Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Making Gold: Am I Doing It Right?

People think I have a lot of gold and that I have some super efficient, super secret way of hoarding those lovely yellow pixels. I don’t think I do anything out of the ordinary. Honestly I just go about my business and use the auction house to clear out my bags. Over time I’ve built up a nest egg of 29k-30k gold.

I get income from the auction house, vendoring, questing, and maybe a profession item here or there. That’s it. I use two AddOns: Auctioneer’s package thing and Auditor. The Auctioneer suite has a bunch of AddOns in it but I just use it to scan the AH and suggest prices. Auditor just displays a large amount of information about where my money flows (from repairs, flight paths, auctions, etc) and how much each character has made/lost.

Disclaimer: Do not buy gold. If I can make that much from not paying attention, there’s no excuse you can’t do it too. Also the auction house prices will vary between servers.

Bank or Sell?

Auditor_total Abyss Crystals, Dream Shards, and Greater Cosmic Essence all go to market. Despite how much I spend on enchants for five sets of gear, I’m fine with just buying the enchants off the auction house and selling whatever materials I get…though in the long run I’ve probably lost money doing this. Infinite Dust and Frostweave are sent to Icebird to help level her tailoring. She just made a dozen Frostweave Bags that are going to auction soon.

All leather is made into Heavy Borean Leather and goes to Icedragon’s bank in case she needs to craft something. Nerubian Chitin, Arctic Fur, and Icy Dragon Scales also go into the bank. As a result, I have a ridiculous amount of stockpiled leatherworking goods that I’ll have to liquidate before Cataclysm.

Eternals, Crystallized elements, and Frozen Orbs are banked with the leatherworking goods.

Anything below Northrend leather gets auctioned, with Heavy Knothide Leather being the best seller (200g per stack!).

Various Northrend greens are just vendored. Because of the cost on the auction deposit, I just gave up selling things on the market and let the little baker chick in Ironforge take extra gear off my hands. I could probably make more money if I had them disenchanted, but I’m too lazy.

Blues from heroics are hit or miss on profit, but I always auction them. A 25g blue cloak is worth more than an 8g Dream Shard.

Since I’m frequently running around in Outlands, especially with my recent rep grinding, it freaking rains Netherweave. I’ve moved over 1000 Netherweave (so over 50 stacks) in the past two weeks, I wound up with that much of the stuff. But since it’s a staple material it always sells.

How I Auction

For items I frequently sell I have a minimum asking price. If the market has taken a dive, I’ll just bank the items until the price comes back up.

Usually I’ll undercut the lowest price per item by about 5%, which Auctioneer does for me when it suggests a price.

Big Druids Farm Raids

I don’t farm mobs. No. It’s just too stupidly boring unless I happen to be farming mobs while doing something else, such as rep grinding. Big druids farm big things, so I farm raids when I’m feral and have nothing better to do. The only downside to farming raids, especially Zul’Gurub, is the size of your bags. I have to vendor crap and mail things to my AH alt every couple bosses.

Kill all trash. You never know what might drop a blue or epic!

Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj (231g-266g):

  • Kurinnaxx Scarabs from coffers and random drops: 2g-3g each, 30 per run
  • Idols from coffers and random drops: 5-6g each, 5 per run
  • Gold from bosses:
  • Random greens and vendor trash can pad your profit if you loot everything.
  • Skin things and save the Runecloth you get for the auction house.
  • I can usually find a blue BoE piece or two on each run, which can pay for my repairs :P
  • If you don’t want the old raiding gear, vendor it. Personally I think the robes are pretty :)

Zul’Gurub (skipping bosses: 325g-448g) (all bosses: 371g-494g):

  • Hakkar_Has_Viliance_Oh_Shit Coins from random drops: 2g-3g each, 25 per run
  • Bijous from random drops: 10g-15g each, 15 per run
  • Gold from required bosses:
  • Gold from optional bosses:
  • Random greens and vendor trash can be worth a LOT if you can carry it.
  • ZG has skinnable beasts, herbs, and mining nodes – make good use of them.
  • Like AQ20, I usually get a blue BoE or two from a full run.
  • Destroy the Hakkari Primals and tier pieces unless you want to collect the old tier for RP (they have no gold value and can’t be vendored or disenchanted).

A note on the Hakkar screenshot. Yes, he does have Vigilance. The warrior (Silverthane) I was with was mind-controlled and buffed the boss against his will. It was a very slow fight after that :P

Karazhan (craptons of gold, just do it):

This raid is so big that I’m not going to list out everything that drops. Just kill as many bosses as you can and loot everything. Generally the only place I have problems is on Opera. Romulo and Julianne are a pain in the ass but otherwise you should be able to bash through everything else. There’s a blacksmith you can use down in the stables if you’re Honored with the Violet Eye, and a Consortium vendor up in the library outside the Chest Event anyone can use.Nightbane_fancyEvery boss drops 38g, making for a total haul of 418g if you kill all 11 bosses. Make sure you have a the key (or someone with the key) to get inside initially. This is a great way to spend a long evening if you have nothing to do, and you can easily work on this over the course of a few nights.

Questing

I used to do dailies religiously in Northrend until I was Exalted with everything or had the rep rewards I wanted from each faction. Now I’m more likely to do the occasional fishing or cooking daily if it takes place in Dalaran. Working on rep grinds through dailies and gunning for my Loremaster achievement really hauled in the money. Even questing on Icebird and Nefaria to push them through Outlands and Northrend was ridiculously lucrative.

If a quest doesn’t have a useful reward, I pick the one that vendors for the most and just sell it. It’s like a consolation prize for not getting a useful reward. “Sorry you can’t wear these pants, so here’s 7g for vendoring them in addition to 10g from the quest.”

Where I Lose Money

  • Buying enchants instead of saving the materials to have them crafted by a guild enchanter.
  • Buying glyphs instead of having them crafted by a guild scribe. I just lack an herbalist.
  • Giving it away to guildies when they bitch about not being able to repair. I’m not a push-over but I like doing it anyway.
  • Not doing anything with Nefaria’s mining or capped Jewelcrafting.
  • Buying consumables instead of farming for them myself.
  • Stockpiling a lot more materials than necessary for leatherworking…
    • …and not doing anything with said materials.
  • Not always repairing with faction vendors where I’m Exalted (that 20% discount adds up).
  • Buying gems on the auction house instead of using my now-useless Emblems of Triumph or honor points (10k honor = 1 uncut epic gem).
  • Using flight paths where I could just fly on my own for free.
  • Buying extra mounts to eventually get up to the 100 mount achievement
    • But thankfully not the motorcycle or mammoths! :P

That’s what I do on a regular basis. I don’t clear a raid every week (more like every other week) and I don’t farm for super-rare drops, but I’ve built up a decent amount of gold. What do you guys do? Is there something I could be doing that’s lucrative?

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at 5:29 PM
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8 comments:

  1. I think you're doing better than me. xD Then again, you have more 80s with more capped professions that you can take advantage of. I only have Cerylia, and all she has are transmutations and flasks to work with. That's sort of a rare thing I get to use. It's mostly her herbalism that brings in moneys, plus all the stuff she farms up while grinding rep or doing dailies. (Netherweave is so lovely, isn't it? ^^)

    I never buy anything off the Auction House either. Like, nothing. If I need resources, I'll see if any of my characters or my friends' characters can provide them first. If they can't, then I actually think about whether I really need this item or not, and then usually don't buy it. xD

    I farm everything I need for my professions; I don't put any money into buying the stuff off the AH. It takes longer, but if you couldn't tell this by now, I'm a patient, take-my-time kinda gal. xD I also hate spending money.

    I also take the time to sell all my greens, even if they seem absolutely worthless. Some weeks it's a bust, but most of the time I can sell them for 3-4G higher than vendor price, which adds up slowly but surely, I think. I've developed an eye for items that seem likely for someone to purchase, either for leveling or for potential disenchanting, and what greens are better off just vendored. But that's just my experience on my server.

    If you have a capped Jewelcrafter, why aren't you using her for your gems? :P At the very least, do her jewelcrafting dailies, keep picking up recipes, then use those "useless" Triumph emblems or honor points to buy gems, cut them, and net a tidy profit. I wish I had a jewelcrafter, it seems such a lucrative profession. ^^

    For all that though, you're still almost 20K G ahead of me, so I'd say you're not bad off. ;)
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  3. @Bigjimm - I appreciate your input but I don't appreciate cross-blog plugs in my comments, especially for that sleazebag Markco (he has some slimeball RL-money-grubbing tactics). If you want to repost it without the links, that's fine, but otherwise it's being removed.
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  4. I have roughly 22k between my two 80s and my dedicated auction toon, but I also finance my husband's toons and my daughter's character. (They don't really try to make any money. They send anything which could be auctioned to my toon, but it doesn't cover all the costs of their epic flight, the purples I've picked up for my husband's toons, etc. And then there's the fact that I recently retooled my mage as a tailor and decided to throw gold at it instead of farming the mats . . . So I figure I'm doing pretty well for an amateur.)

    My mage is also a JC, but instead of trying to play the entire AH JC department, I focus on one gem I know sells well and trickle it onto the AH. (Hint: remember that mixed-color gems cost half the badges, yet frequently sell for about the same as single color gems--on my server, anyway.) That seems to work.

    With tailoring, if I can pick up mats at a discount (I keep my eyes open), I can net a tidy profit on Frostweave Bags.

    My Druid herbs, and anything she doesn't use in her flasks get auctioned.

    Finally, yes, I do auction my greens, but only once. I auction them for only about 2g higher than the suggested price, because I know the disenchanters will pick them up. (And usually do.) If for some reason, a particular green expires, I vendor it. Yes, I don't get as much as I would have otherwise, but in the long run, I make a decent amount that way. (This will eventually change when my husband's level 64 enchanter reaches 80 . . .)

    I'm not too terribly worried about it, to be honest. I'm not trying to send my mage to GKPs or anything, and I have sufficient for the needs of my family's characters.
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  5. You could begin crafting leg armour to sell regularly since you seem to have an abundance of that. Start using the JC to prospect titanium selling all the gems. I know you don't like marcko but the forums at his siteare a great tool to increase your knowledge on how to maximize your professions.

    Honestly what your doing works for you most peolpe never make it above 10k so your doing fine with your current system.
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  6. Whether you're doing it right/wrong depends on how much you think you want/need.
    I currently prefer to maintain a base of ~150k (right now actually 175k), and I have always spent rather liberally on gear or mats (I don't farm, time is money). A lot of my gold currently is being spent on working on 'The Insane'.
    I have several profession alts - JCs and Transmute spec Alchs to make gems, a Tailor/Ench, a Scribe, and both an Elixir and Pot Spec'd Alch.
    Know your market(s), find some niches, and take some money to make some money.

    Also, re-read your 'what you're not doing', as you already have some good advice there. I wouldn't advocate farming necessarily and definitely not flying yourself (unless you are farming) but the rest of it's solid.
    Make a profession DK if you don't have one, as well, if you have the time.
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  7. Other servers do not have Otto.
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  8. @Anachan - I haven't thought about using my extra Frostweave for bags since my tailor is sitting at 441. Maybe I shouldn't work on capping her and instead focus on making bags. Cataclysm will bring new alts and new alts need big bags!

    @bobreaze - For the past few nights I've been making passes through Icecrown to net some Titanium and Saronite, which my warlock has prospected and cut into blue-quality gems. Most of them sell in the 30g-40g range, but if I'm lucky someone has inflated the price to 60g or more. Thanks for the tip :)

    @Aloix - My Alliance auction alt is a 60 DK that's steadily leveling enchanting on a high profit curve (twink weapon enchants are awesome sellers). Once she's maxed I'll have an enchanter, JC, LW, and tailor to work with on Alliance side. For RP reasons my alchemist is Horde but he makes a pretty good profit from selling off extra herbs...and a lot of world drop BoE items, for some odd reason. Tauren bulls must have better luck at finding them!

    @Anonymous - Otto does what Otto does.
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