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Again, this is how I made my money. I've been playing this
game since the first week it came out and I've never made an
altthis guide is truly the path I took from lvl 1-60 (with a few
modifications here and there as lessons learned from my
mistakes!) There's hundreds of ways to make money in this game.
You be a gatherer the entire time, selling mats and make money.
You could do nothing but manipulate the Auction House and make
money. You could grind areas that are known to drop rares and
epics and make money. There's tons of ways, this is just my way.
Enjoy!
Phase One Levels 1-40 Hunting and Gathering
So you're just starting World of Warcraft, you've picked your
race and class (gnome rogues ftw!), and you're at the point
where you get to pick two professions. You might say to yourself
oooh I'm a rogue so Ill get leatherworking so I can make my own
armor! or I'm a warrior so Ill get blacksmithing so I can make
my own weapons! OK just stop right there n00b! Lemme tell
you a little secret about all those cool crafting professions
***With the exception of a handful of items per crafted
profession, you wont make money! And hey guess what, those few
items that are profitable are pretty much unattainable at lower
levels!***
I hate to rain on your parade so early on, but its better I tell
you up front than watch you waste what little gold you earn
trying to level up your crafting profession. The problem with
crafting professions is that you fall into the trap that I like
to call Skill Leveling Fever, where you will do whatever it
takes to raise the skill of your profession. Some of you will
say Ya Gen, but that's why you take a complimentary gathering
profession so you can farm your own mats. This is true, but you
will VERY quickly reach a point where the materials you require
will be unattainable at your characters level. And what are you
gonna do, wait until you can farm them yourself? Hell no, I know
you better than that! You're gonna go run to the AH and start
buying materials for the sole purpose of leveling your crafting
profession. Welcome to the poorhouse!
So instead, pick two gathering professions. The cool thing about
gathering professions is that you start making money right away
walk up to a mineral vein or a plant or a dead animal and grab
those mats! Its 100% profit! And since you are going to be
spending a LOT of time running around doing quests and killing
animals it only makes sense to take advantage of gathering
professions. Mining and Herbalism are the biggest moneymakers,
but since they share the minimap, I usually will pick mining or
herbalism and then pick up Skinning.
The one negative thing about gathering professions is you'll
find your bags fill up VERY quickly. Don't worry, the first
thing you're gonna buy are 14 slot bags. These things cost like
2g50s on my server, which you'll have after selling like 4
stacks of whatever you got. Buy 4 of these 14slot bags, you'll
need the space! At this point some people make alts that sit
near the Auction House and they mail all their mats to the alt.
This is a good idea for some to me it would drive me nuts having
to mail stuff all the time
Also, items with grey text are vendor trash, meaning you sell
them to a vendor. ALWAYS pick up the vendor trash at your level
every little bit counts. If its WHITE text, that means its used
in a profession somehow. Hold onto it and see what its worth on
the Auction House. If you can sell it to the vendor for 25s but
sell it on the AH for 50syouve just doubled your profit! Don't
laugh at 50s profit either do that 1000 times (which you will do
this 1000s of times in this game) that's 500g!
You should be making more than enough money to pay for new
skills, updated armor and weapons, gryphon flights, stupid
noncombat pets (hey I love em too!) etc. But keep in mind you
are working towards two things when you hit lvl 40:
1. Buying your mount, which is going to cost you 90g
2. Preparing for your first crafting profession, which will take
money to level and buy schematics/patterns/recipes/etc.
You cannot enter Phase Two until you have purchased your mount
and have like 100g in savings. Trust me on this one :D
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT PHASE ONE:
Q: Gen, you are a god among gnomes, and handsome to boot. But if
you tell everyone to take up gathering, who will buy the
materials were gathering?! If there's no money in crafting,
nobody will buy our materials!
A: It actually makes a perfect circle lowbies gather the mats,
while highbies buy the mats and make crafted items (well discuss
highbie strategy in a bit). These highbies in turn sell their
items (for a profit) to other highbies and lowbies who NOW have
money to spend (because they're not wasting all their money
trying to level up crafting professions!) It works really well
like this.
Q: Gen, you are kind, intelligent, and have abs you could wash
clothes on. My character is lvl XX, and I'm a lvl YY Crafting
Profession and a lvl ZZ Gathering Profession. And I'm BROKE!
Should I drop my crafting profession and take up a second
gathering profession?
A: It depends on several things. If you are already close to lvl
40, you might as well keep the crafting profession UNLESS its
really low level (like <125 or something) then ya drop it like a
bad habit. If you are relatively low level but have a mid-level
crafting professions, I would still drop it and take up a second
gathering profession. You'll end up making much more money by
the time you're 40, which is the real goal of this guide.
Q: My materials aren't selling! The market is flooded with them
and I keep getting them returned in the mailbox!
A: Ya that's going to happen from time to time. Some days you
can sell a stack of something for 1g, the next day the entire AH
is flooded with stacks selling for 20s. Its what I call the
Retard Factor. The best thing you is get a general idea of how
much stuff is selling for at that time, price your materials a
little bit less that that, and hope for the best. Don't throw
your hands up in despair when someone undercuts you its gonna
happen. Just take your unsold mats and put them back on the AH
someone will buy them, trust me!
Phase Two Levels 40-59 Its fine learn 2 craft
You've hit lvl 40, you have your mount (sure beats walking
huh?), you've learned all your new skills, and you've decked
yourself out in some fancy new duds. Now what?
Well, you *could* stick with your two gathering professions.
They will still make you a lot of money, actually more money
than in the first phase because you'll know have access to
higher level materials. If you don't feel like busting ass
trying to make money with crafting professions, stick with
gathering by all means. You could stop reading this guide right
now and have enough money to make you happy.
Still reading? Okay good lets talk about your first crafting
profession :D
Pick a crafting profession that sounds fun to you. Don't worry,
its going to make you money (except maybe Alchemy, I'm sorry I
*still* haven't seen proof that you can make lots of money off
of Alchemy). What your going to do is drop the gathering
profession that doesn't complement your new crafting profession.
For example, if you want to take engineering, drop skinning and
keep your mining. The one profession I do not recommend you take
at level 40 (besides Alchemy) is Enchanting. Enchanting is a
great profession but its not for the faint of heart, and its a
#@%$! to level up. If you are dying to be an enchanter now,
welcome to the poor house otherwise try to hold off until you're
level 60 (well be discussing that in the next phase).
Now that you're level 40, it should be very easy to power level
your new profession to a certain point. Do everything possible
to farm your own mats while leveling, it will save you a ton of
money. This is important because you need your money for
SCHEMATICS, PLANS, FORMULAS, RECIPES, ETC!!! These are what
separate you from all of the other people taking up crafting
professions. I see twenty new threads every day asking how do
you make money in leatherworking or whatever, and people usually
reply you don't take herbalism its a goldmine. I'm going to let
you in on a little secret.
It takes hard work and a LOT of time and gold to make money in
crafting!
You will NOT be rich from a crafting profession just by learning
what the trainers provide! You have to spend gold on
schematics/formulas/plans/etc to make the stuff that people
really want to buy. I'm not saying that every plan on the AH is
going to be a moneymaker, but the ones that ARE moneymakers
you're going to have to pony up the cash. Don't bother farming
for them its a waste of effort just pay a reasonable amount for
it on the AH.
Guess what? You've just put yourself above probably 75% of the
other crafters out there! Why? Because 75% of WoW players either
don't have the gold to buy plans, or they refuse to spend money
on them because people price gouge on the AH. Now instead of
competing with 1000 engineers, you are competing with 250 of
them and out of that 250 there will be quite a few that aren't
as aggressive in making money like you, you sly dog!
Its important to remember that crafting professions are a long
term investment. Unlike gathering, you actually have to spend
money for crafting professions to make money. On my server
sniper scope schematics go for 100g. 100g is a ton of money, but
as soon as you pay it off (you can make 2-3g profit off of each
scope), you've got another weapon in your arsenal of
moneymaking!
The questions I get asked all the damn time (people even create
alts on Malygos to bug me during my Molten Core run lol) is what
items sell for a profit, how much do you sell them for, etc. And
the answer is find out for yourself. Make a spreadsheet or list
of everything you know how to make. Then for each item list out
how much RAW material it takes to make that item. What do I mean
by raw material? Its the total amount of uncrafted items you
need to eventually make the item. For instance:
Hi Impact Bombs x 8 = Mithril Bar x16 + Solid Stone x16 +
Mageweave x4
Notice that Hi Impact Bombs really take Mithril Casings, Solid
Blasting Powder, and Unstable Triggersbut the RAW material list
is as stated aboveget it?
Ok now that you have that for every item you can make, figure
out the UNIT PRICE for each raw material. UNIT PRICE is how much
it costs if you buy one Mithril Bar on the AH. Don't look at the
prices for just one Mithril Bar though look at how much a stack
costs and divide by 20.
Got that? Great! Next step is to find out how much you can sell
each item for. Do a search on the AH to see what the going
prices are, it might take you a few days to get an accurate
number due to the Retard Factor of people putting up items for
ridiculously low or high prices. If the items just don't show up
on the AH, determine if anyone would actually *buy* the item
first, and if you think they would just take a guess of how much
you could sell it for.
You know what the final step is right? I sure hope so. You know
how much it costs to make the item, you know how much you can
sell the item fordo some simple subtraction to see if you can
make a PROFIT off of your items! You will be surprised how many
items will make a profit. The obvious choices are items needed
for quests, items that need to be purchased several times (such
as armor kits, sharpening stones, scopes, potions, etc), and
blue items.
The two top comments I get from this section are:
Gen, you really expect me to make a spreadsheet of all my
crafted items, with materials, and costs of mats etc etc? that
seems like a lot of work cant you just tell me which ones sell
best?
Get out of my forum! If you cant do the legwork and put the
effort into it go pick flowers and collect rocks.
Gen, why do I have to make a spreadsheet based on cost of mats
in the AH? I can easily go farm my mats and make 100% profit!
Ah HA! This is the statement that is the death of crafters
everywhere. I'm going to make the next statement in all caps not
because I'm angry, but because I want it to stick out so much
you cant help but read it and remember it:
***IF YOU CANNOT BUY THE MATS ON THE AUCTION HOUSE, CRAFT YOUR
ITEM, AND SELL THAT ITEM FOR A PROFIT DO NOT MAKE IT!***
Seems so simple yet time after time again people will say things
like yeah of course you aren't going to make money if you buy
your mats on the AH you have to farm the materials. Well, if the
materials are worth more than the finished product, why would
you bother making it? Just sell the materials for a larger
profit! The purpose of the spreadsheet is to help you identify
what items you can make a profit on.
The next logical step is to realize that if you can buy the mats
on the AH and still make a profit, why would you spend all that
time farming materials? In the time it takes you to farm the
mats to make one item, you could buy the mats to make 10 items.
You should be making more than enough money to pay for new
skills, updated armor and weapons, repair costs, stupid trinkets
(I love my Orb of Deception!) etc. But keep in mind you are
working towards two things when you hit lvl 60:
1. Buying your epic mount, which is going to cost you 900g
2. Having nearly all of the schematics/plans/etc for your
crafting profession, and being able to make a steady income off
of it.
3. Having at least 100g (preferably more) saved to help you
level up your 2nd crafting profession
Do not bother with Phase Three until you have the above three
items complete. Patience is the key if you rush into this stuff
you will have more expenses than you do income.
Phase Three Level 60 Farming is for suckers
Ok so you're sitting pretty at level 60, congratulations! You've
got your epic mount, you've completely owned your crafting
profession, and you got your nest egg of gold. And your entire
time spent in WoW now consists of you either in a high-end
instance or sitting in Ironforge trying to get a raid group
together. And that means you're not running around gathering!
Plus by now you've probably said to yourself Man, I don't even
need to farm mats anymore. I can buy them off of the AH and
still make a sweet profit! Welcome to Phase Three :D
Now Phase Three is 100% optional. Some of the gathering
professions are useful in high-end instances. With mining you
can get Dark Iron Ore and Blood of the Mountain, which both sell
well AND help you raise your reputation with the Thorium
Brotherhood. With Skinning (plus an enchant and a finkles
skinner) you can skin Core hounds in Molten Core and The Beast
in UBRS. Both have their uses for sure. But this guide is about
how I made money and since I HATE FARMING (farming is for
suckers!) I dropped my gathering profession and picked up a 2nd
crafting profession (in my case enchanting).
You level the 2nd crafting profession the same way you did the
first, with the exception that you don't have a gathering
profession to assist you in the leveling process. So that means
you'll be buying your materials from the AH (yeah you could make
alts or whatever, I just don't like making alts). The key is to
level as cheaply as possible until you can get to the point
where you can make a profit (or even break even) on the things
you create as you level up. Again, same thing as the first
crafting profession buy up all the patterns/plans/etc that look
like you could make a profit with, make a spreadsheet, etc etc.
This will be a slower process than the first crafting
profession, but you already have your epic mount, and you're
hopefully getting good weapons and armor from instance runsso
there's really no rush anyway.
There's one more thing you can do to make some extreme money,
but keep in mind that everything requires an investment of time
and money and this will require a lot of both. There are lots of
faction based patterns/plans/etc recently implemented in WoW.
Some of them are as simple as killing tons (and I mean
thousands) of Furbolgs until you are honored/revered with the
Timbermaw Furbolgs, some as daunting as turning in thousands of
Dark Iron Ores to the Thorium Brotherhood. Were talking a couple
thousand gold worth of investment right there if you don't mine
it yourself. 99.9% of the players in this game wouldn't touch
this with a 10 foot pole, simply because they either don't want
to waste their energy to achieve this level (which is totally
understandable you have to be crazy to do this), or they don't
understand the benefit of knowing how to make these epic items.
Its basic logic though lets say you invest 2000g to become
revered with the Thorium Brotherhood. You learn how to make the
revered epic items. Congratulations you're probably one of the
.01% of the people on your server than can make them. And you
know what? 99.9% of the people on the server want those items
because they're some of the best gear/weapons in the game!
There's one guy on my server that makes weapons for 4000-5000g
each. It doesn't take a math genius to see that the return on
investment can be very lucrative! :D Some of you will say Oooh
but Gen how in the hell am I supposed to get 2000g to invest in
this? Well, you could either plan ahead and mine the dark iron
ore yourself (for Thorium Brotherhood, for the others anyone can
do it), or do what I did and sell what you can sell like a
madman and save save save! :) Others will say Yeah but Gen all
of those high end materials come from Molten Core and they cost
thousands of gold to buy the mats! This is true, but as I said
before this is the upper echelon of making money, and it takes
big money to make big money. You don't go to Las Vegas with 20
bucks and expect to win thousands of dollars do you?
Phase Four Any Level Oh you crafty bastard!
So this isn't really a fourth phase, its more of a bonus chapter
of things I did/do to make money. There's no real rhyme or
reason to it, its just the extra things I've done along the way
that aren't really profession related. I never mentioned them in
my first guide because A) I wanted to keep it legit, these
things aren't anything you can do to depend on an income but if
they happen look out! And B) I'm still making money on several
of these so I didn't want to spill the beans just yet lol! I
wont go into super detail here because I want you to use your
brain not to figure out exactly what I do, but to figure out
things I haven't even thought of! :D
Oh I'm a poor guy! On rare occasion you will see someone selling
an item in the trade channel. If its something you know is a hot
seller, msg them and ask the price. Sometimes they will flat out
be stupid and give you a low price. Buy it, wait one day, and
put it on the AH for what its really worth. If they reply with a
price that's pretty much what its worth, say oh gee, I can only
afford <insert low number here>I doubt you'd sell it for that.
Oh well thank you I appreciated it. You will be surprised how
many times they will sell it for that amount or close to it.
I've done that at least 20 times with sniper scope schematics
alone! Am I proud of myself for doing it? No, I am not. Am I
happy to have the extra gold? Hell yes!
Wholesale Materials If you find yourself crafting the same items
over and over, you'll start to pick up a trend of certain
materials that you use in large quantities. The best thing to do
is to buy them in bulk for a cheaper unit price. Sure, you're
eating more money up front, but your profit margin will be way
larger (what, you weren't going to pass those savings onto your
customers were you?!?!) There's several ways to do it, but my
two favorites are the AH and gold farmers. On the AH you might
see 100 stacks of heavy leather, all with 2g buyout, with a 1g
min bid. Bid them all at min bid. Chances are you'll win a
percentage of them at half of what you would normally pay! For
gold farmers, if they can understand you (LOL), strike up a deal
with them to COD the materials to you for a reduced cost. I have
many farmers constantly working for me!
WTF is that??? troll the AH for items people auction, and browse
thottbot and allakhazamtheres tons of items that you can buy, do
something with, and resell for a huge profit. I personally know
of a few items that I can make 50g+ profit on every time, and a
buddy of mine has found another completely unrelated item that
does about the same. What are they? Not telling!!! But do the
research and you'll find several little nuggets of moneymaking!
Hey hey! I got blahblah on the AH! Im not condoning spamming
like a fool, but a well crafted funny msg every 10min or so
about something SPECIAL you've put on the AH will really help
sell your product! Do not do this for everyday junk like light
leather and copper bars this is something you use for rare/epic
items or things that are in HIGH demand. Be witty and funny and
people wont be as annoyed by you. Hell, ask people in Malygos, I
spam stuff and say pst the gnome in the wedding dress! cuz yeah
I wear oneand a Goblin Rocket Helmetand two Cookies
Tenderizersand I'm a male gnome you got a problem with that?! :D
I think that's about all I've got for version 2.0well let this
thing run 31 pages and break, just in time for version 3.0.
Hopefully by that time I've learned new ways to make money for
you guys!
Good luck and stay wealthy!
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Burning Crusade Guides