Networking, in this case, refers to your own personal network of characters. Each character is placed in strategic areas to make your buying life a little easier. The main idea is that is saves a ton of time over having a main character fly from place to place to grab items. You are going to be acquiring limited items and other sellables with these characters and then shipping them off to your bank alt. (This frees your primary characters from a life of farming.)
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The Gold Network
Here’s an example network which will get you started and is pretty much the same for Horde and Alliance.
- If you have gold on your main character then go to step 2, this step is if you are starting fresh on your server. This character will be your gatherer. Start up a new class that can kill fast and don’t worry about getting past level 10 or so (since it’s just doing basic gathering.) Nothing wrong with it if you do go past 10, though. My gatherer is now 90 and has now, actually, switched to two crafting professions.As soon as you can (as soon as you have some cash) head off to the nearest city and get two of the gathering skills. I suggest skinning and either mining or herbalism. If you’re a Night Elf then skip mining, since there is no ore in your starting areas, though you’ll find plenty if you level up enough to hit Auberdine (in Darkshore.) Once you have your skills then start some mad gathering and mail all stacks of stuff off to your…
- Bank Alt Character: This will be the main buying/selling character of your network. Everything that is gathered by any of your characters is sent to this character to sell on the Auction House. I like Silvermoon and Stormwind for these characters since the AH, Bank, and mailbox are all pretty close together. Any city will do, though my characters complain about Darnassus, since everything there is so far apart that their legs get tired. Exodar and Silvermoon and nice and quiet, if you don’t like crowds.
- Buyers: All of the big cities have limited items which you can buy and then resell. Put a buyer in any of the cities you choose and then buy and send stuff to your bank alt for resale. Example: If Ironforge is your base then park a buyer in Stormwind. Grab the limited items, recipes, etc. that are available there. When the Darkmoon Faire comes around then send some character over there.
- As an example, at the Inn on the East side of Stormwind is a Master of Recipes. Grab a few of those cooking recipes and send them to your alt, if he isn’t in Stormwind.
- Enchanter suppliers sometimes have interesting recipes. Tailoring suppliers as well.
- If you find a vendor in an out of the way place, say.. .somewhere in the Outlands, just park a character there.
- Naturally other players can be a formal, or informal, part of your network. Keep an eye on the trade-chat and grab the deals when they pop up.
- Consider making an arrangement with other players for herbs, ores, etc. Buy low, sell higher.
- High level characters can do this, as well. All you do it use a different city for each character’s home base. Every now and then they can run around, buy stuff, and ship it to your Auction House character.
- If you’re a higher level mage the you can port from place to place.
Cross Faction Trading
The section below is obsolete. Currently Alliance and Horde share the same Auction House listings. An Alliance character can post a ReallyCoolThing and a Horde char can buy it. You cannot, however, have your own Horde character buy that item. You will have to get a trusted 3rd party to buy if for you and then transfer it to you.
This really works best with two accounts since you can post and grab almost immediately. You can do it with one account, but in the time that it takes you to log out of one character and in with another you might find that some wag had grabbed your stuff.
You’re going to make a charter, on each side, that will be parked at the Booty Bay (or any other) neutral auction house. You’ll have four alts total, at least. One banker for each side, and one Booty Bay alt for each side.
The idea is that you will be buying and selling cross faction. If your Horde character acquires stuff that sells for more on the Alliance AH than the Horde AH then you ship it to the Alliance side. Or if something in one side’s AH sell for a little, but is selling for a lot on the other side, then you buy it, ship sit off, and resell it to the other side.
For example – Some farmer dumps a pile of Arcane Tomes on the Horde AH for 1g each (I wish.) You check and see that they sell for a lot more on the Alliance side. You buy all of them and ship them to your Horde Booty Bay character. The items are placed on the neutral AH there and then you log into (or switch to) your Alliance Booty Bay character, buy the items, and ship them to your Alliance banker and sell them. Same for Ore, herbs, items, enchanting materials, whatever. Anytime there is an interesting difference in prices then you take advantage of this.
Another example is the Red Dragonhawk Hatchling, which is only available in Eversong Woods. Buy them up and ship them to the alliance side.
Or perhaps primals/eternals/volatiles are selling cheap on one side and for a high price on the other. Buy the one, ship it over to the other side, via the neutral AH, and sell it for a nice markup.
- Since you cannot mail items directly from Horde to Alliance, or Visa Versa, you will be making a bridge to get stuff back and forth. You will need a bank alt for the other side and each side will need to get a character to the neutral Auction House. This means that you will need to get two characters to the neutral AH in Booty Bay… It can be done with level 1s, but it’s a long swim.If you have a couple of mid level characters collecting dust you can either run them down the road through Stranglethorn vale to BB or, if you have the fly point, just fly down.
- Note that some people will camp the neutral AH, looking for deals. Some are rumored to have bots doing just that. If this is the case then the faster you can switch alts the more likely your are to get your stuff. Or, if you’re good at dodging irate Goblin guards, and you’re on a PvP server, you can try to find and kill the other player(s) or bot(s.)
- Basically, just make a shopping list of the stuff you normally buy and sell, then compare the prices on the other side and act accordingly.
Massive WoW Gold
There’s an addon which will automate some of the research for you.
If you just want to farm stuff and post it on the AH then this addon is for you. It will scan the auction house for whichever mats are selling well and then show you the best place to go to get them.
If you want to craft stuff then this addon will show you what’s selling and what you need to get to make those items.
If you hate to farm/grind/gather then there’s nothing better. Check it out here.