Contents
Introduction
Everyone always says you need to be high level to make any gold in
the World of Warcraft. Pfft. Now, it's true that high levels have daily
quests, which pay nicely, and lots of stuff that they can farm. Certainly
there are a number of them who have enough gold to be able to easily
afford those 15k motorcycles and three-man mounts. You also have to
be at least level 65 to get youir crafting beyond 375, so high levels
clearly have their uses.
But you can make more than enough gold to get by at low levels. You
gear doesn't cost much and you don't have to pay any 5k for Artisan
Riding (and another 1k for the mount.)
So this page is for those who are brand new to WoW or who are
starting new characters on a new server or who, for whatever reason,
seem to have too little gold when starting out. Check out the other
pages under "more gold guides" above for more details.
So what's low level? 20 and under, for the purposes of this page.
At 20 you get your first mount and it should be pocket change, not
"wallet emptying." How much can you earn if you get a litte more serious?
Here's a blow by blow description of starting from zero and
hitting 6,500
gold in 30 days. A lot more is possible. From zero. See
here.
The Auction House
Even if you don't get into buying and selling you should download
and install the Auctioneer addon. It modifies the auction view to show
more items in the window and it sorts by buyout price, rather than
bid. Auctioneer just makes it easier to browse the AH. If you seriously
get into buying and selling then it (or something like it) is indispensible.
Auctionator is another addon that I find to be very useful.
The basic idea is that you're going to look for items that are priced
too low for their own good and then buy tham and immediately repost
them at a higher price.
Pricing - What I look to do is browse certain group
of items and look for prices that are way too low. For example,
someone posts Large Fangs at 3 silver each. I buy them up
and repost at three gold each.
Another posts a hot glyph at 1g a pop. Buy them out and repost at
a 40g or 100 or more.
Say Copper ore is going for 7-10 gold per stack. Someone
post theirs for 1g/stack or less. Guess who buys it all up and reposts
at 7-10g/stack? Yep, me. Or the other guy. Don't shoot yourself in
the foot. It might as well be you getting that 7-10. However,
if you want to price it really low, that's fine. Saves me the bother
of gathering it. :)
Don't post in stacks of one, please. People actually
skip over those and buy the larger stacks. My opinion is that you'll
make more with your gatherables by posting them in full stacks even
if you price them above the single item prices. As an example:
Doofusdumb posts 35 copper ore, as singles, at 33 silver each.
Lots of buyers will skip right over the singles and buy your stacks
of 20 ores, which are priced at 40 silver per ore (8g per
stack.)
Why? No one has use for 1 ore or 1 herb. They're bought in large stacks
for crafting. Scribes buy tons of herbs for Inscription (and
they buy more in Cataclysm because they'll need 3x more herbs
to to make each glyph.) Blacksmiths buy tons of copper
bars when leveling their craft. Miners will buy lots of ore to smelt,
which levels their mining skill. Singles are useless, despite what
some guides say, and they're annoying enough that they're often skipped
by the buyers.
Scribes need herbs in stacks of 5, so if youi're herb selling then
sell stacks in multiples of 5, or just sell the whole stack of 20.
Alchemists often need large quantities of specific herbs. Blacksmiths
and Engineers and Leatherworkers and all the other crafters all need
stacks of raw materials. Your job is to provide those stacks.
If you like this guide how about sharing it?
Ores and Skins and Flowers
Just do it. Get Skinning and either Herbalism or
Mining. (If you're a Night Elf then only get Herbalism, there's no
ore in your area, though there's plenty on Darkshore. You need to be
in your teens for that area.) Don't forget your mining pick and skinning
knife. Send stacks of 20 to your banker (and a bit of money to pay
for the auctions.)
The Blood elf area is great for skins, ore, linen cloth, small eggs,
and lynx meat (also makes a buffing food.) Spend an hour or two there
and you should be able to gather enough to get by for a while.
By the way. when you get higher level you'll find the best prices
for your gathered stuff will be for the old world stuff. Eveeryone
will be looting the new zones and the lower level ones are forgotten.
You'll see 40 stacks of 20 of one herb from the new zone and
13 total of one herb from the old world. Ok, not that extreme, but
you get the idea.
Other Gatherables
White items - Would you believe that white titled
items, such as armor and weapons, actually sell on the Auction House?
Not for much, but what they do sell for is a lot more than the vendor
will give you. Send them to your banker and post them at 5 - 10 silver
each. It's not much, sure, but they're free for the gathering and when
you have nothing...
Grey items - Vendor these until you have enough that
you aren't interested in copper. Vendoring these will get you enough
to buy your starting skills and a bit of seed cash to send to your
banker, especially in the Blood Elf area.
Eggs - Some areas have plenty of low level flying critters. These
drop Small Eggs which you can cook up into a +2 Stam food or sell for
a nice price, especially on
certain WoW hoidays
Cloth - Linen cloth doesn't usually sell
for much, but it sells quickly. Humanoid and Undead humanoid mobs drop
the stuff. Collect stacks, get your first aid skill up, and send the
rest to your banker.
Meat - Raw foods that be be cooked up into a buffing
food, such as the Small Eggs into Herb Baked Egg, will sell for more
than those that can't be made into such things.
Limited and Hard to Find Items
Many vendors have only one or two of some items in stock. Once gone
it will be a few minutes to a few hours before they restock. Look into
these. Also look into items sold by only one vendor.
Herbs - your Alchemy Supplies vendors often has a
few herbs available. These are great if you're just starting on your
gold acquisition. Pay a few copper for each herb and sell then for
several silver each.
Recipes - most recipes will go for more on the AH
that what yu pay for them from the vendor. Buy the for a couple of
silver, sell them for a gold or two each (or more, if they're uncommon.)
This
guy, in Stormwind, sells cooking recipes. Buy a few at his low
prices, post them for more, see what sells, then buy more of
those.
Professions
Skip all crafting professions until you have lots of surplus gold.
Cooking is the only exception since you can easily gather the mats
and the buff is handy. You can make plenty of gold with the
crafts, it's just that you have to be able to level the skill till
you hit the sweet points.
That said, your level 1's can certainly profit from the mistakes of
others. If a crafter posts her wares on the AH for a very low prices,
basically dumping them, then you buy them out and price them much higher.
Glyphs are my favorite example, but all of the crafting profs have
items that are valuable to certain classes and specs.
If someone posts +Agility leather items for pennies, then you buy
them and post them, one or two at a time, for gold. As long as they
keep selling you keep bumpng the price up. If you're scanning the AH
regularly with Auctioneer or Tycoon you will have a pretty good idea
of what's in demand and when some person generously posts stuff too
cheap for you to pass up.
Materials
You don't need any gathering skills here. Just as with the crafted
items, you keep your eyes on the raw items that are needed to make
items. When they're low enough you buy them up and resell them.
You can use Auctionator to make a shopping list of herbs, for example.
Select a number of herbs that you want to keep an eye on and add them
to your list. Make a mental note of what price you'll buy them at.
Everytime you log into your bank alt you check the prices. If they're
at your "buy price" then you do just that. Report them at a higher
price or wat until prices climb.
Summary
You don't need to be any higher than level 1 to play the "buy and
sell" game with the Auction House. You don't need to be higher than
level 10 to mine a lot of copper. Level 15 lets you get endless light
leather and some decent herbs. You'll be able to collect tons of cloth
from humanoids and piles of "small eggs" from the bird things in the
starting zones. Misc other items can be found by low levels that sell
quite well.
Level 1s can get from capital city to capital city without much fuss
and then buy all the limited items.
Of course, if you're a female Undead or Worgen you can dance in the
cities and beg gold from people...
Learn More, A Lot More
I started a set of characters on a brand new server with nothing.
I didn't by gold, join a guild, transfer 80s, or do anything like
that, just a fresh start. The goal was to see how much gold I could
aquire in 30 days and the initial goal was 1,000 gold. The end result
was about 6,500 gold. Along the way I leveled a Rogue to 30 or so and
a mage to 20. Just the thing to mine Deepholme, right? ;)
Believe it
or not, I focused on leveling them and any gathering was incidental,
except at the start. A couple of stacks of copper ore, some small
eggs, and some skins provided some started money. Most all of the rest
was working the Auction House. You can see the post series here: 1k
gold in 30 days.
Now, if you're giong to find the deals mentioned above then you're
going to have to do some Auction House study. You'll need to look through
several pages of stuff and find the deals or just gather stuff and
sell it. If you're crafting you're going to have to do a bit of study
to see what's hot on your server.
Or you can check out an addon which automates all of the research
for you and finds the hot deals and what the market wants. Wouldn't
that make the job of acquiring a nice gold stash that much
easier? Such a thing does exist. Go here to get yours and then get
rich!
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