Money Making for Dummies Vol 1.0Follow

I wrote this guide for some people in my guild and some friends who were either new or having a hard time getting a decent earning of gold. I'm sure somebody has been asked randomly for gold, and I'd rather people earn their gold than buy it, so I hope this helps somebody. Suggestions, comments, criticisms,etc. are welcome and (so long as it's constructive) appreciated. More to come. -Galitrune

What this guide is about and who it is for:
This guide is about different strategies on how to make some gold in World of Warcraft. I’ve created this guide primarily for players who find themselves always saying, “Dang, you have 17g!!? You’re rich!” However, this guide can be used even for players who have a set money-generating strategy and just want to explore some ideas. I will cover strategies for players who are new to a realm or who are starting their first character, different professions and ways to make money within each, and some basic theory behind the overall in-game economics. So if you’re a dummy or a smarty, you might want to read.

NOTE:To many, the topics in this guide are so elementary and obvious, but I’m sure every person who’s played WoW for more than a couple of hours has been asked randomly by somebody for a few gold. Well, this is for them.

Starting out with your first character or starting the first character on a server
If you’re just starting out whether it be your first ever World of Warcraft character or you are starting fresh on a new realm, you are going to be finding yourself with no monies whatsoever. Starting from this point is the hardest way to generate an income, but do not be discouraged, there is gold at the end of the rainbow!

First things first, start questing (I know, it’s obvious). Questing will allow you to get some nice gear and experience while finding tons and tons of junk to sell. In the very beginning, all of the gear and items that you will not use, sell. Don’t throw a single thing away! I know it’s tempting to throw away all of that grey junk you know sells for 3 copper to make room for better items, but that 3 copper will add up. This is why your first investment should be in some bags. If you have guild mates or friends who can sport you some bags, great. If not, head to your nearest capital city and buy some bags right-quick from your local auction house. Try to get all of your bag slots full and try to get at least 8-slotters. Now you’ll save time in-between looting and selling, and just like in the “real” world, time is money!

In the very beginning, almost everything you loot will be worthless at the auction house (except for profession materials, but we’ll get to that perty thing later…), so you will be able to sell it to a vendor. Once you start to encounter more uncommon and useful items you will be able to start peddling your wares.

Professional Addons
Time to look at some especially useful addons to help you out in your road to making some nice gold. All of the following addons are either directly useful to a profession or are worth looking into for their benefits into the insight of the WoW economy. You can find all of these addons at Curse-Gaming.

Auctioneer
Auctioneer is a addon that allows you to scan the pages of the auction house and make a catalogue of all of the items up for bid. Then, every time after you scan the auction house, you will be able to see the average starting bids, buyouts, and medians for every item and even quantity. Already you can see why this is a very handy addon. And there is more…Not only will you get a nice idea of how much an item is worth, but included in the Auctioneer package is a passive addon which will tell you what an item is for, whether it’s for a profession and which ones, how many quest it belongs to, or if it’s not used for anything.

If you’re going to use Auctioneer (which is highly recommended) you shouldn’t always look to its sell prices as your automatic sell price. While Auctioneer is a great way to get a general idea for the price of items, it is fallible. Rather, players are fallible because often you will notice players who drastically over or under-price items because they are unsure of the prices which in turn causes the overall average to get all wacky and inaccurate. So, before posting anything in the auction house, it is always a good idea to either research that item or items of similar ilk to get an idea of its price range. I know, it’s extra work, but sometimes it means not cheating yourself out of several gold.

Enchantrix
Enchantrix is a nifty addon that comes bundled with auctioneer. This addon is primarily useful for enchanters. What Enchantrix does is give you a list of what an uncommon item is capable of dropping in terms of enchanting reagents (soul dust, large glimmering shard, etc.) and what the percentage-likelihood that item has of relinquishing those reagents.

For example, you have an uncommon staff and are not sure whether or not to sell it or disenchant it. Enchantrix tells you that it has a chance to drop a small glimmering shard, greater magic essence, or soul dust. The chances of dropping each are 2%, 10%, and 88%, respectively. Seeing as how soul dust is most likely to drop and you don’t really need soul dust, you can safely decide to sell the staff.

Because this addon has a profession specific use, you can just choose not to load it if you don’t enchant/disenchant.

Gatherer
Gatherer is an essential for everyone. Why? Because in your first many days you will be gathering! What gatherer does is keep a record of all of the places you’ve collected different gathered materials such as herbs and minerals. NOTE: it will not display nodes that you have never used before like the tracking ability, it will only remember all of the nodes you have ever used. After you’ve picked from a node it will display a marker on the mini and world map for quick reference.

Where Gatherer really begins to shine is in its search and report functions. It is possible to open up the Gatherer window and get a report or search for a particular herb or mineral. The report will show all of the regions you have gathered said material and will show the area that has the most nodes, highest density, etc. This can be especially useful when you want to go out and farm a specific herb or mineral.

NOTE: although Skinning is a gathering profession, it is not tracked by Gatherer because you do not gather the materials from a node, but rather beasts.

First Professions
Time to start thinking about a career. I know, you started a warrior and you’re going to pick mining and blacksmithing because “sweet! I can make myself armor and weapons and then I can mine all of the materials I will ever need!” Well, that strategy is for the weak-stomached who can’t stand the taste of sweet cash. To many people it may seem quite counterintuitive, but what you’re going to want to do is pick two gathering professions, that is, two professions in which you do not craft anything, but gather materials. The choices then, are herbalism, mining, skinning, and enchanting (“enchanting!? L2p nub” is what you might say, but we’ll get to that later…). It really doesn’t matter what two professions you pick out of each three, but you might want to consider not picking mining and herbalism together as you can only track one type of object at a time. Let’s take a look at our gathering choices.

Fishing
Fishing is a great gathering profession firstly because it is a freebie: it does not qualify as one of your main professions and as such, everyone gets it without limiting themselves to the other professions, and secondly because even the lowest level players can fish and be productive. As such, I strongly recommend that everyone pick up fishing as soon as you can get your hands on a pole!

Fishing allows you to fish for, you guessed it, fish in any bodies of water found around Azeroth. Special points of high density chances of catching fish are indicated by "schools" of fish which are easy to spot visually, but no tracking method is offered. It requires the use of a fishing pole and is aided by various bates that can be applied to the pole.

There are many fish that can be turned into reagents for different professions, such as Oily Blackmouths and Firefins. So, since many higher-level players don't want to spend time fish-farming, you'll be able to sell some of these for a nice profit on the AH.

Herbalism
Herbalism is a gathering profession that allow for the picking of, you guessed it, herbs. It allows for a tracking ability, so you will be able to track nodes on your mini map for easy pickings. Herbs stack in stacks of 20 and require no alteration before selling. Example herbs are Silverleaf and Earthroot. Herbalism requires no special gear.

Mining
Mining allows for the collection of ore and stone from mineral veins found all over Azeroth. It also allows for a tracking ability, so you can easily find nodes. You will be collecting ore and stone and later smelting (which is an ability that comes with mining and requires a forge) to make bars of said ore. The ore stacks in stacks of 20. Different types of bars can be smelted together to make alloys. Examples of ore include Copper and Gold. Mining requires the use of a pick-axe for the actual gathering and a forge (available in most major cities) for the smelting of ore.

Skinning
Skinning is a gathering profession that does not require the use of nodes, so you will not be getting tracking ability. Instead, you are able to skin beasts after you’ve killed them for useful materials. NOTE: the beast must be completely looted prior to skinning (this is why it is necessary to have lots and lots of big-slotted bags). Examples of some useful skinning materials include light leather and Shadowcat Hide. Different items stack in different sizes. Skinning requires the use of a skinning knife.

Enchanting
Enchanting is not often considered a viable gathering profession because, technically it is a crafting profession. However, enchanting is unique in that not only are you able to enchant objects, but you are able to disenchant objects for enchanting materials. It is the only crafting profession that gathers its own materials, and so, in a round-about way, it doubles as a crafting and gathering profession.

People will tell you to hold out on enchanting, and I agree. Enchanting may be the most monetary consuming profession in the game, and while it is capable of generating a nice amount of steady income due to twinking, it takes lots of work and money before you start seeing results. But what you can do is choose enchanting and use it as a gathering profession by disenchanting all of the uncommon you encounter in the game. This is especially useful for being able to disenchant those pesky bind-on-pickup items that you would otherwise have to vendor. Instead of selling the uncommon item, you can sell the disenchanted materials which often go for much more, especially if you’re lucky enough to get a shard or some essences out of it. All of these materials are used for enchanting and this is what you’ll be selling. It is especially nice to note that there are no deposit costs for posting auctions for enchanting materials.

It should also be noted that choosing enchanting as a means of gathering materials is profitable, but not right away and it also means that you will be limiting yourself to either buying low-priced uncommon items or looting uncommon items. It also means that you will usually not be able to sell any uncommons that you find. Enchanting as a gathering profession should usually be picked if you either really love enchanting, or are considering keeping enchanting through until level 60.

And You're Off!
After you’ve chosen your two gathering professions, you are set to continue questing. Gather all of the materials you can get your hands on, but be sure to respect other gatherers (don’t skin a corpse that you didn’t kill without making sure that the other player doesn’t want to skin it). Start collecting your materials and when you have plenty of materials, time to head to the auction house.

Before you put any of your materials up for auction, do some research on the items you’re going to sale because there is a very good chance that there is already a market for the items you’ll putting up. Always always always put a buyout price! Many people think that by not capping the bid-amount on their items that people will bid and bid and bid until, alas! the bid is at 87g! This even goes for those of you “smart-guys” who put the bid super-low and the buyout super-high. Well, that will not happen. Often people will just skip over your item because, yes, so many of us prefer to have our items right this instant! Even if it means paying a little bit more. So set the buyout at around the price of the other items on the auction house (try to undercut a little bit) and set the bid price a little below the buyout.

With the right attitude, a little glue and paint, you should be on your way to making some nice profit as you progress in levels in the game. Before you know it you’ll be turning 40 and then you will be mounted for the first time. Yes, it happens to even the best of us.

End of Part 1
This concludes the money-making guide for World of Warcraft. Part one of two, maybe? Mabye three, or even four. Anyway, part one, as seen, covers the basics of making money for brand new players or players unfamiliar with the schema of making money simply. Part two and beyond will cover more advanced topics such as crafting professions, playing the trade channel, farming, etc. Special thanks to GenerikB as his theory has influenced my own. Hope this guide helps out at least one poor Stormwind urchin.

“Sir, please sir, may I have a gold or two please, sir?” /beg


Original can be found http://realmic.trainstationblues.com/guides/money1.html

Edited, Wed May 24 14:12:48 2006 by galitrune

Edited, Wed May 24 16:42:50 2006 by galitrune

The OP really needs to add fishing to the starting professions. A level 5 night elf can fish for Oily Blacknouths off the pier at Auberdeen or take the boat to Menethil harbor to fish for Oily Blackmouth/Firefin Tuna. A human, Dwarf, or Gnome can make the run to Menethil and fish there. A low-level hordie (L12?) can fish for deviate fish in the oases in The Barrens, or Oily Blackmouth at Ratchet. All of these are money makers. Fishing kicks into high gear after Level 20, when you buy the book in Booty Bay to get fishing into the higher brackets.

Author's Note

Thanks to all who have replied, I appreciate your input. First off, yes, it is rather easy to make money if you take the time to find out how and yes it is much easier to make money if you have money (you can increase income almost exponentially). I've never really considered fishing as a viable profession, but now that I think of it, it obviously is because of so many fish being used as for reagents. So I will be updating the guide soon to be including Fishing!

As for the animal smuggling, I think it's a great idea, but as it is a little bit more in-depth and requires a little bit more knowledge of gameplay as well as a higher level (higher than many starting players) to reach neutral cities such as Booty Bay and Gadgetzan. So along with animal smuggling, I am also including buying limited supply recipes etc. that will be included in Vol. 2 of the guide.

Thanks again for all of your input and constructive critcism, it is appreciated.

that is insane (about the kalimdor run)


anyway, a far easier way to get to booty bay for low level ally toons is to go to westfall and swim south.

Edited, Thu May 25 19:02:37 2006 by axhed