Has Dragonflight Killed the Small Goblin? – Wowhead Economy Weekly Wrap-Up 290

First of all, I dont consider launch to be the norm.

In Legion I was able to farm 2 tokens per hour with skinning, same as in BFA with green items and LW. In shadowlands I got insane returns with legendaries in the first month and played craft simulator one year later to make ~35 tokens in 20 days starting with 10k (all the gold I had) and not selling legos.

In dragonflight I made this:

I even coached people on how to make a token an hour starting off with 100k investment early on dragonflight, same way I did in shadowlands and Legion.

However, now that profession points are timegated AND the AH is regionwide I feel like there is no room for small goblins to make decent gold. The amount of people willing to help others make gold has been reduced drastically since previous xpacs mostly because people are afraid of competition. This got so ridiculous that during launch you could find almost no information on this sub on how to make gold and how prof worked other than mine (coaching alch, lw, bs, jc, etc) and some people recomending spaming in trade chat.

The gap between the person who plays this every day since launch and/or has lots of gold and a casual has grown wayyyy too large.

If you lack KP and/or gold you are pretty much f****.

———

Initially I was going to reply to someone who claimed was making lots of gold with Transmute: Dracothyst. However, after he replied he was making ~half a token per 10 days with 6-7 boosted alchemists I decided to create this TH out of pity as how he was embarassing himself.

Has the changes to the AH/PROF killed small goblins to the point this is considered good for a new player when exploring df content?

I knew that crafting arbitrage would take a hit when they anounced regionwide AH but I think this is too much.

What do you guys think can be done about the current situation? Both gatherers and crafters are in a tight spot RN.

The profession changes has made time investment directly correlate with gold income. Before I could craft 30 mins a day and make 100-200k and now it’s 10-20k a day. But it’s also going back up now that people have stopped competing in the AH but I’m not even inclined to invest time to craft since it’s not worth my time. I’ve been converting gold to Bent credit and realized I would have never cashed in my ~$2,000+ in tokens if not for these changes. I’m sure there are many other former goblins in my situation as I don’t see the same names that standing around in Org on their AH mounts like in previous expansions.

I.e. it’s a lot more fair to everyone with the gold distribution and time gated crafts but it also means they killed the big monopoly goblins. I doubt they’ll go back and the the profession changes will be here moving forward as well as the order system.

It killed the small goblin because of the huge time investment required to make it profitable.

Previous expansion you could simply level your prof to max and start making gold immediatly. Now you need to max out a specc tree, that takes god knows how long, and rely on resourcefulness procs or multicraft procs in order to make a dime.

The margins are way to slim for someone who wants to make a buck on the side. You need to dedicate alot of your playtime for it to be worth your while.

At least thats my take on it.

The AH means items are sold at the rate of whoever values their time the least.

Professions I stopped paying attention to when I realised I had to engage with the crafting order system. That killed any interest in gold making for DF for me.

What thing people often miss is *why* Blizzard made these changes – they want to make sure professions and the AH is available to all players, not just the biggest goblins and high-end raiders with near-unlimited gold. I’m not saying if this is the right or wrong way to do it, it’s not the discussion here, but more players than ever are involved in crafting.

Gold-making is just a meta game within WoW, made up by players. The devs don’t make changes based on what goblins think, they make changes for the general playerbase

I feel like I did fine. What’s even wrong with doing transmutes? I’m just doing transmutes on 4 characters and cashing my mettle in for guaranteed rank 3s every months and im making like 500k a month or something with very little effort. I check on mat prices and buy low and craft when the finished products get high.

Ff14 underwent a similar transformation where you used to be able to make 100s of millions but now the only way to make money in that game is selling to other crafters.

I don’t think it killed farmers willing to go into old content. Legion herbs can give you a pretty steady return on your time.

Also since Naxx came out, doing thorium/arcane crystal farming is pretty profitable.

I think what DF requires from the “small goblin” is more research than before. You can’t just do laps around the current content and make your token in 4 hours per month.

So right now just checking the AH, i see Goldthorn at 38 gold with a solid sell rate, a bunch of the Legion herbs selling from 12-19 gold, Burning Crusade ores are good, i’m seeing cataclysm ores and bars not too bad, plus you get volatiles from cata mining…

These things can all easily get you 30-40k/hour in solid gold, and possibly over 50k if you are really efficient at farming stuff that is highest price and most in demand. All of this is relatively possible for a “small goblin,” that’s like 4-6 hours per month on NA.

The Cata alligator skinning farm with darkmoon firewater also hits those numbers

It’s true you can’t really do that in current content. But it’s not true you can’t do it all.

Just a quick edit: If you have a JC or a BS and just did your profession weeklies you could easily make enough gold within an hour or two on reset day. I made around 300k today on NA just sort of messing around doing crafting stuff between 2 toons.

I’ve had the opposite experience. Struggle to make gold in previous expansions, enough for a token a month but never a spare.

DF I’m rolling in it, canceled my WoW sub, converted all gold into Blizz Cash for Diablo 4, D4 sucks came back to WoW July, Sitting on 3 Tokens and 1.4mil gold. I don’t play AH at all or farm, I’m a simple man no spreadsheets or anything, just crafting.

I have Maxed BS I can make everything guaranteed 447, I have all 4 JC epic gems and a Tailor that I do Azureweave/Chronocloth on and it can make the pvp items+spore cloak. Then 5 characters with Alch for Dracos, that I have all blue multicraft prof gear on. To get that gear I just put in work orders no mettle r3 mats and 3k gold, got filled within the hour on all 5.

Then while sitting in Valdrakken i just snipe trade chat, never advertise. If someone wants 424-437 I just say tip whatever you like. With a sporecloak for example, they might send a 424 one, requires nothing from me to r5, get 1k tip, but then proc 130 glowspores which is another 2.6k, so they’ve essentially given me 3.6k. Its the same on BS anything I can guarantee put on the resource prof gear and farm free alloys.

Difference is maybe server size? Cos i’m on a top 3 pop server.

I installed this addon in March. The AH will be 90% just resource procs from crafts. Other 10% being Dracos.

I actually really like the DF profession system, and the stuff they’ve done to promote players to interact with it has been great too.

Today we’ll look at some great entry level recipes for goldmaking with professions. Criteria we focus on are: High speed of sales, easy to unlock, cheap to craft. We want items you can start crafting even if you have 100 gold to your name, and expect to get a sale quickly.

Glyphs
Glyphs are extremely cheap to craft and you can unlock a ton of them just from doing the Northrend research as well as the classic research. Book of Glyph Mastery is also very cheap these days and you can likely unlock a couple of recipes from that for less than 10 gold per recipe. Costs vary from 1-2 gold on most realms, with top glyphs still selling for 15-20 gold. Sale rates per glyph is a lot lower than for the other items in this video, but on the other side there’s a lot more recipes avilable.

Cooldown cloth
The cooldown cloth is unlocked from the vendor at 415 tailoring. As of right now profits vary from 60 to 120 gold per craft on my realm, with crafting costs ranging from 15 to 79 gold. They sell consistently, but obviously you are limited by the cooldown. If you have an extra level 68+ character it can be very profitable to set it up for cooldowns.

Bags
Frostweave bag is another high volume vendor recipe. Margins are thinner than for cooldown cloth or meta gems, and it is a bit more time consuming, making it a less attractive option, but still a very consistent seller.

Belt buckles
Eternal Belt buckles are learned from the blacksmithing trainer at skill 415. They yield a 50% profit margin on my realm, and the sale rate is high as expected with a best in slot enchant. They are very cheap to craft as well, making this an all around great item for players just dipping into gold making.

Meta gem transmutes
The meta gem transmutes are learned from your profession trainers at 430 alchemy skill. This is a little higher than many others on the list, and you also want to get transmutation mastery for another +20% yield on average. That being said the margins are often high enough to make them profitable even without the extra procs, and if you have a jewelcrafter you can even process them into finished gems to maximize the value.