Many of the changes we’ve seen with cataclysm has already begun to take effect on the wow economy, inks of the sea no longer converting, drop rates for rare recipes higher, and prices mostly plummeting across the board.

One thing that always holds true though at the start of each expansion is the huge demand for the new gathered materials available at game launch. I wrote about this before when WOTLK came out.

Super Inflation of Gathered Materials

Back in the first week of Wrath the price of the new herbs/ore as well as lower level gathered materials shot through the roof:

(screenshots taken from first week of WoTLK)

and as for the Outland herbs/ore that were the top material before WOTLK, there was the opposite effect.. demand lowered and prices dropped:

We’ve already seen most of the price decline occur as players are quickly getting rid of stock, but still expect further price drops.

As for the new herbs and ores introduced in WOTLK, here was the effect:

These screenshots were taken 3 weeks after the release of WOTLK but it tells you a lot.

The price of Tiger Lily’s were around 70-80g/stack in the first couple days of launch, the price dropped almost 300% after 2 weeks! This goes to show that if you can mine/herb fast at the start of the expansion you’ll get top gold right away. As for Cobalt Ore the effect was even higher with prices tanking 400% of the original first weeks value.

The biggest dilemma you’ll have to face is whether you’ll want to use these materials on your profession toons if you’re trying to hit a server first profession to 525. This is my plan but we’ll see what happens on launch day

Have many of you prepared a miner/herbalist or skinning alt specifically for Cataclysm? Gathering incessantly or do a mixture of both gathering and leveling?

A great way to make gold in the game is to go back and farm old world herbs and ore.

One item I see consistently going for a high amount is Mithril Ore so I set out to find the best zone to mine this ore the fastest.

Two zones that are considered the best to mine Mithril Ore are the Badlands and the Hinterlands so I set up a mining route and timed each one to see which gave the mithril ore in the least amount of time.

Mining Mithril Ore in The Hinterlands

First destination I set out on was the Hinterlands, if you search on WoWhead.com you’ll see that the Hinterlands has 143 possible Mithril Ore nodes (the most out of any zone).

This may seem like a lot but many of the nodes are in hard to reach areas that are annoying to get to, here’s the route I’ll be taking:

The circled red area is a hot spot, you’ll almost always find at least 2-3 mithril nodes up there. Elite mobs and dragons roam around but the dragonkin have a very small aggro range so it isn’t that much of a problem.

Two annoying parts of this route exist, one is at the far south in Jintha’alor where you need to climb multiple steps and zig zag through paths to work your way to 3 nodes, while it may seem a waste of time you’ll usually find a node or two up there always. The 2nd annoying part is the very steep mountain at the south east side, make sure you don’t fall off or you’ll die for sure, you’ll need to run all the way north and then work your way back south to get back up the ramp to continue the route.

Results of Mining in The Hinterlands

I spent 42 minutes and 43 seconds doing 2 complete circuits of this route and here’s what I ended up with:

Given the values of all those items on my server I made 257g 83s in 42 minutes which equals 360 gold an hour. We get 104 Mithril Ore an hour doing this mining route.

Mining Mithril Ore in The Badlands

Next up is the Badlands. I like this zone as it is pretty flat and most areas are very easy to get to, not that many caves or steep mountains.

Here is the route I used to mine mithril ore in the badlands:

Again, the red circles are the hot spots where I would always find mithril ore every time I travelled by. Especially the far west region I’d normally get 2-3 mithril ore nodes every time.

The great thing about the badlands is this route takes half the time as the Hinterlands route does.

Results of Mining in the Badlands

I was able to complete 3 circuits of this route within 35 minutes 32 seconds and here’s what I ended up with:

Calculating the totals of all item worth in gold = 348g in 35 min which equals just about 600g an hour, not bad for something a level 40 can do. We get 144 Mithril Ore an hour mining in badlands.

So the evidence points to The Badlands giving the most Mithril Ore an hour as well as the most gold an hour. This is a small sample size and I’ll do some further research when I come back here and add to the averages but I felt that badlands was much faster as you didn’t have to deal with awkward areas of the map like in the hinterlands.

Tanaris is one more zone that has a lot of Mithril Ore in it but I recall mining in that zone very recently and it felt very bare, however I’ll run that zone shortly and add my results here.

I’ll be doing this research for all Ores and Herbs that are in demands and can fetch a lot of gold on the auction house, it would also be wise to build up an inventory of these old world materials before Cataclysm hits.

Gathering professions are used by many players while leveling or even when just starting out with gold making at level 80 because it doesn’t require any investment, the profits are very immediate and low level materials that you gather are worth a lot.

Gathering professions and buying and selling on the auction house as WoW School shows in their guide is the best way to make gold for anyone under 5k and without a crafting profession. I don’t think any player would dispute that.

It would be ideal if you could combine the two best gathering professions: Herbalism and Mining together but many players do not choose both of these professions on one character as you can only track one profession at a time.

There is a solution, with the use of this gathering macro I found it will automatically switch between Find Minerals and Find Herbs for you every 1.8 seconds and best thing of all it is legal to use in WoW and not against Blizzards ToS agreement. (nothing I post on this site is against the ToS btw)

Gathering Addons

1. Gathermate and Gathermate data – These addons populate your world map and mini map with all the mining and herb nodes. Gathermate data comes preloaded with all the locations already available and is updated very frequently on the curse website.
2. Routes – An amazing addon that figures out the best gathering route by using the gathermate data and creating the shortest path between the nodes. The is an optimization feature to cluster nodes so that you are only travelling the shortest distance between nodes (as it takes into account your range for tracking).
   You can also select which herbs/ore to include or exclude based on what is still giving you skill ups or have insufficient skill to gather from.
3. SexyMaps – I found the routes addon didn’t work with the default blizzard mini map and I found Sexymaps was fully compatible with it, you may need to go into the addon config menu to take off some of the frills and flashy graphics.

Gathering Macro

Here’s what makes it possible to track herbalism and mining at the same time, with this gathering macro you can copy it from a notepad document and paste it into the chat box in WoW. Once executed it will switch between find herbs and find ore until you either quit the game or type /reload ui.

/run local f=AuG or CreateFrame(“Frame”,”AuG”) f.m,f.t=1,0 f:SetScript(“OnUpdate”,function(s,e) f.t=f.t+e if f.t>2.5 and not InCombatLockdown() then f.t=0 f.m=3-f.m SetTracking(f.m) end end) f:Show()

I’m using both herbalism and mining on my newly created Death Knight for my project to hit 10,000g as fast as possible and so far I’ve made 600g from low level herbs in 3 hours of gathering to afford my flying mount to use in Outlands. 200g/hr is pretty good for something a level 20 could do (First level you get a mount). Although you could get around 1,000g/hr as a level 1 follow WoW Schools AH guide.

I also tried the  addon Spotter that also automatically switches between herbalism and mining but I found it would stop after I gathered some materials and I’d have to click the icon again to restart the macro, the macro posted about has worked great.

After much positive feedback from my Nagrand Adamantite Route I shared a few months ago, I have been in the process of working on updated routes that encompass all of the Outlands.

I am excited to announce that they are now available!

Scroll below to find Nagrand, Netherstorm, Blade’s Edge Mountains and Shadowmoon Valley.

Other than Luke’s gold making guide this is the fastest way to make gold that I know of.

The routes are calculated based on node spawn rate and spawn time after gathering data for 4 months.

Nagrand

Netherstorm

Blade’s Edge Mountains

Shadowmoon Valley

Why pay for gold when you can follow these routes and make an average of 250g-300g an hour!

No one will share this information with you because they don’t want you to know their personal routes, but here at wowconfidential we strive to research the most efficient methods of gold making.

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.

This is purely from the perspective of which professions make the most gold/profit. It does not take into account which professions are best for your class, that article will come in the future.

I really recommend that as you level up you focus on gathering professions, this will give your character income to buy new equipment/enchants and save up for your epic mount. Gathering professions can also be done in unison with leveling whereas crafting will really slow down your journey to level 70.

You have a lot of options in World of Warcraft, you can choose 2 professions out of the following:

- Blacksmithing

- Enchanting

- Engineering

- Leatherworking

- Jewelcrafting

- Tailoring

- Mining

- Herbalism

- Skinning

Along with these 2 professions you can also have all of the secondary professions:

- Cooking

- First Aid

- Fishing

A very common question asked given all of these choices “Which profession makes the most gold?” here’s the simple answer:

“Pick two gathering professions; Mining, Herbalism or Skinning. Sell the raw materials on the auction house and you will make more than any crafting profession.”

Why are these the most profitable professions? It has to do with the economy in World of Warcraft where raw materials sell for more than the finished products that are created from them.

That sounds strange though, why would someone buy raw materials if they couldn’t profit from the end product? The answer my friends is that the majority of crafters buying those materials are trying to power level their professions and will pay absurd prices on materials just so that they can get to skill 375 and make their epic crafting items.

But you still want to craft?

However, crafting is a whole different side of the game that can be fun, I’m not saying a profit cannot be had and if you are the type of person who would rather sell potions, enchant items, and craft gems than fly around looking for flowers to pick then read further.

Here is my top 7 list of professions that earn the most gold:

7. Blacksmithing

- All of the great things created by this class are bind on pick up. Definitely a profession you should only chose if your class can benefit from the higher end weapons that this profession provides, ex. Deep Thunder.

6. Leatherworking

- Also a profession that only provides valuable bop items, no profit to be had from anything crafted here.

5. Engineering

- As is the case with most of these crafting professions the cost of the raw materials are just more valuable than the actual end products that are created. Engineering is expensive to level. From a make money standpoint it is much better to sell any ore mined on the auction house than to craft for a profit.

Ways to make gold: Things people buy from engineers

• • • Scopes: Sniper and Deadly Scope
  • • Deadly Blunderbuss is needed for a quest
  • • Pets: novelty and for fun, this is a game right?
  • • Mithril casing
  • • Fused wiring
  • • Bullets
      

4. Tailoring

- Fantastic profession for casters who are looking for higher end gear before SSC and Black Temple, horrible from a make money stand point. If you specialize in spellcloth or mooncloth make sure to use up your timers as soon as it’s up to make a little bit of a profit back. Bags have so much competition that it’ll usually cost more to buy the materials.

3. Enchanting

- Although very useful for its ring enchants, disenchanting unwanted drops in raids and being the guild enchanter (who gets all the sweet recipes), this money sink is not a get rich quick profession given the rarity of the recipes that people are actually looking for. You’ll end up spending a ton in recipes and get pennies in return via tips.

Ways to make gold: Disenchanting and selling mats on auction house, tips for enchanting other peoples gear.

Class Advantage: Rogues/Druids can go through lower level instances and disenchant the green drops.

2. Jewelcrafting

- If you combine jewelcrafting with mining you’ll have yourself a hell of a good money maker, use the rare gems you find on rich adamantite to create socketed gems, prospect adamantite ore when the prices on the auction house are low and sell the adamantite when the prices are high. Buy up the adamantite and prospect those and sell any rare gems that come from it. Get tips for crafting special gems for others. There are many ways to make money in jewelcrafting and people are constantly switching out gems and getting new equipment that there will always be a demand for jewelcrafters.

1. Alchemy

- Buying herbs off the auction house or gathering them yourself you can make potions to sell which will be your main source of income as all the raiders will need those elixirs and potions to take on the harder content. Has the potential to become the best gold earner if you find the right niche of potions to sell which aren’t overproduced on your server. Try to make friends with some herb gatherers who you can buy all your herbs off for a discounted price, both parties save the auction house cut. Offer to make their potions free of charge if they provide the mats.

Ways to make gold: Selling potions/elixirs, transmutes (primal mights), tips from making potions to people who supply mats.

I will be making guides for each crafting profession individually which will explain how to get the most profit and power level the cheapest.

Looking to stock up on eternium ore for your blacksmithing, or just to make some fast gold on the auction house?

Here is some information on Eternium ore

1. It’s an uncommon drop from Adamantite, Rich Adamantite, Khorium and Fel Iron deposits.
2. Rich Adamantite has had the highest % to yield eternium ore.
3. Eternium Ore sells on average for 36g per stack of 20.

So what does this tell you? you should be farming a route that has the most Rich Adamantite ore in it which I have provided in an earlier article here.

Here’s the map again for Rich Adamantite in Nagrand:

Here’s my first tip on how you can make 250g an hour.

Lets face it, Nagrand is currently the best zone to farm Adamantite Ore because of the abundance and possibility of “Rich” Adamantite Ore. Why is Nagrand so popular? maybe this will help clear things up:

This information was collected using an addon called Gatherer, every time you mine a node in any zone it will put a marker on your world map (as you can see above). If you are part of a guild you may be interested in also getting GathererSync. This addon will track the nodes that all of your guildmates mine while you are online and permanently mark it on your world map! not too shabby.

 Gatherer also provides a little more information, when you hover your mouse over a mined node it will  show you what % chance you have of mining certain drops, such as eternium ore, mote of earth etc:

So given all of this, I have calculated the best route to take given the drop % of eternium ore and other highly valuable materials that come from adamantite nodes.

 Below you will find the most efficient route to take that I currently know.

 Try it out, let me know how well this goes for you or if you have a better route.

I will be doing the same thing for all outland zones in the coming days!

WidgetBucks – Trend Watch – WidgetBucks.com

Post By: Will