Update – Jan 26, 2010 Note: This post is out of date and I’ll be updating it shortly. In the meantime I have written numerous articles for patch 3.3 on Making Gold With Jewelcrafting and Making Gold With Inscription (Which I’ve made 68,000g with so far) which are the 2 best gold making professions currently. Go check them out.
Wrath of the Lich King is finally here! and all the servers are buzzing with activity. Everyone is making the mad dash to level 80 to gear up, experience the raids and PVP. While everyone is focused on leveling; a lot of people have gold in the back of their minds (got my mind on my gold, gold on my mind?) and I don’t blame them with the new goodies that are now available in the professions as well as those who want to flock their gold making abilities with the new 20,000g Reins of the Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth, its like the BMW of WoW! … or SUV of WoW since you can carry 2 passengers/vendors.
However a lot of things have changed in the game, the World of Warcraft economy has been turned up on its head and old ways of making gold such as BC daily quests, professions, and playing the auction house have all turned sour. I’ve still made great gold/hour following WoW School’s Guide.
Continue reading while I share with you the best ways to profit from the first couple of months of Wrath of the Lich King utilizing current supply/demand needs and exploiting them.
Before we decide where we should focus our effort to make gold, we have to figure out what the current state of the economy is in WOTLK and how that impacts the market place.
If you aren’t interested to hear my explanation of the market place just skip to the next section to see what to do to make the most gold in WOTLK.
State of the Economy
Majority of the server is leveling to 80
If you take a look at any auction house or major city in Azeroth you will notice it a barren, with the exception of the few yet to buy WOTLK yet, twinks in the lower brackets and TONS of death knights! This shows that not much market activity is occurring right now. People are more concerned with getting to level 80.
Drop in Raiding
Raids have grinded to a halt, people are questing with the few exceptions of those who stop into take a peak at the new instances and do a run or two, this will cause the market for consumables to drop, especially flasks and battle/guardian elixirs.
Gear upgrades from Level 70+ Questing
Out of all the impacts WOTLK has had on the market place this was the area I found most affected. You will see TONS of level 60-70 Bind on Equip gear and recipes that used to sell for 1,000g+ now BARELY able to sell for 100g, obviously you can now get easy gear replacements from quests and no one wants to spend cash on lower level recipes when they are sure a better version will be available to them soon.
This all sounds like terrible news for all those who wanted to make money using professions or buying/selling on the auction house, but with change comes OPPORTUNITY!
How to make gold in WOTLK
Anything to do with Death Knights!
With the huge amount of death knights being created there will be an increased demand for death knight inscriptions, Bind on Equip plate gear that is better than their starting epic blues they get from quests, and any consumables/enchants/gems they can use to speed through Outlands. Much profit to be made here but make sure you base them all around what a DK would want and not other classes as they are all in WOTLK.
Everyone power leveling their professions past 375
Right now raiding consumables aren’t in demand, but people with professions know that they will be soon and if they are one of the few to have the most in demand recipes and consumables at level 80 they will have a monopoly on their hands!
How to make gold: Gathering professions! Herbalism, Mining and even Skinning will net a huge profit especially more now than later with the inflated prices and low supply, people are paying ridiculous prices for raw materials but they are rapidly lowering each day to a “fair” price as more people start picking up gathering professions, get in NOW to exploit this.
New BUFFS from Professions
All professions now provide a certain buff or advantage, such as +stamina from mining, extra sockets in items from blacksmithing etc. I foresee a lot of players picking up new professions and power leveling those to get the benefit and with that will be a HUGE demand for raw materials from level 1-60. (there will already be some left over raw materials in peoples inventory from 60-70)
How to make gold: While gathering materials from WOTLK areas will provide the most cash, be on the lookout for those lower level raw materials as they will shoot up in price! and many may sell for even more than what you may find in WOTLK.
Produce Leveling Consumables, Inscriptions, Cheap Enchants and Green Gems
People want to get to level 80 as fast and efficiently as possible. With the excess of gold most players have saved up they are willing to spend a few bucks on improvements to their gear but it has to be CHEAP and worth the value. Before at level 70 people were willing to pay 300g for an enchant on an item but now that equipment is getting replaced so rapidly players will not spend much on an enchant or gems in gear that they may keep for only 2-3 levels. However consumables and inscriptions will be good all the way to level 80 and will sell if priced reasonably.
How to make gold: Find out which consumables/inscriptions are in demand for leveling and produce those. Produce enchants that increase DPS that is cheap to make and green gems that aren’t too expensive that players can throw into their socket equipment they get from questing.
Buying and Selling on the Auction House
This can be very dangerous to do right now with all the crazy prices, its hard to rely on auctioneer’s stored prices since all of those are wrong after WOTLK came out. I’m following WoW School’s Guide at the moment and making high return on their suggestions. Level 60-70 BOE recipes/gear are pretty much worthless. All raw materials/cloth above level 70 are going for a ridiculously inflated price.
How to make gold: Keep an eye out for those level 19, 29, 39, 49, 59 twink items. A lot of people will put aside their lower level BG twinks right now to work on their main, but when they want to take a break and do a little PVP there will for sure still be a market for these same items that were so popular before. Also still buy/sell any plate items that would appeal to a leveling Death Knight as they still need to go through lvl 55-80 but keep in mind their starting gear they get from early quests are already RARE quality.
congratulations! you made it to the end of this beast of an article but I just couldn’t stop… I will cut it at this point as those are the top ways I know of. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed as I will be keeping my eye on the market place and posting constant updates of the changes in demand/supply at the Auction house and how you can benefit and exploit these opportunities!
Articles after this will be more focused on each area to provide more depth, this was a general overview of the large amount of changes in the WoW economy which have occurred.
Thanks for reading, feel free to discuss this article below and provide any ways you have made gold with WOTLK.
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Thanks, I make like 10k gold/week. Farming Titan and using jewelcrafting.
Agreed with price shifts on Auction House. Very wild indeed. It’s best to trust your own eyes and brain. Could take some ink and paper, but MUCH more reliable.
-Kaz’rogal