Gold-making tips from a WoW millionaire
Apr 19, 2009 Auction House, Gathering, How-To, Investing, Resources, Videos
I saw this a few days ago on World of Raids and was drawn to the “0 to 1,000 gold in 4 hours” title. I was a bit skeptical, but I watched the video anyway. Turns out there’s some pretty good information in there! He’s since released another video and a PDF that explains some really efficient gold-making tactics.
This one summarizes his basic strategy and more-or-less proves his “quick gold” claim. I was still a bit skeptical as it could be faked fairly easily, but his 2nd video and PDF proves that he really knows his stuff. I’m excited for his next video.
His site, WoW Auction Mastery, has the same videos in high-def and the PDF I was talking about. He’s supposed to have a few more videos coming in the next week. I’ll probably review them in more depth pretty soon. I’m going to put a few of the techniques to use and report back with my findings! Leave a comment and let me know what you guys accomplish as well. Maybe I can get him to write us a guest post!
Enchanting changes in patch 3.0.8
Jan 5, 2009 Auction House, Crafting, Farming, How-To, Investing, Patches, Professions, Wrath of the Lich King
As we covered a few weeks ago, some enchanting recipes are being changed in the upcoming patch. Thanks to well-formatted post at MMO-Champion, we’ve got a much better idea of what’s being changed - nearly all the Wrath enchants!
Many of them are having their dust and essence (especially essence) requirements lowered, some have had Dream Shards added or Dream Shards to replace Abyss Crystals. With the additions of two new tanking enchants, we can definitely expect Dream Shard prices to rise - probably double or triple their current cost. I’ve been stocking up over the last few weeks and I’m already seeing the prices climb from 4-5g each to about 8-9g each. And the increases in price isn’t stopping any time soon.
I have not yet heard if the patch is coming during tomorrow’s maintanence or not, but it has to be soon. You still have a chance to pick up some more dream shards before the auction house is cleared out and inflation sets in.
Upcoming changes to Enchanting
Dec 23, 2008 Auction House, Investing, Patches, Professions
More opportunities for profit in the next patch have surfaced in a blue post on the official WoW forums:
“In BC we thought that dust was too common and enchants were basically gated by the cost and availability of shards. We wanted to adjust this for LK and in retrospect overcompensated, such that dust is now the rare, limiting reagent.
As Excrusiate points out, this should be better next patch.”
From what I’ve gathered in the post above the blue, some of the enchants that require dream shards will now take a few more than they currently do. Initially, I assumed they’d just be slightly increasing the chance to gain dust/essence from disenchanting, but I guess not. Having just finished collecting all the Wrath enchants, I can tell you the enchants that are likely to change and cause the value and demand of Dream Shards to rise:
- Enchant Gloves - Armsman (currently requires 2 shards)
- Enchant Gloves - Crusher (currently requires 1 shard)
- Enchant Cloak - Major Agility (currently requires 2 shards)
The other few enchants don’t have near the demand (1/100th, if I had to guess) to cause any change in the Dream Shard prices. Of the hundred or two enchants I’ve done, I can remember doing Armsman twice and Major Agility two or three times. I’ve sold one or two scrolls of each flavor as well. So there probaby won’t be a huge increase in shard prices, but perhaps enough to stock up on them now so you can sell scrolls in a few weeks and earn a tad more profit.
Arena Season 5 starts today! What are you gemming?
Dec 16, 2008 Arena & Battlegrounds, Class Specific, Crafting, Investing, Patches, Resources
Another late post! No more slacking from me, I promise!
I just got done watching my server slowly count down to shutdown. You know what that means? Arena Season 5 with lots and lots of new gear! A few dozen sets of gear, at least!
Just like Season 4, I hope you stocked up and prepared for enchanting and jewelcrafting because they’ll be hot, hot, hot over the next week or two. Last season, our readers together earned hundreds of thousands of gold profit. Enchanting materials (dust at least) didn’t seem to do as well as expected, but essences sold quick. What sort of surprised me was how much was made from leg armor and spellthread - huge profits in these areas. I stocked up on Frozen Orbs with plans for Icy Prisms, but I may start crafting the new spellthread instead.
Jewelcrafters did well too since most of the gear needs socketing. In Wrath we have some new, unique cuts designed specifically for PVP. I’m hoping to see these gems take off in price. If you’ve been running heroics over the last few weeks and you have a small pile of Stone Keeper’s Shards, go grab the new Jewelcrafting patterns from your Wintergrasp quartermaster - most of them are just 12 shards a piece.
Now, before you run off trying to be the first to login and buy up all the mats on the AH, let us know what race and class you play mainly and what gems you’ll be using for raiding, arenas, and battlegrounds. I can’t be an expert in all classes, so your recommendations will help us all invest properly with a wide variety.
Winter Veil Inflation
Dec 16, 2008 Auction House, Crafting, Farming, Gathering, Holidays, How-To, Investing, Professions, Wrath of the Lich King
I’m sorry I didn’t get this post up sooner so you guys could start preparing. Wordpress has been giving me some trouble lately. If the most recent updates don’t fix it, I might have to move to a new blogging platform.
Winter Veil is finally here and so is the inflation. Most of us have seen it before - hundreds of gold for stacks of Small Eggs among other things. It brings back memories of WoW’s first Winter Veil and farming the hell out of owls in Teldrassil for eggnog.
With many players going after the Merrymaker title, a few of the player-created items are in very high demand. This demand has caused the materials to skyrocket in price, giving us an opportunity to earn some major cash. Seeing as this post is a little late, we won’t be able to invest in much. But some quick and easy farming, even on low level alts, will prove to be very profitable. Here are some items you should look out for and sell while the demand lasts:
- Wool Cloth and Bolts of Woolen Cloth
- Runecloth and Bolts of Runecloth
- Rugged Leather
- Copper Ore and Copper Bars
- Small Eggs
- Deeprock Salt - this is a big one, going for about 20g each on my server. Deeprock Salt can be turned in with 5g for five Preserved Holly.
The following may be profitable investments as they can be purchased cheaply from vendors. I’ve often started earning funds on new bank alts by selling a few Rune Thread on the auction house for a few hundred percent markup - the markup and demand are likely much more significant at this time of year.
- Rune Thread
- Green Dye and Red Dye
- Holiday Spirits and Holiday Spices
- Ice Cold Milk
Hopefully there’s still time for you to take advantage of the holiday madness. Let me know how you do!
Tags: Seasonal
Icy Prism, the new Brilliant Glass
Dec 13, 2008 Crafting, Investing, Patches, Professions, Wrath of the Lich King
After being the proud owner of nearly every Engineering pattern in the game (save for very few, rare green ones) for about two years, I decided it was time for something more profitable. There just wasn’t much Engineer-only recipes in Northrend to make it worth while. I dropped Engineering for Jewelcrafting and leveled it up just before the expansion. After hitting 80 and farming a few stacks of ore, I dropped mining and leveled up Enchanting (I wish I had gone Inscription instead, but I’ll probably just roll a DK for that).
The upcoming patch has a lot of disappointing changes (I’m a hunter), but I’m very excited for the new Brilliant Glass of Northrend, Icy Prism! Even better, it’s made from those three uncommon gems I seem to have the most of: Calcedony, Shadow Crystal, and Dark Jade. It also requires a Frozen Orb, which could make it a costly endeavor for now, but I’ll bet it’ll still be profitable after cutting the resulting gems.
I was going to write about Frozen Orbs and other rare materials, but it seems I might be a bit late, so I hope you were selling them as soon as you got your hands on them. In the first week or two of Wrath, Frozen Orbs were going for 300-400g on my server, Abyss Crystals made a few hundred more. I made a killing on them during that time. Now that the Frozen Orbs are down to about 50g each, it’s probably safe to start stashing them away for Icy Prisms. I haven’t heard if they have a chance to turn over epic gems, but it should still be profitable regardless. If epic gems are released through Icy Prisms, we’ll be insanely rich!
I have a neat little prospecting calculator that’s nearly finished to give you an idea of how profitable prospecting is on your server. Across the few servers I’ve checked, uncut uncommons go for a few gold a piece and uncut red, orange, and yellow rare gems sell anywhere between 50g and 90g. If this sounds like your economy and Saronite Ore is around 25-30g a stack, it’s probably safe to prospect the hell out of it. You’ll get some profit out of uncut gems, but way more out of cut ones. Just find the most profitable cuts and get those recipes before the competition does - and sell, sell, sell!
Death Knight preparation and investments
Nov 5, 2008 Class Specific, Factions & Reputation, Farming, Investing, Resources, Wrath of the Lich King
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.
Overachiever Wealth: Vanity Pets
Oct 21, 2008 Auction House, Factions & Reputation, Gathering, Investing, Vendors
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!
Wrath: Inscription coming sooner than expected
Aug 26, 2008 Auction House, Gathering, Investing, Patches, Professions, Wrath of the Lich King
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.
Arena Season 4: How did you do?
Jun 26, 2008 Arena & Battlegrounds, Auction House, Investing, Patches
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!