because most players are dumb and uninformed. Sad, but there is no denying it. Thus, we see strange happenings which are only corrected slowly by the enlightened few. For example, you would expect steel prices to be fixed to iron prices, since it only takes a bit of time and coal to make steel from iron. Not so! For some reason, steel and iron seem to be only loosely connected.

The same applies to many other equivalent products, some of which can be transformed only one way, while a select fewcan go back and forth. You can exploit this without even feeling guilty about it, since you're kinda-sorta performing a service. Kinda. Sorta.

1. Iron + Coal -> Steel
2. Copper + Tin -> Bronze
3. Cloth -> Bolts of cloth (careful, bolts are typically not in demand)
4. Greater Essence <-> Lesser Essence
5. Metal bars -> Engineering parts

Crappy Greens and Disenchanting

One rewarding equivalency tactic is disenchanting. You can disenchant any uncommon or rare item to get dust, essence, or shards (Rares always give you shards, but the cost of the item is often far more than the cost a shard at the AH). Chance and the level of the item determine what enchanting reagent, and how much of it, you will receive. You can make an absolutely insane amount of money if you know the long-term break even point for a certain level of item. That is, if you buy one hundred items at an average of 1 gold each, and they disenchant into reagents worth a total of 125 gold, you can earn yourself a tidy profit auctioning off the reagents you collect.

1. You need an assload of cash to start with. You need to be able to bid on every single low-priced uncommon (green) item with no buyout in the entire Auction House. Depending on the time of day and the size of your server, this could mean shelling out 20 gold or 100 gold. Most of it you will get back when you are outbid, but some of your bids will go unchallenged.

2. Patience. If you win only a few items and they all disenchant into a single vision dust each, keep buying! Many of your disenchants will result in valuable essences and shards, just wait! (Note that the level of the item determines how many dust you will get)

3. A good strategy is to bid on any armor or weapon above level 40 or level 45 which is listed at less than 1 gold. Go through every page in the search results and bid, bid, bid. Librams, bags, and bullets, however, can NOT be disenchanted, so don't waste your money.

4. Items level 45 and above will get you the most bang for your buck, but if you lower your expectations to 40 you can still make money. You just don't make as much on average, but you're dealing with higher volume so you may actually make more money this way.

5. You can combine your bargain disenchantable shopping with price fixing of the reagent market.

6. Set a buyout price. People hate waiting.

7. Enchanting components have no worth to vendors, which means the Auction House requires no deposit! Don't settle for less, never lower your prices if you can help it. Just keep relisting until it sells!

8. Use Thottbot to determine what disenchants into what, and AH searches to determine your server’s prices. I sometimes use Allakhazam to estimate how well those prices actually match demand..

9. There are a lot of enchanters who live hand to mouth; that is, they buy what they need when they need it. It's a good idea to list your essences and shards singly, and your dust in stacks of 2 or 3 instead of 10. You can do this by holding down the shift key and leftclicking on a stack, choosing a number in the dialog that pops up, hitting enter, and then dragging and left-clicking to drop that number, splitting the stack into two stacks. The fastest way to go about this is to use the right-hand shift key, left-click, then hit enter right away and clicking an empty inventory slot to drop a single dust. Do this twice intead of typing “2” or using the arrow buttons. If you sell in stacks of 2, make sure you inflate your price far past the typical price/dust of a 10-stack. Don't worry! It will sell. Many dumb enchanters only want a specific amount of dust, they don't care about the savings they will get from buying in bulk.

Faction-Specific Items

One complicated equivalency which few people bother correcting is in faction-specific items: pets. Alliance pets are generally cute: kittens, pandas, parrots. Horde pets are icky: cockroaches and other yucky things. If you're on a non-PvP server, or you know someone on the opposing faction, you can do some dealing in the Gadgetzan Auction House to transfer faction pets. A 50 silver pet can easily fetch a few gold at the opposing faction's capitol city Auction House as long as you don't flood the market and you keep the

technique to yourself.

Ethical Concerns

* Speculation cheats people out of their hard-earned money.

Okay, here's the thing: you can go get this shit yourself. All you have to do is to find a place where level 15–25 humanoids spawn and you're golden. Free wool for as long as you care to stay out there. I have absolutely no problem with jacking the prices up on these goods because the people buying them can all go get them themselves.

Leather, for instance. If someone is buying my leather there's one of two explanations: they don't want to go out and get leather themselves OR they've decided they can maintain leatherworking without having skinning as their second profession. In the first case, who cares? They're paying for the privilege of not doing the work themselves. The second case is even worse; why should I do the work and make only a tiny profit because some guy doesn't want to have any gathering trade skills?

Seriously. People make too big of a deal out of AH prices, especially trade goods. No trade good being sold on the AH isn't freely available, just stop being lazy. Hell, if I could sell copper stacks for 5g each I'd do it in a second. — Paradoxish

OH NO KINGSBLOOD SELLS FOR 2G APIECE WHATEVER WILL I DO AS AN ALCHEMIST Oh, I guess I can go fucking pick it myself. What a concept.— Nail Rat

Scheming is the most heinous form of Speculation. Most forms of scheming involve tricking people, either directly or indirectly, into (deliberately or accidentally) buying your goods at an inflated price.

Contents
Good Seller, Bad Seller
Sole Supplier
High Buyout
Scams

Gold guide for noobs, to increase their gold income dramatically

I wrote this guide to try to help basically two sorts of players: newbies to WoW and players who raced ahead in levels without learning how to make money (and wonder why they’re always broke). Once you learn the tricks, it’s pretty easy to make good money in WoW. And if you’re willing to work at it a little, you can become rich.

There is really only one way for players under level 20 or so to get rich in WoW, and that’s through picking the right professions. Most professions are moneysinks at the lower levels. Sure, at higher levels some of these are big moneymakers. But in general you have to invest a lot of gold to get there. But four professions are money-makers from the start. These are:

Fishing
Mining
Skinning
Herbalism

All players can get Fishing. It is a “secondary” skill or profession (along with Cooking and First Aid). All players can get all three of the secondary skills, so get them as soon as you can (level 5 for fishing). In a nutshell you can at level 10 fish in some fairly high level areas for certain fish that Alchemists need in their potions (possibly for Enchanters, too). Please see my HOW TO FISH guide to learn more. Mining, Skinning and Herbalism are “primaries”, and you can only learn two of them.

PRIMARY SKILLS OR PROFESSIONS

You can only pick two of these. They include: Alchemy potion making
Blacksmithing armor and weapon making
Enchanting granting magic powers to items
Engineering making bombs plus useful and wacky items
Herbalism* getting herbs for Alchemy (and maybe Enchanting)
Leatherworking make leather armor (and two small bags)
Mining * get metal and gems for Blacksm, Engi, etc.
Skinning* get skins for Leatherworking, Engi, etc.
Tailoring make cloth armor and many kinds of bags

If you’ve already picked yours, don’t panic. You can always ditch them and train again in new ones. To lose skills hit K, select the skill, and hit Cancel. If you ever want to relearn this skill, you can. It’s an inconvenience, but it’s not that big a deal.

You may have read on various sites how players recommend that a Paladin go for Mining and Blacksmithing or a Hunter go for Skinning and Leatherworking, so they can make their own armor. Mages, they say, should try Enchanting and Tailoring – and so on. This sounds good in theory – “Hey, I’ll make my own armor for free.” But in reality, if you’re in an established (i.e. not brand new) server or realm, nothing could be farther from the truth.

Using Fishing and a combination of Mining, Skinning and Herbalsim, you can make so much money that you can just pay for all the armor you need, get enchantments for it, buy bigger bags, buy a pet, and still have money to burn! All around level ten.

Why? On an established server higher level players have lots of money. They mail it to their alts to spend or spend it themselves. Even though they’re high level, they still need basic trade materials: copper, light leather, herbs, oily blackmouths, firefin snappers, and so on. And they’re willing to pay you good money for these things – things you can get before you’re even level ten.

WHICH TWO PRIMARY MONEY-MAKERS TO PICK?

I chose Mining and Skinning, and it has worked very well for me. Herbalism and Skinning would work, too, although I don’t think it makes as much money (you still do okay – and I could be wrong). I don’t recommend Mining and Herbalism for the simple reason that each of these gives you a “detection” skill on your minimap to help you find resource nodes. It would drive me crazy to have to switch between the two constantly, and if you don’t constantly (and I mean every minute or so) switch you’ll miss nodes. But if you think you can handle it, be my guest.

HOW TO MINE

First you need to train in the skill. If you’re a newbie this means leaving your starting area and going up the road towards the next bigger town (or to your race’s main city). Between the next bigger town and the city are guards (on the road), most of whom will tell you (if you right click them) how to find a trainer.

Click on the bottom option (Profession Training) and then Mining. You get a yellow arrow on your mini-map, and when you get close you get a red flag showing where the trainer is. Easy.

Just right click the trainer and buy the skill (it’s really cheap). Now buy a mining pick. There is always a merchant near the trainer who sells these. You must have it in your backpack or in a bag to be able to mine (not in your bank). Now you need to find a mineral node to mine.

It helps to be at least level five or so to mine copper only because the nodes are in areas where there are lots of monsters, and you need to be able to survive. Note, Skinning is a good combo with Mining because a lot of the things that attack you while you mine are Beasts – and this is precisely what you need to do Skinning: dead beasts.

Copper nodes are scattered all over areas where level five and bigger creatures lurk, like Elwynn Forest, Dun Morogh and Mulgore. They tend to be in hilly or mountainous areas, often around the zone’s edges, but some are underwater (just swim down and mine – you have plenty of air). When you buy the Mining Skill you get several new skill “buttons” in your “book” (one of the buttons in the middle bank of control buttons). Just click on the Detect Minerals button (copper hammer icon) and get that same copper hammer appearing on the corner of your mini-map. Now all copper nodes near you will show up on your mini-map as little yellow dots.

You’ll have to spend some time exploring the lowbie zones to find the copper nodes. Some are impossible – there is one in Elwynn, for instance, that has literally a dozen wolves around it. Forget it. Leave it and move on. Sadly some nodes are “broken”. You mine them and either get nothing or you get error messages. Leave these and move on. Note, this is not the same as a “failure” message. If you get a red “failed attempt” message as you mine, just try again until it works.

To mine all you do is run up to a copper node. They are copper-colored lumps with “crystals”. Right click it, wait, and click on the copper ore, rough stones, and occasional gems that appear on the window. Each node is good for two to four clicks. Then, it vanishes. Note where the node is. It will refresh itself over time – sometimes right away, sometimes in about thirty minutes.

The quarry in the southeast part of Dun Morogh is a great place for copper, as are the kobold mines in Elwynn. Sometimes you’ll see a copper node on the mini-map, but it simply “isn’t there”. Most likely it is underground! See if there is a mine or tunnel entrance nearby. If so and if you can take on the monsters in there, go for it. Excuse me for being obvious, but mines are great places to mine!

HOW TO SMELT

Once you get 20 copper ore you may want to sell it, but first you should Smelt it into copper bars. You increase your Mining skill doing this (which is awesome), and copper bars are what other players want to buy (it’s what they use to make things).

You get a smelting button with the Mining Skill (you may have to click the Next button to see it). Find a forge and stand close to it. If you ask a guard where a Blacksmithing trainer is you will almost always find a forge there. It can be a red, glowing gizmo with an anvil (some forges are small), or it can be “The Great Forge” in the center of Ironforge (just go there and stand to Smelt).

Click the smelting button and then Create All. Go make a sandwich. When you come back you will have made twenty copper bars (if you started with 20 copper ore), and you will have increased your Mining skill a lot! Great. Now you can sell.

WHAT ABOUT THE ROUGH STONES AND GEMS I FOUND?

Rough stones are turned into blasting powder by Engineers. This can be turned into bombs or ammo for guns. If you plan to one day switch and become an Engineer (or if you plan to play up an “alt” or secondary character as an Engi) then save as many stacks of rough stones as you can in your bank. Otherwise sell them to other players (more on this later) or sell them to npc merchants.

Gems are mostly used by Engineers for making things like scopes, goggles, telescopes and so on. Some gems are used by Enchanters. You can sell these to other players, but prices you can get vary a lot. Higher level gems are worth much more. Gems you’ll see at lower levels include Malachite, Tigers Eye, and Shadowgem.

HOW TO SELL MY STACK OF COPPER BARS

Get to your side’s Auction House or AH to sell these, although you can do “/2 twenty copper bars for sale” in any zone to try to sell them in person on the trade channel. I wouldn’t. I’d do the AH. The Alliance AH is in Ironforge, and the Hoard AH is in Ogrimmar. Just right click a guard as you enter the city to get directions. I’ll be giving more advice on selling at the AH toward the end of this guide.

ADVANCED MINING

At Mining skill 50+ and I think adventuring level 10 you can go back to the trainer and learn Journeyman Mining (I think you start as an Apprentice). When you start your Mining skill cap is 75. But when you train as a Journeyman you get the skill cap bumped up to 150.

With a higher skill you can mine and smelt tin. You can smelt copper and tin bars into bronze bars (buy these abilities from the trainer). Want to know what’s crazy? On my server tin sells for about the same price as copper, as does bronze! I’ve never even made bronze because it’s such a waste (you in essence “lose” a copper bar to combine it with tin to make bronze – the price of bronze would have to be more than the price of tin and copper together for the creation of bronze to make sense). I often don’t even bother with tin because it’s so much faster and easier for me to go get 60 copper ores, instead. I know where the copper is, and the monsters around the copper don’t faze me now (tin is a pain to get – maybe I need to work harder to find better deposits – but why should I if the market for it is no better than copper?).

Warning, this is how it is in my server. In three weeks this could all change. I have been seeing copper prices coming down lately. So who knows? Just keep in mind that occasionally you hit skill caps and have to come back to pay the trainer to get to the next “tier” of ability. It gets costly as you level up, so save some money for this.

I’ve just started mining iron. I’ve never mined mithril or thorium, but apparently you can make really good money on those. They require higher skill and high adventuring levels (because these nodes are in some hairy places). If you keep the Mining skill into the higher levels, that’s what you’re going to be doing.

SKINNING

To get Skinning right-click a guard for directions to a trainer, either in your race’s main city or in the village outside your main city. Right click the trainer to buy the skill. Near the trainer you’ll find a merchant selling skinning knives. Buy one. Like with the mining pick, you need to keep this in your backpack or in a bag (not in the bank).

Skinning is much simpler than Mining. There are no fancy buttons that come with it. Simply kill a skinable beast (you can’t skin spiders, and the very low level beasts can’t be skinned), loot it completely, and then hover your pointer over it. You’ll see the pointer change to a “hide”. Right click. If you fail, right click again.

Soon you’ll get a window with “ruined scraps” or “light leather” in it. Save these. Even ruined scraps can be sold for decent money.

You may come across a field where some other player has left three dead boars, two dead bears and a dead snow leopard. If he’s looted them, you can now skin his kills. Cool, huh? If he’s there don’t do it too fast – he may be a skinner, too, and it’s really rude to skin other skinner’s kills.

Save your stacks of scraps and light leather, and put them in the Auction House or AH when you have enough. Scraps don’t always sell well on the AH (if so npc merchants pay well for them), but light leather is always in demand. Hide is a rare drop and sometimes gets more money than light leather. More on AH selling later in this guide.

HERBALISM

Just like with the other skills, right click a town guard and get directions to a trainer. Right click her and buy the skill. You get a button for “herb detection”. Hit it, and you get a little “daisy” icon by your mini-map. Now all nearby herbs will show up as yellow dots on your mini-map.

You can get Peacebloom and Silverleaf right outside Ironforge and Stormwind. They can be anywhere, although Peacebloom tends to be in the sun and Silverleaf in the shade of big trees. Earthroot is in the hills or mountains. Stranglekelp is underwater.

When you find a plant, just right click it. If you fail, right click it again until a window opens. Pick up your herbs. That’s it. Unlike mining, the Herb node only has one “harvest”. But Herb nodes tend to be more plentiful and easier to find than mining nodes. Also fewer players tend to become Herbalists.

As you adventure, you’ll see herbs all over the place. Some of the mining nodes tend to be near clusters of troggs, gnolls or kobolds (and are hard to get), but herb nodes tend to be out in the open and not so well guarded.

Once you have enough herbs, get to the AH and sell. I have a sneaking suspicion that herbs sell better on PvP servers than PvE servers. I can’t prove this, but PvP players aggressively look for every “edge” they can get on other players. Potions are a great way to get this edge. They can literally mean the difference between winning and losing. That said, any smart player who wants to get ahead in the game will want to learn about and use potions.

So there always is a market for potions (and for the herbs needed to make them). I don’t think the market is quite as good as the metals market, but herbs can be sold for good money to other players. But I could be wrong. This isn’t the only guide on the Internet telling players to Mine and Skin to make money in WoW (prices for metals and leather may come down some). It could be that most players are overlooking Herbalism and that in the future there will be a good market for it. If you try it and don’t like it, it’s pretty easy to ditch it and get some other skill (to lose a skill hit K, pick the skill, hit Cancel). More on how to sell at the AH later on in this guide.

BUT I DON’T WANT TO JUST HARVEST STUFF; I WANT TO MAKE THINGS!

I understand. But it’s really frustrating if you’re burning up all the copper you find in your Blacksmithing skill – and no one is buying the armor you make. You have no extra money for bigger bags (this is a huge pain), for potions, for that rare blue item you really want that sometimes appears in the AH, for fluff pets – even for Griffon rides!

There’s always a compromise. Maybe put the Blacksmithing on the back burner a while and sell your copper for cash. If you find your Enchanting skill is eating you alive, cancel it and make some cash. Gain about twenty levels and then go back to Enchanting. At that point you can farm the “green” items you need to up the Enchanting skill like crazy, and you can catch up in a few days. Try fishing. Do what makes sense to you. All I want for you to know is that there are a lot of ways to make money, even at the very lowest levels, and no one in WoW has to be broke. There is nothing more pathetic than some clueless player whining and begging for money when it’s so easy to make!

MAKE YOUR ALTS WORK FOR YOU

Most players don’t just play one character. They have a “main” and an alternate or “alt” character. Most people make an Alt because they get bored being one thing too much. They see some other class having a lot of fun, and they want to try that out.

But you can also make an Alt to be a money-maker for you. Again, you can make really good money in WoW at level ten or below. And it’s pretty easy to play up to level ten. My first day in WoW I got my Hunter to lvl 10 (it was a long day, yes, but I did it). You can leave your Main as a Engineer/Enchanter or whatever and occasionally play your Alt to make money. Mailing the cash to your Main costs only 30 cp.

A Hunter is a great choice for a Skinner because they get track beasts. A Warlock or Hunter is good for any harvester because these classes can use their pets to “take the heat” while running between nodes or while harvesting nodes (Hunters don’t get pets until level ten; Warlocks don’t get a good “tanking” pet that can taunt well and hold agro until level ten). Night Elves start far from the AH in Ironforge, so if you want to play a NE consult my travel guide for getting there fast and easy. For the Hoard it is the Tauren who start far from their side’s AH in Ogrimmar (Undead are connected to Ogrimmar by a fast and easy to access zeppelin that goes to their home city). Again, check my travel guide; it’s not really that bad getting a Tauren to the AH. But if you don’t want to fool with this extra trip, don’t make your “money maker alt” a NE or Tauren.

HOW TO SELL – UNDERSTANDING THE AUCTION HOUSE

Get to either Ironforge (Alliance) or Ogrimmar (Hoard) and find the Auction

House or AH. Consult my travel guide for tips to find these cities if necessary. Remember, Stormwind is connected to Ironforge by tram. Undercity is connected to Ogrimmar by zeppelin. Both rides are fast and free. Once in the city, right click any city guard to get directions to the AH.

Press through the other players and right click an Auctioneer. Gnomes may need to use a “high angle” camera view to find the Auctioneer (I’m not kidding!). You get an auction window, and you should be in the Browse part of it.

Type the name of whatever you’re selling and hit Search. Make sure you spell it right. If there is lag it may either take 30 seconds to work, or it may not work at all. The AH can be buggy at times. If it is, go do other things; maybe log out and go get a burger or pizza. Just don’t assume that if it tells you it can’t find what you’re looking for that it’s telling you the truth. At the time of this writing it is often buggy.

Okay, lets say you’re selling a stack of 20 copper bars. Your search for “copper bar” gives you the following information on other players’ auctions (bid and buyout prices in SILVER money):

Akuzo 20 bars bid: 40 buyout: 60
Corino 20 bars bid: 48 buyout: 50
Corino 20 bars bid: 48 buyout: 50
Corino 20 bars bid: 48 buyout: 50
Corino 20 bars bid: 48 buyout: 50
Corino 20 bars bid: 48 buyout: 50
Corino 20 bars bid: 48 buyout: 50
Funkybat 20 bars bid: 45 buyout: 48
Hradakar 20 bars bid: 47 buyout: 55
Hradakar 11 bars bid: 24 buyout: 27
Joebob 10 bars bid: 29 buyout: 30
Joebob 10 bars bid: 29 buyout: 30
Kaolinda 20 bars bid: 42 buyout: 50
Kaolinda 20 bars bid: 42 buyout: 50
Margar 20 bars bid: 25 buyout: 30
Margar 20 bars bid: 25 buyout: 30
Margar 20 bars bid: 25 buyout: 30
Margar 20 bars bid: 25 buyout: 30

Gah! What does all this mean? Is this good or bad?

PLEASE, MY BRAIN IS BLEEDING – JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO

“I’ve been playing 16 hours straight. I can’t think any more. Just tell me how to sell my dumb copper and let me get to bed!” Okay! I will. Try to find the “average price” in the above numbers. Don’t literally average them. Just eyeball it. It’s fifty silver, right? Or is it 30? No, Joebob is only selling half-stacks, so don’t get fooled by him. Indeed the “average price” is 50 silver. The no-brainer approach: if the “average” buyout price is 50, set your opening bid for your stack of 20 copper bars at 45 silver and set a buyout price at 49 silver. Click the “auction” tab, put your stack of copper in the little box, and then fill in the numbers. Make sure you’ve done it right. Then set your auction for “long term” and create the auction! If the average buyout price is 40 silver, start your auction at 35 and set your buyout for 39. And so on. Sometimes it’s literally as easy to find the “average price” as in the example above. Sometimes the “average price” is really more a “cluster,” say a group of sellers with buyouts at 52, 54, 55, and 56. In that case set a buyout of 51 to be safe. You’re not the cheapest guy in the AH, but he’ll get bought out fast. Over the next 24 hours your price will eventually attract a buyer. You will almost certainly sell. Your money will be in the mail tomorrow. Now go get some sleep!

WAIT, I WANT TO KNOW MORE – WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON IN THE AH?

Well, it’s not that hard to figure out, so don’t worry. It works a lot like Ebay. The price is in silver to buy the whole stack – it’s not a price per unit. So the first guy, Akuzo, will sell his stack of 20 copper bars if someone bids 40 silver and then no one else comes along and outbids him or does buyout. The winning bidder gets his stack of copper bars in the mail when the auction expires. At that point Akuzo gets the silver money minus a small fee in the mail. If Akuzo never gets a bid, he gets his copper bars back in the mail, and he can try again. Someone agreeing to pay the buyout ends an auction right there.

But what’s the big deal with “buyout”; what’s that all about? Let’s say a player’s

got an Engineering skill of 145, and he really want to get that skill to 150. He’s going to make five “orange” combines (each challenging or “orange colored combine” always nets a skill up). This player needs four copper bars per combine – or 20 bars. He’s most likely going to want to buyout. Why? He wants that copper right now, and if he goes for the buyout option, he gets it in the mail immediately. He wants the cheapest price, so Margar the Orc sells a full stack for the 30 silver buyout price.

Most tradeskillers are going to want to “buyout” the trade supplies you sell. Again, it’s because they don’t want to wait two, six, ten or more hours for the auction to expire. They want it now because they want to do their combines now. Their bank and bags are already full of stuff, and they don’t want to sit on it forever. It’s a supply-chain world in WoW for the skills, so to speak. There will usually be no bidding wars for copper bars.

There may be a bidding war for a rare “blue” magic item. But when selling stuff like copper bars, light leather and earthroot, “buyout is your friend” (I’ve heard several players literally say this – I didn’t make it up).

Okay, looking at those prices in the table above, who is the clever Orc and who is the dumb Orc? Well, Margar has the cheapest price per 20-stack at 30 silver. He’s definitely going to sell all his hard earned copper. Is he the clever Orc?

Maybe, maybe not. Eye-balling it, what is the “average” buyout price? About 50 silver (don’t let Joebob fool you). Are these guys selling at 50 really going to sell, too? Yes, they most likely will. Margar will sell first, then Funkybat at 48 silver. Then Corino and Kaolinda will start selling. Other players may come in with cheaper buyouts and sell before them, but as long as they picked the longest time for their auctions, Corino and Kaolinda will almost certainly sell all their copper at 50 silver a stack.

Why? It’s because every once in a while a rich player will come along and buyout as much copper as he can. He either wants to get his Alt to skill up a ton, or he wants to make scads of bombs, or whatever. He’ll buy six or even a dozen stacks of copper and almost wipe out the AH! He doesn’t care what he pays, either, although he’ll probably buy the cheapest stacks first. After he’s come through, then players with higher-priced buyouts can and will sell… usually.

It’s a small risk. Sometimes buyouts slightly above average work, occasionally they don’t. If they don’t work you lose a little over silver (for the set up fee) and can try again. It’s not that big a deal. But is it really worth it to take the risk