100,000 today

Today, I broke 100,000 gold. It has been a long time coming.  3 weeks ago, I had zip.  Nada, no gold at all.  I had just bought a truck load of gems.

Glyphs are what I often talk about on my blog.  But it really is my side game, Gems is where I am at.

I was late to the gold making game.  My first blog post was back in Dec 09.  I started thinking about gold making maybe a month before that.

Sure, I had a couple of 80's, my first toon - Foosecond was a herbalist/alchemist, making the odd flask here and there.  If I recall correctly, I was still working on Foolich (my DK tank) and Foofixit (my priest heals).  I started tanking Nax about the time that TOC came out.  And I still only raid once a week.

Now I have four toons at 80 (adding Foostorm - shammy heals) and am working on my baby druid tank (Howdoyoufoo - currently lvl 34).  My four 80's between them have all the maxed tradeskills.  Foosecond has max fishing and cooking - with every recipee except the rogue only thistle tea.  I plan for Howdoyoufoo to be a gatherer.

Mulitple level 80's is not efficient.  Having all the tradeskills is not efficient.  But I found it fun, satisfying my ego.  Once you have all the professions, it is convenient.  But I could probably do better concentrating on one or two toons, and just a couple of professions, and just buying the few things I needed.

I have not been particularly frugal either.  All four 80's have epic flyers.  I bought a DPS set for my tank for a single boss fight (Yogg Saron - which we did with only one tank).  I shouted a few guildies the odd (expensive) treat or two.  I have resisted the large gold sinks (Tundra Mammoths, Dalaran rings, most BOE gear - with an exception or two), waiting to see what happens in Cata.

Jewelcrafting has been my main gold earner.  Get all the recipees, buy uncut gems low, sell all cut gems medium has worked.  This includes the unpopular gems.  They may not sell as often, but the margins on them are much much higher.

Glyphs have been my second earner.  It is a steady profession, with many methods of gold making.  Spend your time and gold doing your research.  Once you can mill high end inks, milling and selling the inks is profitable without the grind of owning the glyph market.  Vellums for enchanting scrolls work well too.

But I have made a profit on all of my professions, with the exceptions of engineering, cooking and first aid, including while I was levelling.  Lil Sparky's workshop, auctioneer and Ackis recipee list are a wonderful combination.  I know I could turn a profit on engineering and cooking if I set my mind to it.

It is a bit misleading saying I went from 0 to 100,000g in 3 weeks.  I do that sometimes.  I already had all the epic gem recipees (might be missing 1).  I already had auctions up and sales waiting for their hour.  I had well over a thousand uncut Epic gems and they sell well, much better than those (grumble grumble) glyphs do.  I still have a lot of gems, just not as many.

It has been a good trip.  I would do it again.  I probably will come the Cataclysm.

Is that all the gold a goldseller has?

Mmm.  43.5K of gold in stock.  Really?  Is that all?

If you are a low level toon and want 200 gold, go and learn Skinning + one of Mining or Herbalism.  Mining is marginally better for mellee toons, and herbalism is slightly better for ranged toons.

Regardless of what skills you get, spend an hour gathering in your starting areas and post your stuff in the auction house, for the 'mid range' of what you see items sell for.  Yes copper, silverleaf and light leather + leather scraps really do sell.

If you are a higher level toon, and are struggling with gold, take at least one gathering profession and gather it till you get to 450.  Combine gathering with dailies.  Consider gathering in Outlands. 500g/hour should be yours for the taking.

Get a 'bank alt' (possibly a level 1 toon), and put it at an auction house, and mail all gathered stuff to him.  It saves time continuously running to the Auction house.


Keep your gathering skill for when Cataclysm hits.  Gathering will make a fortune for the first part of Cataclysm.  (My guess : 800g/stack of anything cataclysm for the first few days.)

If you wish to make more gold, read this website.  Read the sites listed at http://wow-econ.blogspot.com.

Make gold by brokerage - zero trade skills required

There is a guy in our guild who is doing really well at making gold. He has just hit 80, and has (so far) no tradeskills.

I have an inscriptionist, and make glyphs (have all the recipees). However, there are two parts to this that I dont enjoy; Milling inks and gathering mail. My guildy buys the herbs, gets them milled, and sends me the ink of the sea (which I pay for). I then turn the inks into glyphs, which he then posts for me and I pay him a cut for that too.

Finally, he gathers epic gems from a stable of alchemists, for which I pay a set price. By doing the running around and providing them with the mats, he gives them a small cut, and adds another large cut for himself before mailing the gems to me. I also would not be surprised to find him scanning the AH for gems that I am after.

By doing this, inside a fortnight - starting with as a (roughly) level 65 toon, he earnt nearly 8k in gold. Yes, If I had the time I could have been doing these things too, but I don't enjoy that part of the game, and he does. And he is really enjoying making gold.

Where did Foo go?

TO ULDUAR !!!

Thats right, after some help downing Malygos he has progressed himself into Ulduar.

Anyone who knows Foo, or has been in his guild or a PUG with him, will understand he is a calm methodical palyer. Most people like me have trouble with repeated wiping. Foo, while annoyed he may get, works on what went wrong throwing fish and buffs at everyone in his way.

Ulduar, the next great conquering plane for Foolich, Foo..... Oh there is to many. Foo, is one of few people that choose to do things in order, I recently started a ICC progression with my newly 80 mage (I had the gear) and have skipped alot of the early content that Foo revels. So as I do, I take my over geared shaman and heal his runs, or my mage and destroy what ever I get set onto.

I like the idea and concept of doing everything in order, but I do everything fast, and come back sautrdays and some other nights to do some less stressful (not always) runs of lower raids. It is surprising how much you can learn from Ignis, and how hard some fights can still become despite there relative ease. So for everyone pining for Kingslayer, just relax the buff will go up to a max of 40% and everyone will be a kingslayer so chill, and the titles you want like immortal and such, come from the lower tier 80 raids. So myself and a few others take it apon ourselves to clear these with what should be easy mode (with our high gear) toons, and farm the achi's for mounts or titles or hell the achi's themselves.

So after this brief carry on about raiding in lower tiers at 80, I'm off back to work, stupid short breaks...../sigh..

Do not disregard the lower tier runs as skills and gear still drop, and at worse aim for achi's and get the Ulduar Proto... or the Immortal title.... Did I mention the 400+ gold from BOE's? the gold for simply killing and looting? No... oh well now you know.

See you in Dal or shatt or whether my portals take me, or my raids.....

Egamad, Wizdom - Cealestrasz

Time management?

I play wow for a couple of hours a night, most nights I like to relax after work by handing some horde there entrails. However this results in me losing gold, I try to farm, but have to be in the right "mood" to do it. I try to quests but its so monotone I log off.

So, managing my time to get Gold, level toons, kill those dark bastardly horde, and ultimately get to 80, is proving somewhat harder than I would like. My solution? Well basically I have a mage with herbalism and alchemy maxed, spend 1hour flying around northrend or even lower areas I can make a few 100 gold. I have a maxed miner, and again same situation 1 hour a few hundred gold. I do not play the AH game, I want that instant reward for my labor, so I have Foo now taking a cut, and selling everything for me.

Time management is not something I can do with an 80 two near 80 toons, and up and coming tanks etc, so I need to work out one thing per day to focus on, make a gold day a pvp day a this toon that toon day and so on. But..... I do not, I play for what I feel like, Killing horde on my rogue (the cooldown class, please head to wow.com to see what I mean) or freezing them to oblivion as my mage, Farming just is not on the books for the few hours a night I get. The weekend however after 3 hours of morning raiding, farming is just the ticket, still get to satisfy that craving to play feed the addiction if you will, and yet its not something that will make me so mad or stressed I want to uninstall. So I raid, I farm, and then when I get over farming, I PVP or quest, or move on to something else.

Managing your time on wow around goals, and real life can be more stress than its worth, playing for what you want helps yourself, but not the in game world. Even though you are there to hide from politics, money, religion and all of life's other BS, you actually just move from one active society to another. So if your not like me and can actually farm on queue that is great, however if you log on to PVP and then wonder what idiot has his headlights shining through the window at OH S**T IT'S MORNING!.... you are probably like me.

I Farm I have enough gold (if there is such a thing) but it never goes up for long, and never goes down for long. So like all my posts there centered around me and nothing.... that is right I do not help much with these ramblings.... or do I.... Think about it.

Egamad that anti gold farmer.

Healthy Competition

On my server there is another gold-crafting blogger (breevok), that sometimes we work co-operatively, and sometimes competitively.  We had a discussion earlier tonight about arrows , a low markup, high volume area.  At the moment, the prices of arrows are 5g per stack, where midweek they were 1g50.  As I don't have an arrow manufacturer, I often just buy his arrows, and re-sell them.  I pointed out that his main competition was offline, and that he was selling above market.  He asked if I was going to undercut him, and my response was,  "I couldn't be stuffed".  This is especially true as (a) he was online so could immediately re-undercut me, and (b) my arrows were on another toon.

While I was on my next bank alt, I was posting my bits and peices, and noticed that someone had moved into 'My' market for Rituals of the new moon.  Last time I looked, I had no real competition, now I had stacks of it.  My main competition is Puraa, one of breevok's alts. 

There is nothing personal about this competition, it is just business.  I am going to try maximise my gold/hour.  Sometimes, this will mean that I will undercut (in this instance - it means selling an offhand for a profit - at market value).  Other times it means not playing in a highly competitive market and moving somewhere else (I've just picked up the recipee for bag of jewels - where there appears to only be a few sellers).  In any case, if it wasn't an associate (in the form of puraa/breevok), it would have been someone else (pandapanda for example), as offhands are a good way to consume snowfall inks.  I fully expect Breevok - and others, to do exactly the same thing.


If you want to make money by selling things, keep an eye on your markets.  If someone else starts playing in your corner, that's OK.  You may decide to keep playing with the newcomer. But explore other possibilities.

P.s. Congratulations to Breevok for his gold cap. I did call him a cow, but it's only because I am jealous.

The cost of Alts?

Have you ever sent gold to an alt? Bags, potions, materials for professions? Do you consistently find your alts are taking all the gold off your main, as you swear that leveling your first toon didn't cost this much?

Well, it didn't, you simply have the ability now to make your alts life "easy" and it's costing you. You can level an alt without any help, like gold or bags, and its easy to do, hell how did you get there the first time? Can't remember a time before you had bags of gold? Before you where striding around in epics? Me either, and to be honest I cannot work out how I managed to level with no 80 to supply me, but I did and now my alts are Dependant on that 80.

So what I ask is, how come we can no longer survive on alts without an 80 to power feed gold, and other goodies to us, and yet we have done it before perfectly fine. When you make an alt, who starts with a 100gold care package and a stack of bags? Most of you will send bags and cash in some amount, whether its enough to afford the start area training in the form of 50silver (which is still excessive) or you pay there way to 80 we all do it.

Yet, when we started we had to work our tiny leveling buts off to make ends meat and now, we quest, we spend, we buy Auctions like there going out of fashion and when the well runs dry, we log over and top it off. Our dependency is now firmly in place, but has anyone thought what the cost to level that toon up is going be? what proffs? Whether or not they can pay there own way?

I reckon that is a firm "NO" and the reason is we have done that grind before and now we can make it somewhat less of a burden on ourselves, and why shouldn't we? Have we not earned this from the countless hours of raiding, farming, swearing at the stupid rogue that keeps ganking my mage!! Anyway, regardless of how you spent your time you still have paved the way for your alts, and they level being pampered, but remember to pamper them you have to first make that money to hand down, or farm for them to level proffs.

So next time you level an alt, remember its upwards of 6k for flying alone, 1k-4k per proff (depends on server and proff, specifically crafting) then talents, gear, enchants, mounts, FP, repairs etc etc etc. You cannot pamper them all there life's, but at least through the Azeroth grind, and in Outland they can look after them selves.

I don't know who I am anymore, to many alts.

My first 1000g with unskilled low level toons

For my first lot of gold, where I 'hit it big', it was with cooking recipees.  There are a couple of recipees (listed below) that (a) can be gathered by a level 5 toon, and sell for up to 500 gold each.  Admitidly to get 500g requires patience (it may take 2 weeks to sell), but even a quick sale of 100g is a lot for a new toon.

Why & How?
Cooking recipees sell well because they have an achievement attached to getting 160 recipees. There are only about 165 in the game, some of which are festival linked.



I have found that the 'big' recipees are alliance cooking BOE quest rewards:

• Recipe of the Kaldorei
• The Great Moongraze Hunt
• Costly_Menace (at least according to wowwiki)

For selling these recipees - 100g for a quick sale, 500g if you put them on the horde ah and take your time (via the neutral AH and another account - ask a friend to help).

For the next stage down, there are still a large number of out of the way recipees.  Again alliance has the advantage as some of their recipees are not only out of the way, but also sold by alliance vendors only.  For these recipees, you can often get 4 times your money back.

Some usefull links:

Wowwiki Faction Exclusive Recipee List
WowWiki Cooking recipes

Caveat Emptor - Power Levelling Guides.

Let the buyer beware.
One of the 'big' wow economic sites has just put up a list of how much it costs to level a proffesion using their power levelling guides.  It ranges from 2k to 8k depending on the profession.

Please remember that different sites have different goals.  Some want to teach you a philosophy and use gold tips to lure you in.  Others sell gold guides for currency.  Still others are paid by gold selling adds.

I read a lot of websites, and find in them good information.  However dont take any website (or any organisation at all) at face value untill you know what their agenda is. (And yes - even I have an agenda).

I have found that Auctioneer, Little Sparky and Ackis Recipee List have been a much cheaper method to level.  My suggestions for power levelling a profession are in levelling crafting on cheap.

Using crafting to make money on the AH

www.wow.com/.../using-...to-make-gold-on-the-auction-house

I am in the process of writing up a gold making via crafting article, of which a large part was going to be using auctioneer and lil-sparky to determine how to use your crafting skill to make gold.  However, if someone has already written it, even better. The article above is about using these two addons to make gold using blacksmithing, with some specific advice for blacksmiths (feel free to ignore if not applicable).  However, the principle is the same for all crafting professions - including cooking:

1. Scan the auction house.
2. Use Lil-Sparky to see what sells for more than it costs.
3. Get the mats.
4. Craft a few and trickle feed your items onto the AH.
5. If something sells - make more somethings.  If it sells alot - make alot. 

If you find that a raw material sells for a lot, and farming it would give you enough gold/hour, then by all means farm as your gold making method.
Farming is not free.  If you ever feel that farming time is free, I have a large list I would like you to farm for me - it shouldn't take you more that 24 hours a day.

Edit: blessed blog. I had "<" crafting ">"  in the heading, and it showed up fine in the preview, got droped in the posted topic.  Ah well.

3.3.3 PTR LFG changes

www.wow.com/.../patch-3-3-3-ptr-random-dungeon-finder-changes ...

• The Deserter debuff given to players who leave a dungeon prematurely when queuing via the Random Dungeon option has been increased to 30 minutes, up from 15 minutes. The cooldown for using the Random Dungeon option remains 15 minutes.
• ...
• Anyone in a dungeon party can now re-queue their group for a dungeon, as players will still be prompted whether or not to accept their chosen role.
• Players who use the Vote Kick option will now be prompted to provide a reason for kicking a party member. This reason will be presented to everyone in the party except for the person voted to be kicked.
• When joining as a group, more generous level requirements will be used instead of Random Dungeon level requirements so that players of different levels joining together will be eligible for a greater number of dungeons.
• World Event bosses (such as Ahune for the Fire Festival) will now be accessible through the Dungeon Finder. Players must use the Dungeon Finder to access these bosses.
• ...

There are some other tidy up changes, that will make things cleaner - but otherwise have no effect.  However, I see that this has some minor implications - with the biggy at the end:

Basic moneymaking.

This post is for those players who believe they do not have the time/energy to make a lot of money, but would still like a quick way to make 100g. 

Gathering gold

Earlier I talked about levelling crafting on the cheap.  In that post I talked about the following players:

• Would like to learn a profession.  Spends a fortune on stuff in the AH. Doesn't finish in twenty minutes and gets bored. Gives up.
  
• Knows that some professions go together - like herbalism and alchemy.  Tries to keep up, but cant be bothered.  Finds that they get to level 40, and can't gather anymore.   Gives up.
• Can't get into their raiding guild without a profession.  Takes 6000+ to AH.  Cant find all the mats in the AH. Spams trade and pays 3 times going price.  Uses a profession levelling guide. Sells everything at a vendor.  Runs out of money.  Begs for gold.  Might even get profession, but will never make money from it.

Below, I have some tips for assisting them in their crafting journey, for a price.

Levelling crafting on the cheap

If we look at what the 'average mug' crafter does, we can 'structure' our training to take advantage of this, both as a crafter and as a gatherer
Dont be these guys:

• Would like to learn a profession.  Spends a fortune on stuff in the AH. Doesn't finish in twenty minutes and gets bored. Gives up.
  
• Knows that some professions go together - like herbalism and alchemy.  Tries to keep up, but cant be bothered.  Finds that they get to level 40, and can't gather anymore.   Gives up.
• Can't get into their raiding guild without a profession.  Takes 6000+ to AH.  Cant find all the mats in the AH. Spams trade and pays 3 times going price.  Uses a profession levelling guide. Sells everything at a vendor.  Runs out of money.  Begs for gold.  Might even get profession, but will never make money from it.

The 'simple' way to level your crafting professions will, by my rough and ready numbers,  set you back about 6000 gold.  However, as much as possible - I have a break even (or better) policy.

Crimson Halls open tomorrow.

Wow.com reminds us that crimson halls open tomorrow.
Opportunity plus instinct equals profit. (apparently Ferengi acquisition rule #9)
Want to know how?

Keep up your skills while levelling

There will be times during your levelling that you outstrip your skills. Do yourself a favour - take the time to keep up.
How do you do this?

My bags are full, so turn stuff into silver and gold

With your first starting toon, you are now gathering to your hearts content, but you are constantly having problems with full bags.  To solve this you will need to:

Gold when you are first starting.

When I first started WOW, I thought that 'trade professions' were way cooler than 'Gathering professions', so I took tailoring and enchanting. Cool does not earn the gold. Let me state for the record - in my opinion - Your first toon should take two gathering professions - skinning and your choice of herbalism or mining.
My reasons are: