This guide can be used by both the alliance and horde sides.
First: a little insight as to my past. I have played World of Warcraft numerous times. The first time I played was on the US servers when a friend wanted me to join him and some fellow co-workers to have fun after work. When I first got in, it looked good, I was impressed with the graphics compared to the graphics of FFXI that I was playing at the time. I got up to about level 35 or so (solo mind you), and tried my hand at a dungeon. I unfortunately was a warrior, and as I didn't have any money making skills, and my friend that got me in refused to help me whatsoever, I didn't have skills that I should have had. I was built around doing DPS, not tanking. But this group that got me in expected me to be a tank. I didn't have taunt ... yes you read right, I didn't even purchase taunt. Mainly because I had no money, and was budgeting myself so that I did have a little cash. I got bitched at and told I was a noob and was told I should just quit now. So I did.
Then some friends in the UK told me that they'd pay for me to play on the EU servers with them, as long as I got my own copy of the game. This proved difficult as I live in the US and basically the only way for me to get the EU copy was to find it online. GamersLoot.com proved to be helpful in that. Shameless plug yes, because their stuff is discounted from retail for the most part. These friends actually helped me out, they got me in their guild, and helped me level up. At first I started a hunter, and that went well, until I ended up in stormwind and saw that the server population for hunters was about 75% LOL ... I had to take a break for a while, but that went well, I wasn't hurting for cash, but I wasn't rich either.
Later on, when I had more time on my hands (when I lost my last job) I got to play on the EU servers again, this time with Wrath of the Lich King. I started up a new character, a Druid. I found some specific hints on the net randomly that helped me start my gold-making prowess. Not enough information out there to make me swim in gold with what I found, but enough to get the gears turning in my head about how to make money. By the time I got to level 70, I had enough money to purchase the cold weather flying ability, and still had money left over.
I stopped playing EU WoW when my friend lost his job and couldn't pay for me to play anymore. Just recently however I decided to get a game card for the US servers. I started just 4 days ago, and am currently level 27, with over 400 gold on me, and over 800 made thus far.
So, how did I do it?
Easy: The auction house!
Firstly, you'll need at the very least, two addons. Gatherer and Auctioneer. Well, Gatherer isn't really NEEDED per say, but it's nice to have, especially if you have co-guildies that use it as well, so you can get the nodes that they gather put on your map.
From the start of your character, if you're new that is, do the starting quests. Equip whatever you can get from the quests that is better than what you pick up off the mobs. If you can't equip whatever the reward is, pick whichever will sell to the NPC for the most, or on the AH for the most (auctioneer helps with this, but in the beginning you probably won't be selling this stuff on the AH). This is the very basic basis of the tactic I use... Use those quest rewards! If it's not usable, sell to a vendor the best thing there. Once you leave that initial starting area and go to the mini-town between where you started and the main town... skip it. Go straight to town, do not pass go, do not collect 200g .. well, not yet at least.
Once in town, open up the auction house, and scan it with auctioneer. This may take some time of course, as there's just so much that may be listed. Once it's scanned the first time, your auctioneer is set for some fun down the line. Next, you have to decide your gathering skills. Yes, skills... two of them. Look in the Auction House, and look under the supplies for the different gathering skills. Look specifically at stuff from skinning, herbalism, and mining.
What are you looking for? Full stacks of materials. Look at the buyout price for the full stacks of things. What one is giving the most bang for a stack? How many stacks of that are available? Do some other research on some sites about what skill level is needed to gather that item. You may be surprised to find that some of the expensive things may be low level gathers. I would suggest picking up one map-able gather ability, with skinning to back it up. Why? Well, with skinning you can hunt beasts and then skin them for their materials, while having your tracking watch for the other gather skill you chose. I myself am on Lothar on the US servers, on the Horde side, and right now, stacks of Stranglekelp were going for roughly 40 gold a stack of 20, and only 3 partial stacks were on the AH. Granted, I'm also partial to doing herbalism as my other gather skill, purely for the fact that the herbs are out in the open with the mobs I'm killing for skinning, so I don't have to visit the edges of the maps or caves where the mining nodes are, and not the beasts. I see the use in mining though, as you can get gems as well, which are for jewelers, so you can hit up two markets easily, but those gems are few and far between, while herbalism also caters to two markets, it's the same stuff so you don't have to hope for that gem when you're mining so you can get money from the jewelers.
Find that niche in the market you could set yourself up at, and get those gathering skills. Now go back out to that mid-town area, and continue your questlines. Whenever you get through them and end up back in town again, scan that AH with auctioneer. The more times you scan, the more reliable the results can be, and you may have auctioneer catch something that you normally wouldn't look at for making money. Grind up those gathering skills, and sell everything you get on the AH. Auctioneer has a nifty tab at the bottom called "appraiser", you can set those gathered things to be batch-posting, so you can post up all those gathers real easy. The other nice thing with auctioneer is that it will automatically undercut the market by a small fraction (10% default) so yours gets sold quicker. Granted, if there's none on the market, it tries to put it up for the average that it's seen.
There's other tabs in auctioneer that can be useful. I don't remember what it's labeled as, because I've only been on the server 4 days I haven't gotten a lot of info for some items, so I haven't looked beyond the appraiser and browse tabs LOL. Anyway, there's a tab where you can do a search of the auctioneer database (useful to go here right after scanning the AH) for items that are seriously under-priced. On the EU servers, I managed to spot a book that was being reported as being 500% under it's normal price. I looked at it, and it was only 1 gold buyout. The normal selling price was over 500 gold. I quickly purchased it, ran to the mail, picked it up, and put it back on the AH. Within 5 minutes, it sold, and I just made almost 500 gold. This kind of thing won't happen often, granted... but that's still awesome to find sometimes.
One more thing to note: other skills. There are other skills you can pick up that aren't limited. These are cooking, first aid, and fishing. Many new players fail to realize that you aren't just limited to two skills, and only find out about it much later. Most of the time this comes in the field of first aid. They are then forced to grind through the stuff they've already passed by in levels. They either will try to save money by going back and slaughtering the monsters that drop the low level cloth, or they purchase it off the AH ... This is another small niche. Linen cloth is dropped off some low level humanoids, so you could find yourself a nice spawn place that has lots of humanoids and grind on them to your bag-space's content. Granted, you'll also get a lot of grey items, but hey, it's easy money too. There is one spot that has been in the game since the beginning, that is special. This special spot is in Westfall. Along the western side, up on the cliff, is a windmill, with a small shack next to it. This area has an endless spawn of Defias people, and they drop linen. What does 'endless spawn' mean? Once you kill all the people in this area, another couple will pop, sometimes 3 (when the shed repops). There is NO downtime. Even if you go and gather all the mobs into one big group, then AOE kill them all at the exact same moment, a single group of 2-3 will spawn instantly. Grind that linen cloth up, then sell it on the AH. Granted, it won't sell for much, but if you spend 30 minutes slaughtering that spawn, your inventory will be full of stuff to vendor-trash sell, and cloth sell.
There you go ... simple? yes. Easy? yes. Not a lot of info I'm sure, but, even if you're a high end player, you can figure out, the best way to make money? Off other people's pocket books.
Oh yes... Vanity pets ... or just pets in general, go for a ton on the AH, no mater where you go / come from. Find a pet that's not there, or is selling for a lot, and find out how to get it. Then go get it LOL. There is one pet that I know of that is only available to the alliance to purchase, and that is of the white kitten carrier. In stormwind, there is a small boy that spawns, and walks around town (path below in the pictures, starts at the top left, goes counter-clockwise), then despawns where he spawned at. He spawns with a SINGLE white kitten carrier, for under 1 silver if I remember right. He spawns 4 hours after he despawns. If you catch him at the start, you can grab that cat before anyone else. To get a feel, or just want to see if he's out, walk his path in reverse whenever you hit town. On the EU servers, that cat was going for 40 to 50 gold. On Lothar right now, on the horde side, that same cat is going for over 100 gold... but of course, that takes two accounts to get it transfered over to the horde side, but still. Another big vanity pet would be that of the tiny whelplings ... they've got a shoddy droprate (0.08% at best) but they go for over 1k gold each if you can manage one.
Liked the info? consider possibly donating to me on the right over there... I still have to purchase Burning Crusades and Wrath of the Lich King for the US servers, seeing as Blizzard can't transfer the expansions I had on the EU servers to the US. ... or drop me a line on US Lothar @ Kinam saying you liked it, or that it helped.
Proof? From the EU servers:
My gold acquired ... most notably look at average gold/day ^^
My gold acquired ... most notably look at average gold/day ^^
Lil-timmy's path:
No comments:
Post a Comment