Welcome to ‘In Search of Fortune’, a monthly series where I discuss my gold goals and in-game money making strategies.
The beginning of an expansion in World of Warcraft is an important time to set the pace for how that expansion will go for you. You pick a main character to play, the role you’re playing, covenants (this time at least) and, in a way, your play style. Assuming you don’t have unlimited time, opportunity cost says you’re likely going to have to sacrifice one area for another. In my case, in making sure I was leveled and ready for the same content as friends, I had to forgo some of the crazy early money making tactics. The first couple of days see ridiculous prices and I could easily have made double or more what I have so far if I didn’t spend my time leveling and in dungeons. That being said, I’ve still made close to 1.5 million in total profits in under a month
In this post, I’ll break down where my 1.5 million gold profit has come from and what I’ll be doing in the near future to continue it.
The 1.5 Million Breakdown (roughly)
- AH Flipping – 500k
- Darkmoon Cards/Decks – 300k
- Enchanting – 245
- Skinning/Leatherworking – 400k
- Callings – 60k
- Vendor/Misc – 50k
AH Flipping
This one takes some time to build up. I have hundreds upon hundreds of items to sell as I’ve been buying deals for a while. However, it’s fairly simple. Use TSM or auctioneer (I use auctioneer, but there are even more options) to scan the AH for good deals. It can take some set up and awareness of markets to make sure you’re finding actual deals. Then repost those for profit as often as you can stomach. I set my auctions for 24 hours so they get reposted once a day, others do more. When I was grinding for my bruto, I was cancelling and reposting one more time per day and notice a significant increase in wow gold earned.
Darkmoon Decks
I started out herbing. Then that was slow so I bought herbs to mill to pigments for ink to craft the cards. However, the value of ink and pigment was more than the value of the cards. So I would mill the herbs into pigments, turn some into inks and sell those for ~25% profit. Then I’d just buy the cards and either turn them into decks or flip them when prices get weird. I’m still buying the cards when they are cheap and holding onto them until the price spikes or I collect a deck worth. This is probably a 10k per day for 5 minutes of work hustle on my server even now.
Skinning/LW/Enchanting
I haven’t really made much gold on the leatherworking side of things, but I at least made enough to repay the cost of leveling the profession. Most of my gold there was from skinning. There are several places in Ardenweald that have those large bugs which are skinnable and spawn quickly. Between those (particularly when world quests are there) and skinning in non m+ dungeons, it’s made a lot of money. Enchanting I’ve been using just to disenchant blues and epics into materials and selling those for crazy money. Whichever character you’re doing the most dungeons on, make them enchanting as the epic crystals are still 1-2k each.
Callings/Vendor/Misc
Completing your daily calling rewards, along with potentially usable loot, about 1500 gold in vendor trash. Between that, quest reward gold, and other vendor trash (greys, greens once the disenchant value dropped, and blue weapons) I’ve made over 100k gold this expansion. It’s really nothing to focus on, just make sure to do callings, they are valuable for rep, conduits and gold, and check to make sure (if you have enchanting) the value of disenchanting an item versus vendoring said item.
Overall
I didn’t put very much effort or focus in any particular area. I’ve read stories of people making millions getting into some market early on and taking it over, but I spent more time on the other aspects of game play to be able to really dominate any market. Most of what I’m doing now I can continue to do as the expansion moves forward, just with generally smaller numbers. 45k per month per character from callings, continuing my typical 10-20k per day from AH flipping (of which Darkmoon cards/decks will eventually become part of once their specific appeal dies down) and I expect 5-10k per week selling enchanting mats for as long as I’m actively playing my enchanters. Should be an easy 500k per month. If so, I’ll reach gold cap in ~17 months, before non-gold-making expenses like raid/m+ consumables. Of course, given that I have several hundred thousand in character transfers to buy and some mounts and things… we’ll see how long it really takes.