Farming vs. AHFollow

In general, for my tailor I'll farm cloth and buy anything else that's needed at the AH. I'll farm the other stuff only when I can't buy it. However, today I think I found another reason to farm - price gouging. There is a point where something becomes so expensive that it makes more sense to farm it than to buy it at the AH. I'm fairly well off, so that isn't a point I usually reach. Today I found that point, and I'm off to Silithus to farm Ironweb spider silk. If the people putting it on the AH for 7G each had been more reasonable, I'd be happy and they would have some of my gold.

I agree completely about AH prices , depending on what it is if it is cheap and/or not that common i will buy from the auction house but anything i need a lot of i will get my hunter to farm for my alts unless the AH prices are very cheap , i guess i am lucky i have a 71 hunter as i find a lot of things i need for various trades are far above the level of my alts.

What i also do is if i spot something going for silly prices and i know can be farmed fairly easily i will farm enough for my needs plus enough to make my farming time worth my time , for example i have been farming cloth and other items in the Hinterlands recently and after getting enough cloth for my Tailor alt i made about 100g for a few hours of killing which to me makes more sense than spending gold at AH on what is an easy farm run.

What i do find is some common drops go for silly prices at AH so if i have an alt at the right level that gets exp from the kills i will spend an evening farming with them rather than doing questing as i figure it is better to have spare gold than be high level with no gold.

This happens every time i need mageweave. AH has it for 7-20g a stack on my server.

for some reason mageweave stacks on my server are the most expensive stacks of cloth....its not hard to farm up,

if i need some for an alt or for something i am doing i'll check the AH price, see the price is way over the top and them go to kill furbies in southern felwood for rep and cloth....usually no more then 45-60 minutes of furbie farming nets me all the mageweave i need and some to stick on the AH.

The one thing I factor in when deciding to farm or just buy it on the ah is TIME. In the same amount of time you took to farm that one thing you needed could you have done something that would have made more gold than just buying it?

I rarely ever farm because my time is more valuable spent doing other things. In fact I make most of my gold off just "farming" the AH, professions and other things that don't involve farming.

I've been going a little crazy with alt professions. As it stands, the only professions I don't have at the Grand Master level are Tailoring Alchemy, but that will be in the works soon.

Bank alt > AH for me. I'd rather ship something that may be of value to a bank alt for future use. For a time I was starting to question the wisdom of that decision, since I have two bank alts, each with their own guild and 3 tab guild bank, and they were all full. Then I got to leveling alts and their professions, and saved literally thousands of gold and/or dozens of hours of farming. Jewelcrafting, blacksmithing, and tailoring from 1-375+, gathering to fill the gaps between what I had on hand and what I needed, and buying from auction here and there when the gathering got overly tedious. I have a level 60 warrior with 430 jewelcrafting. My DK has 440 Blacksmithing at level 61. If it weren't for the wonky way they set up the level requirements for tailoring, my DK would be a GM Tailor...as it is, I'm stuck at 375 until I get my DK to 65, but at least I can condense the Frostweave I get here and there into bolts for future use.

I find that my need for gold is trivialized by my access to so many professions. If I need leg armor kits, I hop on my druid and make them. If I don't have the mats, I go get them. If I need food for raids, I can do that on my druid too (and spent this past weekend leveling her fishing so that I'm not restricted to farming meat). I routinely send stacks of Saronite to my warrior to prospect, and as a result I have between 6-11 of each of the rare WotLK gems on hand...just needs a quick request in guild for a JC to cut the one I need and it's done. In the process of leveling grand master professions, I get a ton of greens and even a fair number of blues that don't sell for much on auction but D/E quite nicely on another alt. Eternal Belt Buckles are easily made for a pittance with leftover Saronite and the over abundance of eternals I have on hand at any given time. I've got 20 Titansteel Bars in my pally's bank and no pressing use for them.

In other words, I'm self contained for the vast majority of whatever I need. Flasks and repair bills are easily paid for with a handful of dailies. I'm not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination...most of my toons have < 100g on them right now, with the exception of my pally (main toon) who has just over 5600g. That's plenty for my needs right now, and considering my next two alts through Outland/Northrend are already nearly capped or well on their way with GM professions, all they need to pay for is class and riding training.

I have no interest in things like memmoths with vendors or motorcycles. I'm not much for achievements in general, but even less so for those that would require hours upon hours of farming for rare drops (ie. pets) or paying hundreds/thousands of gold for them on auction. Once I've got Alchemy to the GM level and gold set aside for riding training, it won't be hard at all to divert surplus materials to auction from time to time, When you need to buy little (if anything) and have a lot to sell, the auction house is your friend.

On my server, someone is attempting to corner the market in Fire Leaf (which is used in making the 180AP flask). Invariably, the entire stock in the AH is listed at close to 100g per partial stack, which my auctioneer says is an 800% markup over pre-monopoly prices.

As a result, it has become worth it for me to get online 15 minutes early on raid nights, and farm enough for our DPS, rather than doing a daily and buying them. It's probably even more profitable to go a half hour early, list them for 300%, and let the monopolist pay me for the privelege of maintaining his position...

I farm most of my mats as I am levelling then just send them to the alts that need them. Only profession I have really had to buy much for ah is Leatherworking because my skinning alt hasn't been levelling. Generally its more worthwhile to just farm the items yourself, particularly if it is northrend goods. I would rather farm it (most of the time) because its more interesting than running dailies over and over again.

I also buy gems off the ah for Jewelcrafting because its 1-2G a gem (for outland and northrend green gems) on my server so its easier for me to just buy them from the ah. I still have 30 stacks of netherweave sitting on my tailoring alt waiting for him to hit level 50 so he can learn the next tradeskill level.