« Legal Gold Farming in Warcraft »

How to make hundreds, even thousands of gold a day, legitimately

MENU:

• Introduction
  
  
• Newcomers guide to earning gold
  
  
• Entrepreneurs guide to Auction House
  
  
• Farming Motes and Primals
  
  
• Choosing professions for profit
  
  
• On the evils of Gold Sellers: Why buying gold is a really BAD idea.
  
  

Introduction

One of my pet hates in Warcraft and all for other MMO games are the gold sellers. They are insidious and never-ending. They are also unnecessary! Why risk your credit card, an account ban or just spend hard earned cash to when there's tonnes of money to be made just playing the game!

This guide will tell you how to make tonnes of gold in WoW easily. No cheats, no hacks, no dodgy files to install, no pdf's to pay for, just a straight, down the line guide to easily making tens, or hundreds of gold an hour, every hour, every day. Thousands of gold a day. Every day.

Want the proof? Tough, I can't be bothered linking videos of my toons or screen-grabs of my wealth. Actually, to be honest, I can't anyway, (at the time of starting this) I only had about 3,500g to my name. And I don't even have an epic flying mount!


It's not that I couldn't afford one, I just don't need one greatly, so I just haven't bothered. I did pay over 3,000g for a [Tome of Polymorph: Turtle] though. And, totted up, I estimate, just on my mage, I have spent between 30,000 and 50,000g on recipes in auction house. Apart from a few obscure greens and very rare BoP designs from instances I have nearly every single enchantment and jewelcrafting design in the game. I can't be bothered but if I wanted I could sit in a city and make hundreds of gold per hour just from tips from enchanting and crafting.

Fast forward to the WotLK expansion and there's still plenty of gold to be made. More in fact!

However, when my alchemist reaches 70 and wants an epic flying mount for grinding herbs, or my engineer for mining then I'll get one. It will take me as little as a day to grind the money. I could make it just selling an epic or two, but that's besides the point.

Well, that's easy for you, you , you have a couple of mains, I'm only level ( )

Well, actually no, by the time my very first character was level 35 or so, having never read a guide, I was still making up to 100g an hour, by the time he was 50 and had discovered a little more about the game he was making upwards of 5,000g a day. Blizzard nerfed that nice little nest egg a few patches back, but there's still loads of ways to earn a fortune in WoW.

First off, a word on playing:

• Bank character(s):
  This one will be in a guild of their own, for access to the storage facilities offered to a guild bank. He's the one you'll have camping Auction House, though there's no reason he can't also be a farmer.
  
  
• Farming character(s):
  This will have one, ideally two gathering professions, plus have fishing and cooking maxed. They will be level 80 and only really need blue gear, plus epic mounts.
  
  
• Main character(s):
  These are the ones you are actually farming for, the ones with the insatiable greed for epic gear with eye-wateringly expensive enchants and gems. There's no reason they can't be a farmer too, but realistically you want two professions to maximise their killing/healing/tanking potential.
  
  

Assuming you have time obviously, even starting with a new character on a new server, in the next few pages I will show you how YOU can be making over 60g an hour even on a level 5 character!

Just send $49.⁹⁵ to… . Only kidding, it's all in the next sections.

Newcomers guide to making gold the easy way

It doesn't have to be blue to sell!

From cooking and fishing:

You can fish for [Deviate fish] in the Barrens fairly safely from as low as level 5, though it's really a 10 to 25 area. These are used by cooks for savoury deviate fish (the one that turns you into a pirate or ninja) and typically sell for 10-20g or more a stack, depending whether you are Horde or Alliance, and usual variables. Good way to level up your fishing stills too. If you circle for the pools of these you can catch anything up to 180 an hour, though realistically it will be 60-80 an hour.
The recipe for this, albeit a very low rate, is farmable in the area and often sells for over 200g

Putting this into perspective, you can stand around in cities like a parasite spamming 1g plzz!, or you can get your fishing up to 225 (even 375) and make over 100g an hour doing so - even at level 5 with your first character!
OK, mild exaggeration as your aggro circle will get you killed a lot, but it's do-able. By level 10 onwards it's easy.

Really need to be at least level 35 and have decent fishing skills but in places like The Forgotten Coast (Feralas) and The Savage Coast (Stranglethorn Vale) you can run up and down all day looking for pools of:

Oily Blackmouth - needed by alchemists for water breathing and speed swimming potions
Firefin Snapper - used by alchemists for fire oil, itself used various recipes
Stonescale fish - used by alchemists for stonescale oil for protection potions
Floating wreckage - loads of iron and mithril chests with greens, recipes, cloth, leathers and potions

You can also catch them in the harbours like Booty Bay, Menethil. The harbour in Southshore, Hillsbrads is especially good for Alliance for the Oily Blackmouth.

At higher levels, in Outlands, you can get 2-3g each for popular fish, for up to 300g per hour. Recently, while waiting for a Karazhan raid to start, I passed the time fishing the stream there. I made 140g on AH from the Crescent-Tail Skullfish I caught.
(Cooked for Skullfish Soup)

With Wrath it is common for some popular cooked fish and meat meals to sell for as much as 200g a stack (of 20)

Just doing the Dalaran daily cooking quest you can earn up between 150 and 300g per day, per character!

From beast drops

Sharp Claw(s) and Large Fang(s)
- these find their way into Rage potions and Barbaric leather and mail armour

Spiders silk
This was a favourite of mine and used in a number of tailoring and a few leatherwork items, notably blues. Indeed all the silks are in constant demand. Just search the auction houses to see what I mean

Feathers, meat, eggs and other items work too

From Harvesting (Herbs, mining and skinning)

Picking herbs, mining and skinning, even at low levels, are a constant source of revenue - and the prices can fluctuate massively. Take Mithril and Thorium ore/bars. These fluctuate between lows of 6-10g and as highs of 40-50g or more a stack.
Even lowly copper can reach 5g a stack and I sold iron ore today for 20g a stack so you hardly need to be a level 80 in full epics and 100% mount to do this (though it helps, naturally - less aggro for a start).

Many herbs sell for 10-20g a stack, while the rare ones like [Fel Lotus] sell for 40-50g each.

This applies equally to skinning with stacks selling from 1 to 2g for light leather to 100g or more for Thick Clefthoof and Heavy Borean Leather and ever more for some scales, with Arctic Fur selling for around 60g each.

Prospecting (with Jewelcrafting) ores like Iron and Saronite can treble the value of the ores too.

Daily Quests

Once you are in Outlands and Northrend and comfortably level 70 or so you can delve into the fun (or grind) of the Daily Quests. You can do up to 25 'dailies' a day, per character and earn anything up to 300g or more per quest, per character, though naturally many only reward a token few gold and reputation. Some of my alts earn 400 to 500g per day (each) on just two two five minute quests!

How to make hundred even thousands of gold a day, Speculating Auction House

Learn to love AH

I have friends whose bank alts just buy and sell ores. Each bank characters can easily hold 300 stacks. Naturally you'll never sell 300 stacks of one item in a day, but if you have a selection, and you buy/sell right, there's maximum potential of something mental like (+40g x 300 stacks x 10 alts) 120,000g in a day. That said, if you stacked up a loads of BoE epics, some of which sell for over 15,000g each…

I heard recently of a player, an accountant actually, who was (allegedly) nearly banned for reaching the gold cap in the game. They thought he was a gold farmer, he'd actually reached the limit purely buying and selling items, making a few silver or gold at a time, but lots per day. According to WoWWiki, the gold limit is set by Blizzard's use of a 32-bit integer to display it, making it cap at 214,748g 36s 46c

Personally I can run circles around Auction House and easily make a few thousand gold a day on it, but that's boring after a while too. At present I focus on one thing as a time, glancing in at my trade character two or three times a day. Even so, if I put a lot of items up I can log in the next day and find 2 or 3 pages of sales. Now you can even track your trade and earning via the Achievements.
Below is the trade from one of my alts. Yes, that's over 32,000g in a single week, returned from some 2,000 auctions.

Being aware of seasonal changes can be extremely profitable too, For instance the Christmas recipes use Mageroyal (picked) and this rises to 10g a stack in season. Similarly smalls eggs for the gingerbread cookies at Christmas rocket up in prices to a few gold each. There's loads to be had from birds in Westfall, The Barrens, Azuremyst isle and especially the Bloodelves Eversong Woods where the drop rate from dragonhawks is as high as 90%

I will expect this shortly to give a selection of tips to profit from Auction House. A lot of it boils down to knowing the real bargains and to focusing on niches to make your own. If isn't possible to memorise the price and value of everything, but you can get a feel for things and use other sites like Thotbott and co. to cross-reference values. Remember though that these external values can be way out because of private servers and that, in any case, it's not the value of the items on every server, but what it is fetching on your server. That said, many people do look on these sites and use that as a guide for their selling price.

Another point to bear in mind the bell curve of sales and prices over a week. Of a weekend, when more people are off school, college, work the number of players can rise sharply. As such you are more likely to sell items from Friday night to Sunday evening. Conversely, a number of items, particularly primals, can rise steeply by midweek, with Primal Fire fluctuating between 25g and 50g each. Again, there are people who don't even bother grinding these but buy and sell via Auction House. A level five character, with a few gold from fishing can rise to buy and sell these, making up to 500g a stack. Outrageous yes, but if people are willing to pay the prices rather than wait…

How to make thousands of gold a day farming motes

From Farming Motes in Outlands

Ten motes combine to give you [Primal Fire], Water, Earth etc and these are in constant demand. I've tried and after a while it gets mind numbingly monotonous and I can tell you it isn't possible to farm motes faster than you can sell them! The demand for these, especially when new gear is released in insatiable. Flat out, with high prices, you can earn 500g an hour farming motes, plus whatever else you make from drops.

Oh yes, and bear in mind several recipes require motes rather than primals. You might want to sell these are such, can be more profitable!

I'll just give you that again so while you get your head round this - you can earn anything up to 10,000g in a single day just farming motes! Not a month, not a week, but a day!

Of course there's a sting or two in the tail.

1. Did I mention it's so boring!?
2. It's hugely lucrative, so you often have a lot of others in competition, especially gold farmers bot.
   (the ones that sell for cash, spamming channels all day annoying everyone)
3. There's the elemental factor. High armour won't stop a fireball, while ice mages have fun with water elementals that are immune to their attacks. As a fire mage I have the same fun with fire elementals.
4. Blizzard can and frequently do nerf anything they think unbalances the game. I went from 6 to 8 primal fire an hour grinding to 1 to 2 recently. I gave up and get fire motes from mining instead when I need them. Personally I believe they altered the code so that the time of day alters the drop rate. Wonderful it you are off school and farming in the morning. Awful if they decide Chinese farmers are grinding mostly after 10pm which happens to get best time for you to relax after the kids are in bed.
   
5. Whatever price you put them in AH for, someone will uncut you!
   You only really sell when you are cheapest (ideally without cutting your own throat)

Profession wise:
Miners can get earth and fire when mining ore in Outlands
Engineers can get air, water, mana and shadow motes using the Zapthrottle Mote Extractor (and a helm to see them)
Herbalists can get motes of mana and life with picking (and skinning) plants in Zangermarsh and Netherbloom in Nethestorm.
Fishers can get motes of water in Nagrant too.

Primal Earth (from Mote of Earth)
are 2-4g each, best got from mining. Don't waste your time farming elementals for these. (Noting that miners can get earth motes from mining the earth elementals)


Primal Life (from Mote of Life)
are 15-25g each, are easily farmed from the Bog Lords and other plant mobs in Zangermarsh. Best if you have herbalism for skinning them.


Primal Mana (from Mote of Mana)
are 15-20g and can be farmed from Mageslayers, Mana Seekers and other mobs in Netherstorm. By far the easiest place (if you have a flying mount) is the Phase Wyrms in Bash'ir Landing, Blade's Edge Mountains, doing the daily quest 'Maintaining the Sunwell Portal'
Engineers can also extract them from Arcane Vortexes in Netherstorm.
Tailors also get motes of mana (and fire) if they kill the 'Angered Nether-wraith' that spawns when they make Spellcloth


Primal Shadow (from Mote of Shadow)
are 25-35g generally. Can be had from the Voidwalker is Hellfire (poor), Voidspawn in Nagrand (reasonable) or Voidshriekers in Netherstorm (best).
Engineers can also extract them from Fel mist in Netherstorm
Herbalists pick them with Netherbloom in Nethestorm.


Primal Air (from Mote of Air)
around 25g generally. The air elemental in Nagrand are OK for these, with the Storming Wind-Rippers of the Elemental Plateau being the best. This is naturally farmed to death so I prefer the 'Enraged Air Spirit' in Shadowmoon Valley. Also farmed a lot, but I prefer it there.
Engineers can also extract them from Windy Clouds in Nagrand.


Primal Water (from Mote of Water)
around 20 to 40g, 25g being average. The Shimmerscale Eel in Terrokar and Lake Surger/Spirit have these (poor), as do the Enraged Water Spirit in Shadowmoon Valley (reasonable) but by far the best drops rates are from the Crashing Wave-Spirit on the Elemental Plateau in Nagrand and the Skettis Surger around Skettis in Terrokar, both of which need a flying mount to reach (or Warlock summons).
Engineers can also extract them from Swamp Gas in Zangermarsh.
Fishing pools in Nagrand is also a great source of these, especially from the 'pools of pure water'
Alchemists, particularly those with Transmute specialisation, can turn Primal Earth into Primal Water. (Got with Revered reputation from the Sporeggar.

Primal Fire (from Mote of Fire)
around 25 to 35g, rising to 50g or more in peak times.
These are the worst to farm for several reasons, not least of all being the fire elementals that drop these are at least level 66 and tend to go a lot of damage. They are the most needed and thus most over-farmed motes and so the first to get nerfed when Blizzard changes the drop rates.
Before level 70 and a flying mount the best places are the fire elementals to the northeast of Blades Edge Mountains, before Netherstorm, or the Enraged Fire Spirit in Shadowmoon Valley. With a flying mount your can also get to the ones in Forge Camp Terror (BeM), Elemental Plateau (Nagrand) or my favourite, the Incandescent Fel Spark in the Throne of Kil'jaedon, Hellfire Peninsula
Miners do well with these in Outlands, getting them with ore.
Tailors also get motes of fire (and mana) if they kill the 'Angered Nether-wraith' that spawns when they make Spellcloth
(Observation: While Alchemists can turn Earth into Water and Fire into Earth, they cannot reverse this, turning Earth into Fire, which I find rather baffling!)

Choosing crafts and professions to maximise your daily gold.

Choosing your professions profitably

I'm frequently asked: What's the best profession to make money with

And the answer is actually, for the most part, harvesting aside, none of them, they are all awful! You can make a lot of money with them but for the most part you don't, or it's too much like hard work and/or tedious and boring. I will point out that I have maxed or nearly maxed all the professions below so I do know what I'm talking about.

You should ideally have one (or two) high level characters just for farming. You main characters are generally FAR better off with a profession that gives a major boost to your effectiveness; for casters that would be tailoring and engineering, for shamans, once Wrath arrives with options like [Fur Lining]* it will be engineering and leatherworking.

*(i.e.: [Fur Lining: Spell Damage]: Permanently enchant bracers to increase spell power by 70. Can only be used on the leatherworker's bracers, and doing so will cause them to become soulbound.)

Alchemy: Can be very profitable, especially once specialised (at level 68). With extra procs in transmute give 2 to 5 items, for instance, you can make from 200 to 1,000g a day for a 5 second transmute. Can save you a small fortune in potions making your own too.
For the most part however, this is wasted on a main character as there are very few recipes from instances, and none I would remotely consider essential.

Blacksmithing: You can make money with a few epics and other recipes but mostly it's just a huge money pit, sucking in vast amounts of gold to train. Only really any use for a few BoP designs.

Cooking: You can make money of it but really everyone - including us lazy mages - should maximise cooking for the buffs food gives.

Enchanting: Can be profitable, especially if you get all the rare BoP designs but to be honest it's not that great. You rarely if ever make the money back from expensive recipes in Auction House unless you are the type to stand in a city for hour after hour after hour spamming trade. I make a lot disenchanting though, both for mats I use myself, as service for tips and for mats for AH. I'm not giving away all my secrets but you can easily make 1,000g a day disenchanting. It's useful to have an bank alt with it purely to disenchant all the poor selling greens you get at high levels but as a profession, I strongly regret taking it on my main, even though I have nearly every enchant in the game now.

Engineering: For ever making money, forget it, it's an incredibly selfish, self-centred profession. Contrary to some claims it's not that expensive to level (I will be writing a guide to that). It just, apart from guns and scopes, nearly everything engineers make is only for engineers - thus no market. The incredibly imbalanced and over powerful BoP hoods, helms and trinkets are what makes this optimal for all main characters.

First Aid: Not one for making money, but everyone - including priests and other healers - should maximise first aid

Fishing: Yes, it's boring. but it's also one of the most profitable professions in the game, because many of the fish give food buffs. Also, at level 70, there's the daily fishing quest. With rare and obscure drops I average 500g a month, per character, on this alone. And it usually only takes 5 minutes. I've had rare gems like the +15 stamina Eye of the Sea drop and sold grey junk like the [Noble's Monocle] from this for over 200g!
If you can stand the tedium it quite easy for even a level 60 to average 100g or more an hour from fishing in Outlands, even at low levels you can make substantial money. For instance:

Deviate Fish, The Barrens, Kalimdor, 10-17% drop rate (100% in pools), 1-2g each
Golden Darter, Terrokar Forest, 20% drop rate (100% in pools), 2g each. Priest food (+44 healing).
Zangarian Sporefish, Zangermarsh, 20% drop rate (50% in Hewn Bog), 1-2g each. Priest food (Stamina & 8 mp5)
Figluster's Mudfish, Nagrand, 20% drop rate (100% in pools), 1-2g each. Melee/Hunter food (20 Agility & Spirit)
and so forth. See the cooking link above

Herbalism: Moderately profitable at low levels, but can be hugely so in Outlands, especially in Zangermarsh when you can skin the Bog Lords for plants and [Mote of Life]. Many plants sell for around 20g or more a stack while the likes of [Fel Lotus] are worth 40-50g each. (up to 1,000g a stack)

Jewelcrafting: If you have all the recipes (and you are talking vast amount of gold for this, upwards of 20,000g) and if you have the patience to follow the market, can be very profitable. Most people give up. The prospecting is can be lucrative, especially with adamantite ore, but you can tip people to do this for you. I regret taking this too, even though I now have virtually every design in the game besides the Sunwell Plateau ones. (Those though *drools*)

Leatherworking: Can be expensive and tedious to get to 375 but, for several classes, it's fairly necessary for the BoP designs. Some of the BoE epics can sell very well, but it does need skinning with it. The various kits that improve armour are great sellers though and most are in constant demand. A good choice for hunters, rogues, shamans and druids once they are level 70.

Mining: Can be hugely profitable. A steady source of income. In my opinion and retrospect, all players are best to pick this and skinning (or possibly Herbalism) and keep it until level 60, possibly level 70. Anyone thinking of learning jewelcrafting, engineers or blacksmithing needs to consider this.

Skinning: Like mining, can be hugely profitable. A steady source of income. In my opinion and retrospect, all players are best to pick this and mining (or possibly Herbalism) and keep it until level 60, possibly level 70.

Tailoring: Like Leatherworking, can be expensive and tedious to get to 375 but, for priests, mages and warlocks, once level 70, it's fairly necessary for the BoP designs. For fire mages, for instance, there's very few epics better than the BoP Spellfire set (Increases spell damage by up to 7% of your total Intellect), while for Spellstrike set gives tailors a chance to increase spell damage effects by 92 for 10 sec.
Some of the epics can sell very well. You need to run raids in Serpentshrine Cavern (or Black Temple) to get the recipe but the Bind on Equip 'Belt of Blasting' costs about 500g in mats and easily sells fast at 1,200g. Most tailors in AH ask 1,650g for this!
The spellthread kits (from reputation) that improve spell damage and healing for leggings armour are great sellers too and again in fairly constant demand. Almost an essential choice for all clothies.
I really regret not getting this for my mage but I've put to much time and money into my other professions to change now. Isn't 20:20 hindsight wonderful.

The ultimate characters for earning gold is…

The class and race don't actually matter greatly, whatever you are most comfortable with. That said, a Night Elf Rogue can Vanish and Hide in Shadows if they need to. Less deaths is more farming time. If you also take skinning then a Hunter class is essential. Paladin can have 20% to riding speed though, the faster you cover area, the more you can harvest.

Right, the best, outright winner, is: Herbalism and Mining with a Epic flying mount, geared for farming motes.
The flight path will vary with whatever is most profitable on the day, but this way to maximise the number of nodes you can harvest.

A surprising good option is also an Engineer with a mote extractor. You'd be amazed at just how many many motes you can get with it!

In a close second is a Hunter with Skinning with Herbalism or Mining.

For instance, in a circuit of Terrokar Forest you have loads of basilisk and warp chasers to harvest for drops, hide and food. The [Warped flesh] alone - used for Warp Burger can sell for up to 80g a stack (Requires Level 55, restores 7500 health over 30 sec. and gain 20 Agility and Spirit for 30 min.)

In the same circuit you have several ore nodes that can be sold and/or prospected, along with gems, earth and fire motes. With the herb skill instead you have plenty of Felweed. This was recently 30g a stack )on our server) and can yield a few [Fel Lotus] an hour - worth 50g each.

On the evils of Gold Sellers

Why buying gold is a really BAD idea

Besides the fact you risk an instant account ban if caught, that is.

Looking at Warcraft, you are talking a game with some ten million active players.
That's $180,000,000 a year in subscription fees.
And, some estimate, upwards of $250,000,000 a year in criminal activity of varying degrees.

I'll just re-write that in another way: it is estimated (2007) that the game generates up to quarter of a trillion dollars a year for bot farmers, hackers and organised crime syndicates.

A lot of it is more innocuous, simply violating the rules to create automated characters - bots - and 'gold farmers' that do nothing but harvest items for gold to sell for real cash. Rather annoying they can be too. Having farmed said gold, the beggers 'spam' all the channels - all day, every day, on every channel: BUY OUR GOLD, VISIT () etc etc etc. Can get incredibly aggravating and if you don't learn to ignore it you can turn into a rage over it. I don't, but it does wind me up incredibly because I've told them how to greatly alleviate if not fix the problem and they allow it to continue.

Then you get to the next level - and you are talking serious crime up to and presumably including the likes of the Mafia and Yakuza taking an interest. They won't send the lads round to kneecap you for protection money, nothing that sinister, no they send a virus or trojan round your house (millions of computers actually) to do their dirty work, using keyloggers to steal your details, your characters online identity.

To 'you the player' it is months, even years of hard grind, very literally thousands of hours to get the characters (and guild maybe) levelled and equipped. To them it's another $15 to $30 for every 1,000g gold they can steal from you. If you are a guildmaster then they have hit jackpot because the guild bank is the first thing they will strip bare, leaving a lot of angry players.

Enter 'warcraftgold' into Google and your find 5 million pages listed.
One company alone, when I looked a minute ago, claimed over a million orders worth over a trillion game gold - about $60million.

And it feeds in on itself. When (if) they (you) recover their (your) stolen characters many people - those that don't quit in disgust at any rate - are faced with the ordeal of replacing everything, throw their hand up in the air and go to these gold peddlers for 1,000g, maybe 10,000g or more.

And if the keyloggers is still on the system…

Essentially, buying gold trades on misery - either from the game economics being screwed because of the activities of bot farmers, or, equally likely, because the gold was got by destroying someone else's characters.

And it is so unnecessary, as I've pointed out above, even a low level character can easily make upwards of 50g an hour, while a level 70, even in poor equipment, should be able to earn upwards of 200g an hour.