Gathering the Gold in Wrath of the Lich King

Wrath of the Lich king has landed and the World of Warcraft has changed. There are new talents, new builds, new gear, new areas to explore, and so on, but one of the areas that hasn’t changed much is in the gold making techniques.

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.