Last week was the news bomb that was Blizzcon, so we skipped an episode. This week we digest what was announced around gold making and look ahead as to what this could mean. We also reflect on the Region Wide Auction House and it’s impact and discuss ways of making gold with 10.2 PVP gear and other methods.
My name is Samadan and I’ll be your guide through the World of Gold Making!
Blizzcon Gold Making News
With Blizzcon over, there’s a huge amount of information to digest and unpack. Many will be looking for information around gold making and there’s a few snippets here and there to talk about, but much of it is simply too early to tell what it means for the gold making landscape. It will take a few more deep dives once playable versions become available and we can digest what’s to come.
Professions
Not a huge amount was said about professions, it’s simply too early to tell at this stage. It was asked during the group interview with Morgan Day
As in expansions in the past, professions are tied to the expansion, so new points and perks coming in WW. At a high level, they’re happy with how professions play out, but some tweaks with stats/crafting orders, but happy with the system foundationally. Will iterate and continue forward.
So, not really much to talk about here. Professions in Dragonflight had a complete overhaul and largely the system is a lot more engaging, but the hardest barrier to entry was the time-gated knowledge and woefully inadequate Trade Chat for connecting players and crafters to then get into Work Orders.
We did hear a bit of new information in the post show Q&A
New spec points are coming to Professions. Inspiration stat is being looked at. Looking at ways of increasing availability of crafting orders, possibly NPCs putting in crafting orders.
Listening to this makes me think Professions are here to stay in their current form, but with a few tweaks.
The same with Mr. GMs interview where he asked about professions ..
- The current plan is for The War Within to have its own version of the existing Profession talents system, so players who really love professions will be able to learn talents, spec into specialized things, and use the Work Order system in the next expansion.
- The Work Order system is confirmed to carry forward, though they’ve heard a lot of player feedback and so they’re looking for ways to make them better.
- Archaeology is a profession that needs a lot of love. Nothing to say right now, but stay tuned – there’s stuff in the works.
So, a few tweaks here and there, maybe some NPCs to prop up Work Orders. Inspiration and crits are being looked into, but on the whole there’s not enough information to talk about. The feel I get is that region wide will be more and more a think as time goes on as the barriers between servers and factions get eroded.
Early Access
People who buy the Epic Edition pre-order get to play 3 days early was quite the controversial announcement!
Beta Access and Early Access dates subject to change. Early Access duration is 3 days. Limited time only. Play time subject to possible outages and time zone differences. Certain endgame features, including Mythic dungeons and weekly quests, not available during Early Access. Click for more details.
While many may think “oh well, I can wait”, others may struggle with the FOMO and decide to purchase. While it seems to address player power won’t get a leg up ahead of time, for gold making the early bird most certainly catches the worm so this could be essential to kick start your gold making at the start of an expansion.
early DF had a perfect storm with a new crafting system making alot of people engage with it and buying mats, aswell as a new flight system making bots less prevelant until they cracked the code. Its hard to imaging the next exp will have the same demand, but the demand will be there.
Gearcrafting made me many millions early because i stayed ahead of the curve for leatherworking and did crafting orders. I did meddle with scale crafting whenever demand outdid supply or somebody reset the market, but it was alot more hassle than it was worth trying to do m+ and raids aswell.
Making money of the auction house seems to be more difficult in the future as they are slowly tearing down the walls between crossrealm and realm. Meaning markets will get bigger, and margines smaller.
Working the auctionhouse doesnt seem like the way to go for me as all the people who usually work it are probably also preordering. But in the end, we dont know enough about the expansion to be sure of anything.
Alt Friendly Warbands
The phrase “Basically, Account Wide Everything!” pretty much sums up this new feature and it’s a massive convenience boost to gold makers.
Having an account wide bank and reagent bank is going to be amazing for a crafting army.
The account wide reputations and renown is also going to be a major factor when unlocking recipes for alts and an easy way to gear up alts only adds to this feature.
Overall, this is going to be a fantastic quality of life upgrade. I do hope there is a way to integrate this into the Work Order system, so that you can effectively have a crafting warband and easily connect with players and Work Orders through a shared system. Perhaps something for later.
Manthieus has a great video going through his early thoughts on what’s been announced so far..
Personally, I’m very excited for what’s to come with the new expansions. As a player, I may scale back my operations and focus on just a few niches all depending on how much time I have available. With the region wide Auction House, competing with players with much more time resources is never that appealing. I’m going to focus on enjoying the game and story with gold making being a side income.
10.2 Gold Making
With the release of 10.2 this week, many have returned fresh off the hype of Blizzcon and are ready to jump into the new content.
There are a bunch of fresh videos from Manthieus, Penguin2gt and TheLazyGoldmaker going through some tips and tricks of what to look out for.
First up Penguin2gt has a video highlighting things to do early on and getting setup with recipes.
Next we have Manthieus with a rundown of the various new things including Skinning drops and similar recipes and PVP notes.
Finally, TheLazyGoldmaker has a rundown of how a fully decked out Enchanter can maximise profits in 10.2 with weapon enchants..
At this stage, those that are already deep into their professions can look to new recipes to help fill out their professions and others have options of the staple Dracothyst/Cloth cooldowns and World Quests / Races to fill out alts.
10.2 PVP Gear
One of the things mentioned for early gold making in 10.2 is PVP gear and CanadiaTV has put together a great guide talking about the new PVP gear in 10.2 and how to profit …
This will be a text guide but if you prefer the video format…
Season 3 pvp season
Season 3 is a copy-paste of season 2. Recipes are obtained the same way. Obviously everything in here is still ptr content and could still be subject to change. For pve, the ilvl goes from 379 to 412. 412 ilvl will be very convenient for returning players and alts. For pvp ilvl, it will go from 424 to 463. Considering the best season 2 gear is 450 ilvl, this will be best in slot for a very short time. The season 3 starts 1 week after the patch BUT if you look at season 2, everything was available on patch day for this type of gear.
With that new information, i found 4 ways to make gold.
The first way to make gold : Selling recipes
Recipes are obtained from pvp wins from battlegrounds and arenas. Looking at the amazing website undermine.exchange , i was able to track the pricing data for the season 2 recipes. I only tracked the leatherworking recipes as this was quite time consuming. That being said, it was very similar for other professions.
I’ve made a spreadsheet with my findings. Click on this text to see the spreadsheet
My findings were as follows :
- First day of the patch : Recipes averaged at around 168000g
- One week into the patch : Recipes averaged at around 68000g
- One month into the patch : Recipes averaged at around 14000g
So if you like pvp ( or gold ), getting those recipes could give you massive gold at the start of the patch.
Second way to make gold : Inscription trinkets
The 3 inscriptions trinkets recipes are different from the rest. You can buy them from a vendor in Valdrakken in the pvp area. The vendor is called Fieldmaster Embermath. Each recipe costs 3 Awakened Ire. This will be by far the best recipes to buy if you want to craft items which leads us to our 3rd way to make gold.
Third way to make gold : Getting recipes to craft items
There is a total of 42 new recipes. 16 for leatherworking, 9 for tailoring, 8 for blacksmithing, 4 for engineering, 3 for inscription and 2 for jewelcrafting. Just like recipes, i tracked the prices on undermine.exchange on the second page of the spreadsheet
My findings were as follows :
- First day of the patch : Recipes averaged at around 23000g
- One week into the patch : Recipes averaged at around 15000g
- One month into the patch : Recipes averaged at around 5000g
Looking at the 4 following pages of the spreadsheet, you’ll see the estimated crafting cost of items ( which is roughly 2000g per item ) . The prices were on the America region from about a week ago. Even one month after the release of the patch, you would make 3000g profit per item IF history repeats itself from season 2.
Skill and resourcefulness
Just like season 1 and 2, you will need 120 skill to craft the best quality. This is very easy to achieve with rank 2 materials and some knowledge. The only stat that matters is resourcefulness. Make sure to have a resourcefulness tool and a resourcefulness enchant. Tailors also have the shimmering embroidery thread that increases the potency of resourcefulness. They can be crafted or bought on the auction house for cheap.
A really big new factor comes into play next season that could really change the game for this season.
Cross-realm trading
In season 2, cross-realm trading wasn’t enabled yet. This will probably make the recipes a little bit less desirable. If you buy a recipe, you can now craft the items for every single realm if you have 2 accounts. In the past, you would need to get the recipe on each realm or do massive character transfers to propagate your crafts.
If you are going to get into crafting, it’s probably best to get a few recipes at the start but sell the items on as many realms as possible. Make sure to have lots of time available as this will be a very competitive market.
There is one more preparation you need to do and that leads to our fourth way of making gold.
Fourth way to make gold : Flipping speculation
( Everything in this section is mostly speculation. I do not know the future. This is just analysis that we can look at in the future and see where we were right and where we were wrong to be better at … speculating lol )
Infurious bolts, scales, bolts and alloys are not default recipes from the trainer. They can be sold and purchased on the auction house. If you want to craft these items, make sure to buy your infurious recipes before some goblins like me buys all the recipes from your server to flip them for when new crafters come into the market.
Awakened Ire
Awakened Ire is the biggest material needed for this. If you look again at undermine.exchange, the price one month before season 2 was about 100g each. One week before the patch, price became 200g and nowadays, its, over 300g ( all the prices are from the America region again ) .
It just keeps going up and a very big factor will come into play for this particular season ! In season 2, you would need 126 awakened ire to craft everything. In season 3, you need 200 awakened ire to craft everything. That is a 59% increase! For example, leatherworking recipes now need 4 infurious hide/scales in season 3. In season 2, you would only need 2 infurious hide/scales !
Every infurious bolt/hide/scales/alloy need Awakened Ire. It is obtained from infurious ores and herbs that only show up with war mode ON .
Auctionator shopping list
I made a list that works with the Auctionator addon . It is in the last page of the spreadsheet. Here is how you can import it :
1- Copy the text in the spreadsheet
2- Go to the auctionator shopping window in the auction house
3- Click on the import button. A box opens
4- Press ctrl+v on your keyboard. This will paste the text
5- Click the import button in the box and you now have a shopping list of every material involved in the crafts for potential flips or crafts
Shoutout
I want to take a second to appreciate the undermine.exchange website. It is an amazing free tool for goldmakers and you can support them on their patreon
If you have any questions or comments, please let me know here or on twitch . I should stream as i’m posting this.
I’m also very hungry for feedback. So if you see things that could be better in the video or in the text post, let me know.
Thanks and happy new patch !
Whilst hardcore PVP players may already be ready to gear up, this is still a great way to tap into the more casual PVP market. We also have a followup post from Canadia talking about early results now that 10.2 has dropped..
When the data was collected, i had 31 recipes. I bought 28 of those ( the 3 trinket recipes are from a vendor ) . I paid 1597550 gold for all 28 recipes for an average price of 57055 gold per recipe. I didn’t shop too hard to get them. I went on the biggest pop realms ( tichondrius, illidan, area52. I’m on the america region ) to buy them quickly. As much as it is data from the first 36 hours, i didn’t have all these recipes for the full 36 hours so keep that in mind.
Another interesting thing is i saw a lot of people mentioning recipe flipping. I did buy 2 amulet recipes for 50k and i resold both for 150k. So there is definitely potential there.
Sales , crafting cost and profit
I sold for 4934000 gold of items. I estimate the crafting cost at 740100 gold. I deducted the price of the recipes and the crafting cost of items to get a profit of 2596350 gold. Keep in mind the auction house cut has been included in these numbers.
Cross realm trading, competition and undercutting.
I posted my items on 7 different realms. 2 full pops, 1 high pop, 2 medium pop and 2 low pops. Funny enough, the top 3 performers we 1 full pop, 1 high pop and 1 medium pop.
Competition has been somewhat light for most items. Trinkets, rings, necks and cloak are extremely competitive. Competition today is getting wayyy more ferocious than it was last 2 days.
I got 80% of my sales in the evening. If you want to undercut these ( let’s be real, you will have to now ), do it on evenings! Not a lot of stuff sells during the day.
Flipping potential
I talked a lot about awakened Ire. When i made the post about 10 days ago, Awakened Ire was at about 300-350g. It is now between 575 and 625g. You can see a huge change as well in infurious bolts, alloys, hides and scales. Looking ahead, i have enough mats to supply thousands of items and i’m really unsure for the future of all this.
Gathering in emerald dream seems to be garbage. Pretty sure you make a lot more gold from going back to Zaralek Cavern. If people don’t go hard on farming awakened Ire, we could see the price go higher.
Overall thoughts
It was a disappointment to see all the 415-424 boe gear dropping extensively. No pve player should buy the pvp gear as the dropped gear is cheaper. That being said, i’m extremely happy with my sales. I will do another follow up in a week or 2 as i will keep doing this market for at least 2 weeks.
Here are some screenshots on my twitter from sales
I did all of the accounting on my twitch. You can check the vod here . The big mailbox opening starts at 11 minutes. The accounting starts at roughly the 3 hour mark.
If you have any questions, please let me know! Happy new patch goldmaking!
I think this is a fine example of how going all in early and being prepared can reap large rewards. Being aware of the high competition and making sure you have lots of time is essential!
Gold Farming Ruined
u/Mangert has shared their feelings about how the experience has changed the way they liked to play the game ..
I’ve been playing wow since Vanilla. I love this game. I got into gold farming in legion because there was a 250k gold Blazing Hippogryph on my AH. I learned all that I could about gold farming and farmed up and bought it! It was a huge achievement. I realized I loved gold farming as a way to relax after doing pvp. (Btw yes I’m very pissed everyone was given my crowning achievement for free…)
My main gold farming was always farming materials. I would skin. Current content and old content. (Think warbear leathers jormungar scales, savage leather, etc). I would also mine and herb old and current content (leystone/felslate, obsidium, whiptail) I would also farm non-profession materials like felcloth, tomes of polymorph, etc.
I made millions of gold. Some mats I was getting 60-100k an hour even if they wouldn’t sell for a while.
Then came the region wide auction house. And it was all ruined. Why? WHY! Prices became literally rock bottom. They knew what mat prices were like on high pop realm. Imagine a region wide AH, prices plummeted. Skinning probably getting hit the worst because of the addition of 2×4 farms for skinning.
Skinning supports leatherworking. Leatherworking creates demand. The demand from leatherworking is the same as always. But adding 2×4 farms skyrocketed the supply of leathers from skinning. Supply rises, demand stays the same. And that means… prices drop. Plummet in fact. Made even worse by a region wide auction house.
The region wide auction house has gutted all mat farming. The most u can make mat farming is like 10-15k! And that’s high end. I used to buy tokens like candy. And now my income has dwindled to nothing but gold from world quests.
Region wide auction house has ruined a huge aspect of the game, all so that I can buy potions and flasks for cheaper? Woohoo I guess?
I miss the days of just gold farming mats while I watched Netflix. I miss the days where I could buy my friends the new expansion because I had so much gold.
The only way to make good money now is crafting professions or selling boosts. I am a title m+ player but I never found a group to boost with, so that never happened.
U can make money transmog farming. But I am on a full pop realm and I wouldn’t make any money with transmog without undercut scanning multiple times a day. Which I don’t have the time or interest in doing. And the recent transmog series on this subreddit showed that it actually isn’t that much gold per hour anyway.
They would probably never revert it… but please revert the horrible region wide auction house.
Edit: Typos Edit 2: btw I think it’s super sad the best gold farm in the game is a minimum wage job and buying WoW tokens with real money
While I agree the landscape of gold making has changed since the introduction of the Region Wide Auction House, I can see how it benefits the wider playerbase by making commodities much more accessible. For me, I simply chose not to compete. It wasn’t fun anymore. I found new ways to enjoy old gold making methods in Classic.
What do you think? How has the Region Wide Auction House changed how you make gold? Have you jumped into Cross Realm trading instead? What do you find fun to make gold these days?
Cata Classic Items Removed
With the announcement of Cataclysm Classic, u/Zjar has been thinking about items soon to be removed from Wrath Classic …
With Cata classic announced, I figure now’s the time to farm items that will be removed from classic, to sell for much gold later on. All the lists I keep finding are recipes or quest items that aren’t tradable. The recipes I have open on a tab. The items I can slap on the auction house like removed swords, armor, etc I cannot seem to find. Anyone got said list?
There is of course such a list thanks the the ATT community as many of these items are seeing a return in Retail and so we go full circle!
Whether players in Classic will miss these items and there be a demand for them in future remains anyone’s guess. What will you do?
Further Reading
Most of this information was discussed and originally posted on the /r/woweconomy subreddit or in the accompanying Discord Server.
I hope you found this useful and If you have any suggestions or feedback, please do say so in the comments below..
Until next time, Happy Goldmaking!
Samadan
