Warcraft Gold Tips

by Fox Van Allen

One of my favorite topics is World of Warcraft’s problem with inflation. If affects just about everyone in a very negative way, regardless of whether they’re an Auction House maven or a casual player. Inflation makes any gold your character is holding worth less and less by the second, making work you do now far less valuable than work you do later. It even affects the way developers approach the economy, from the amount of gold you get for finishing a daily to the creation of new gold sinks.

By most anecdotal measures, in-game inflation is wildly out of control. And that’s one of my problems as WoW Insider’s other market follower; the only evidence of inflation we have is ancedotal. There’s no real solid way for us to measure inflation in the game and understand what’s working to control it and what’s not.

The question got my mental gears turning. In the real world, inflation is measured using something called the Consumer Price Index. Creating an in-game version of the CPI intrigues me, but to figure out the best way to construct it, we need to first figure out the answer to another difficult question: What do people buy the most of in-game?

What’s the Consumer Price Index?

I’ll spare you the full economic lesson, but a Consumer Price Index is a pretty simple concept. You take a selection of items that the average American buys — things like bread, clothes, electricity, cars, gas, and housing — and keep tabs on the price of each. Then later — say, in 10 years’ time — you can compare the new prices to the old prices and see how they’ve changed. The percentage that prices go up (and they almost always go up) is the rate of inflation.

Keeping tabs on price changes is the easy part, though. The harder part about crafting a CPI is taking into account the amount of each item a person buys on average over a year and to adjust the weighting of each item in the market basket of items we selected. If the price of bread increases by 10% and the price of a house decreases by 10%, we can’t just average things out to zero, because people tend to buy more loaves of bread over the course of a year than they do houses. Unless they’re a real estate investor with a gluten allergy. Hmm.

… and this has to do with WoW … how?

Hey, don’t rush me. I was getting to that part.

If we take the concept behind the real CPI and translate it into Azeroth, we can measure the effect of inflation on the World of Warcraft economy and identify the best places to invest our hard-earned gold. Websites like The Undermine Journal and AHSpy.com make it really easy to track prices. We just need to figure out what the typical player purchases most often in a way that represents what people buy the most. But what do people buy the most?

It’s hard to track the number of items sold on the Auction House with the given limitations of the API. We’ll have to keep track of the number of items listed, instead — a far easier number to determine. Obviously, not all items listed will be sold, but economic theory suggests that they’ll all sell or be used eventually once the right price is found.

So, enough set-up. Here are the items that are bought and sold the most.

Top seller: Raw materials

By far, raw materials make up the most common purchases on the Auction House. That’s because just about everything else being sold on the Auction House (with a few exceptions) are comprised of these raw mats.

Herbs To represent herbalists, alchemists, and scribes, I’m going to include in our inflation-measuring market basket the two most traded herbs. Currently, this is Whiptail (1.89 million units globally) and Cinderbloom (1.68 million). We’ll also include Peacebloom (0.19 million) to try and capture the impact of those leveling professions on the market.

Ore To represent miners, blacksmiths, and jewelcrafters, we’ll keep tabs on the two most traded ores. Currently, this is Elementium Ore (3.86 million units globally) and Obsidium Ore(1.62 million). We’ll also include Copper Ore to capture the leveling market (0.51 million).

Enchanting mats To represent enchanters, we’ll have to look at enchanting material prices. We’ll keep tabs on the current expansion’s dust, Hypnotic Dust (2.21 million), and the current expansion’s greater essence, Greater Celestial Essence (0.21 million), the most traded enchanting mats by far. We’ll also keep track of the changes in the most basic enchanting mat, Strange Dust (0.36 million).

Cloth To represent tailors and those poor suckers who actually make and use bandages, we’ll include the current expansion’s common cloth, currently Embersilk Cloth (1.11 million). We’ll also look at Linen Cloth (0.91 million).

Leather To represent skinners and leatherworkers, we’ll look at the current expansion’s leather, currently Savage Leather (0.70 million). It easily sells more than all the other leathers combined. We’ll also follow movements in the price of low-level Light Leather (0.43 million).

Elemental And finally, many craftables require elementals. We’ll keep track of the two most traded elementals, which are currently Volatile Life (3.05 million) and Volatile Earth (2.16 million).

Raiding goods

While your more casual player makes the raw material market go ’round, there’s a segment of the market that more casual players are less influential in: the high-end raiding market. Surely, there are far fewer hardcore raiders, but the items they buy tend to be exponentially higher priced.

Gear The best way to track the movement of raid-quality BoE gear will be to keep an eye on valor gear. To try and keep things somewhat consistent, we’ll keep an eye on DPS plate (assuming all gear for other spec behaves similarly) because it’s the most frequently listed item (846 global listings). In this case, we’ll watch Heartcrusher Wristplates until a new class of BoE gear comes out next expansion.

Enchants and gems For the most part, the cost of enchanting and gemming that gear should be covered in the raw materials section. Just to be safe, though, we’ll follow the costs of the highest-quality red gem available (currently, Queen’s Garnet; 5,058 global listings) and the highest-quality enchanting mat available (currently, Maelstrom Crystal; 62k global listings).

Putting it all together

We’ll keep track of the prices of these items over the upcoming months to try and identify some trends and to give us all a better idea of what to expect in the next expansion.

So, what do I expect the data we’re collecting to show? Well, if history is any judge, you should see purchasing power increase until Mists of Pandaria is released. Why? Decreased demand — fewer and fewer people will need raw materials, gear, and the items used to enchant and gem that gear. As a result, most people will simply stockpile money.

When Mists of Pandaria is released, history tells us the dam will break. Players will finally have something to spend their pent-up money on, and since supply will (initially) be very tight, we’ll see inflationary problems worse than ever before. As for fixing that problem — well, we’ll get to that issue very, very soon.

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World of Warcraft In-game Leveling Guides

The #1 best-selling in-game World of Warcraft leveling guides. Join over 60,000 Zygor Guides users to level your character, make tons of gold, earn achievements, titles & much more…

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by Basil Berntsen

Every so often, I get asked something to the effect of “What’s the fastest way to get 10,000 gold?” It’s usually asked by someone who is perpetually poor in game and is looking to get a BoE or some other sort of reward that costs gold. The fastest way for me to get 10,000 gold is to log in and check my mail. My daily haul is many times that and scales based on how much time I have to craft, list, and relist. This isn’t a useful answer to someone who lives paycheck to paycheck, though. So what advice would be helpful?

First off, if you’re below level 85, get to level 85. This nets you quite a bit of gold simply from quest rewards and vendoring gear you acquire. If you’re already level 85, the first thing you need to do is identify how much money you can make per hour running 5-mans for valor points that you can use to sell BoEs. On my realm, I could sell a BoE costing 1,650 VPs for about 10,000 gold. That means every valor point I earn could be worth 6 gold, which makes the 150 points I get from a 5-man worth 900g. I can do seven per week per character with the requisite gear. Also, every trash kill and boss kill has a chance of awarding you with valuables, including enchanting mats (if someone can DE) and BoEs.

Downtime between instances

Unless you’re queuing as a tank or healer, though, you’re going to have significant downtime. What can you do while queued to make money? For starters, professions. Every single profession has something it can do to make money. If you have herbalism, skinning, or mining, farm. Put your goods on the Auction House a little higher than the lowest, but undercut the biggest quantity listed. If you have crafting professions, you can spend your queue time in front of the Auction House trying to find items that you can craft that will get purchased and cost less to make than they’ll sell for.

As soon as you’re involved in the AH, you will definitely want to replace the base AH interface with Auctionator. It allows you to see on one page how many auctions are at each price. There’s no need to manually read each auction and try to work it out for yourself.

Next up, basic arbitrage is something anyone can do while waiting for a queue to pop. Buy something that can be transformed and sold in its new form. For example, Greater Celestial Essences can be turned into Lesser Celestial Essences with a right-click, and these will sometimes sell for more than a third. Some professions can do things like this, too.

• The raw gems obtained from Prospecting just about any type of ore will be worth more than the ore itself.
• The inks obtained from Milling are worth more than the herbs needed to make them.
• The mats obtained from Disenchanting are sometimes worth more than the items you can disenchant.
• Heavy Savage Leather might sell for more than the five Savage Leather it takes to make them.
• Bolts of cloth might sell for more than the cloth itself.

The sunset of profit from dailies

Notice how my advice doesn’t include dailies? That’s because until you’ve exhausted your VP gains for the week, queuing for sellable VPs will be way more than anyone can make doing dailies. Daily quests were a viable way of making money when most people thought that 100 gold was a lot. Nowadays, that’s one repair bill. Dailies should be done for reputation, gear, or fun, but never money. You can make more gold per hour doing just about anything with a profession than you ever will doing dailies.

The other bad, outdated advice I’d like people to ignore is grinding. Killing lots of monsters is a very low amount of money per hour compared to almost any alternative, unless you’re skinning. Even then, all the non-leather you get from skinning is a drop in the bucket compared to how much you get from the leather.

Escaping the cycle

There is a middle ground between being a multimillionaire and being completely broke. There are lots of people who always have 30k to 50k gold around in case they decide to splurge on something, but they don’t spend as much time keeping that balance as I do making my millions.

What’s the difference between someone who is consistently broke and one of these middle-class players? Believe it or not, I don’t think income is much of a factor. I suspect that a large part of the middle class makes money the same way I’ve outlined here. The biggest difference is how they choose to spend their money.

The best advice I can give someone trying to get out of the grinding for gold cycle is to look very carefully at where you spend your money and decide whether focusing in on what’s really important to you would help you achieve your goals. You won’t have to have to farm your butt off saving up for a Hagara pick-pocket if you hadn’t spent all the gold you made last patch on mounts, vanity pets, and other less important items. Have a minimum balance in mind, and until you’re at that level, don’t spend anything.

The reality is that most people don’t bother with gold making because there really isn’t much you can do with it. But if you treat the 10k (or 30k or 50k) gold mark as your zero balance, then you’ll be able to splurge every time something new comes out.

Looking to make more WoW gold?

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World of Warcraft In-game Leveling Guides

The #1 best-selling in-game World of Warcraft leveling guides. Join over 60,000 Zygor Guides users to level your character, make tons of gold, earn achievements, titles & much more…

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by Fox Van Allen

Usually when new content is released, it’s only the level 85 characters who can make money hand over fist. But the coolest thing about the Darkmoon Faire is that you don’t need to be a level 85 character to participate or even profit off it. A level 20 character can have just as much fun at, get just as much benefit, and even make as much money as a level 85. It just takes the right amount of knowledge.

And, oh yeah, it also takes a Darkmoon Adventurer’s Guide. You’re carrying one of those on you at all times, right? Right? Well, according to Wowhead, most of you sub-level 85 players aren’t. And that’s a gigantic missed opportunity for a lot of money – thousands upon thousands of gold. The kind of money that’s just unheard of at lower levels.

It belongs in a museum! Auction House!

Part of the fun of the Darkmoon Faire is that it’s a limited-time event. Sure, it’s here every month, but only for a week. A number of different Darkmoon Faire quests can be completed only once per month. It’s that kind of time-sensitive feature that offers the best opportunity for profit.

Accomplishing certain acts at the fair will earn you tickets, which can be redeemed for prizes. There’s a limit to how many tickets you can get in a single Faire, so a lot of players are very much actively seeking out ways to get every last prize ticket. And unless you’ve found each and every one of the nine BoE, world drop, quest-starting items that can be redeemed for tickets, you’re simply not maximizing your monthly haul.

It’s worth noting here that there’s a bug affecting the Darkmoon Faire that hampers your ability to turn in these items at the moment. It’s a known issue and will be fixed “soon.” That’s likely to increase the short-term rarity of these items as players turn them in.

In the meantime, there’s no reason why you can’t go around collecting these world drops. So long as you’re PvPing, running 5-mans (even at low levels), or raiding, you’ll find them. But you need to know where to look. And you also need the Darkmoon Adventurer’s Guide, because these suckers don’t drop without it.

That’s lesson number one, here: Always carry around a Darkmoon Adventurer’s Guide. Treasure it. Never let it go. So before you do anything else, go log on to each and every one of your characters and get a Darkmoon Adventurer’s Guide. You can only get the guides while the Faire is in town, but all these items drop even when the Faire is not.

You can only complete the quests from the Darkmoon artifacts once every month. That said, even though you can only complete the quest once, you can farm up the items again and again without cooldown. There’s a lot of money here to be made, and really no limit on how much you farmers can get.

Money from raiding

The first of the nine items, Soothsayer’s Runes, can only obtained by beating older Cataclysmraid bosses, specifically Magmaw (Blackwing Descent), Halfus Wyrmbreaker (Bastion of Twilight), Shannox (Firelands), Nezir (Throne of Winds), and Pit Lord Argaloth (Baradin Hold). You can’t take these guys on unless you’re level 85, but because you need to run outdated content to get the item, it’s especially valuable to players who otherwise couldn’t be bothered. AHSpy.com prices the Soothsayer’s Runes at between 1,300 and 1,500 gold — a pretty nice haul for spending a few minutes in an old raid with your friends.

Money from PvPing

Three of the Darkmoon items, the Adventurer’s Journal, Banner of the Fallen, and Captured Insignia are available from PvP. All are looted off players’ corpses while running Battlegrounds, including Warsong Gulch, so you can start farming these as early as level 15. Selling these items is a quick way to get some cash. The Adventurer’s Journal currently sells for about 150 gold or so; the Banner of the Fallen is about 250 gold; and Captured Insignia is worth 150 gold. That may not seem like a lot of cash, but even as early as level 10, you can rack up thousands of gold in a single afternoon. It sure beats farming Peacebloom.

Money from 5-mans

The last five Darkmoon items are all found in instances as boss drops. They’re not 100% guaranteed, but the drop rate is strong nevertheless; ancedotal evidence would put the drop rates around one in three or four. Best of all, they tend to be worth a lot more than the PvP drops. They are:

• Mysterious Grimoire, which is obtainable as soon as level 20 or whenever it is you can first gain access to Lady Anacondra in Wailing Caverns. It also drops from a number of different instances all the way up to level 85: Shadowfang Keep (Lord Godfrey), Scarlet Monastery (Bloodmage Thalnos and Arcanist Doan), Scholomance (Darkmaster Gandling), Zul’Farrak (Hydromancer Velratha), Sunken Temple (Jammal’an the Prophet), Old Kingdom (Jedoga Shadowseeker), Drak’tharon Keep (Novos), and Hour of Twilight (Archbishop Benedictus). As you can see, the grimoire is easily farmable, even at early levels. And its current price is high: about 1,000 gold.
• Monstrous Egg is available to characters as soon as they can enter Zul’Farrak and take on Gahz’rilla, which is around 45 or so. It’s also found in Lost City of the Tol’vir (Lockmaw), Throne of the Tides (Lady Naz’jar), Utgarde Pinnacle (Skadi), Violet Hold (Cyanigosa), Drak’Tharon (King Dred), Azjol-Nerub (Anub’arak), The Arcatraz (Harbinger Skyriss), Old Hillsbrad (Epoch Hunter), Underbog (Ghaz’an), Blackrock Depths (Ambassador Flamelash), and Stratholme (Nerub’enkan). These sell for about 850 gold each.
• The Imbued Crystal drops in Ragefire Chasm (Taragaman), Maraudon (Razorlash), Scarlet Monastery (Whitemane), Scholomance (Ras Frostwhisper), Dire Maul (Immol’thar), Stratholme (Balnazzar), Blackrock Depths (Gerstahn), The Botanica (Warp Splinter), Nexus (Ormorok), Halls of Lightning (Loken), Pit of Saron (Tyrannus), and Vortex Pinnacle (Assad). You can also get it from Queen Azshara’s chest in the new Well of Eternity heroic. Considering very few people are going to make the effort to pick up an Adventurer’s Journal at level 15, that’s a very easy-to-obtain 900 gold as many times as you feel it’s worth chasing down.
• The Ornate Weapon is a much more limited drop, found in Deadmines (Ripsnarl), The Stockade (Randolph Moloch), Scarlet Monastery (Herod), Stratholme (Rivendare), and Blackrock Spire (Wyrmthalak). Despite that, it tends to sell for less than its brethren: about 720 to 820 gold.
• The most rare and therefore best selling of the five boss drops is the book A Treatise on Strategy. It’s found on at least one of the bosses in each of the new Cataclysm heroics. Very few of these are available on Auction Houses right now — a grand total of only 467 across all servers, according to a quick check of AHSpy. They’re selling for an average of 23,500 gold because of their scarcity. That’s right. You read that correctly. A gigantic jackpot for the simple act of running a heroic.

You’ll have to roll against other people to score these artifacts, but only against those who also hold a Darkmoon Adventurer’s Guide — and again, ancedotally, that means you’re only rolling against one or two other people, if you’re rolling against anybody at all. A lot of people simply skip the Darkmoon Faire. Or this aspect of it, anyway. But now you know better, right?

Buy, sell, or hold?

Obviously, these items have very little value on the Auction House when the Darkmoon Faire isn’t in town. Values are shooting upward now that people are looking to complete the quests. And it’s not out of the ordinary to expect a sharp change in price at the end of the Faire. But in which direction?

Well, over the course of the last Faire, the value of these items slowly declined over time. That was because people were selling the items at high prices. A large number of sellers were stuck with inventory in the final days — a quantity that exceeded the number of buyers looking to complete quests at the last minute.

I expect this to be the general trend of most Faires. As a result, smart sellers will price these aggressively so they don’t get left holding the bag when the Faire is long gone. Even if you do wind up with excess inventory, though, don’t fret — the next Faire starts Mar. 4. And all the people who bought these items in February will be back in the market.

Looking to make more WoW gold?

Never again worry about having enough gold. Gold Secrets makes it easier than Ever. 100% game legal, no hacks or cheats. Totally profitable, totally portable.

20k Leveling is designed to walk you step by step through making gold in World of Warcraft with rock solid, fundamental strategies which will allow you to easily make 4000-8000 gold every day while you level.

World of Warcraft In-game Leveling Guides

The #1 best-selling in-game World of Warcraft leveling guides. Join over 60,000 Zygor Guides users to level your character, make tons of gold, earn achievements, titles & much more…

Totally updated for the Cataclysm Expansion pack and includes a full in-game leveling guide mod! The new 1-85 horde (and 1-85 alliance) guides are fully functional step-by-step guides that will make leveling a breeze for you!
Read more… »

by Fox Van Allen

If you’re a magic-using, cloth-wearing class, I’d recommend you at least take a look at tailoring. By leveling it, you get access to Lightweave Embroidery, one of the best level 85 buffs in the game for casters.

Of course, you can level tailoring on any character, and a lot of the craftables you make can be sold at a profit. But if that character can’t use the buffs from the profession, you’re missing one the key benefits to max leveling a profession.

Should I level tailoring?

Generally speaking, it’s hard to argue that one profession is hands down better than another. They all have their own unique advantages and drawbacks. And a profession that’s not especially lucrative or useful in one patch or expansion may wind up being the best in the next.

The tailoring profession is best leveled by someone who is actively leveling a character. The profession requires a lot of cloth. This cloth can be quite expensive to obtain at level 85, but leveling characters will routinely find cloth out in the wild.

The tailoring profession is best leveled alongside an enchanter. The two professions have terrific synergy. Tailoring requires you to craft a lot of gear that people aren’t going to be interested in buying off the Auction House. Disenchanting this surplus green gear turns them into enchanting materials, which is far more liquid a commodity.

Getting started

Obviously, the best way to level tailoring is to craft the items with the lowest cost to make that sell for the highest profit margin (or lowest amount of net loss). What items sell the best tend to vary from server to server. Still, some things hold more constant than others.

If this is the first time you’ve ever leveled a profession (don’t laugh — we were all there once!), you should know that the tailoring profession, like most non-gathering professions, is pretty poorly balanced in terms of leveling. In the early levels, you’re likely to find moreLinen Cloth and Silk Cloth than you can use while leveling. By the time you hit level 80 and are ready to leave Northrend behind, you’ll be frustrated that your tailor still needs tons more Frostweave Cloth.

Balance your leveling

It’s most efficient to pace your effort to level tailoring with your effort to level your character. This makes sense on a number of levels. You may as well be crafting things your character can use, and if your character levels faster than you level your profession, the gear you’re making will always be outdated. And, of course, by leveling in tandem, you’re actively getting the cloth you need from level-appropriate mobs. It just makes the whole process feel smoother.

• Tailoring 0-75 Level 1-15 humanoid mobs (Linen)
• Tailoring 75-150 Level 16-25 humanoid mobs (Wool)
• Tailoring 150-225 Level 30-40 humanoid mobs (Silk); level 38-50 humanoid mobs (Mageweave)
• Tailoring 225-300 Level 50-60 humanoid mobs (Runecloth)
• Tailoring 300-375 Level 58-68 The Burning Crusade content (Netherweave)
• Tailoring 375-450 Level 68-80 Wrath of the Lich King content (Frostweave)
• Tailoring 450-525 Level 80-85 Cataclysm content (Embersilk)

Priority 1: Craft Bolts of Cloth

While tailoring, you’re going to need bolts of cloth. Lots and lots of bolts. They’re the simplest and most useful thing a tailor makes.

As a tailor, there’s no reason not to craft bolts of cloth. They take up less bag space. They’re generally worth more than the component pieces of cloth you used to make them.

• Bolt of Linen Cloth Make these from skill level 1 through 50. Resist the urge to craft anything else until this pattern goes gray. You should have far more Linen than you need from drops alone, but in a pinch, Linen is almost always cheap on the Auction House.
• Bolt of Wool Cloth As soon as you hit skill level 75, drop everything and start making these. Keep making these until the pattern goes gray at 105.
• Bolt of Silk Cloth Start making these when you get to skill level 125. Keep making these through to level 145.
• Bolt of Mageweave Cloth You can make these as soon as you hit 175. Craft these through to 185.
• Bolt of Runecloth Start making these at 250; make nothing else until you hit skill level 260.
• Bolt of Netherweave You gain the ability to craft these bolts at 300. Making these should continue to provide skill points through to 325.
• Bolt of Imbued Netherweave Start making at 325. Make until it stops awarding skill at 340.
• Bolt of Frostweave Start crafting Frostweave at 350. Don’t stop until the act grays out at 375.
• Bolt of Imbued Frostweave Make this from skill 400 to 405.
• Bolt of Embersilk You can start crafting bolts of Embersilk at 425. It should continue to award skill points through to 450.
• Dreamcloth When you hit level 525, you’re likely going to want to craft gear with Dreamcloth, so it pays to start making it as soon as possible (500). Whether or not you want to wait out the week-long cooldowns or pay the premium price for certain types of volatile elementals is up to you.

Don’t take these bolts to the Auction House — hold on to them. You’ll need them to finish the leveling process. And if you make more bolts than you need, don’t worry. You can always sell the bolts on the Auction House later.

Priority 2: High-capacity bags

The one item that has consistently sold well throughout World of Warcraft history are bags. Everyone needs them. But not all bags sell. The only bags that sell to any reliable extent are those that contain a minimum of 16 slots. Profession-specific bags sell well too, so long as they’re 32-slot bags or higher. These bags frequently sell at a profit, so obviously you’re going to want to concentrate your leveling effort here where you can.

• Netherweave Bag This pattern is available at 315, though you’ll still be making Netherweave Bolts until 325. Keep making it until it stops awarding skill points at 330.
• Imbued Netherweave Bag Make these from 340 through to 350. You can get the Netherweb Spider Silk by leveling through Terrokar.
• Frostweave Bag Make these starting at skill level 410. You should generally switch over to making Embersilk Bolts at 425, but these bags award skill points to 440. So if you have excess Frostweave, keep going.
• Embersilk Bag If these are profitable to make (at 15 bolts each, these can be quite pricey), then you can grind these from 480 to 495.
• Hyjal Expedition Bag Early in the Cataclysmexpansion, these bags were made at huge losses just to finish the tailoring leveling process. Now that fewer people are leveling tailoring, these can usually be made at cost or at a profit. Just be aware that the market for specialty bags such as these can be easy to flood.

Priority 3: Bind-on-equip gear

Crafting bolts and bags put you well on your way to hitting 525, but you’ll still need to fill in the blanks along the way. For this, you’ll probably need to make green- or blue-quality bind-on-equip gear.

This is where there’s no right answer for the leveling guide. You’re going to want to try to craft whatever sells for the most profit (or usually, the smallest loss), but this can vary from server to server. You might need to do a small amount of research on the Auction House first. Thankfully, this is easy enough. I like to do the bulk of my crafting in the Auction House itself, so I can search to make sure the market isn’t already flooded with what I’m about to make.

Players who have already reached level 85 will have access to heirloom gear to send to any future characters they decide to level. Right now, heirlooms are available for your head, shoulders, cloak, and chest. Tailoring gear for these slots tends to sell especially poorly, since very few people are in the market to buy them. Focus your crafting efforts on the other slots: wrists, gloves, belts, pants, and boots.

There are some other things to consider, as well. Often, blue-quality gear will take the most effort and materials to make. But this means that few players actually bother to craft the gear. A surprising amount of blue-quality gear will sell for a profit, especially if it’s for one of those five non-heirloom slots.

Further, gear for twinks — characters who purposefully refuse to level past a certain point for PvP reasons — is always a popular seller. This gear is pretty easy to spot, even for beginners. Blue-quality stuff is more popular with twinks than green-quality stuff, because twinks only want the absolute best gear. Further, gear that has a minimum level requirement that ends in nine is popular with twinks, since they typically halt their growth at levels that end in nine. For a specific example, look at the Spidersilk Boots. They take more materials to make than their green-quality counterparts, but the extra effort is well worth it. They oftensell for around 250 gold, depending on your server.

Finally, a warning to the crafting novice: Before making something, check to make sure that item you’re about to craft is bind on equip, not bind on pickup. If it’s tagged as the latter, it will be bound your character and you won’t be able to sell it. Don’t waste time bind-on-pickup gear like the Robe of Power unless you plan on using it yourself.

Priority 4: The rest

One of the best ways to make money in WoW is to do what everybody else is not doing. That makes writing guides like this difficult. If everyone has the same information, then very few people who have that information will be able to make money off it.

That said, those who have the greatest success while leveling a profession will be those who have a little bit of creativity to find underserved markets specific to their server. On many servers, roleplay gear — that is, gear worn for looks and not functionality — tends to sell slowly but often at a profit. Shirts can be surprisingly profitable, but do your research first. And don’t list too many at once.

If you’re not a enchanter, don’t be afraid to make contacts with people in your guild who are. If they’re willing to lend a helping hand, you can always send them your excess crafted gear and have them disenchant it for you. Enchanting materials almost always sell better than the gear the materials came from.

And as a final note: Don’t be afraid to craft gear for yourself! While a lot of people level professions for the purposes of making money, that’s really only half of what the process is good for. Cloth-wearing tailors have access to some of the best gear possible for their class, if only they go through the trouble of making it. If you can get a skill point out of creating a better piece of gear for yourself, there’s really no reason not to.

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