Thursday, November 12, 2009

Making gold, noob-style

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I've never been one to try to actually make a decent amount of gold. I think the highest I've ever gotten is around 6,000g, which I was pretty proud of. I know people who have tens of thousands of gold, and I'm always like, how?

So I decided to try to actually gather up some wealth. An fun experiment, yay!

First, I went through my bags and my bank to see what I could easily pawn off. Clefthoof meat, shoveltusk steak, worg haunches? Sold! Runecloth? Sold! Frozen orbs? Sold! Extra flasks of the frostwyrm that I’ll probably kick myself for selling later cause I know I’ll need them at some point? Sure, why not, I’m poor! Sold! It reminded me of the time I bought a Wii + Twilight Princess right as it came out for like 400 bucks, played non-stop and beat the game, and then was like "uhh.... wii sports anyone?" and then eventually sold the whole thing to my friend because I was poor. Ah, the good old days. It's ok, Xbox kicks the Wii's ass anyday, and I've Pete's got one of those now.

Anyway, after pulling in a solid few hundred gold off of that, I moved on to …. farming herbs.

Sometimes I hate farming herbs. Sometimes I’ll see an herb right there. Right there! And I refuse to go over and pick it. Why? Because I’m stubborn, dammit. Damn you, herb, for trying to make me go out of my way while I’m on my way to the Argent Tournament! I’ll show YOU! Guess who’s not picking you now, biotch! The problem is, this is just total fail, because it would take me like, what, 14 seconds total to drop out of flight form, fall a bit to get closer to the ground, shift back into bird, scratchscratchscratch the ground to herb, and then be on my merry way. 14 seconds! Probably more like 10 or 12, because I’m a druid, and druids are OP and herb in flight form, lol.

However, sometimes farming herbs is very relaxing (similar to how massacring many herds of Shoveltusk in the Grizzly Hills is relaxing. Barkskin+Hurricane, ho! I could do that for hours on end and never tire of it. Once I farmed Shoveltusks for so long that I amassed about 70+g just in grays. Those Worn Hooves really add up, lemme tell ya. The only sad part is that I’m not a skinner). I just shift in flight form, head on over to Sholozar or the Storm Peaks, zone out, and herb my face off. Then I sell them all to my much richer co-healer/guildmate at a fair price. What he does with them, I don’t know. But it’s quick and easy money. He gets a good deal, I get the assurance that I'm not going to be undercut on the AH.

Other money making options (keep in mind I have absolutely no experience doing this. Just throwing that out there, before Gevlon starts calling me a moron or something):

1. Play the AH exclusively. My boyfriend Pete does nothing but buy low and sell high. There’s absolutely zero effort involved. No farming, no professions, no nothing. Just snag the stuff that people are silly enough to put up cheap. Arctic furs for 30g each? Sure, it’s 10x the amount it goes for at the vendor, but if you take a better look, you’d see they’re selling for 130g+ (that is, until 3.3 hits). Buy low, resell high.

2. Work at a profession and sell your wares. You know, farm herbs, skin stuff, cut gems, make flasks, write glyphs, blacksmith/leatherwork/tailor something, etc. Undercut everyone on the AH, profit.

3. The Anti-AH: Dailies, leftover Icecrown quests, killing stuff and looting cash, etc. Slightly more time consuming, but also profitable.

How do you guys make your gold? I'm trying to get at least a few thousand more to get epic flying for my hunter...

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17 remarks:

Vralk said...

Damn, I do hate herbing...
why do they make druid's so good at it, just to realise that we all hate it...
Gold making is interesting, but very tedious, any method atall is tedious, but some make gold faster than others, and so are more tedious for the trouble.
WoW is like a monopoly, some times you get unlucky and go to jail, making big losses, and sucking hardcore, others, you return after a day of rest to find every single auction has sold :) I do just love those days ;)
Vralk

Matojo said...

How I make gold tends to really depend on my mood from week to week. Some weeks, I just feel like grinding. Others, I'm whipping up gems or thread or vellums to sell. Sometimes I just say "Screw it" and blast through a bunch of quests.

This week, I may take a shot at leveling my Paladin's JC/BSing by only making items that will turn a profit. Is it slow? Hells yes, but it benefits me to a degree, too.

Jaedia said...

Money from quests (levelling alts, finishing all quests, dailies)

Selling any crap I pick up on my travels (leather, cloth, etc.)

Using professions (I make netherweave into bags and make a little more profit than selling stacks of netherweave) used to buy uncut metas, cut them, and made about 50g profit each.

And soloing old content, places like ZG/Kara, SH HC, not too bad for gold, even in a pair. Especially cool if the TBC heroic you decide on is the Shat daily

Littlebark said...

I made 4,000g once (and that is still my personal best). I went to work and when I came home, Mr. Littlebark had power leveled Enchanting... with my gold!!

*sob*

Interesting post. I'm horrible at playing the AH. I feel SO bad undercutting people.

Anonymous said...

I don't set out to make money, but just doing a daily heroic here and there + raiding + a single cooking daily ads up over a few weeks. looked at my main raider the other day and they had 6k on them. That's after a few weeks build up. The key to making money in wow is basically not spending money.

Cassandri said...

I agree. The secret is just not to spend money.

I thought druids could herb in flight form? OP! OP! OP!

Glamour Geek said...

I actually find herbing a fantastic way to end my night. Yes, I'm weird.. :( The trick is to be comfortable. Yummy hot coffee, low music, and guild mates to chat in /g or Vent. Give me those three things and I could farm for hours.

Another good money maker? grind your BC factions reps. The dungeons are full of cloth, gold and gear. Haven't got your MGT chicken or SH Raven? Find a friend and turn it into a daily!

Spex <3

Maaya said...

Your story reminds me of how I was when I played back in 2.4, I never got my epic flyer, money was so hard to make.

Then I recently started afresh on a new server, and I've been selling some vendor stuff. You know, the enchanting formula from the Moonglade vendor. Every time I need to hearth, I teleport to Moonglade first and buy the formula for 2g50s (it's limited supply), mail it to my bank alt and post it on the AH for 10-20g, depending on whether there are others selling it. I've made at least over 200g pure profits in a week just by doing that.

Also, selling the alliance cat pets on the neutral AH to the horde side (the vendor is alliance only).

The money from these activities probably is only about one day worth of dailies at 80, but really good starter money for lowbies, and it adds up to quite a significant sum over time.

I've also been posting stuff I gathered during questing (ores and herbs) on the AH, and I'm now sitting with dual specs plus close to 2000g in cash, at level 60.

One lesson I've learnt is that you shouldn't be afraid of getting returns from the AH. Just repost them at a reasonable price. Scan the AH with Auctioneer everyday even if you don't intend to play the AH. This way you get to know the market price of each item in a tooltip. Set it to post slightly under market price. The Appraiser function will automate posting stuff.

On my old main, we've been raiding for money. Get some core raiders together, then advertise in LFG channel. Non-tier pieces start at 300g bid, tier pieces start at 500g. When a boss is down, everyone is open to bid on the drops and highest bidder wins, with no consideration to spec or role. At the end of the raid the money is divided equally between everyone, including the bidders.

Back before Ulduar went live, items like the T7.5 helm, the Last Laugh, the ring, and the quest necklace used to easily pull five-digit bids out of some people. For one afternoon raiding Naxx25 we could earn 1000-4000g each. (Obviously we must ensure we could down all the bosses, that's why you need a core group of raiders. We usually clear Naxx25 in 4.5 hours.)

Then Ulduar25 was even more profitable, since people have been doing dailies and accumulating money. Even raids that couldn't down the four guardians could easily accumulate 1000-3000g per person.

But of course it depends on whether your realm likes these kind of raids. I used to eye it with suspicion and hated the concept of "buying" gear. But it really is a good way to make money if you don't have guild raiding obligations.

Anonymous said...

Turning all my toons triumph badges into crusader orbs and spitting them out like rabbit babies.

Of my 3 toons the only one that needs the badges are my DK. I can make those back pretty quickly just running heroics post 3.3 so I figure why not. They aren't selling for as much as when I started but making 800+ gold from just running toc10 is pretty nice.

Averna said...

@Spex: I'm so with you. If I'm in the right mood, and I've got on a snuggly robe and my space heater's on, and a nice cup of tea, I'm all about farming until the sun comes up =)

@Maaya: That's a neat idea, the raiding for money thing. I don't think that happens very regularly on my server, although I think some top guilds once did full clears of Ulduar with people who would pay them for the drops.

Maaya said...

Raiding for money is a good way to extract some gold from those casuals who want to see 25-man content, yet don't want to be tied to a raid schedule.

The key to make people accept it is to not present it as a raid selling gear. That alienates the buyers. Ideally you want it to feel like there's only two or three people running the show (RL and the book-keeper), and the rest of the raid is there to bid on gear.

It's like running a business, really. You'll start slow, but as satisfied buyers leave the raid with their shiny new epics that their guild would never have given them, they'll come back with their friends and guildies and you'll start to see bidding competitions.

But it is very tiring leading such a raid. Because virtually half the raid can be strangers, and if you fail to clear the instance, they won't come back the next time.

Towards the end of T7, we had a core of close to 20 raiders who show up each week. Most of them are alts whose mains are actively raiding as well.

Oh and I enjoy gathering, too, actually. I've leveled up fishing to max on three different characters, and I'm loving druid herbing. Although sometimes it gets frustrating to have my nodes taken away by someone who got there faster. Well, not that it was mine to begin with, but you know that feeling...

Watching guild chat and herbing for me is sometimes like taking a walk in the local park. Except it's much more comfortable in winter and no mosquitoes in summer. :P

Meleetree said...

Gold has ever been a major problem for me in WoW. I've never had anything - hell, I even had epic flying for my main character *given* to me when I dinged 70 back in BC. My guild members thought it was embarrasing that their guildmaster was always so slow :(

When WotLK hit, I was levelling, making a bit of gold then, but still barely enough to support me when I started raiding. But... but... since then, things have gotten better. I am, by no means, rich like some of my friends, but I now got a healthy amount of gold, in case I see something shiny I want!

How did this happen? Well, I hate doing daily quests. I don't "play" the auction house, and I definitely do NOT farm anything unless I really, really have to. I raid, I love to raid! so what happened to me, was that I all the sudden found myself with some extra time to play wow. I levelled up a few more characters (3, to be precise - so I now got 4 lvl 80), also skilling up different professions for them.

All the sudden, I no longer have to buy flasks, I no longer have to buy gems and I no longer have to buy enchanting materials or spellthread. Because I am self-sufficient. I can make everything I need (almost) myself. Granted, I don't make any gold from that... But I SAVE gold. I no longer spend 5-600 gold a week on raid stuff. so even if I only do daily quests a few times a week, I'm still making a profit :)

I would love to be rich in game. But not at the cost at doing daily quests on 4 characters and "playing" the AH. Not my style of gaming, even if I do admire the people capable of doing so. My gaming is about having fun... and if that means, I'll never be the player throwing gold coins to the mob in Dalaran, then so be it.

Jarr said...

I do dailies, simply because they are profitable and I nejoy the progress made from the rep. I hate sitting idle and playin the AH beyond seeling a few dropped items is not for me.

My route is
1) Son of Hodir (6 quests: 82g 68s)
2) Argent Tournament Crusdader (9 quests: 159g 7s)
3) KotEB (6 quests: 79g 38s)
4) Frenzyheart/Oracles (3 quests: 42g 66s)

So in three zones you bang out 24 dailies (leaving one for the Heroic dungeon daily) and net 363g 79s. That's before factoring in vendor trash and any items you could toss up on the AH.

Six 80 Argent Tourney Crusaders all with speedy flyers so I think I'm doing something right. I hope this helps. Good luck and good hunting.

Anonymous said...

There are some really great ways to make gold in WoW! My guildies love me and constently hit me up for gold because I always seem to be rich. The big problem is that as soon as people start learning about the best methods (Arctic Fur) (Hatchlings) then Blizzard seriously nerfs us. I would love to tell you all about my tricks but I'm sick of blizard taking the ecomomy back from us that figure out the secrets. After all they have all the marbles.

Keldara said...

With the patch, using the random heroics, 13g/15-20 min assuming smooth runs (which most are in my experience. It's a nice way to make gold, social and not tedious (until after you've ran like 20 runs a day ._.)

:D

Nelladel said...

If this is your main, why do you have a gathering profession? Herbalism doesn't give anything for raid healing (Lifeblood is not really useable I think), so you should have JC/Enchanting with your Alchemy, those skills give you more spellpower which is more useable I think. And you can have a gatherer alt (a DK is usefull for that) to get materials for your main.
Here is my character, check it: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Ragnaros&n=Nelladel
GL HF: Nelladel

Cold said...

The best thing about being a druid herbalist is you dont have to lose flightform to herb or skin. Not sure on mining though.