
This week we celebrate a player reaching 100 million gold and how they went about it. We also have a look at what’s to come for gold making in Cataclysm Classic and some interesting changes to Speed Sets in 10.2.6. Finally, we have some discussions about making gold in retail without Dragonflight and some interesting quick farms that can be done on rotation.
My name is Samadan and I’ll be your guide through the World of Gold Making!
100M Gold
One hundred million gold! Let’s just imagine that for a moment… At today’s prices that’s 347 NA Tokens or 272 EU Tokens or if you’re thinking Battlenet Balance then it’s $5,205!!! Youaintmyrealdad has achieved such a figure and has written a great article on just how it was done …
Hit 100M gold, screenshot:
Resources used:
- Saddlebag – Find stuff, sell stuff.
- Undermine – Research stuff.
- TSM – TSM addon. Research stuff, sell stuff. I have Premium so I use Premium features to find stuff.
- Wowhead – Research stuff, find stuff, make lists of stuff.
- r/woweconomy – Research stuff. I don’t think there’s a single useless link or resource in the FAQ/sidebar. I’ve tried/used probably 90% of the things listed.
- https://account.battle.net/games – I use multiple accounts for cross server stuff. In my opinion having at least two accounts should be standard advice for gold making going forward–even to new players.
I felt the need for two accounts when I tried to make gold in BFA, I was just too risk adverse to try it. Regret not making multiple accounts sooner.
I thought I needed to have things figured out before making a second account, but really I should’ve just made a second account then figured things out.
Lots of opportunities open up, including people who don’t have multiple accounts paying me gold for having multiple accounts.
Backstory
Started playing on EU region S4 TBC through some of WOTLK. Gold making ventures were pretty much WQs, and doing Enchants/JC stuff on IF bridge for people.
Rolled NA servers in Legion. Gold making ventures were pretty much M+ carries, into Battlepets (to try get gold back to my main server), and crafting pots/food/enchants/mounts -> sell on AH.
BFA was Warfront stuff and gathering Anchor Weed -> Zinathid. I stopped end of S3 BFA, had ~2.8M gold at this point. Saved all my BFA BOE greens since I knew eventually I’d want to figure out transmog sales.
Skipped Shadowlands, had no intentions of playing again until I heard about Dragonflight profession rework aimed at going back to Classic/TBC style of getting crafters to craft stuff for customers directly.
Sold the BFA greens to get to ~3.5m, and in DF I did Dragonraces on ~12 chars to fund leveling professions.
On New Players
There seems to be some conflation of new player = someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing (aka “stupid”). Some more “experienced” players seem to attribute cetain things to “all” new players, and I don’t think it’s beneficial to new players who are capable of learning fast.
So for example one misconception is new players can’t make token gold in the first month or two of playing. Previously I would’ve agreed with this, but that’s probably because I couldn’t figure things out myself that fast.
There’s people who’ve been playing since Classic who still don’t understand:
- Servers – what a server is, what server features are, what server limitations are, what connected servers are.
- Mailing – cross faction mailing on same server (if they understand servers) is possible now.
- Trading – what trading is. When cross server trading was turned on an absurd amount of experienced players were complaining they couldn’t send stuff cross realm. They didn’t seem to understand mailing =/= trading. It’s like a bunch of them forgot what the “Trade” option means when right clicking another player’s frame.
- Auction House – what’s region wide and what’s not. People still don’t understand pricing (why Is sHADOweD ClAsP So ExPENSIve?), how to use search feature (misspell stuff then claim they can’t find it), difference between BOP/BOE (no, you can’t find BOP stuff on AH), scarcity (just because it’s not there now doesn’t mean it’ll never be there), price fluctuations (just cause it’s a certain price now doesn’t mean it’s always that price).
There’s really nothing stopping a new player from figuring all this. If someone wants to figure it out, they’ll figure it out. Granted some people will never figure things out, but I’ll leave that to them to find out on their own.
At the same time there’s people who paid attention in school when they took an economics class, and some of them can apply those concepts to WoW perfectly fine even as a new player. Some people didn’t have/need an economics class and can figure it out just the same.
Another misconception is people need gold to make gold. I was also on board with this, I wanted to make 30M gold before I started spending gold to make gold. Yes, it’s easier to make gold if one has gold, but can also make gold from essentially nothing “perfectly fine.”
Buy Low, Sell High.
Always saw the “buy low, sell high” comments, thought it was something for more experienced players or players with gold.
Decided to give flipping a go myself this past fall. I had the 30M gold I wanted, cross server trading was on, it was probably the best time to get into the market.
Yes, I did spend ~20M gold on investments for S3 on NA. I made all that gold back pretty quickly after S3 started, including a day where I sold ~7m worth of stuff. But I was aware of “gold makers” who could only make gold at the start of expansions or patches, and I’m not interested in that.
I felt like having gold was a crutch to actually learning, so I turned on some EU accounts to experiment. I wanted to see if I could start from 0 gold with limited knowledge and make a token worth of gold in the first month. Earlier I said having two accounts should be recommended now, so token worth of gold in first month actually needs to be two tokens worth of gold.
Additionally I was using crafting as a crutch on my main account, a new player won’t really have access to all crafting professions completely leveled up for each expansion like I do. So on my EU account I only used level 1s, and did AH only. Remember, this is with ~2 weeks of flipping experience, so I was still fairly “new” and in the figuring things out stage (not saying I have things figured out now, because I don’t).
Using the resources I linked above I was able to make 1M gold on EU in the first three weeks just finding cheap stuff to buy, then resell higher. I approached it the same way I approached the AH as a new player, I just went through all the stuff listed high, verified (with TSM/Wowhead) the stuff that was actually valuable + selling, then made a shopping list to try find those things when they were listed low.
The method I used was a lot more time consuming, led to me missing a bunch of items (because none were listed on AH), and just generally you have to finish a category in one sitting without closing AH interface or you lose your spot essentially. If I had to do it again, I’d use Wowhead Database + TSM to figure out these items so I don’t miss anything (hopefully).
Regardless, even using the bad method of logging on to a high pop server, sorting AH by most expensive items, then going down the list one by one, early on someone doing research would’ve come across NLA (no longer available) items that were removed in Cataclysm. Some of these items were recently added back to the game.
A couple days ago an “experienced” player on Moon Guard was asking why a crappy low ilevel green weapon Kazon’s Maul was selling for 10K, implying it was worthless. They also said it was ugly, but IMO it looks like something someone who wants to RP as a Tauren guard would buy, so I assumed there would be a buyer somewhere. This was one of the first items I came across when doing research, and consequently is one of the first items I targeted on my EU account. I don’t know if people are buying this item assuming it’s still NLA, but it was worth the try.
After leaving Exodus Reach (starting zone) my EU character had ~3g. I just needed to find an item listed somewhere for cheap and also something I could list on AH for a low listing fee–Kazon’s Maul fit the bill. I didn’t get Kazon’s, but I did get a similar item for 1 gold. Then I moved it to a server where a few were listed for 70,000g, listed it for 7,000g (to make it look like I missed typing a 0) to try get a “gold maker” to buy it. Then I took the 7000g, bought a DF recipe for 5000g, and sold it for 400K essentially finishing the goal of getting the first token.
There was other items I bought same time frame, but some were slow sellers. I still feel I haven’t scratched the surface of items to flip, I ran into a couple items people weren’t touching that I can find 2-3 of every hour then resell in the 10-50k range. I’d imagine there’s many more items out there people can find to flip.
I also made 30K my first day of having the EU accounts simply doing direct trades. Basically moved gold between servers for three people and charged them a 10K fee to do it. The variation I do most though involves buying things on other servers for people. Biggest gaps earn me 250-350k, average I’d say is 15K-25K, normally if I can’t make 10K I won’t bother. This is something that’s really not complicated to figure out, a new player could definitely do it, but I’ve seen some experienced players not figure it out or struggle with the concept.
Getting into the territory of breaking Rule #1 on the sub, but the gist is people pay me gold for having multiple accounts, having gold, and/or moving gold/items for them. Currently there’s an event going on where someone paid me 350K for one hour of me using my accounts to help them. This isn’t really a one off thing, I’ve made gold before using accounts that don’t even have the sub turned on to make gold around Thanksgiving/Valentines. There’s people paying 5000g a character for some of those achievement elements (e.g. find an orc rogue or something like that).
All in all, flipping is probably the most efficient gold making method I’ve tried. I play significantly less and make more ratio wise. Crafting is still the best GPH for me, but just playin ~1-2 hours a day I can still make 3-5m a week with AH sales on NA (~300K-1.2m on EU a week). Again, I’m still in the beginning stages of figuring this out. People who have it figured out are clocking over 7m a week, 35m-40m a month, with the largest numbers I’ve seen being 60-80m a month.
All I can suggest is start with something you know, or something you like. E.G. did a transmog item swap for someone, realized they really really like transmog. Showed them how I found it cheaper, within 15 minutes they had made a second account themselves to start moving transmog to their server to resell since they understood their server’s transmog market. If you understand mounts, then do mounts.
Really don’t need to know a lot, I didn’t realize how little knowledge was needed, but definitely some basic “common sense” is required. And as I demonstrated you really don’t even need starting capital. Someone who managed to get to level 70 more than likely has 10K-30K gold sitting around and that’s more than enough.
Thankyou Youaintmyrealdad for sharing your experience and passing that knowledge on. It really is that simple. Look for things that people might want and find a way to get it for them at the best price.
Cross realm trading has certainly opened up opportunities for many and it’s a natural progression from what was mainly isolated server economies now expanding into a larger region wide Auction House.
Preparing for Cataclysm Classic
TheLazyGoldmaker has a great video and writeup this week as our attention draws towards Cataclysm Classic and what to expect in terms of niches for gold making.
The sorts of things he discusses are..
- Darkmoon Decks
- Shuffles
- Early PVP Gear
- Vial of the Sands
There’s a lot of interesting markets for sure in Cataclysm Classic and it will be exciting to see how it develops with the increased pace of patch drops and knowledge the second time round.
Speed Sets in 10.2.6
An interesting side effect, whether intentional of not has opened up the item options for those wanting to make speed sets. These are specific items and enchantments to make your character move as fast as possible, usually with the purpose of dungeon farming as efficiently as possible.
I’m using the ilvl319 DF crafted starter boots from the Pioneer set and have 233% speed in cat form and 193.7% in bear, with 5 pieces that can still be optimized from drop or AH grabbing something with +Speed, but only if it also has the best secondary for Longstrider, as that’s actually more important now. Choosing between a piece with +Speed or synergy with Longstrider, Longstrider wins (at least until Longstrider caps, which is now a lot easier perhaps, we’ll see).
edit: I also do not have T3 Ripple in Space and may or may not try to grind that out. I’m also a Kul Tiran but might change to Nelf at some point, for less belly fat and more free speed.
edit2: I just race changed to Nelf and am at 235.6% in Cat, 198% in Bear, and 240.6% in Prowl base run, no Dash or consumables with not fully optimized DF gear apart from 194 Azerite pieces and 3X Longstrider and no Ripple
edit3: now at cap for Longstrider, 238.2% in Cat normal and 243.2% while in Prowl, no consumables, no Dash, just still unoptimized gear and several slots that can still be upgraded with tertiary speed. Just swapping back to +Speed pants (net loss as this dropped me below cap) but then swapping my Tier gloves (which didn’t have +Crit for Longstrider with some gloves that do).
There is some discussion whether it’s better to be level locked using older item level gear or to make the most of current content and be the fastest level 70 you can be. It certainly is good to see people min maxing every piece of gear and gem and enchant to go zoom!!
edit: only time a farming twink was cool to me was 110/111 when level cap was 120 because that was nuts. Being able to light up unsuspecting 120s was a riot.
Now, DF itemization + Longstrider > +Speed (edit2: at least until hitting Longstrider cap, which I may be at now), which will mean greater choices for +Speed without also having to look for, in my case, Crit too)
K, that’s exactly what I have been equipping in various slots when they come up. But that didn’t start with the Emerald Dream BOEs, it’s been roll-of-the-dice tertiary all along. DF gear with tertiary speed has been a part of lvl70 speed sets all along.
That still has nothing to do with the bits people were still wearing from old content that provide (or provided) more boost than a full set of world BOE with +Speed, namely, the boot enchant. That was locked to ilvl50 until just this last patch. At lvl70 the truth is whatever was worn in the boot slot offered practically negligible stats, because the itemization and gems are practically trash compared to DF itemization. It was for that boot enchant that was BIS.
You can search for specific gear with Speed stats in undermine.exchange …
Farming Gold for a Token Without Dragonflight
An interesting dilemma here coming from a player who has been making a token relatively easily in Wrath Classic and wants to do similar in Retail, but without the Dragonflight Expansion.
I am coming mainly from WotLK where I just do my dailies, and it is enough to get the token, but I tried to do it in Shadowlands and I barely got 10% of what I would need to get daily in order to buy it in time. And as I don’t have much money and enjoy farming, maybe I will buy DF in the future, most certainly I’ll buy TWW but in the meantime I would like to have some goal to play for.
It’s an interesting limitation and one that could resonate with many. Perhaps you want to earn enough gold in Retail to be able to buy the new expansions with Battlenet Balance which you can’t do in Classic.
The Good News: It is do-able. Flipping is an okay way, but you already mentioned you don’t enjoy flipping. If you want to do it through farming and professions, that’s doable. You need to think about the markets that have significant demand that are a pain in the ass to farm for. Example: A lot of people are farming Naxx so they can sink gold into getting their really old transmog stuff made. You can absolutely farm stuff to sell there. It doesn’t have to be limited to Naxx, but Naxx is a cakewalk speedrun at this point. Take 15 minuts on a dozen or so characters to clear the lockout each week. I forget all the crap you’re looking for exactly, but when you think about a couple hours a week, over the course of a month getting you a significant chunk of gold, it’s probably pretty decent- I know a few people that have done it.Elemental stuff is always in demand. Elemental Water, Elemental Fire, Undeath, etc. Old world stuff- people want it for making transmog stuff, or leveling older professions. Outland for Primals would probably do okay, or Northrend for the equivilent there. Elemental stuff is always used in crafting. Some areas even have hyperspawn or similar.
Look up craftable mounts- either farm and sell the materials for it, or craft them yourself, or make an army of alts with crafting CDs you can explot. Is it massive gold daily? No. But it adds up at the end of the month. In addition to mounts, think about things people will always use- twink enchants and consumables/gems are always going to make gold. Many players run Engineering, and if you’re running Engineering, you probably want to be able to make yourself a Jeeves or some other cool engineering thing from previous expansions- you can exploit that by farming the materials, because players with money might have 5 engineering toons, and be willing to part with 20-50k to level WotLK for a Jeeves, etc.
Do the cooking and fishing dailies in the capitals and Northrend and Outland. Sound stupid? It is. But people will sometimes pay for recipes, and some of the rewards will sell well, whether recipes, transmogs, pets, etc. Everyone wants a pimp cane, apparently. Bonus pounts- they can drop items that actually start repeatable quests for currency. Don’t think that’s important? I spent close to 100k buying them so I didn’t have to wait to get 100 of the cooking currency so I could get my chef hat, because it works to make DF cooking lightning fast. People will pay for convenience.
Go make auto hammers, those will almost always sell- you probably need the rank 3 recipe to make a profit, but you can also just sell the materials too, if you just feel like farming.
Get a character than can make the Sulfuron hammer, run Molten Core every week actually make it (and other transmog from old recipes). People need it for a legendary, or just transmog, and the average person can’t make it, and really can’t be asked to put in the stupid time required.
Check ever BoE, grey, white, etc to see if it’s selling. You’d be surprised to see what people will buy.
There are always creative ways to do this. The problem is, for the average player, it’s just not worth it. It’s not big money, you know. It’s a huge, massive time investment, plus listing, relisting, cancel-scanning, and waiting and waiting and waiting while things may or may not sell, do to competition on the regionwide AH, or the local market just being slow, or the items just being that niche. I think if you put in the time, at the end of the month, you’d be surprised how much you’ll pull together- I also think there’s still a very, very good chance if you tally time put in vs cost of game time/token/expansions/etc…. you might just as easily find the prospect costs you too much time. Either way,, if you want to make your ridiculous gold nest egg, don’t miss TWW. If it’s anything like DF, it’ll have the same profession system, and you’ll have a lot of opportunity for someone who doesn’t mind putting in work every week of becoming an excellent gear crafter, or dealing with the AH in Volume sales. (It’s really too late to get into at this point in DF- also, if you plan on getting TWW, can’t you just get that and it gives you DF?) Good luck, hope you prove me wrong and make just oodles of tokens, mate. C’mon back here and tell me about it.
There’s lots of great suggestions here and it ties in with the first topic on 100 M gold. It’s all about looking for things that other people want and find creative ways of getting it to them.
Rotating Respawn Farms
WowGamerBoy has an interesting video this week where they rotate through various characters parked in different places to pick up mobs for certain drops or transmog and then move onto the next rather than wait for respawns.
One of the bigger limiting factors here is logout and load times. With maybe 2 accounts and limited addons and a fast hard drive, this could be kept at a minimum.
Further Reading
Most of this information was discussed and originally posted on the /r/woweconomy subreddit or in the accompanying Discord Server.
I hope you found this useful and If you have any suggestions or feedback, please do say so in the comments below..
Until next time, Happy Goldmaking!
Samadan