Wrath of the Lich King and Northrend are bringing some interesting changes to the WoW economy. Quests pay at least 4 gold each and there are hundreds of them. Alchemists and Scribes are buying up tons of herbs and crafters are getting their tools into new leathers and ores. Not to mention the new gear, food items, and so on.

So there’s a pretty fair quantity of new items for the gold grind and a pretty fair amount of new cash coming into the game. Prices, of course, will vary from server to server and Horde side to Ally.

Do you like to farm for your gold?

Northrend herbs start at 30-40 gold a stack and go up from there. More and more farming will tend to push prices down some, but Glyphs, that require inks made from those herbs, will help to keep herb prices up. If you want to take up herbalism I have a quickie guide to leveling herbalism from scratch.

Cobalt and Saronite ore look like they’re running 40-50 gold a stack and Titanium is just grim right now. Mining is always a good money maker and all the ores sell well.

Borean leather is somewhere around 20g a stack and you’re going to be killing lots of critters, so the shear quantity of skins should keep those prices relatively low. Rarer skins, though… Artic Fur is looking pretty grim, too.

Hungry? Chunk o’ Mammoth is going for 10g per piece right now. Just avoid the D.E.H.T.A. druids when you’re covered in Mammoth pieces.

Auction House Pricing

When you puts your loots up for sale on the AH check the existing prices first. I use Auctioneer (advanced,) but it’s not essential for price checking. Some people seem to skip this step. For example, let’s say prices for an ore are going at 45g a stack. BobBank comes buy and throws his up there for 200g a stack. Lol wut? Why? I think sometimes its to screw the Auctioneer data, other times people just aren’t looking. It’s a waste of effort since it’ll never sell.

Next comes NotAfarmer, who posts a pile of stacks at 5g each (when the market is 45.) Sigh… what do you do with these people? First, he’s hurting himself since he could get a lot more for each stack, next he’s hurting the market. Actually this is great for buyers, but we greedy types would like to see things a bit higher, which makes it worth our while to farm or make the item. What some of us will then do is buy out all of NotAfarmer’s stuff and resell it at market price.

Then there’s ZogMuffin, who puts up 20 stacks of something at market price or lower. The issue here isn’t necessarily the pricing, but that Zog is locking up 20 stacks of his inventory, which won’t sell, because BobBank gets a clue and undercuts him. So the first few items the buyer sees are Bob’s and Zog gets all his items back in the mail when his auctions expire.

Unless you have a monopoly on an item I don’t suggest putting up a lot of that item. Store the surplus in your bank if it’s selling and prices seem reasonably stable. Post one item at a time if it’s a slow seller, just a few if it sells faster. You’ll sell just as much and you’ll have fewer returns to deal with.

It’s funny sometimes… You see a game where one person posts his items and then he and three or four others will alternately undercut each other by pennies. Then NotAfarmer comes along and dumps a pile of that item, undercutting everyone by 60%. So one of two things happens: his stuff gets bought out by another seller (for resale) or the price creep game starts again at the new, lower, price.

Need More Bank Space?

Make a private guild, just for your banker/mule. Start it up like any other guild, then kick everyone out when its ready to go. It’s probably a good idea if you let them know your plans ahead of time. Bribery (2-5 gold per signature) will get sign-ups a lot faster.

Once done you have access to that nice, large, guild bank. All to yourself. Every once in a great while someone sells their guild and that’s the one I have. Didn’t have to bother with the signup fuss and only paid 70 gold. Then I bought another pair of tabs and now bank space is no longer an issue.

Storing stuff in the mailbox is a good idea for smaller quantities, but doesn’t work so well for larger quantities due to bugs in the system. You won’t lose stuff (as long as you don’t store it for more than 30 days,) but you might not  see it either, until the mailbox is emptied.

Summing Up

Mining and Herbalism for the (gathering) Gold.

Dedicated bankers are a good idea, for all of your buying and selling, and private guilds allow lots of storage space.

Watch the current prices so you can make a good choice about pricing your stuff and try to avoid posting a ton of stuff at one time.

I haven’t started a DK yet. Yeah, I know, I’m bad. I did play one for awhile in the beta and I’m looking forward to it, but I think I’m going to get my Rogue up to 80, first. I haven’t had much time to play recently and I’m only level 73.

So. DKs and PvP. What do you think of them as they stand, now?

Are they the overall destruction machine of choice? Or strong against casters and Ok against others? Or…? Are they the Gankers or the Gankees?

For the one or two of you (like me) who haven’t started your Death Knight yet and want a leg up, the free leveling guide to the DK starter area is still up.

The main reason is that there are a lot of people who know more than I do about World of Warcraft, and the other reason is for the trackbacks.

A trackback is just an acknowledgment on blog A that Blog B has linked to a particular post. They’re easy to make and they’re pretty much automatic for the more recent blogging platforms.

Pretty much everything I know about trackbacks (and linking) came from linking expert Jack Humphrey. He’s put together an easy to understand video, which explains all of the How and Why of trackbacks.

Check it out: How to do a trackback to get more links and traffic

This, of course, is making inscribers unhappy since they have to grind up 5 herbs to make pigments for their inks. Alchemist are used to paying through the nose for their herbs (fel lotus) and this probably won’t change much. Still, prices will eventually drop as the farmers are done with leveling and start farming.

So here’s the list of the herbs that you can find in Northrend, with links to more info (on Thottbot.com.) Inscribers should just grab whichever herb is cheapest and easiest, likely to be Goldclover for some time) and mill those.

Alchemists can click through the links to see which recipes can be made from these herbs.

• Goldclover, 325 herbalism, all over the place in grassy areas. This one herb will take your skill to well over 400.
• Deadnettle, drops with Goldclover
  
• Firethorn, 325 herbalism, not millable, drops leaves and seeds that provide a buff (and a debuff,) I also saw a frost lotus drop and a crystallized life. Found around the hot pools in Borean Tundra.
• Tiger lily, 400 Herbalism, found along the edges of waterways, just like Liferoot. 
• Constrictor Grass
• Icethorn
• Lichbloom, Requires 425 Herbalism and is found in places with snow areas I.E. Icecrown and Storm Peaks
• Adder’s Tongue, This stuff is all over the place in Sholozar Basin, requires 430 Herbalism
• Talandra’s rose, all over the place in the lower tiers of Zul’Drak
• Frost Lotus, rarely picked directly, usually drops off other herbs, much like fel lotus

Updated 11/19

Gathering is unchanged, except for discovering the new things to gather. Demand for green drops from mobs will probably be strong for awhile since much of it is better than the epic stuff people had at level 70. Certain crafted items (especially glyphs) will sell very well and the materials to make the popular enchants and crafted items will sell very well. The only real difference here will be in exactly which crafts and enchants are popular.

So here are my guesses for gold earning in Wrath. Keep in mind that prices will drop as more and more people start farming Northrend.

Skinning – As always, skin everything you can. Sell the scraps, too. Keep an eye on the Auction House for which skins sell best and which hot crafting recipes require those skins. Find areas where people are just grinding away for XP and skin everything they kill.

Mining – Cobalt and Titanium await you. Engineering, Blacksmithing, and Jewelcrafting will create a demand for these ores and that demand should stay strong for a long time. Cobalt look like it’s going for almost 50g for a 5 stack at the moment, on Bloodscalp. Mining should be interesting on the PvP servers…

Herbalism – Now that Wrath of the Lich King is here people will get back to raiding, which will require the usual collection of potions, created from the various herbs that you will be picking. Plus there’s Inscription, which has driven the price of herbs way up, since the inscription ink come from herbs.

Right now the prices for Northred herbs are truly grim, 20-40 gold per herb. With much of the playerbase arriving in Northrend, gathering away, I don’t think Northrend herbs will stay at that price for long, which is great for scribes, but less great for herbalists. With herbs at 20 gold a stack it costs about 4 or 8 gold to make one glyph. With herbs at 300 gold a stack…

Outland herbs, which have been cheap for some time now, might go up as the gatherers head to Northrend. If Northrend herbs are selling at 100 gold a stack, right now, how many stacks can you farm? As always, check prices on the Auction House first.

Fishing and cooking – Some fish will likely be needed for Alchemy, as well as for cooking, and some might turn out to do interesting things (such as Savory Deviate Delight.) Of course, certain foods are in demand for the buffs they provide and those foods should sell well.

Looting – As usual, keep a close eye on any white or better items you loot in your day to day monster mashing. Some of these items will be valuable. Send them to your banker to sell, don’t vendor them.

Limited items – I have no doubt that there will be a number of new “limited items” appearing on various vendors. Keep an eye on these as several might sell for a very nice profit on the Auction House. Make your own list of “limited item” vendors as you travel the new lands.

Speaking of the Auction House… This really is the area where people can make some serious gold. There are two basic ideas here, both of which require a good understanding of the market on your server.

1. buy low and sell high is a tried and true one. Herbs for example. If an herb (or ore, or…) normally goes for 30gold a stack and you see that someone has dumped a bunch of stacks for 5 gold, buy them up and resell them (or send them to your favorite scribe.) If prices are starting to look depressed then just hold those items for a few days and keep a close eye on the AH. Post them at a higher price when the market allows.
2. Find holes in the market and fill them. If a certain glyph is rare and selling for a high price then see if you can make a few of that glyph and sell them for that high price. Same with herbs. If the market needs a few more of a certain herb, because prices are so high, go out and farm a few.

Your banker: Lastly, consider using a low level alt to do all of your buying and selling. It’s less distracting than if you use your main character, plus you’ll be able to focus on making gold and not spending it on better stuff.

Just make a level 1 character to be your “Banker” and run to the nearest big city and park in the Auction House. Next have your main character mail your banker some starting money (for auction fees.) Then as your other characters collect sellable loot and limited items they mail all of those items to the banker for resale.

There are a lot of ways to make gold in the World of Warcraft and the above suggestions are only a few of them. To learn many more gold making techniques you should consider taking the advice of someone who has made enough WoW gold to hit the gold cap (over 230,000 gold) on each of four separate characters. He’s the Warcraft Millionaire and, as you can see, he knows what he’s talking about.

So I received a backup of all my data from them and moved everything to the new host, where it actually seems to be running ok.

Umm… so where’s “The Cookbook is Back #1?”

Well, in a massive display of epic falm palming fail, I deleted the database for the blog. It was actually supposed to be the OTHER (expletives deleted) database, but there you go.

Fortunately, I was able to extract the database from the aforementioned backup file and restore everything, except “The Cookbook is Back (#1)”

So just the one post and the one comment (Sorry, Zug) is gone.

And now it’s time to get back to work. Or gaming. Or something. Maybe I’ll just watch some more 24 (via Netflix.)

Big Red Kitty has the video: BRK Gorilladin 101 Movie

If you are going to join the Deathknight horde (at any time) then you might want to check out this free DK leveling guide (a PDF) that covers the DK starting area. Both Horde and Alliance will be using the same area, just in case you didn’t know, so this guide applies equally to both sides. (By the way - I didn’t write the guide.)

When I was running my DK through that area some weeks back there were a number of people asking “Where’s the…?” “How do I…” etc.  So I think that a lot of people will find this to be useful. Download it here and save to your disk.

Go here to browse.

edit: Some additional info on use and installing addons can be found here: WoW addons

Now consider for a moment what it takes to hit the gold cap: that limit being currently set at 214,748 gold, 36 silver, 48 copper, and once reached will prevent you from receiving any more cash. At 300 gold an hour that’s a measly 716 hours of pure gold making activity.

Brad, of Warcraft Millionaire, has hit that cap on four separate characters.

How was it that this guy had managed to do what is seemingly impossible when millions of other players have been at it for just as long and are nowhere close? You can see the video proof on his home page, which really drives the point home.

When you watch it you will see Brad clicking between several characters he has on the same server, each of which had reached that gold cap of 214,748 gold, 36 silver, 48 copper. It’s rare enough to see one character at the cap, much less several characters.

So how did he do it? What has Brad done that very few, if any, have done before? What did see in the game that others had missed? His strategy must surely be superior, right?

It seems that Brad’s friends and fellow players have been asking the same question of him for some time and so, instead of constantly answering questions, he has put together a collection of resources at his website that promises to guide the casual or even hardcore player through the same process he used to reach the upper echelons of gaming.

The truth of the matter is that it’s not some special secret, as you might think. The difference is entirely in his understanding of how the WoW market works. His secret? It’s all in the Auction House (AH.) We all know that; we’ve been to the Auction House and we’ve seen what kind of gold it can provide, but none of us would have guessed that there was quite that much gold in it.

Suffice it to say, that Brad provides concise, well written advice on how to use the Auction House to make a lot of gold. I think that hitting the gold cap, four times, provides some serious credibility, don’t you?

While I won’t reach a million gold anytime soon, I definitely feel much more confident in my ability to make hundreds of gold on demand and pretty much all of it it with my low level bank alts.

Not Just the AH

Now, while the real gold is made at the auction house, and Brad emphasizes learning to use the AH, there are people who would, for whatever reason, rather do something else to earn their WoW cash. So, I’ll open up my copy of Warcraft Millionaire and note that, in addition to the Auction House domination guide, Brad includes the following:

• All of the Daily Quests - listed, rated (1 to 5 stars,) with notes on the gold and the rep that you will earn, and linked to WoWdb.com for more info. Of course, you do need to be level 70 to do these.

• The Grinding Guide - Want to just mindlessly kill hordes of mobs and fill your bags with goodies? This is the guide for you. It includes where to find certain special items, grinding instances, various locations, and recommended addons to make you grinding easier (besides plugging a case of Mountain Dew into your brain.) Brad hates the grind, I hate grinding, but if you’re Ok with it then this guide is for you.

• A limited items listing - This is a big list of vendors who sell all sorts of limited items. General locations of the vendors are provided, but it would have been nice to see exact locations.For items found in Azeroth the list is sorted by specific item, who sells it, and how much you’ll pay. How much you can sell it for will depend on the economy of your particular server. The Outlands listing lists vendors by zone, plus the items thy sell and the cost. Make a loop of these vendors, grab the items that are available as you hit them, ship them to your banker, and sell for a very nice profit.

• 1-60 and 60-70 gold guides - As you level you should keep an eye peeled for certain items and these two guides cover those items. You can make a lot of gold in the leveling process (beyond taking Herbalism and/or Mining) and these guides will show you what to look for. Naturally the best stuff requires higher level characters.

• A special bonus, is the Warcraft Basics Guide, which covers the basics of the WoW economy, principles, gold making, questing, professions, etc. New players will find this guide to be very useful, experienced players can skim much of it, but will find some useful tips as well.

Since Millionaire is one of the newest gold guides it neatly cuts out one of the problems of the older guides, none of the info is out of date. You won’t find references to the level 60 cap or to items and mobs that are no longer in game or of value.

You don’t have to have level 70 characters. In the video on the home page Brad notes that his level 1 bank alt does most of his trading, buying, and selling. Yes, it’s at the gold cap. You will also get an idea of what he buys and sells.

You won’t just be given a set of grinding locations either, though you do get those in addition to everything else. What you will get and learn is a set of techniques that will massively boost your gold stash.

Even better is that Brad has a Wrath of the Lich King update in the works and that update should be live very soon now. It will be free to members of Warcraft Millionaire.

Just One Thing…

There is one section lacking: With the addition of Inscription into the game, and what it’s doing to herb prices, I expect there will be an update soon that will cover Inscription and that will do more with making gold from Herbalism. The guide was released before much was known about Wrath or anything was known about Inscription.

I’ll bug him until I get the exact word on the Inscription/WotLK/3.0+ update. If you’re not interested in those two professions then the rest of the guide is golden (pun intended.)

You can snag your copy of Warcraft Millionaire here.