The Master Looter

No, this isn’t a sales pitch to buy an e-book! It’s just an easy system anyone can use to make anywhere from a few hundred to a couple thousand gold per week, by using the Auction House.

Step #1: Create a bank alt. This is where you will store all your items that you are going to sell each week. As your bankroll grows, you can purchase a guild bank with multiple tabs. If you are just getting started, four Netherweave bags and your backpack will do just fine, though.

Step #2: Mail items to your bank alt. While playing your other toons, mail any items you collect (but aren’t using) to your bank alt instead of selling them to vendors. As a general rule, don’t vendor anything that’s not gray; these are items that can be used by other players and may prove to be valuable when sold on the AH. If you are leveling a profession, mail your bank alt the crafted items for later sale. If you have any profitable crafting cooldowns such as alchemy transmutes, titansteel smelting, or tailoring, store mats for several of them on your respective toons and make sure to transmute/smelt/weave daily. Mail them to your bank alt as you make them.

Step #3: List your items on the AH. Once the weekend comes, it’s time to turn all of your creations and random loot into a big pile of cash! The weekend is a great time to sell all the items you’ve been collecting all week long, as more people log on to play. Using an add on such as Auctioneer or AuctionLite will streamline your AH sales by helping you price your items faster. You should look at the unit cost of items being sold, in order to pick a good price for your own items. The unit cost is the amount you are charging per item. Having an auction add-on lets you browse prices looking at this unit cost, to give you a clearer picture of what the market is like. The best advice would be to use common sense when picking prices, and quantities of items to sell. If you have multiples of some items, it may be a good idea to only list one each week, because of the deposit cost. The exception to this rule is enchanting mats as they have no vendor value, and in turn cost nothing to list.

Step #4: Profit! Check back after 48 hours and collect the cash! Anything that didn’t sell you can list again the next week. Toss ‘em in the bank and go back to step 2!

With just a few minutes at the AH each week, you can turn all your unwanted junk into enough gold to pay your repair bills, flasks, and just about anything else you need to buy each week. It’s really that simple!

Gold Making Strategies auction house, making gold

Crafting professions require a lot of materials to level. While there’s not much you can do to reduce the amount of materials necessary, there are certainly a few things you can do to lower the cost of acquiring those materials, and recoup those costs using the Auction House.

Farm your own mats. This one’s a no-brainer. If you’re an Engineer, Blacksmith, or Jewelcrafter, pick up mining as your second profession. If you’re a Scribe or Alchemist, become an herbalist. Skinning goes with Leatherworking. Enchanting is a bit trickier; if you have tailoring you can disenchant the items you make, otherwise it’s often worth finding cheap greens on the AH that you can disenchant. With mining and herbalism, always keep your node tracking active while questing and gather those nodes.

Level your tradeskill while leveling your toon. Don’t wait until level 80 to pick up a profession – especially a gathering profession. It’s a lot less stressful, and often less costly, to level professions slowly. One big benefit of doing this is that you can actually use many of the items that you craft while leveling. If you wait until reaching the level cap, you will miss out on one of the biggest benefits of being able to craft your own gear.

Craft items with the highest demand and resale value. A lot of crafted items are just plain useless. Unless it’s an incredibly cheap way to gain a skill point, avoid them at all costs. Check the AH to see what your crafted items go for, compared to the cost of the mats needed to make them. Knowledge is power!

Don’t unload all your items onto the Auction House at one time. If you list five of one item that’s not of especially high demand, you risk having someone list a single item and undercut you, and having all your items expire without a purchase. This will cost you a lot of AH listing fees in the long run (unless you’re selling enchanting mats, scrolls, or glyphs – of course!) List one of each item at a time, and once it sells you can list another. Keep doing this until all of your items have been sold.

Don’t waste too much time in the trade channel. Depending on your server and what you’re selling, chances are that folks in the trade channel will not be willing to pay anywhere near AH prices. Trying to hawk your wares in Trade is time consuming, and you will have to deal with your fair share of irritating folk. Unless you have something incredibly rare and valuable that you absolutely need to get rid of quickly, it’s probably best to stick to the AH and let the open market work its magic.

Gold Making Strategies, Newbie Guides

You don’t need to farm stacks upon stacks of cloth to get the largest bags possible. All it takes is a visit to a few different raids, both classic and current – and a bit of luck, of course! At level 80, most of these should be a breeze even for a pickup group, so you should be able to farm them every week.

The Obsidian Sanctum: Sartharion drops a 22 slot Dragon Hide Bag in both 10-man and 25-man mode. This will require a full group of level 80 raid-equipped players.

Zul’Aman: Complete the intro quest to ZA “Promises, Promises…” and you’ll be rewarded with a 20 slot Tattered Hexcloth Sack. All you need to do is take down Nalorakk, the bear avatar boss. Every person in the raid can get one of these since it’s from a quest! At level 80, this boss will be a lot easier than at 70. If you haven’t tried him yet, why not give it a shot and get a 20 slot bag in the process?

Magtheridon’s Lair: Once a level 70 raid requiring 25 people, Magtheridon can now be defeated by a much smaller group. One lucky winner will go home with a 20 slot Pit Lord’s Satchel.

Magister’s Terrace: The Sun Touched Satchel is a 20 slot bag that randomly drops in both regular and heroic MGT.

Zul’Gurub: The panther boss High Priestess Arlokk has a chance to drop an 18 slot Panther Hide Sack.

Onyxia’s Lair: Onyxia drops an 18 slot Onyxia Hide Backpack which is not unique! You can get one of these at every raid reset, and fill your bank up with them! Considering that Onyxia can now be soloed by many classes at level 80, getting her down at every reset is a great way to get an 18 slot bag, a bunch of drops that can be disenchanted or vendored, and a bunch of gold!

Gold Making Strategies

Training fees getting you down? Repair bills forcing you to mortgage your mount? Here’s some common-sense tips that may seem simple enough, but all too often go overlooked.

Always loot your mobs. Too many times, I see a field of dead mobs that haven’t been looted. Gray items may not be useful at all, but the vendor value sure does add up. In Northrend, gray weapons and armor can vendor for several gold, and other worthless gray items can vendor for 20 silver or more. Everything adds up, even in small quantities.

I can only think of two reasons why people don’t loot their mobs:

Not enough bag space: This is a problem easily fixed by keeping your bank and bags organized, and by carrying 18 slot or larger bags. If you can get 20 slot or larger bags, by all means use them. Don’t waste stacks upon stacks of Frostweave cloth, or buy Haris Pilton’s Gigantique Sack! Make your way to some raids, new and old, and pick up some free 18 to 22 slot bags. Alternatively, you can pick up or craft some Imbued Netherweave Bags if raids aren’t your thing.

Not enough time: Oh, give me a break. It takes half a second to loot a corpse! You’ll be glad when it comes time to train Cold Weather Flying.

Don’t rush to max out your profession skills. Level them gradually, making sure to keep the costs involved minimal, if any. Make items with other peoples’ mats to gain skill points. Level up making items that people will buy on the AH for a decent amount. Don’t make an item just because it is orange if you are going to take a huge loss to do this, if at all possible. Often it’s more profitable just to sell your raw materials than to craft items to sell; don’t be afraid to do this to keep your cash from running dry.

Drop your crafting profession if you don’t need it. Know a lot of other leatherworkers? You’ll get by just fine dropping Leatherworking and picking up Mining. Know a few alchemists? Drop alchemy and pick up skinning. Having two gathering professions is the best way possible to keep a lot of gold coming in.

Know the market, and don’t always undercut. Visit the AH regularly to get a feel for the prices of the items you regularly gather. If the market is flooded and prices are low, wait to sell. If the supply is low and prices are higher, that’s when you want to be listing your items. If you see items listed at way below the normal cost, buy them up and resell at a profit. By having patience, and knowing the value of your items, you can earn several times more gold for your efforts. Timing is everything.

Utilize helpful add-ons. Auctioneer will help you list items on the Auction House and keep track of their value. There are many add-ons that show the vendor value of items, and allow you to vendor all gray items with one click, that will also save you time and provide valuable information. The more time you save, the more time you can be leveling or farming!

Gold Making Strategies, Newbie Guides

The Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth is the best ground mount ever invented. It can hold two passengers, will take the hurt for you if you fall a great distance, and most of all – it comes with two handy NPCs! One for repairs, reagents, and poisons, and a second for food, drink, and ammo. The only drawbacks being that it can’t be used indoors like a repair bot, and the price tag, of course.

Upon entering the magical city of Dalaran, you start out Neutral with the Kirin Tor. You can talk to Mei Francis, the Exotic Mounts Vendor, and purchase this mount for the bargain price of 20,000g. Raising your reputation lowers this 5% per reputation level. At revered it cost me 17,000g. If you grind all the way to exalted you’ll save another 1,000g bringing the price down to 16,000g.

There are a handful of ways to raise your reputation with the Kirin Tor. The first way you’ll get reputation with them is through the quests they offer in Borean Tundra and Dragonblight, as well as the Violet Hold quest. Upon reaching friendly status, you can purchase their tabard and wear it in level 80 dungeons and heroic dungeons. Other than that, you can also earn an easy 150 reputation per day doing the cooking daily from the inn in Dalaran. After you’ve earned an exalted reputation with the Kirin Tor, there’s still the matter of the 16,000 gold to come up with, though.

Here is how I saved up for this incredible mount while journeying through Northrend, and how you can too:

Do all the quests in Northrend. They’re easy, especially if you can find a buddy or two to group with. Once you hit level 80 – and it only takes a few areas of questing to get there – you can go back to the places you skipped over and earn extra gold in the place of experience points. Combined with gathering, disenchanting, and standard loot, it adds up pretty nicely.

Enchanting. You know all those useless soulbound quest rewards you get in Northrend? Disenchanting them can be worth upwards of 40-50g at the higher levels, depending on your server’s economy. Instead of vendoring them for just a few gold, you have the opportunity to make quite a bit more profit here. Add all the Bind-on-Equip green drops that you get while questing, and that’s a fair chunk of change. Sell all the Infinite Dust, Cosmic Essence, and Dream Shards on the Auction House and you’ll be seeing green in no time. If you want to take it one step further, you can level your enchanting by offering free enchants with other peoples’ materials in trade chat. They’ll likely go to the Auction House, purchase your materials, and you’ll make money while gaining skill points!

Gathering professions. Pick your favorite of skinning, mining, or herbalism. You can’t miss. I see too many people say they’d rather wait until they hit level 80 before leveling one of these up. Big mistake! You are missing out on thousands upon thousands of gold if you don’t gather while questing, during the leveling process. Especially with skinning, which does not require you to go out of your way at all, unless scavenging for leather. Make sure you’ve got one (or two!) gathering professions up to par before taking the boat up north, and you’ll be mining/skinning/herbing your way to riches.

Don’t buy gear on the Auction House. This should be obvious to many veteran players, and here’s why. All of the items you can get from quests will easily trump these, especially if you run a lot of dungeons. Going through each dungeon at least once in non-heroic mode is a good idea, anyway. That way when you run it on heroic at level 80 you’ll at least know the basics. Not to mention you’ll earn the Northrend Dungeonmaster achievement, too! The bottom line is that you want to be making money on the Auction House, not spending it.

If you’re going to level a crafting profession, don’t spend your own money to do it. Craft items for other players with their materials. Craft items that you can make a profit reselling on the Auction House. Crafting entry level epics may be tempting, but the fact remains that dungeon blues are free to obtain and will do just fine if you are trying to save up some gold. You’ll be getting epics from doing heroics and raids, which are also free. Save your gold for enchants and gems, and get your gear for free!

Don’t spend too much gold on gear enhancements for items you will soon be replacing. Green quality gems are best suited for blue items, and blue quality gems for entry level epics. If you are going to enchant your gear as you level, stick to the less expensive enchants if you plan on replacing the item in a couple of levels. The same goes for spellthread, leg armor, belt buckles, and so forth.

Don’t vendor any non-gray items. Any item of white or higher quality can be sold on the Auction House for a much higher return. If you’re not an enchanter, either sell your BOE greens on the Auction House or have an enchanter friend disenchant them for you. Every time you vendor a BOE green, the random number generator will put a noob in your PUG! Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Basically, this all boils down to common sense. It does take a small time investment to sell items on the Auction House, but it is well worth it.

Gold Making Strategies