Gold-Making 101: The Basics

Posted by Aleithia at 8:00 AM

Join us on a journey from rags to riches. The Gold-Making 101 series will walk you through the basics of getting started on your road to the gold-cap. This week we cover some of the basics that will be the foundation for your gold-making journey.

Options For Making Gold

There are lots of options for making gold in the World of Warcraft. I'll go into specifics more in future posts, but for now, here are the basics:

• QuestingCompleting quests, especially at the level-cap, can bring in a steady supply of gold. Once you've reached max-level, any quests you complete that would have awarded experience, instead reward gold. The more experience you would have gained, the more gold you can earn. In addition, you can sell or disenchant the quest rewards from some additional gold.
• Daily QuestsEach character can do 25 daily quests each day. The gold reward varies between 10 - 20 gold per quest. As an added bonus, daily quests can help increase your reputation with various factions, granting access to recipes or other perks.
• GrindingTake your best Area-of-Effect DPS toon, gather up a bunch of mobs, kill and loot. You gain gold from the junk you sell, plus you could net some valuable gear to sell on the auction house. There's also a very slight chance for rare world-drops worth big cash on the auction house or direct to other players.
• Farming/GatheringGathering herbs, ore and leather can be quite lucrative and is a relatively safe gold-making venture. Sell your materials on the auction house or directly to other gold-makers in trade chat (use /2 to access the trade chat channel). Standard practice in trade chat is to post something along the lines of "WTS [x] stacks of [item] for [y] gold/stack. PST." WTS is short for "willing to sell", PST is short for "please send tell". If you aren't sure how much an item goes for, you can look up the average value at The Undermine Journal or check your local auction house. You need one of the gathering professions to collect the herbs/ore/leather. You can also farm cloth by killing and looting humanoid mobs. All of these items have good value to other players.
• CraftingYou can actually increase the value of the raw materials received from farming/gathering by processing them into more lucrative finished goods. You will need professions such as Jewelcrafting or Enchanting to do this, and not all recipes are profitable. 
• Auction House FlippingLook for deals on the auction house on items that are underpriced, then re-sell the items for a higher price. This is a classic gold-making strategy that can be accomplished just by monitoring the auction house. There are some risks involved in the process as some items seem like great deals, but you're never able to sell them for a profit. Others are consistently available for deals to be resold later.

Professions

There are 2 classifications for professions: Primary and Secondary. Each character can have a maximum of 2 primary professions and all of the secondary professions. The primary professions can be broken into 2 groups as well: Crafting and Gathering. Each gathering profession supports a few crafting ones. The existing professions are:

Primary

• Alchemy (Crafting, Blizzard's Overview)
  Creates potions, flasks and transmutations. Uses herbs from Herbalism.
• Blacksmithing (Crafting, Blizzard's Overview)
  Creates plate armor and weapons. Uses ore from Mining.
• Enchanting (Crafting, Blizzard's Overview)
  Creates scrolls for enchanting weapons and armor. Also allows you to disenchant items for materials.
• Engineering (Crafting, Blizzard's Overview)
  Creates fun gadgets, scopes for ranged weapons and vanity pets/mounts. Uses some ore/bars from Mining.
  
• Herbalism (Gathering, Blizzard's Overview)
  Gather herbs from nodes placed throughout each zone.
• Inscription (Crafting, Blizzard's Overview)
  Creates glyphs, Darkmoon Cards and relics. Uses herbs from Herbalism.
• Jewelcrafting (Crafting, Blizzard's Overview)
  Creates gems for enhancing gear, as well as rings and necks. Uses ore from Mining.
• Leatherworking (Crafting, Blizzard's Overview)
  Creates leather and mail armor, plus leg enchants for melee classes. Uses leather from Skinning.
• Mining (Gathering, Blizzard's Overview)
  Gather ore from nodes placed throughout each zone.
• Skinning (Gathering, Blizzard's Overview)
  Gather leather from certain mobs throughout each zone.
  
• Tailoring (Crafting, Blizzard's Overview)
  Creates cloth armor, leg enchants for casters and bags. Uses cloth from killing humanoid mobs.

 Secondary

• Archaeology (Crafting, Blizzard's Overview)
  Dig artifacts from the ground in designated areas, found on the world map. Artifacts range in value from a few silver up to several hundred gold. There is also a chance for some rare drops for your character to use.
• Cooking (Crafting, Blizzard's Overview)
  Prepare food that characters use to buff stats, including party/raid-wide feasts.
• First Aid (Crafting, Blizzard's Overview)
  Creates bandages from cloth.
• Fishing (Crafting, Blizzard's Overview)
  Catch fish from pools or bodies of water. Fish can be sold at the auction house raw or processed via cooking for sale as food.

Up Next: First Priorities and Your First 100 Gold

Come back next Friday for the next post in the series about getting started on your journey to gold-cap by making that first 100 gold.