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!

I was a bit surprised when I heard that the new profession, Inscription, is coming well before the Wrath launch. Eyonix stated that the pre-Wrath content will be patched “in the coming weeks” and according to some of my own insider info, Wrath isn’t scheduled to launch until early November. I can only assume the patch will land somewhere in the middle. I’m hoping for sooner than later.

Iktomi hinted in a comment in our last post that we might have some success selling “tradeskill power leveling packs” of herbs to new inscribers. Perhaps even a step-by-step guide to go with the raw materials. That will likely fetch more profit than the soon-to-be-inflated market price of herbs. Did anyone try this with Jewelcrafting in the Burning Crusade?

Whether you plan to sell your herbs individually on the auction house or in packs directly to new inscribers to quickly boost their skill, I’d highly recommend investing gold into herbs as soon as possible. Once the patch hits the test realms, I’m guessing prices will slowly rise on the live realms, then sky rocket when the patch goes live. It’s also worth noting that Cenarion Herb Bags aren’t that expensive to craft and hold 25% more herbs than Netherweave Bags. I was recently invited into the Wrath beta so I’ll be working on an Inscription power leveling guide as soon as I get a stock pile of herbs to transfer over.

It looks like the economy is beginning to settle down after the initial rush for Season 4 gear. I’m sure there’s a bit of fluctuation left to go before I’d consider the market stable again, so no need to rush getting rid of everything you invested in for the new arena season. You still have time.

I found it interesting that the motes and primals went up quite a bit more percentage-wise than Void Crystals and Greater Planar Essence. I still have a few stacks of Void Crystals to dump and fortunately the prices are still high enough to make a good profit after AH fees. I was a little frantic before Season 4 trying to gather up all the cheap enchanting materials and took about 2k gold in loans from friends. They’re all paid off and I’m sitting at about 2,300 gold and double that in items to sell. It was a success for me and I did well considering it was the first time I’ve taken advantage of the new-area-season inflation.

How did you do with Season 4? Leave a comment and let us know how much profit (or loss, but I sure hope not) you ended up with. We’d love to hear!

June 24th! Not only does this mean new, badass gear for the hardcore PVPers (Spartan helmets, anyone?), but new gear for the casual guys too. With the Season 2 sets purchasable with regular honor points, we should see many more regular players running around with Tier 5 equivalent gear and guild progression should pick up a bit.

We economists know what new gear means! The demand for enchants, cut gems, leg armor and spellthread will be on the rise. So it’s time to start hoarding for a week or two while we wait for Season 4 to roll around. I just started on a new server about a month ago so I’ve been working hard on earning as much gold as I can to stock up on the materials needed to buff all the new gear that’ll be floating around.

It’s probably not safe to buy out the AH, but definitely watch the trade channel and keep tabs on auctions throughout the day. Try to snag as many deals as you can on all of the high-end materials needed for the gear buffs mentioned above. Just hoard em until Season 4 starts and sell at your discretion.

On an unrelated note, I’d like to apologize for the lack of updates lately. Will, our main writer, has been very busy lately and hasn’t found the time to post. I’ve been working on some exclusive tools for WoW Economist readers (yea, that’s you!). They’ll be in their beta stage in the next week or two, so keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime, I’ve got a lot of ideas (with the help of your suggestions) for new articles so I’ll be sure to write more often. If you’ve got any ideas for a post, just leave a comment below and let me know so I can take note of it.