BoA Cloaks?

I recently saw some screenshots of bind on account cloaks which will be part of the new expansion, and it brought to mind a gold making opportunity. For some classes, the best enchant will be this recipe, dropped by Syndicate Assassins in Alterac Valley. If you have an enchanter, go and farm the recipe (it may take some time, the drop rate is about 1.5%) and come cataclysm, you will be one step ahead of the competition. Also, you should take the time to look up the other BiS cloak enchants and get those recipes too.

Turn 1000 gold into 2000 gold

Markco has announced the topic of his next blogging carnival, and I thought I would chime in with my thoughts (also, thanks Markco for linking to this blog on your site). I'm going to assume that readers don't have access to rare recipes, but that trainable recipes can be obtained by asking on trade chat and offering a tip. Also, there are a couple of items (eternium rod and enchant chest - major health) that I suggest going to the npc who sells the plans and buying the plans so you can bring them to your crafter.

Search your auction house for khorium ore and bars, if they are less than 10g per ore or 20g per bar, check the price of primal fire and make sure it isn't too high. If the price is right, buy up to 9 khorium bars (or 18 khorium ore and find a miner to smelt it) and three primal fire. Then advertise in trade that you are looking for an engineer, tipping (your choice, but I'd try 20g). Have the engineer make you three khorium power cores. I regularly sell these for 350g each, but they might take a while to sell.

Next, purchase the materials and find a blacksmith to craft you about 5 each of eternium rod (you might want to buy the recipe in advance in case the blacksmith doesn't have it), adamantite rod, titanium rod, and fel iron rod. These will sell for 50 to 100 gold each. If cobalt bars can be gotten for cheap, you could have the blacksmith create 5 of the level 70 cobalt tanking sets for you, all of these items cost from 7 to 10 gold each to craft and sell for 30 to 40 gold.

Go to Dealer Rashaad in netherstorm and buy some of the vendor pets to list on the auction house.

Buy some thorium bars and arcane crystals if they are cheap and have an alchemist (transmute spec if possible) transmute them into arcanite bars for you. Preferably, do this before you talk to your blacksmith so he can craft some arcanite rods for you as well.

You could go to Qia in winterspring, buy this recipe (might have to camp with an alt, she doesn't sell an infinite supply), give it to an enchanter along with a bunch of small brilliant shards and some armor vellums, and get some Scrolls of Enchant Chest - Major Health to sell. I sell these for 100g all the time on my server.

Well, that's about it, if you can't make 1000g turn into 2000g with some combination of these methods... well, try something else.

Formula: Enchant Chest - Major Health

Formula: Enchant Chest - Major Health. If you have an enchanter, go to Everlook, find Qia, and pester her until she finally decides that she will sell the recipe to you. The enchant is usable on BoA chest items, and is the best health enchant that can be used on these items. The best part: the recipe only requires two Small Brilliant Shards plus the vellum so you can put it on the auction house. Small brilliant shards are dirt cheap, about 2 gold each on my server. Your results may vary, but on my server I regularly sell Scroll of Enchant Chest - Major Health for between 50 and 100g each. Make sure to buy up any cheap Small Brilliant shards you see on the auction house, and convert them to this recipe.

Healing Power

I have a natural aversion to spending, because I feel that I have worked hard to get what I have. When I do spend, I expect to get my money's worth. What this means in practice is that while leveling, I do not usually enchant my gear.

My logic is that the gear will be replaced soon, and I feel that I can fully pull my weight in a 5 man group without enchants. (I do put uncommon quality northrend gems in sockets once I hit Outland, but that is slightly off topic.) When I spend, I want to spend on durable goods that will perform their function for a long time. I would certainly enchant a twink character if I had one, as a twink's enchant would be considered durable. This mindset, wrong or right, has led me to miss out on a great market until recently.

I'm sure you've heard the story of the two miners, one filthy and one clean. At the end of the work day, the clean one went home and washed his face, while the filthy one did not. The reason: each had seen the other, and assumed that he must be the same. The point is that I assumed that nobody else enchanted their gear while leveling, because I don't.

I figured only chest and weapon enchants would sell, as these are the only enchants that will last the entire time a character is leveling. Either I was wrong about enchanting leveling gear or there are plenty of twinks on my server, because these boot, shield, and bracer enchants have all been selling for between 25 and 50 gold.

Based on my success with Greater Stamina Enchants, I did a wowhead search for Illusion Dust and clicked the "reagent for" tab. There I discovered Formula: Enchant Bracer - Healing Power. I'm now off to raise my argent dawn reputation so I can add this little beauty to my auction house arsenal.

Arcanite Bars

Here is a quick wow gold tip for those of you with Alchemy (especially transmute spec): Arcanite Bars. Alchemists can transmute an arcanite bar from one Thorium Bar and one Arcane Crystal. Making these will not use up your daily epic gem transmute, as there is no cooldown on transmuting arcanite bars. Market prices will be different on different servers, but on my server, if I pay attention, occasionally I can snag both Thorium Ore and Arcane Crystal for 1 gold each (one thorium ore smelts into a thorium bar, requires mining).

That means I'm paying 2 gold per arcanite bar (less actually, because my alchemist is transmute spec). I'm not sure who I'm selling to (maybe people smelting Elementium Bars to craft Thunderfury) but the arcanite bars sell regularly for between 9 to 14 gold each. Not mind blowing profit, but worth keeping a stack on one of my auction house alts and setting up a QA3 group so they post with minimal effort on my part.

Greater Stamina Enchants

I have been making gold by disenchanting and selling the materials from green items purchased using auctioneer's disenchant function, found in the search tab. I place bids on items with bids less than 30 silver if they are expected to net me at least 1 gold profit, and on all items which are expected to net me more than 5 gold profit.

To do this, I first set the minimum profit under disenchanting to 1 gold and run a getall scan. I then sort by purchase price, lowest on top, and buy out all auctions with a buyout less than 30 silver. I then sort by bid price, and place a bid on all auctions with a bid less than 30 silver. Finally, I sort by profit, highest first, and place a bid on all auctions with an expected profit of more than 5 gold.

In the process, I accumulated more Dream Dust than I knew what to do with. I was looking for a way to get rid of some of it, and stumbled across a moderate source of income from a product I had too much of anyway: Greater Stamina Enchants.

There are three: Formula: Enchant Shield - Greater Stamina, Formula: Enchant Bracer - Greater Stamina, and Formula: Enchant Boots - Greater Stamina. They all cost 5 Dream Dust to make, plus the vellum so you can put it on the auction house. I crafted 5 of each and created a QA group to sell them anytime the price was between 25 and 50 gold. To my surprise, there isn't much competition, but there is demand (mostly twinks and leveling tanks, I suppose). My enchants often post for the fallback price of 50 gold, and more importantly, they have been selling (not high volume, but the gold return on time invested is good if I simply keep one stack of each scroll in my bags and hit the post button once or twice a day after a scan).

Next on my list is to check out the market for Scroll of Enchant Bracer - Superior Stamina... the mats for this one are a bit more expensive (10 Illusion Dust), but I think that if the market for the subpar low level twink/tank bracer enchant is there, then there is bound to be a market for the better enchant.

Also, to my readers (few as that number may be), comments are always appreciated. It helps keep me motivated to know that somebody is actually reading the tips I'm putting out there, and if something I wrote was useful to you, I'd like to know.

Sparklers

Red Sparkler, White Sparkler, Blue Sparkler. Buy a bunch of these, and don't advertise or tell anyone that you have them until the vendor disappears for another year. Click the links for vendor locations.

Sorry to those who don't read this until after the vendors are gone. I would have posted this sooner, but I only recently learned of the existance of these items. Also, I hit the gold cap.

Khorium Power Core

It's been a while since my last post, here are the gold making opportunities I've stumbled across in the last month.

Khorium Power Core. Made by engineers, this item is required for a netherwing quest. Exalted Netherwing reputation allows access to 6 flying mounts, useful to those trying to get Mountain o' Mounts. The power cores don't sell in high volume, but I've sold these for anywhere from 250 to 450 gold each, so it's worth it to keep one on the auction house. While you're at it, sell Felsteel Bar in stacks of 2 and Adamantite Frame too!

The dire maul arena spawns a rare elite roughly every six hours... if you have an alt capable of soloing a lvl 58 elite and don't mind leaving that character in the arena, it can be worth your time to quickly check this area on login/logout. The bosses drop boe rare items, including Orb of Deception, which is worth quite a bit on the AH.

I got lucky on my paladin (who is lvl 64 now) and found a Recipe: Savory Deviate Delight on the horde Auction House for 9g buyout. I could have made some gold flipping that, but I used my girlfriend's account to transfer it to my alliance main and learned the recipe. I'm not sure if it's because I play alliance or if it's just my server, but it looks like Savory Deviate Delights aren't on my auction house very often. I've sold several as singles for 15g, so I added a group to Quick Auctions and now keep a couple of stacks on my auction house character, posting 5 single auctions when the price is between 5 and 15 gold.

Well, that's all for now, and thank you Adarellus for commenting on my previous post... it's good to know that someone actually reads this blog!

Still Chugging Away

My horde paladin is still chugging away, level 47 now. I've got a little more than 180k gold, 4 thousand of which is on the horde side (not bad for a level 47, huh?). Some of that gold was obtained by killing the Dalaran Spellscribe a few times in hopes of him dropping Cat Carrier (Black Tabby), an idea I got from JMTC. I sold two already for 750g each on the horde auction house... I should probably try to list the other ones I have for more on the neutral AH, as the alliance cannot obtain this item themselves.

I also completed a nobles deck at a cost of 852g, though I haven't sold it yet. I am still buying bargain green items and disenchanting them to sell the mats on the auction house, and I have started placing select low level enchants on vellums and listing them on the auction house, including fiery weapon and lifestealing.

In addition to hitting the gold cap before the Cataclysm release date (I shouldn't have too much trouble doing that), I'd like to have each profession maxed on one of my alliance characters and then begin trying to automate things... that is my end goal, to have gold flow in with as little effort as possible. Up front, this is taking a lot of time, but that's ok as I like trying new things (healing low level dungeons on my druid, for example). So for now, I'm going to be leveling and setting the framework for the next expansion... if I have any readers yet, it will be slow for a while, but expect things to pick up as Cataclysm approaches. Oh, and comments would be welcome, I'm beginning to think I'm the only one who visits this site.

Gold Wins

Whew! I played my horde paladin quite a bit on my days off, and he is now level 30. I bought 6 bank tabs for the guild I made for my alliance characters, and I had spent 5k more on my dk's epic flight skill, but I still have about 168k gold right now. I could have made more, but I was ignoring my alliance characters while I leveled my paladin.

Speaking of my paladin, I placed a bid for an Ace of Nobles that had a bid price of 1g 30s and a buyout of around 1000g. I figured for sure someone would outbid me, but the auction house hawks must not have been paying attention that day, because I actually won the auction! I checked the auction house, and found several other nobles cards for 40-50g each, so I decided to put together a deck. I currently have 5 of the 8 cards, each purchased for less than 100g, and I have a bid on another card that I need for 101g 50s. If I win that auction, I will only need two more cards for a full deck!

Not including the Ace of Nobles (I haven't actually realized a profit on that yet), I had two gold wins on the auction house. The first came from when I needed a silver rod to continue leveling enchanting, so I checked the auction house. There were none listed, so I bought 6 silver bars for 6g each and also the mats to make the grinding stones needed to make silver rods. I found a blacksmith by hanging out at the blacksmith trainer in dalaran. I had the blacksmith make me 6 silver rods. I used one and put another on the AH for 99g, and it sold! There are some cheap ones on the auction house now, but I will keep an eye out for when there are no silver rods on the auction house and list the others I had made then. The other gold win I had was finding 4 stacks of dream shards listed for 19g per stack. I bought out all 80 dream shards, spending 76g, and promptly relisted them as singles for 4g each. Every single one sold! Sweet!

I'm still buying cheap greens from the auction house and disenchanting them to sell the mats on the auction house, though I seem to be accumulating the materials faster than they are selling. I still say this is a great way to earn starting gold on a new server, but with the way my bank is filling up, I may need to stop buying for a while and just sell off the mats I already have.

New Character, Opposite Faction!

Children's week has come and gone, I sold about 40 Delicious Chocolate Cakes for between 50 and 100g each. I also sold plenty of stacks of 3 mageroyal for 27g per stack and stacks of 8 small eggs as well.

I took the opportunity to create a new character (skinning/enchanting) on the opposite faction during the holiday, as it was the best time (in my opinion) to create a new horde character. This is because small eggs are easily gathered by new blood elf characters, and last week they were selling for gold, which is very nice as starter income on a new faction. (Yes, I could simply use my new character to list an item on the neutral auction house and purchase the auction with another account, but why not earn it with my new character?) I didn't farm the eggs for very long, and I didn't create the new character until the last two days of the event, when prices had dropped a little, but I was able to make about 133g selling the small eggs and the leather I skinned.

With that starter gold, I placed bids on all uncommon (green) items with a bid of less than 30s. I won quite a few auctions, and my enchanting skill is now at level 49 or 50, purely from disenchanting. Because enchanting mats cost nothing to post, I will continue to repost the strange dust for 1g each until it sells... if the horde side is anything like the alliance side, it shouldn't take long. I also used auctioneer to scan for deals, and placed bids on low priced items I know will sell, such as ore, leather, and even a couple of pristine black diamonds (I bid 50g each on them, I'm pretty sure that won't be enough to win them, but who knows, I might get lucky!) For those of you who don't know, Pristine Black Diamonds are used in the feat of strength "Insane in the Membrane".

My new blood elf paladin is now level 11. My plan is to level with quests until level 15, then use the LFD tool to level from there (if you haven't experienced it yet, try leveling as a tank. The que times are awesome). I also bought my death knight epic flight skill... not sure why, as I don't really farm ore often, if at all. However, he did hit lvl 70, and I had the gold, so...

Oh, and here's an idea for the ultimate gold sink: pay 1,000g to gain a level. Enough gold might evaporate out of the economy to combat the inflation that BC and WotLK brought with them. Just a thought.

Rituals of the New Moon

Again, I have to begin by giving credit where credit is due. I already had the recipe for Rituals of the New Moon, but I learned how to sell them in this blog post. Technique: Rituals of the New Moon drops from Silverbrook Hunter in Grizzly Hills. You must have inscription for one to drop, which is why the drop rate looks so low (every time someone without inscription kills one of these guys and the recipe doesn't drop, it causes the drop rate reported on wowhead and similar sites to decrease).

I encourage you to go to Haora's blog post to read why this works, but basically I copy pasted the tell he was using and made it into a macro (look at the third comment on that article to see how I made a macro that linked an item). This item costs 30 to 50 gold to make, and I have been selling them for upwards of 250 (I sold one for 500!). I don't want to saturate the market, so I have been selling one per day.

The next step is to start posting one of each color in the auction house for 499g each, to manage the expectations of those who use auctioneer or some other addon that monitors auction house prices. The auction house fee is minimal, and who knows, some of them might sell :)

Felsteel Shield Spike - Update

Ok, I have learned a few things. First, I own this market on my server. I haven't seen anyone else post a felsteel shield spike since I started paying attention. Second, people will not pay 400g for this spike. Third, there is at least some interest (someone was interested enough to put my auction house character on their friend list, because I only log in for about 1-2 minutes on that character, and they whispered me during that time, asking me to reduce the price).

I had put them up at such a high price (400g) as an experiment, involving advertising with a macro. I generally post twice a day on this character, and when I do, I click a macro that says something like, "Want to level your paladin or warrior tank in style? Consider using Felsteel Shield Spike, a luxury item with a luxury price. No level requirement."

The results? I haven't sold one. That's ok though, I did learn something that I wouldn't have known if I hadn't tried: I won't be missing out on gold if I sell them for a lower price. Plus, I might end up getting some auction house flippers to try to buy and resell them when I lower the price to 199g. Here's hoping :)

In the morning, I'll change the price to 199g and from there will continue posting one every 12 hours along with a macro click... I'll see where that gets me. As far as material cost goes, I am looking at 10g per primal fire, 1g per primal earth, and 10g per felsteel bar. That comes to 84g to make each shield spike. I have ten made, I don't think I'll be crafting any more until I can sell the ones I have.

Cobalt Tanking Gear

This is not my idea, I actually got it from a post on the JMTC Forums. (Great forums by the way, you can probably learn far more there than you can from my blog.) The idea is simple: because of the LFD system, more people than ever are leveling as tanks. When they hit Northrend wearing BC gear, the dungeons become more difficult. The monsters hit harder and the dps starts getting shiny new northrend blues, making it more difficult to hold aggro. Many of these tanks will go to the auction house to see if they can get any cheap upgrades. They won't be willing to spend hundreds of gold, as they will get better gear soon, they just want a quick fix to allow them to tank the first few dungeons in Northrend.

Enter the cobalt tanking gear. These items can be used at level 70, and are upgrades for tanks who leveled in BC dungeons. They cost roughly 5 Cobalt Bar per item, and tanks will pay 40g for these items in my experience. On my server, if I pay attention, I can find cobalt ore for 25g or less per stack.

The AH listing fee is a bit steep, so I only list one of each item at a time. I list for 12 hours... I'm not sure if I would make more gold by listing auctions for longer or if I would just end up getting undercut, but what I'm doing seems to be working :)

The Cake Is Not A Lie!

Those of you out there who cook and have done the daily cooking quests, check to see if you can cook Delicious Chocolate Cake. If not, there are two cooking quests available each day (BC and Northrend), and you have until May 2 to get the recipe. Why May 2? Here's why: For The Children requires Bad Example, which requires you to eat a Delicious Chocolate Cake while your orphan is watching. The drop rate for this recipe is something like 1%, so if you don't have it yet you would need to get lucky to get it in time for the event.

The ingredients for the cake are 8 small eggs, 3 mageroyal, and some vendor bought items. The best place to farm small eggs is just south of Silvermoon City, from the red dragon looking creatures.

Even if you don't have the recipe, if you farm the mats to make a bunch of the cakes, you can find someone who has the recipe and tip them to craft the cakes for you, which you can then sell on the auction house on May 2 for a tidy profit. I think that 100g per cake is not unrealistic, if you have them ready and on the auction house the day the event starts. Worth farming the mats, I'd say!

Making gold passively

I will be the first to admit that I make a lot of gold from inscription. However, that takes work. I dislike gathering professions, and to me, inscription is only a small step above a gathering profession. When all the milling, crafting, purchasing of inks and parchments, cancelling of auctions, mail collection, and glyph posting is done, I feel like I've just finished farming the auction house.

The reason I don't like gathering professions, and that I hold a grudge against inscription, is that the amount of gold you make from these professions is linked to the amount of time you are willing to spend on that activity. I prefer to locate items that I can craft and sell for a profit, create a small stockpile of these items, and send them to a character who exists solely to post auctions.

I then configure Quick Auctions 3 to post one of these items on the auction house when the market price is within the price range I specify. This allows me to log into this character for one minute twice a day, collect my mail, open the auction house, press "Post", and log off once my auctions have finished posting.

Items I have had success with using this method include: Titanium Weapon Chain, Titanium Shield Spike, Titanium Plating, Iron-Bound Tome, Faces of Doom, Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Crusader, Runescroll of Fortitude (posting one stack of 20 at a time), Eternal Belt Buckle (posting five single auctions at a time), and all of the enchanting rods.

These items may not sell often, but when they do it's typically for a high profit margin. Once I have made the initial investment to obtain the recipe on one of my characters and set up Quick Auctions 3, gold from these items flows in even if my play time is extremely limited some days.

Blacksmithing - Felsteel Shield Spike

Ugh. If I never see the shattered halls again, it will be too soon. I spent the last couple of days on my mage, in frost spec, soloing the shattered halls instance to gain reputation with Honor Hold. Why, you ask? This is why: Plans: Felsteel Shield Spike. That's right, I made the grind to exalted with Honor Hold so I could craft Felsteel Shield Spikes. If you're wondering why I would work so hard for an obsolete recipe (Titanium Shield Spike is better), take a close look at Felsteel Shield Spike. Notice anything? That's right, there's no level requirement. Which means that low level paladin (and possibly warrior) tanks will fork over a lot of gold for this item, as it will help them to maintain aggro on large pulls. That's what I'm hoping, anyway.

Oh, I also hit 100,000 gold!

Understanding Demand

If you want to make gold on the auction house, you need to understand both supply and demand, but I'll limit this post to demand. Demand is important because if it does not exist your item will not sell, even if it is the only item of its kind on the auction house. Someone must have a use for the items you plan on making a profit from. Demand originates from several sources.

One of the most profitable sources of demand is other players leveling their crafting professions. If an item is needed at a certain point while leveling a profession, you can be sure that there is a market for it. If you have the time, browsing www.wow-professions.com will inform you which recipes are worth camping to resell on the auction house (once the character is there, it only takes a few seconds to log in, check to see if the recipe is there, and log out... repeat and go to a new location when you have enough of that recipe), which items people will be willing to pay a lot of gold for because they need that item to continue leveling their profession, etc. You can add certain items to your snatch list (if you use auctioneer suite) to buy when prices are low and relist when the market is back to normal.

Items that enhance a player's character in some way will also have demand. BoE items, enchantments, the librams, shield spikes, weapon chains, armor kits, spellthreads, leg armor, belt buckles, cut gems, and the various temporary enhancements (including flasks, elixers, and potions) all fall into this category. Leveling characters will soon outgrow their current gear, so it seems that demand for these items is highest for twinks and max level characters, who tend to use items longer.

Demand also exists for items which help characters to complete achievements.

Where else does demand originate? Comments, people, comments!

Low Epic Gem Prices

Epic gem prices: I feel foolish for not putting two and two together before the patch, but I noticed lower prices after the patch was released and connected the effects to the cause. The honor double for all honorable kills implemented in 3.3.3 has been causing a drop in raw epic gem prices. I bought up a bunch of gems before I realized what was happening. At least I figured it out eventually. Due to the increased number of gems being created, raw epic gem prices are dropping from their previous level and will probably remain low for some time. The low prices of raw gems will cause the prices of cut gems to drop as well.

An Update

Right now I am in the midst of building myself a solid profession base, and have been spending my recent profits leveling my new crafting professions. Blacksmithing is now at 445, I haven't looked into what I can make at 450 or if it would be profitable to get those last 5 skill ups. (Maybe a blacksmith could comment.) I plan on dropping enchanting on my warlock eventually, as I would rather have that profession on the paladin I am leveling right now... the better to solo low level instances with (I can solo what I need to on my lock, I just think it would be faster and more fun to be able to pull half of a low level dungeon at once with a prot pally). I'll then take up tailoring with the lock. I keep hearing that bags are a good gold source, it's about time I stopped buying and started selling!

In other news, the engineering pets have started selling... and possibly as a result of me posting all 80 pets on patch day for 499 gold each, everyone's auctioneer seems to think that 300g is a deal. I'm not sure what other realms look like, but I've sold several of these pets for over 300g. I also got the yeti recipe, but haven't had time to make any yet.

Oh, and glyphs are back to normal :)

Bags Full Of Bombs

Well, here is a screenshot of all my pets taken shortly after I created them. None of them sold last night, it looked like I was undercut shortly after I logged off the auction house; then again, I might have priced the pets a bit... ambitiously. Hopefully demand will pick up some today. If prices go too low, I may end up storing the pets on an alt to sell at a later date. Maybe Blizzard should have added a cooldown when they made the pets BoE. I had hoped a few pets would sell overnight... oh well, such is life.

Someone Is Sitting On The Glyph Market

Well, I guess the title says it all. I had hoped it was just a fluke, but it's been a week since someone decided to lower glyph prices on my server. I have to admit, I am a bit disappointed... the glyph market on my server had been a thing of beauty, with ten or more glyphs for each class priced above 50 gold on a regular basis. Now I'm lucky if there is one glyph for each class at that price. Actually, I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner. After all, the only reason glyphs sell for a high price at all is the sheer number of glyphs and how long it takes to learn them all. Anyone who has put in the time to learn all or most of the recipes can lower the price of glyphs to near the cost of mats, reducing the profits of all scribes and helping everyone else pay a lower price for their glyphs. I'm not angry about it... it actually gave me the push I needed to diversify my professions a bit.

I've been busy for the past week. I leveled blacksmithing on my mage all the way to when the recipes start using cobalt bars, and I now have eternium rods (and other enchanting rods) that I crafted myself on the auction house. I plan to start selling the tanking sets for tanks just hitting northrend and tanks just starting heroics. Also, of course, the belt buckles. I'm hoping that the eternals market dive bombs for a while after 3.3.3 hits, allowing me to stock up mats on the cheap. I wish they would make the skeleton keys not require blacksmithing to use.

I also opened a Thorium Lockbox and found Schematic: Lifelike Mechanical Toad. I still need to do the quest for the Tranquil Mechanical Yeti. I'm pretty happy about the toad.

Locating Characters - A Brief Tutorial

This post isn't about making gold. I'm writing it because a surprising number of people don't know how to do things like find a mage in their city (for a teleport), quickly locate an npc they know they are close to, or locate race/class combinations for holiday achievements. I'll keep it quick.

First, either buy a Shadow Crystal Focusing Lens from the auction house or buy a Shadow Crystal and have a jewelcrafter make the lens for you. Each lens has 40 charges, which should last you a good long time. I keep one of these in my bags on all of my characters, in case I need to locate an npc or a character who isn't in my party.

If you are looking for a mage, instead of asking in the trade channel, open the social window (the exclamation mark in a white speech bubble right next to your quest log, default button "O") and click on the "who" tab or type "/who" in your chat window and press enter.

The black bar just above the "Refresh", "Add Friend", and "Group Invite" buttons is actually a text imput field. Click that black bar and type in the city you are in and the word mage (for example, "ironforge mage"). Press enter or click "Refresh" and you will see a list of all mages in that city.

Next, you will create a macro to target the mage. Either click the yellow speech bubble on the upper left of your chat window and click "macro", or type "/macro" into your chat window and press enter. Under the general macros tab, press "new". Name your macro and select an icon (I named mine "Target"). In the box underneath the line "Enter Macro Commands:", type "/target [mage name]". In the future, you will only need to open the macro menu, click your target macro, and edit the name.

Attach the macro to a hotkey (by dragging your macro icon from the Create Macros window to an open spot on your action bar which has a key bound to it) and run around the city pressing that key. If you can't find the mage, he/she might have left the city, so press refresh on your Who List to make sure they are still nearby. Once you have your mage targeted, use your Shadow Crystal Focusing Lens to point you directly to them (the target macro has a slightly larger range than the focusing lens, so you might have to run around a bit to find a place close enough for the lens to work.)

The same trick works to find an npc you know is close, and you don't need to use the who list. Just edit your target macro to target the npc, and click the hotkey. Once the npc is targeted, use your Shadow Crystal Focusing Lens to point you in the right direction.

For holiday race/class combonations, type the race and class into the text field of the Who List (for example, "dwarf paladin"). I prefer to complete the holiday race/class achievements in Dalaran, there's no pvp there and it's a small area, so I can find the characters quickly. To look for opposite faction race/class combonations, create a level one alt of the opposite faction, use their Who List to find the character you are looking for in Dalaran, edit your target macro (only works if you made the macro under the "General Macros" tab), logout (I ran my level one to an inn to save the 20 second logout timer), login to the character you are doing the achievement on, and run around Dalaran pressing that hotkey like a crazy person. Laser pointers for the win!

Gold From Blacksmithing - No Professions Needed!

When I was leveling enchanting, I needed an Eternium Rod. The same is true of all leveling enchanters. Silver Rods and Gold Rods are taught by the blacksmith trainers, so nearly every blacksmith has the recipe. The Eternium Rod recipe, though, can only be learned using Plans: Eternium Rod, which is a rare spawn on either Mari Stonehand for Alliance or Rohok for Horde. For this reason, few blacksmiths have the recipe and there is not as much competition on the auction house for Eternium Rods. The plans sell for 12 gold, and if someone else bought them recently, you might end up having to log off and play another character, checking back periodically (For this reason, rare spawns are best camped with a character you don't want to be playing).

Eternium Ore is generally very cheap, so what I did was buy the plans, and enough ore to make 10 Eternium Rods (depending on your bag space situation, you may want to buy enough ore to make many more rods... if you aren't a blacksmith, you will have to repurchase the plans and find another blacksmith when you run out of rods to sell.) Then just advertise in trade chat, "Looking for a character with [both] high level [mining and] blacksmithing, tipping [whatever you think is a fair tip], pst." (If you have a miner or eternium bars are cheap on your auction house, you only need the other player to be a blacksmith.) Meet the miner/blacksmith at an anvil, ask them if they can make Eternium Rods (if they can't, give them the plans you bought earlier), give them the ore and ask them to make you 10 (or more, if you like) Eternium Rods. Of course, check the auction house to find the price of eternium rods before you do this, but on my server I was able to sell the rods for 50 to 100 gold each, posting one at a time and selling about one a day, with little competition, and without needing to have mining or blacksmithing as a profession!

Pet Bombling and Lil' Smoky

Here is the link for the PTR patch notes. According to the notes, the day patch 3.3.3 hits live servers, "The Pet Bombling and Lil' Smoky non-combat pets are no longer Bind-on-Pickup."

I want my share of gold from the pet collectors, so I leveled my death knight's engineering skill yesterday. I also stopped by Gnomeregan to pick up the schematics. Gnomeregan can be found just outside of Ironforge, and is easily soloable by a level 60 death knight. You may need to run the instance multiple times before both schematics drop for you (it took me two runs). The Pet Bombling schematic drops from the end boss, and the Lil' Smoky schematic drops from these mobs. Note that the schematics are bind on pickup and that you must have engineering as one of your professions for them to drop. It's worth mentioning that though the pets require engineering skill of 200 to craft, one of their ingredients, Fused Wiring, can only be learned at skill level 275. Engineers might be able to make some gold selling Fused Wiring. The people buying will be mostly pet collectors looking to buy the mats so they can bypass market price and get their pets for the cost of a tip, and maybe a few engineers who only leveled to 200. Fused Wiring is easy to make in bulk though, so expect high prices until people catch on, and then a crash. Jewelcrafters might be able to sell Delicate Copper Wire, while miners should be stocking up on Mithril, Truesilver, Iron, and Gold to sell after the patch.  Because it wasn't very expensive on my server, I bought up all the gold on the auction house... gyrochronatoms shouldn't be easy for my competitors to make unless they planned ahead like me.  I bought all the cheap truesilver too.

Once you have obtained your schematics, you'll want to gather enough materials to craft lots of pets. It seems that the bottleneck as far as the ingredients is going to be Heart of Fire for the Pet Bombling and Core of Earth for Lil' Smoky. Even if you aren't an engineer, you may find it worth your while to stock up on these before the patch. I'm guessing the prices will skyrocket shortly after patch day. Your first stop should be the auction house, where you should hopefully be able to pick up a few of these for cheap. After that, you'll have to either ask in the trade channel or farm them yourself. A good place to farm Heart of Fire is from the flame type monsters which can be found all around the center of Un'Goro Crater. If nobody else is there, the flame monsters should respawn faster than you can kill them, so no downtime. Core of Earth can be farmed from Desert Rumblers in the far northwest corner of Silithus. There arent enough Desert Rumblers to be able to farm without downtime, but the respawn rate is decent and it's the best place I've found. Be warned, the drop rate for both Heart of Fire and Core of Earth is about 5%, so you should expect to kill about 20 monsters for each drop.

A final note, any pets created before the patch will be soulbound to the character who crafts them, and there is no way of knowing if existing pets will unbind on patch day. It's possible that only pets which are crafted after the patch will be bind on equip. With this in mind, I strongly recommend that engineers hoping to cash in on this change to their profession gather the needed materials before patch day, and wait until the patch hits before actually crafting the pets.

Bag Space

I've read about scribes who use multiple alts to create glyph auctions due the vast quantity of ghyphs available ingame (four 32 slot inscription bags plus the backpack is not enough to hold one of each glyph.) I find that to be unnecessary; my approach is to craft only glyphs whose market value is currently greater than 10 gold, and to only craft one of each glyph. When the price of a glyph I have already made drops below 10 gold, I will continue to list the glyph for 1 copper less than the competition, but when that glyph sells, I will not create a replacement until the market value rises above 10 gold. That way, I can use the auction house as my storage, and handle my glyph auctions with just one character.

I find that a glyph costs around 3 gold to make, so to ensure that I would always make a profit, I started out by not selling glyphs that had dropped below three gold. However, I quickly discovered that my bags filled with worthless glyphs which had at one time been above 10 gold. It got in the way of emptying the mailbox, as I would often have less than 50 open bag spaces available. Gradually, I lowered the threshold (usually when my bags were full, so Quick Auctions would list more of those underpriced glyphs to get them out of my bags). One day, it dawned on me: I don't care if I lose three gold on a glyph. I'm in this market for the glyphs that cost three gold to make and sell for ten, even twenty times that much. When I make a glyph, I'm betting that it will sell before the market price drops below 3 gold, and most of the time, that bet pays off. When it doesn't, it's just the cost of doing business. I'll sell it for what I can get, and I won't craft another until the price goes back up. When I realized that I value my bag space more than the glyphs that were cluttering those bags, I dropped my glyph threshold to 1 copper. That's right, no threshold. Since then, my bags have been free and unfettered. On the subject of bag space and the absence of a threshold, I think Cosmo Kramer said it best: "Oh, it be so. I'm out there, Jerry, an' I'm lllovin' every minute of it!!!"

Just What We Need, Another Gold Blog!

Thank you for visiting my brand new WoW gold blog. First, I'd like to thank the existing bloggers who inspired me both to attempt to reach the gold cap and to start my own blog: Markco, Gevlon, Tella, and BigJimm & Zekta Chan. If you're interested in learning ways to make more gold in less time, with less effort, I highly recommend you click each of the above links and take a long look at what these sites have to offer... they've put a lot of effort into their blogs and it shows.

I recently read these posts by BigJimm and Markco, respectively. The author of the first post writes about how difficult it is to write a gold blog, when basically every good gold making idea has already been covered in Markco's blog or in his forums. Markco responded to that article with a post on his own blog, encouraging BigJimm and all WoW gold bloggers to keep blogging, and to set our sights high, not worrying about if it has been said before or not, but mainly just to keep blogging and to have fun doing it. (I paraphrased slightly, but that's the gist).

I've been thinking about starting a WoW gold blog for several weeks, but I hadn't gotten around to it, partially due to exactly what BigJimm was writing about in his post. I am pretty good at making gold in World of Warcraft, but many of my methods were adapted from the blogs I linked in the first paragraph; I was worried I wouldn't be able to find topics to write about that hadn't already been discussed to death.

Enter Markco's post. The part that hit me strongest was where he wrote, "Perhaps you, the person reading this load of hot air I call a post, are going to be the next big wow blogger." I think that bit of encouragement from a blogger whose site has taught me so much gave me the push I needed to go and figure out how to create a blog (it was easier than I thought).