Making money in WoW (for newer players)Follow

While levelling, money is often scarce though very required. In reading other posts, gathering some info from guildies and experimenting a bit, I put together (pieced together) this guide for new WoW players on how to get some dosh. I'm sure there's a lot of addendums which can be made to this, as well as a lot of advice from seasoned moneymakers, it is in no way concise and complete, but, you can make a CONSIDERABLE amount of cash this way, and in some form or another it is utilized by many a WoW player.

KK, lets get moving, here's 'Moneymaking 101':

Make an secondary character and immediately run the nearby quests to get to level 5. One he/she is at level 5 don't bother with any more quests, your main objective now is to get him/her to the nearest big city with an auction house (e.g. Stormwind, Exodar, Ironforge, etc...). Auction houses are not located in all towns/cities, so if you need to, simply ask in the chat channel where the nearest location of one is. When you find out, run for it. You may die along the way, but don't worry, respawn and keep running. Don't stop to kill anything as you will no longer level with this character - he/she is going to be a go-between for you your main character and your money. When your secondary gets to the city, go find a friendly guard and ask where to get enchanting training, then go get it (thats why you need level 5 as it is the the minimum level requirement to train professions), as per why you need it, you'll see later. Now, go find the auction house (ask a guard if needed), then go find the mailbox closest to it. Your alt will spend his existence (at least, for the time being) running between the them. For now, position him near the mailbox.

Now go back to your main character. Take up two collection skills, make sure 1 is skinning (As skins are everywhere) and the second either mining or herbalism (remember to buy a skinning knife and a mining pick (if mining chosen)). As your main runs about, skin everything, and mine and/or gather everything you can. When you get to an area with a forge, use your smelting skill (comes with mining) to convert your ore into bars (if you chose mining instead of herbalism). Hold onto everything, do not sell them to any vendors (aside from the gray items, which are common and worthless - these you can sell to a vendor). When your main eventually gets to a mailbox, mail all your collected items to your alt.

Now this becomes your Donald Trump part of the game. Sign in your alt, get your mail, then run with all his/her goodies to the auction house. Browse the auction house for the goods you are about to sell and note the prices, then create auctions for your items undercutting the competition by 5-10%. If an item you are selling is not on the auction house (for example a certain weapon or piece of armor), search out something similar for reference and undercut that price by 5-10%. When you put up any green items for sale, give them a 48 hour auction, most items like skins and ore you can put up for 12 hours (as they tend to sell very quickly, sometimes within seconds of the posting). When all of your auctions are created, run back to the mailbox and wait for either the money from your successful auctions or the next mail from your main.
Note: There is an add on program out there called 'auctioneer' you may eventually want to look into which helps with auction prices, but it does have a tendency once in a while to give you a price way off current market value. The best method is to scan current auctions to get a current value idea.

Now, onto the reason for taking the enchantment skill. Every once in a while you will find you have a green item which just doesn't seem to be selling. If it doesn't sell after two postings, it probably isn't going to sell at all. As an enchanter, you also have the ability to disenchant the item, which breaks the item down into its original magical components, which have just about a 100% sell rate.

Lastly, two bits of valuable advice if running this scheme:

Most skins, leathers, ores and bars will sell irregardless of when you start the auction, but for green items, put your sale up over the weekends. Try to put your greens up for sale on a Friday with a 48 hour limit on the auction. There are many more casual players online who tend to shop the auction houses on Saturdays and Sundays. If your limited on bag space, you also have a great warehouse nearby to store any items for future sale, the bank.

As you start pulling in cash, consider investing in larger bags for your alt. This allows you to store more items for weekend sales and cuts back on running back and forth between the auction house, the bank and the mailbox, which can get a bit frustrating.

Playing this way is a blast as well, after a few hours running amok and killing on your main, you get to play an economics game for a while. It also builds up some anticipation for your next log in to see what's sold and how much you've earned (which is well worthwhile). Hoping this guide might be of help to someone. Good hunting!

O3


P.S. Now, heres a couple of 'advanced tips' for once you have you moneymaking scheme going and are comfortable with it:

While scanning the auction house for item prices, keep your eyes open and buy anything which is underpriced. For example, if you are looking to sell 'item x', lets say you scan the auction house to get an idea on price and find 8 'item x's' at 500s each and 1 'item x' listed at 100s, immediately buy it for 100s. Then post both of your 'item x's' at 400s each. Theres some good money to be made this way. Your expenditure is 100s, you profit is 700s. I've sat once or twice and played this game for an hour, with a considerable profit made at the end.

If you visit a vendor and he/she has an item in limited stock (shown by a number in parenthesis, e.g. 'Potion: Major Rage (1)'), BUY IT! These are the equivalent of 'rare spawns' for vendors. My auction house alt character, alone, can make quite a bit of money in just under an hour by running about town, buying every rare vendor spawn, then immediately putting them in the Auction House.
For example, whenever you stop in a town, go visit the local enchanting guild and buy out enchanting mats such as 'strange dust' and 'lesser magic essence' as well as any rare recipes they may have. These periodically renew at the vendor and sell for a few silver each for the dust and essence, and a few gold each for recipes, BUT, at the AH stacks of dust/essence may sell for 1g+ and some recipes go for up to 15-20g.

If in Ashenvale area, run south to the building just north of the lake. There you can buy cooking training books for 70s each, I've been selling these with 100% buyout at 2g50s.


Edited, Jun 7th 2008 5:13pm by OzoneSSX

This is also good for players with higher level characters that don't know how to play the AH very well.

Why level it up to level 5? That whole your character won't be preserved BS has been disproven many times over.


EDIT: Want to give ball-less rate downs? No problem, the only thing you should note is that I am completely correct. Someone said "Enchanting" those who have levled it know that there are requirements for DEing items now. If I am coming off harsh, sorry. That isn't my intention.

Seeing as I am at sub-d, the only people that would read this post "want" to. I am not trying to cause a stink over a rating system whose only flaw/greatest strength is the fact that almost everyone can do it, but I'd like to know why exactly am I being rated down for?


Edited, Jun 7th 2008 11:52pm by Justdistaint

Level 5 is the minimum level for training professions (if I'm not mistaken), so it would be required to train enchant/disenchant (for breaking those non-selling greens down into their original components, which sell very well).


It may be a 'nobrainer' to you, me and many others, but not to a new player. I can run a few dailies on my main, make 100g and fund my alts no problem, but we're not the players I compiled this guide for. I recall being a new player, running quests for 55 coppers or 2 silvers in an attempt to save up 14s for a piece of armor, all the while selling stacks of leather to vendors (as I didn't know better). I could have easily made 10x more money by posting a sale at the AH.

Edited, Jun 7th 2008 5:05pm by OzoneSSX

This money-making guide has some good ideas, but what everyone needs to remember is that just like all markets the AH goes through mood swings (so to speak). Too much supply, demand goes down (and vice versa). Simple economics. It just means that we must stay apprised of what the market is doing and keep aware of these ebbs and flows.

Myshumana -- Tauren Hunter, Feathermoon

Edited, Jun 7th 2008 5:21pm by MyshumanaofFeathermoon

Hey guys and gals. I ran this post to help a few folks out that are just starting. Just saw an angry post (seems to have vanished) about rate downs with an insulting message to me. I'm not going to rate up or down in this post, nor, from this point forward shall I defend anything I've said as, it is an opinion - debate it, yes, defend it, no. There have been over 130 views at this point, which I'm happy for, maybe someone picked up some useful info (which was the intent) and maybe some have disagreed (more than understandable). If anyone needs any clarifying on any of the points of the original post, I'm more than happy to answer and help.

Also, please, feel free to add constructive criticism and/or ideas, I'm very open to them myself and I'm sure it would give many a player new insights into things they haven't thought about - its the point of the thread. Debate would be fantastic, its what forums are for (or should be at least), I'd be more than happy to learn a few things myself.

If I came across as 'all high and mighty', my apologies, it was not the intent. Nor is this post a base for me to fire off rate downs and critique at those who don't agree with me (which via a message has been implied). This post is an opinion based on a play style which has worked for me and I decided to share in case it may offer some help/advice to new players.

Edited, Jun 7th 2008 6:56pm by OzoneSSX

You can get Auctioneer at Norganna's Site


You'd better rethink about your alt never needing to level. Disenchanting is a tiered skill, and you won't be able to disenchant everything at level 5. However, you can disenchant anything in the current (TBC) game at Level 35, since that will enable you to get to 300 skill in enchanting.

Enchanting skill determines what item levels a player can disenchant.

Uncommon and Rare

Skill 	Req. Level 	Item Level 
1 	1-15 	          1-20 
25 	16-20 	         21-25 
50 	21-25 	         26-30 
75 	26-30 	         31-35 
100 	31-35 	         36-40 
125 	36-40 	         41-45 
150 	41-45 	         46-50 
175 	46-50 	         51-55 
200 	51-55 	         56-60 
225 	56-64* 	         61-99 
275 	64-70 	        100-120 

Epic

Skill 	Req. Level 	Item Level 
225 	56-60 	         61-89 
300 	60 	         90-92 
300 	70 	        100-151

Edited, Jun 7th 2008 4:51pm by ohmikeghod

Nice starter guide.

As stated, if you stay with disenchanting, plan on leveling your bank toon a bit so you can disenchant higher items.

When you are ready to read a bit more about money making, here are a few additional posts I found useful.
Making Money in Azeroth- Some suggestions by Wondroustremor

Bottom Scanner guide by Actodd (when you are ready to make serious money with disenchanting)

In addition to gaining mining skillups through smelting, many ores can also be prospected by jewel crafters to obtain gems. It seems to vary on my server, so I check and see which is currently fetching the highest price at the time.

Auctioneer comes bundled with two other addons: Enchantrix and Informant. Do yourself a favor and run both of those also. Even if you aren't an enchanter, Enchantrix can help you by letting you know what items disenchant into what essences or dusts. This can be helpful so you know that the truly awful cloth boot "of the Falcon" has a chance to disenchant into illusion dust...and illusion dust sells really well. Enchantrix will also give a baseline value of an item, based on what it disenchants into.

Informant is incredibly handy. While I always try to sell all my vendor trash greys, (and so should everybody) some are worth more than others. Say you're running some instance and you need room in your bag to loot that bop blue, well, now you know what to get rid of. Of course, that's only one example, but it's just a very useful addon.

Other things that sell well are cooking recipes and the fish/meat to cook them. Some people skip cooking at lower levels and then see the wonderful buff foods available and decide to power level cooking. Rather than take the time to go around to the different vendors to see who sells what, they would rather just do one stop shopping at the AH. Same with the cooking mats. A lot of people would rather do dailies than spend time in Elwynn or Tirisfal gathering stringy wolf meat or whatever. Save them the trouble of doing so and charge for the service.

Wikibase feedback forum

Not so much, vendor prices aren't so bad, cloth is always worth more to a vendor as bandages than the cloth alone. I wouldn't use first aid as a money maker.

Threads like these helped me alot when I was brand new to the game.

Something you should mention (Ohmikegod already did), a level 5 won't be able to disenchant very much. But it's good to start with I suppose, and you can even make good gold at lower levels through strange dust. In fact I find it very easy to consistently double my profits by bidding on cheap level 1-20 greens, disenchanting them, and selling the materials at 2x bid price.

You can start with 1g or less, then double it up to 2g, reinvest that and make 4g, then 8, then 16. There becomes a limit where you can only make so much gold/day doing this (as theres only so many cheap greens to bid on) but it's a great idea for new players who don't mind spending 20-30 minutes a day on the AH.

All that's needed is L35, at least until WotLK is released.