In Search of Fortune: Long Boi

Welcome to ‘In Search of Fortune’, a new monthly series where I discuss my gold goals and in-game money making strategies.

Near the end of November, 2019, it was discovered (then confirmed) that the Mighty Caravan Brutosaur would no longer be purchasable in Shadowlands outside of a rare spawn on the black market auction house. Prior to this point, I had assumed I’d eventually get the mount, as gold inflation and whatnot tends to devalue old vendor items. I wasn’t, though, passionate about the mount. Sure, it would be nice, but… 5 million gold? Then, the news that it was going… extinct. Admittedly, I still didn’t care a lot. But there was this slight… annoyance. “I had plans for that”, I thought. Sure, not important plans, but, plans. Sometime after that, I wondered “could I even get it if I wanted?”. Well, sure I could, right? Suddenly my gold-making ego was self-challenged! Can I earn 5 million gold before Shadowlands (prepatch, even, I eventually learn)?

Admittedly, I wasn’t starting from 0, but it was pretty close. As of November of 2019 I had less than 300k gold on my account and I was in a similar state whenever it was exactly that I decided to start upping my gold game. I figured I had until October or November and guessed that I’d need to average about 450k gold per month to reach my goal. Then I learned it was gone in prepatch and took a month off of the goal, ouch.

What I Did To Earn 4 Million Gold:

My biggest source of income has been from selling transmogs. This has come from buying and selling (flipping) items off of the auction house as well as crafting as many things as I could and listing those auctions. The addon TSM has been invaluable for listing quickly, but honestly I’ve never been able to get the strings to work right for buying (check out this TSM guide, not by me). The flipping included anything I could buy that seemed like a deal, but the biggest stuff was almost always mogs. I’ll probably put up a more specific gold making guide for my own personal tactics in the future, so, subscribe here or bookmark it or whatever you do to get new blog posts and you’ll get it.

Outside of AH flipping and mogs, I’ve found a great resource in WTBgold, example video below, for some of the best farms. In the past week or so I’ve made 50k+ from a couple of the ore farms mentioned in this video. Some of these farms are time sensative though, such as the questionable meat farm at the beginning of patch 8.3 (of which I made easily 250k from in a couple of weeks). Additionally, there’s this great (if really boring) raw gold/cloth farm in Suramar that averages for me about 10k per hour – again, I’ll probably discuss specifics in a future post.

How to Finish in Time:

As of this writing, I need slightly over 500k to get the mount. I also have enough Blizzard Balance to buy a token, money that I gained from buying a couple of tokens with gold from different servers that I had been making slow gold on. 500k gold (or 370k if I use the balance), and, probably 10 days to get it. At this point, I’m banking on prepatch being the 22nd (here’s my post talking about it), BUT I really expected and announcement for the end of the PVP season this tuesday the 8th if the prepatch would be the 22nd… so, maybe the 29th? But, it would be significantly shorter than any prepatch in recent history. Assuming 10 days, I have to earn nearly 50k per day (or 37k per if I use blizz bucks).

For the most part, I’ll be continuing doing what I’ve been doing. Flipping on the AH, crafting mogs (I’ve been farming/buying extra patterns to try and maximize here), and then doing the ore farm and Suramar farm. The Suramar farm is the only thing I have right now that guarantees gold. Anything sold on the AH is subject to the whims of the AH. I could farm an ore that gets overfarmed by others and the price drops or there around enough buyers. Transmog sales are always very random. Some days I’ll sell several large items and other times I might go a week without unloading anything nice. I think I can make it, but, it’ll be the hardest I’ve ever been grinding gold.