How do you go from just making a bit of gold, to starting to work towards gold capped?

First off, level some alts. I have 4 max level garrisons running (with a 5th about to come online). That means I have 4 level 3 salvage yards feeding me items. 4 sets of treasure missions. 4 piles of herbs and ore. 4 toons making epics every 7-8 days.

I have 9 garrisons total. Sure, only 7 of them have mines and profession buildings, but that means I also have 7 sets of followers running missions. Lucrative treasure missions. I have all these alts with the ability to go and do quests or pick up treasures.

Now obviously, this takes a great deal of time (about 1.5 hrs a day) to check and “process” all these garrisons. (Process is the phrase I use to describe clearing and resetting missions, gathering resources, and setting work orders.)

Crafting Epics-

I spend a majority of my efforts on alts getting them to the point where they can run work orders and daily crafting cooldowns. This means that every 8-10 days they can craft an epic item, or every 15-18 days craft an upgrade item. These still sell fairly well and consistently make money. Tailors are especially good at this because they can make bags, which always sell, and generally sell very high.

Ore Shuffle –

The ore shuffle is a strange idea that I reserve for “middle managers” because it takes a great deal of time, several professions, and knowledge of the markets to actually make money on.

Currently the ore shuffle is as follows:

Send Ore to your Blacksmith/Jewelcrafter. Make Blue Items. Send blue items to your enchanter – disenchant for dust/shards. Sell dust/shards – or create enchant scrolls and sell those.

Trade Skill Master –

It’s a weird program, but very helpful. Go ahead and download the addon from your chosen addon site and then download the desktop app from TSM’s site. This requires you to sign up for their site, but it’s worth it to use the apps.

I use the Main addon, Accounting, Auction DB, Auctioning, and WoWuction modules. This gives me some tools to list and most importantly – data on the values of items.

Setting up TSM can be a pain. Once you get the addon installed and the desktop app up, you have to set the desktop app up to pull data for your server. Then you have to set up groups inside the game addon to sell your items.

First create an operation. This is located in the third button across the top, labeled options. (It’s the bolts one.)

This let’s you change how you post things. I have a single operation, because I just don’t care that much. It posts for 48 hours, in full stack sizes, with minimum, maximum, and normal prices all based on the data base.

 

 

Next, you need to make groups. This allows you to break all your auctions into sections so you only post certain items at a time. Add them to the group by clicking on the item in the left column and adding to the right. Items can only be in one group at a time. (Again, I am very lazy here. I have one for greens, one for blues and purples, and one for pets. At home I have a fourth for crafting mats.)

 

Now go to the auction house and you will find a ton of new tabs. Select the Auctioning one, select the groups you want to list, and click “Start Post Scan”.

 

 

 

 

Finally you have to confirm the posts. This screen gives you all the data you need to make a decision about if you should post an item or not.

TSM allows you to post dozens of auctions very quickly, which is vital while running multiple salvage yards.

Rare Item Farming-

There are a few kinds of rare items that can be farmed – but generally I focus on transmog and pets. Specifically in places like AQ20/40 are gold mines for transmog. Having a list or TSM can help identify the items that sell the best. Other good transmog instances are Dire Maul and Molten Core. There is value in raids like Kara, TK, and SSC – if just for the trash and pets.

Be aware of in game holidays and the pets and mounts that can be farmed from it as well. Some are fairly worthless – like Sinister Squashlings – but others are very valuable – like Widget and Birdman.

One final note for middle managers – be sure to watch patch and ptr notes. Track what’s coming so you can prepare and adjust. This is especially vital on expansion and large content patches. I made over 100k the first two weeks of Mists just selling bags to all the new pandas. I spent months before hand buying up netherweave super cheap and just storing it on alts.

These few steps alone put a player into a state of making a few k every day on average. It generally takes more time to do these, but the reward is also greater.

Back in December I hit gold cap. 1 million gold.

Of course, I immediately spent 300k of it on mounts and pets, but STILL. I hit the mark. After my 500k expense during MoP, I was fairly sure I wouldn’t hit it before WoD, but even so – I didn’t have far to go when I got there. Of course, now everyone is always asking me:

How did you make your gold?

Well first off, it wasn’t any one thing. I farmed. I bought and re-listed. I ore shuffled. I crafted epics. I lucked out on some pets. I did dailies. It was a huge blend of things. There is always gold to be made, no matter the scale or play-style.

But this post is some ideas. It assumes several things – 1. You have one toon. Every alt will increase your gold making. But let’s just assume you have the one.

How would I recommend people make gold?

First and foremost – get thee to a level 3 garrison. Garrisons are an absolute gold mine. Get the mine and herb garden up and running, then make sure to process them every day. Start your work orders running on both those buildings, and get them to level 2. Then to level 3 asap.

Next on the Garrison front, go to Spires of Arak and get the pattern for a salvage yard. You’re going to be activating missions every day anyway, might as well make some gold off it. For your other two small plots, either grab your specific profession buildings or an enchanting hut.

Pick up the Inn and the Barn while you are at it. The inn gives you treasure missions, which – while I would argue Blizzard’s use of the term “lucrative” – are missions that just give gold. Once you get all your followers to Epic 100, these missions are vital to have things to send your followers on. The Barn, at level 3, allows for the farming of Savage Bloods. Don’t discount the fur and leather though, both will still sell consistently. (Edit – Even more so now that Blizzard has introduced the Treasure Hunter trait on followers. Snag a lvl 3 Inn, and work towards recruiting and leveling a full team of treasure hunters to run your Treasure Missions. NOW they are lucrative.)

At level 3 your garrison should be giving you substantial amounts of herbs, ore, and salvage bags. When you open the bags, you will get BoE greens/blues/epics and crafting mats. Keep the crafting mats for your professions (you should have at least one that makes epic items) and list the rest on the AH. You want to have some form of addon for telling you the “market price” for an item. I use TSM and will have a second post about how to set it up and use it. The reason I say you “want” this is because of a few things. Most of the items from the salvage yard are actually fairly worthless, but that’s why I suggest the enchanting hut. This hut allows the disenchanting of items, even if you aren’t an enchanter. (Ideally though, you would have a max level alt who is an enchanter – especially if you have two other crafting professions and want those buildings for the dailies.) With all the things from the salvage yard – check it’s vendor cost vs the market cost vs the disenchant cost. These are the three things you will need to weigh to decide if you should vendor, list, or dust an item. Everyone’s breakpoints will be different (for example I won’t list anything that’s under 100g, I will dust or vendor it.) But remember to consider that enchanting mats always sell faster than greens. Greens can take re-listing several times before they sell, while mats rarely take more than 1 or 2 listings to sell. Never list something that isn’t selling for at least twice it’s vendor price.

Some people like to discount the herbs and ores from their garrison as “not worth it” because it doesn’t sell as well as herbs and ore did in the past. These items rarely go below 50s each (so 100g per stack) on most servers because of the ore shuffle and the amount of them needed for work orders and cooldowns. Remember, every sale is a sale. Even small gains are worth it if they don’t take too much time, and these don’t.

You should have at least one crafting profession and the accompanying building so that you can use work orders and such to work on epic items. If you have no crafting professions (really?) either pick the one that makes gear for your class, or inscription, jewelcrafting, enchanting, or tailoring. Each profession has something good, but those 4 have great stuff for all players, not just specific classes. Inscription allows the crafting of Darkmoon cards which sell fairly well and can be made into trinkets. Jewelcrafting not only lets you craft gems and epics, but also has a daily quest in the garrison building that nets a few hundred gold a day. Enchanting allows for the creation of temporal shards – which sell well and likely will for the duration of the expac – and makes it easy to disenchant things while farming. Tailoring is the last one, and while not the best unless you wear cloth, it does have the upside of making bags. Bags are a commodity that always sells well. If you farm old instances, you will get cloth and mats to make Netherweave, Frostweave, and Embersilk bags, which still sell well and consistently. Hexweave bags sell high and generally on a single listing. If you pick the professions you have or the one that makes your armor, it can still make you money. Once you have your crafted pieces made, use work orders and daily cooldowns to build up stock of the soulbound item. Then either make epics to list on the AH or upgrade items if you are also running a barn for savage bloods. (On my server, this makes sense as the bloods are only 700g each so about 10.5k – and the upgrade items sell for 20k. I make the ones that use the cheap sorcerous mats, not the earth, because those babies sell well.)

Outside of your garrison you should make sure to get Loremaster of Draenor. All those quests give mountains of gold at level 100, and you can sell the quest rewards.

You can also run old raids, both for mounts and pets, but also just to vendor trash and bops. Doing this requires big bags and is easier if you have a vendor mount (both are worthy investments.)

What are the biggest things that keep people from making gold?

Buy NOTHING. Seriously. Don’t buy gear. Don’t buy pets. Don’t BUY. If you need mats for an enchant – farm it. If you want a pet – farm it. Do not spend gold. I had a problem with this, so I actually stored my gold in my bank alt’s guild bank. Every time she had over 6k, I would put all of it but 1k in the bank. This made it a two step process to get it out of the bank and onto my main to spend. Just annoying enough to keep me from doing it.

List everything. So many people don’t realize that every item needs to be considered for sale. When I got my one and only BoE epic from High Maul, I seriously considered selling it. I wasn’t going to equip it simply because I COULD sell it. However I did some research and realized that they were literally the only gloves I could get from High Maul so I put them on. I did list the first FOUR crafted cloth items I made though. Why? Because chances were high I would get something as a drop. Save your gold by listing things instead of equipping them, unless you have really good reason.

Getting lazy. People who admit to already not processing their mine and herb garden complain to me about not having gold. WELL. Go do work! These same people complain when they realize I have two crafted gear pieces at 670. *whine* savage bloods *whine* WELL. I farmed them. I even sold some too. Gold doesn’t just appear. You have to do some work for it.

 

That’s the really easy/casual way to make gold. Doing this you should make at least 200g per day just on garrison salvage, missions, and mats. Runs of Firelands and ICC can get you a few k. Small investments and small returns. Next up, TSM and how to step into more “middle manager” gold making.