WoW Economist

A few guides and shopping lists are floating around to prepare yourself for rerolling a Death Knight. With the introduction of a brand new class into WoW and the fact that all races start in the same area, the leveling process in the first few weeks is going to be chaotic. That’s where these guides come in.

Scattered around Azeroth and Outland are many repeatable reputation quests. Almost all of these quests offer experience the first time you turn them in and usually some bonus reputation as well. There are a dozen or so of these quests that are well worth doing after your Death Knight escapes the Scarlet Enclave. The major ones being the cloth turn-ins for every city faction and the turn-ins for Outland factions. I’m not going to go into much detail about the quests themselves, but the complete shopping list should give you an idea of what items to start investing in.

• 300x Wool Cloth
• 300x Silk Cloth
• 300x Mageweave Cloth
• 300x Runecloth
• 6x Blasted Boar Lung
• 6x Scorpok Pincer
• 11x Basilisk Brain
• 14x Vulture Gizzard
• 5x Snickerfang Jowl
• 1x Imperfect Draenethyst Fragment
• 1x Flawless Draenethyst Sphere (very rare unless you kill Teremus, you can probably skip this one)
• 30x Core of Elements
• 30x Crypt Fiend Parts
• 30x Bone Fragments
• 30x Savage Frond
• 30x Dark Iron Scraps
• 2x Thorium Bar
• 1x Golden Rod
• 8x Hi-Explosive Bomb
• 8x Unstable Trigger
• 10x Unidentified Plant Parts (or 360x to get you to Honored before you do Zangarmarsh quests, helping you to hit Revered for your head enchant before you leave Zangarmarsh)
• 6x Bog Lord Tendril
• 10x Mature Spore Sac
• 10x Glowcap
• 6x Fertile Spores
• 5x Sanguine Hibiscus
• 30x Arakkoa Feather
• 10x Oshu’gun Crystal Fragment
• 3x Pair of Ivory Tusks
• 10x Mark of Kil’Jaeden (for Aldor)
• 10x Mark of Sargeras (for Aldor)
• 1x Fel Armament (for Aldor)
• 10x Firewing Signet (for Scryer)
• 10x Sunfury Signet (for Scryer)
• 1x Arcane Tome (for Scryer)

The Death Knight starting area quests will get you past level 58. Afterwards, you’re forced to roam around Eastern Plaguelands for a while - with dozens, maybe hundreds, of other Death Knights, all competing to complete the same quests. The reputation turn-ins will give you a significant boost (a level or two initially, and a few bars every few levels during Outland leveling) and will allow you to push past the chaos into uninterrupted leveling.

With the introduction of the Achievement system in pre-Wrath patch 3.0, more opportunities for profit have surfaced. Many pet collectors and skunk lovers are going after the 50 vanity pets achievement for their own Reeking Pet Carrier. Since the release of the Burning Crusade and the addition of the skunk critters throughout Terrokar, many of us have been dying for our own skunk mini-pet. Now that our wish has been granted, we’ve been sucking up all the vanity pets we can get our hands on.

High demand and lowered supply - you do the math! Here’s an opportunity for some really easy profit, especially for those playing on PVE realms. There are about 30 different companions that can be purchased directly from vendors, and I don’t think any of the vendors have a limited supply. A quick trip around the world will earn you some exploration and trick-or-treating achievements while you stock up on these vendor-sold vanity pets. Selling these on the Auction House will usually return 10x your investment, sometimes more.

If you are Alliance or you play on a PVE server, keep a close eye on Lil Timmy as he is a rare spawn NPC that sells only one White Kitten before despawning for hours. The last White Kitten I saw on the AH was priced around 200g. I can’t say if it sold or will sell, but if it does, that’s a hefty profit for wandering around Stormwind.

I personally spent the time to travel around and collect the pets while exploring and I’m very close to getting my own Stinker. I’ll need to spend a few hours farming for the oozling and whelplings before I’m done. The skunk is definitely an awesome and unique pet and well worth the effort. I’m not the only one who thinks so, either, so get out there and make some money off ‘em!

It seems that with the popularity of Quel’Danas dailies combined with the relative value of Aldor shoulder enchants and proc requirements on exalted neck pieces, the value of those respective reputation tokens has risen sharply. Indeed, killing blood elves on the new daily quests yields far more Sunfury Signets and Arcane Tomes than Marks of Sargeras and Fel Armaments. And thus, the laws of supply and demand take hold once again and gift us with an exploitable market opportunity.

So one way to get cash here would be to head on over to Legion Hold and kill every demon in sight. Here are a few other ways:

• Always choose Aldor reputation items as your reward from daily quests.
• Buy cheap Scryer reputation items in AH, trade at 1:1 ratio for Aldor equivalent, resell.
• Buy cheap Aldor reputation items in AH, trade at 1:2 or 1:3 ratio for Scryer equivalent, resell.

Here’s a pristine farming location for Aldor reputation items if you prefer grinding it out: