The Tycoon Gold “Guide” Addon – Reviewed

This thing’s an addon, how can I call it a guide? Well, it’ll guide you to making a lot more gold with a lot less effort, but I usually think of a website or PDF when I think of guide.

Ok, enough babble.

So what is this thing?

Their homepage calls it  “The Mailbox Bustin Gold Addon.” Is it? Really? The page is certainly over-hyped and it’s going to take some serious work and a fair amount of luck to hit that 30k gold per day that they suggest is possible.

Will it increase your daily haul? Oh,yes. I definitely think that it will. But first, here’s what this thing is:

It’s an addon, not a PDF, DOC file, or WoWhead-like reference site. You can install it like any other addon and they even have an automated installer widget thingie. It works with my WoW install, which is on a separate drive, in an odd folder, and not registered with my Win 7 install. If it can do that it should be able to handle yours.

Ok, so you install the thing, load into your bank alt or gatherer/crafter/farmer, and you’ll see this on your screen:

Click that yellow button, in the 5:00 position on the ring, and you get the welcome line. Click it and you get the main Tycoon window (click image to embiggen:)

There are four tabs across the top (there will be five when the dailies module is release real soon now.) The tabs are Auctions, Gathering, Farming, and Crafting. Important note: you will need to download the free Auctionator addon for Tycoon to do it’s work.

• Auctions tab – this is for your buy low and sell higher AH playing. Scan the AH with Auctionator and then Tycoon will post a list of items from most to least profitable. This module will be more accurate after several scans over a period of a few days. The above is a pic of the auctions tab after a scan. It shows the current price and a price that the item might sell for, as well as some other data.
• Gathering tab – This one is for your Herbalism and Mining skills. Click the Gathering tab and then Herbalism (or Mining) in the drop-down just to the left of the go button. It will show you the herbs (or ores) that will net you the most loot and they’re not necessarily Cata herbs. (click the image to enlarge.)I’ve tried a couple of the Herbalism routes shown (it shows routes? Yep.) and you can indeed gather the amount shown and, if prices hold, make that much gold per hour. It that worth a couple of hours of looping around Boring Tundra? It might not be so boring if you can make a couple grand per hour…

  By the way, you don’t need to be a high level gatherer. An Elwynn Forest route for Silverleaf (and Peacebloom and Earthroot) is shown that Tycoon guestimates will be good for 50+ gold per hour. Not bad for your low level characters.

• The Farming tab is, as of this writing, for Cata skins (Savage Leather) and Tailoring (Embersilk cloth) only. A (near) future update will make this available to lower level characters. Like the gathering tab, this also shows how much you can expect to make per hour of  farming. Naturally the real amount will vary between servers and with the actual price of the skins and cloth.
• The Crafting Tab shows all the items from the various professions that might be worth something on the current market. Click the crafting tab, then the various professions in the drop-down menu. When I did it just now the top three profs were Tailoring, Leatherworking, and Blacksmithing.Tycoon also calculates your costs if you buy the mats. If you can farm them then it just costs you for any that you can’t farm and your time. Crafters have, I think, been looking for something like this for quite some time.

  Currently it shows items that require Cata level crafting, but an update at some point should fix that.

Routes

Routes? Yep. Click any line on the herbalism, mining, skinning, etc. tabs and then hit the “go” button. You main map will be marked up with a gathering trail. Run, ride, swim, or fly to that area and just follow the lines. The also show on your mini-map, which makes it really easy.  Just follow the lines and skin the back and forth to the PDF or WoWhead map.

Here’s what it looks like (the exclamation points are from another addon:)

I tried that route. There be Dragonkin there and it was nice. No competition, when I was there, and a fast enough respawn.

That “ant trail” also shows up on your mini-map:

It’ll even show you how much you’re making:

That’s after spending about half the time being AFK. Do you think that having a good route to follow will improve your gathering/farming efficiency? If the area is too crowded, just click the next item on the list and go there, instead.

Problems? Issues?

You do have to download a separate addon, Auctionator, to for Tycoon to do its stuff. Not a big thing, especially if you have the Curse downloader thingie, but it’s an extra step.

Sometimes the AH item list will show an item that isn’t there when you go to look for it. Maybe someone bought the item between your scan and when you searched for the item. I don’t think it’s a bug.

The AH items listed don’t show how many or how few of an item are available. For example, it might show Rugged Leather at a current price of 50 silver per piece, with a recommended sell price of 2g 50s. It doesn’t tell you how many pieces are available. You might see one piece at the 50s price and then nothing else below 2.5g, or you might see dozens of stacks under the 2.5g price. You’ll just have to look. Often enough it’s very much worth the look.

The AH listing really can’t tell you how fast any particular item sells. There might be an item listed for a very low buyout price that you might be able to sell for a lot more, but that might be an item that sells rather slowly.

As mentioned above, the farming module is Cata only at this point, but if you do have a high level then you’re golden (pun intended,) and the gathering and AH modules can be used by characters at any level.

It’s not quite the no-brainer that it’s advertised to be, but it’s close. It certainly is for gathering and farming. You’ll have to look at the AH and Crafting items and decide what’s really going to sell well enough to be worthwhile, though Tycoons data will be a big help.

What’s the bottom line?

The huge advantage of the Tycoon gold addon is that it’s not a PDF or website. It’s all right there and it does a lot of the work for you.

If you’re a gatherer/farmer how much time do you think you’ll save by having the best routes right there on your map? Don’t you think that just that feature will greatly increase your gold per hour?

If you’re a crafter then you have a list of what the market is looking for and just how much you might make.

I’ve already made thousands of gold from the AH module showing me items that I wasn’t looking for, but that I could buy and resell. My Scribe used the Inscription section, under Crafting, and made a number of glyphs that were selling at high prices. Enough of them have sold to be very worthwhile.

How much more will you make? I don’t know, but I think that if you use the thing you will make a lot more than you’re making now. You’ll be a lot more efficient, save a lot of time, do a few things that you might not have done otherwise, and you’ll make quite a bit more gold.

Get yours here.