gold-making
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The economics of perfect gem cuts
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! This expansion is the first one where "perfect" cuts (which are about a 10% proc rate when you're cutting a green quality gem) are blue quality, and even though they have different names, they have identical stats as blue quality gems. People still don't generally know this, and will sometimes skip over the perfect cuts when they're gemming new gear, but over time it will become more commonly known that there's no difference between socketing, for example, a Perfect Delicate Pandarian Garnet or a Delicate Primordial Ruby. If you're an enchanter, you may have noticed that the price for the common materials has gone way down, and if you're a jewelcrafter, you're probably wondering what to do with all the green quality gems you get from prospecting, as well as potentially looking wistfully at the profit margins on some of the really desirable research blue cuts.
Gold Capped: Six tips to make gold in the first month of MoP
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Every new expansion brings with it two things: more ways to make gold, and more ways to spend it. Making gold can be a very rewarding and engaging way to play the game on its own, but it's not for everyone. Here are a few tips that can help anyone make gold in the first few weeks of an expansion. Pay later A huge part of how much gold you have is actually how much you spend. Most people neglect this part of the equation, allowing their subconscious to choose when to splurge. A very simple way to have more money to spend on even more cool stuff is to avoid buying something until you absolutely need it. For example, if you decide to powerlevel that engineer or leatherworker, you have a choice: either pay now, or choose to wait a few weeks and level your profession when the mats go down in price. The only difference is the order you do things in, but waiting will save you thousands of gold in materials.
Ink traders still accepting Blackfallow Ink
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! The ink traders you find near inscription trainers allow you to buy any lower-level common ink you might need for the price of one current ink. Glyphs take a variety of inks, and if you want to craft one, you're more likely to need ink from some earlier expansion than you are a current ink. In Wrath of the Lich King, we were trading in Ink of the Sea. In Cataclysm, we've been trading in Blackfallow Ink. In Mists of Pandaria, including patch 5.0.4, we'll be trading in Ink of Dreams -- or at least the tooltip at the ink trader would have you believe.
Addon Spotlight: Getting started with TradeSkillMaster auctioning
Last time on Addon Spotlight, we talked about TradeSkillMaster (TSM) crafting. It was a bit of a slog, but I hope some of the readership were able to take the instructions and get TSM and have a bit of a go at setting it up. The setup is definitely a trial, but it's so worth it in the end. This week, we're taking our hard-earned crafted items, and we're going to sell them on the auction house. It is kind of the idea, after all! Just like last time, if you haven't already, please ensure that if you're trying to follow these instructions that you've got all the relevant modules of TSM installed. PowerWordGold helpfully and correctly pointed out in the last column's comments that TSM Gathering is outdated and should not be downloaded, but get the rest. As you get more accustomed to the addon, you'll be able to work out what you use and switch things off if they're not necessary. Download TradeSkillMaster: TradeSkillMaster.com, Curse Again, with this column, I'm not going to be getting into the really detailed super-user aspects of TSM. Like I said before, it's not really necessary to just get up and running with it. Once you've begun, you'll inevitably start working out how the additional elements work, and the more advanced guides will start to make more sense. I linked setup instructions for these guides in the past, so I won't be delving into the details for each profession. This is just a general guide. Right, that's the housekeeping out of the way. Once more into the breach, my friends!
9 reader tips for making gold
For someone who doesn't really know much about gold or the making of it, I've been posting a lot about gold recently! I recently posted a Breakfast Topic asking our dear readers what their gold-making secrets are, and we at WoW Insider thought the comments deserved their own post. First and foremost, some gold making tips cropped up too many times for me to attribute them to any one commenter. 1. Loot everything, sell everything. CaptainFreddy puts it well: And from someone who got his paladin Charger back in Vanilla, loot and sell EVERYTHING. You may feel grody picking that Troll Sweat up, but that's silver in the pocket. SueNankivell adds: And get a 'Vendor greys' addon to save time. If you're an AH player, these methods are not the fastest ways to make money. On the other hand, if you're NOT, then you need to make the most of what you DO do in WoW. Loot everything, and sell everything you don't need or use on the AH. 2. Use addons to your advantage. Many commenters mention the various addons that they use. TradeSkillMaster of course crops up a lot, along with others. AltosGold says: The "cunning scheme" is proper use of addons. Whether you are using TSM for posting auctions, Auctionator/Auctioneer for scans/resales, NPC Scan for farming rares, or Dailies Quest addon, the list goes on and on. Even a novice "gold maker in training" can utilize these addons and with a little bit of knowledge can rake in quite a bit of cash.
A First Look at Mists of Pandaria Professions: Tailoring
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. Tailoring has always been a solid profession choice, especially for casters. You can create some of the best, epic-quality gear for your character with your own two (digitized avatar's) hands. You can even create some serious bank notes by selling leg enchants and bags. It's never been the most profitable profession -- but in every expansion, it's been a solid money maker. A number of tailoring patterns have finally started appearing on the Mists of Pandaria beta. But is the outlook for the upcoming expansion as golden as it's been in the past? The outlook is a bit cloudy (misty? haw haw haw), but we'll still see if we can make some sense of some of the major changes coming to the profession in just a few months' time. Just how major are these changes, you might ask? Major enough that it's worth considering whether or not it's time to give tailoring up for good.
Breakfast Topic: What's your gold making secret?
I've been posting quite a bit about gold of late, mainly on the subject of gold sinks. In the comments of both these articles, many people have spoken about how they barely even look at the Auction House and make 10k gold per week. Others have waxed lyrical on how gosh-darn easy it is to make gold in WoW, how all you need to do is read up a little, know your markets and post auctions. Some have said they farm; some have said they don't. Some have said that the gold you make just by doing daily quests and leveling is very high; some have disagreed. An overarching theme I've noticed, though, is that those who do know how to make gold have their methods, while those who don't know how to make gold (myself included) barely have a clue. In my PvP columns, the commenters are always very generous with their advice for others, so I thought I'd try to engender the same spirit in some gold making secret sharing! So what's your gold-making secret? As I mentioned, I'm not that great at making gold. However, I do have a few cunning ploys. If I just need a bit of fast gold and I've got some time to kill, I farm herbs. Obviously, the Cataclysm ones are good sellers. I go and check out the Auction House to see what's low in supply and higher priced than usual, and then I go farm that. However, not flooding the market is a good move, so I'll mix it up a bit rather than posting 20 stacks of the same herb. Also, whenever my alts level up, I send the cloth they loot to my tailor. Certain cloth sells very well on my server, but if it isn't that sort of cloth, I tailor it into cloth gear, then disenchant that gear on the same character and put the resulting materials on the Auction House. Some sell better than others, but it can still be better than selling the cloth. And if the mats aren't selling, I'll make them into an enchant! So those are a couple of my cunning schemes. What are yours?
Gold sinks and entitlement in WoW
I recently published a news piece about the price hike of the Grand Expedition Yak from 60,000g to 120,000g in the Mists of Pandaria beta. I was not overly surprised by the reaction to the piece at first; I had expected something of an outcry, as there often is at the introduction of gold sink items. But then I began thinking about why. Why do gold sinks promote such ire in the WoW community? I first approached the question from the angle that it's hard to earn that sort of gold. Whatever you think, for the beginning Auction House player, it is. It's hard to transform 500g into 120,000g. And it's hard to imagine that such a transformation would ever be feasible when you're the person with 500g across all their characters or even the person who's always sat at about 30,000g -- no more, no less -- despite having a go at playing the Auction House. That latter one is me, by the way. I do try at playing the Auction House; I'm simply not very good at it or very dedicated! Worrying, really, when you consider I used to work for a hedge fund. I was managing real estate, in my defence.
Gold Capped: Spirit of Harmony crafting limitations
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! The Spirit of Harmony is going to be the limiting factor in a lot of craftable items in Mists of Pandaria. Just take a look at all the recipes it'll be a reagent for -- some 153 so far, and they haven't even finished designing the professions. The interesting part of this is that the Spirits (and the Motes you can turn into Spirits) are going to be bind on pickup, which means that you can't trade for them. Does this means that you will not be able to level a profession up to the new maximum skill level without farming Spirits and Motes of Harmony yourself? Will it mean the end of readily available, entry-level crafted PvP and PvE blues?
A First Look at Mists of Pandaria Professions: Inscription
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. I know there's some disagreement between myself and Basil over this, but inscription is hands down my favorite profession. That's not really because I like the process of finding or buying herbs, and I absolutely detest the whole milling procedure. It's because I like money. Inscription made me stupid rich. So, it would only follow then that I have great interest in what scribes will be up to come Mists of Pandaria. After all, Cataclysm brought the advent of the ultra-profitable and high-demand Mysterious Fortune Cards, so Blizzard must have something cool up its sleeves for this next expansion, too, right? Well ... sort of! I mean, let's face it, Mysterious Fortune Cards are a pretty big bar to set. That being said, there's some serious love coming scribes way in terms of new things to sell, new items to equip, and new, fun things to have fun with. But don't take my word for it. See for yourself.
A First Look at Mists of Pandaria Professions: Engineering
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- if you're not having fun while playing World of Warcraft, you're doing it wrong. Sure, raiding is great, and so is having pockets full of gold. But if you don't find either of those fun, then why bother? Find something that is fun. Fun, of course, is what the engineering profession is all about. It's certainly not about money, after all -- engineers make very few things that non-engineers can use. But while you're struggling to make money in MoP, you'll at least be getting a lot of new perks to enjoy while doing all that struggling. There are cool new pets, new conveniences, new gear, a new world-altering device, and even new mounts -- yes, mounts with an s! Exciting times are most definitely ahead for engineers. So strap on your goggles and have a robot roll up your sleeves -- we're going to dive right in.
Gold Capped: Things that still sell at the end of an expansion
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! The end of an expansion is a tough time to make gold. There's a lot more competition for a lot less demand. Many people see gold-making as a nice casual way to play while they wait for the next content dump, and fewer people are playing seriously (which is the root of demand for a lot of popular and profitable markets). To top it all off, we know that inflation is going to take a huge chunk out of our net worth when Mists launches, and there are a bunch of new things to save money up for. What kind of things can you still sell to make a profit?
Should you change professions for Mists of Pandaria?
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. Last week here in Gold Capped, I gave you a sneak peek at the alchemy profession in Mists of Pandaria, including some of the new potions, flasks, and transmutes available to those willing to put in the work. That column apparently got a lot of you thinking, because immediately afterward, I got no fewer than three emails from players asking if they should change their professions to alchemy -- or more generally, whether or not they should switch to a better profession. It's a question to which there's no easy answer. Each profession has the potential to be profitable -- some more so than others, sure. But one person might make millions of gold from inscription, for example, while another player struggles to make a few silver. Aside from knowledge (which you're all getting right here from Gold Capped, natch), what's the biggest factor regarding a profession's profitability? It's your playstyle. Certain professions lend themselves to the weekend Auction House warrior, while others reward daily persistence. So what profession is right for you? And should you change to that profession for Mists of Pandaria?
A first look at Mists of Pandaria professions: Alchemy
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. One of the most common questions I get as WoW Insider's (other) resident Auction House guru is this: What professions are going to be the best in Mists of Pandaria? Arguably, there's no absolute right or wrong answer to the question -- after all, each profession is going to have its pros and cons. (I like to hedge my bets by giving different alts different professions to have a max level of each profession.) That said, one of my favorite professions for the early days of any expansion is alchemy. It's likely one of your favorites, too, and there's no mystery as to why -- transmutes. In the earlier days of Cataclysm, it wasn't rare to see Truegold sell for more than 1,000 gold apiece. That provided a small profit to any alchemist, but for those lucky enough to see bonus procs, a single transmute could turn a 4,000 gold profit or better. Not bad for about 20 seconds' worth of work. Of course, that was then; this is now. Will alchemy remain as stupidly profitable in the early days of Mists of Pandaria? Only one way to find out -- ladies and gentlemen, it's time to datamine! To the beta!
3 items to unload and 3 to stock up on before Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. As we approach the end of the Cataclysm expansion -- there are maybe four months left -- playing the Auction House gets a bit trickier. There's less enthusiasm on the part of buyers. More scary, though, is that the launch of Mists of Pandaria is about to render a lot of markets obsolete. It happened in Wrath and in The Burning Crusade too -- those potions and flasks that were top of the line suddenly became worthless. Gear that once cost thousands of gold could be had for hundreds. It's the nature of our in-game hobby. If you sit on stock, you're going to lose a fortune. (Shamefully, it happened to me out of laziness.) But not everything is set to crash. A few select items are going to increase in value, if not in the days leading up to MoP, then shortly after launch. These are the items you need to fill your bank tabs with. But which ones are they? What should you sell ASAP, and what should you buy?
Meet the new million-gold jewelcrafting mounts
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. I had an absolute blast with Mat McCurley, Mike Sacco, and Alex Ziebart at PAX East 2012 this weekend. If you've been living under a rock, the four of us put on a great live panel discussion in front of about 200 to 300 excited fans. We met our fans (you!), gave away a ton of crazy awesome prizes (including immortality as a WoW Trading Card Game card), and had a lot of fun. We also discussed the big news of the day, which was the new Mists of Pandaria beta patch. There's a lot of news in there for class columnists. But of interest to us as those who make and break the WoW economy, we've unearthed a new mount for jewelcrafters. And another mount for jewelcrafters. And another. And another. And yet a fifth. Yes, you heard me -- there are no fewer than five new JC mounts in the beta files. If any jewelcrafters in the audience are salivating, they have a right to be. These new mounts could be a veritable bonanza for those who take the time to craft them. And they could wind up saving the World of Warcraft economy at the same time.
Mists of Pandaria: Glyphmas 2012 for scribes is right around the corner
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction! Once upon a time, all was quiet throughout the land. Players had made glyph choices throughout Wrath, and they were good. Scribes made decent money. Then came patch 4.0.1. The opening salvo of Cataclysm, the Shattering, didn't just break the world. It broke players' glyph setups, as well. A slew of new glyph options were added to the game. Players had to choose nine glyphs, up from six. At the very least, everyone had to buy three new glyphs. For glyph sellers, times were good -- so good, in fact, that the magical time post-patch 4.0.1 was dubbed Glyphmas. We've already been told that major changes will be coming to glyphs once more for the pre-Mists of Pandaria patch 5.0.1. Prime glyphs are disappearing. A whole slew of new minor glyphs are being added to the game to promote fun. The opportunity for another Glyphmas is clearly present. But will scribes experience the same kind of gold rush they did at the end of the last expansion? What's different this time around? And what, exactly, is the best way to prepare to cash in?
3 things that will become more expensive in Mists of Pandaria
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! If you save every gold you have right now until the next expansion, you won't actually be any poorer than you currently are, but you sure will feel like you are. Assuming there are no new gold sinks, the amount of gold entering your characters' pockets is going to skyrocket, and they will all buy stuff you want, raising prices across the board. Farmers will make more from crafters, who will charge more for crafted goods. World of Inflationcraft Inflation is one of those universal truths like taxes and hunter envy. Unlike hunter envy, though, it can't be avoided by simply upgrading your main from a support class to a hunter. The best way to deal with it is to plan ahead and tie up as much of your money on things that will go up in price. You want to aim for things that will rise at least as much as inflation will erode the value of your savings.
Gold Capped: Transferring to a new server
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him. And be sure to catch the return of Basil and Fox's podcast, Call to Auction! In the game world, just as in the real world, prices of even the most basic of materials fluctuates based on your location. A hamburger in Beverly Hills costs more than a hamburger in Milwaukee. Heck, just about everything costs more in Beverly Hills -- that's just the way it goes. Your dollar is simply worth less there. But what if we were going to move from Milwaukee to Beverly Hills? We could just brace ourselves and accept that we're going to have to pay more for hamburgers. Or, we could load up our car with hamburgers and resell them for a profit when we arrive. That concept is probably a bit disgusting -- I wouldn't recommend a cross-country trip with a car filled to the brim with ground meat. But when it comes to realm transfers, the idea's right on the money. On some realms, gold is worth more. On other realms, the stuff you buy with gold is worth more. Making the most out of a server transfer (or indeed, making a realm transfer with the goal of making in-game money from it) is a skill that could make you rich overnight -- literally.
3 things that need to change about WoW's auction house
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Of all the many things that could be done to make the Auction House a less frustrating and intimidating experience for players, three stand out to me. First, Blizzard needs to fix the insane inflation in the economy. Second, it needs to fix what people see when they click on an auctioneer, and lastly, it needs to allow farmers to fill buy orders instead of posting stock for sale. These three changes, if made, would greatly equalize the economy and serve to reduce the drudgery that the vast majority of players have to deal with. What the heck are buy orders? I'll start with buy orders because it's the least obvious issue. Right now, when a farmer wants to make some gold for a BoE or a mount or whatever, they go and farm and then come back to a city and dump everything they've made onto the AH. Nobody likes waiting for their money, and most farmers have been burned by a huge batch of goods coming back, minus the auctioneers' listing cut, unsold due to too much competition. In order to have to wait to lose money for all the hard work they did, they'll list their goods more cheaply than they're perhaps worth.
