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Gold Capped: How to reach the gold cap
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! Don't mind the intrusion, folks. It's me, Fox Van Allen. I'm filling in for Basil this week while he deals with the parasite that recently burst from his wife's stomach. (That's what those baby things are, right? Am I recalling seventh grade health class correctly?) If any of you have been following me on Twitter (and if you haven't, for shame), you may already know that back in March, Heartbourne of Lore Hound challenged me to a race to the 999,999g 99s 99c gold cap. I immediately accepted. After coming up with some basic rules (no gold buying, no server transfers, no "borrowing," no interfering with each other's auctions), the race to a million was on. During the contest, I was quiet about my gold-making activities -- I didn't want to tip off the competition. But now that the contest officially ended this past week, I'm free to talk about what happened. And so, my friends, what follows is the tale of how someone with virtually no gold-making knowledge went from next to nothing at the start of Cataclysm to, as of June 10, over one million gold.
Gold Capped: How much can I automate?
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! Today's inbox contained something that got me thinking about the definitions of botting and how weird the economy would be without the rules. Pat writes: I am looking at basic auction and mass-mail answering mods. I've just had a problem where I've found a good deal (Saronite Ore often drops below the vendor trash price once you forge it into bars), but it requires a titanic load of time to watch things. Time I could be using for other things, like sleeping at 4:00 a.m. when prices are super-low. Plus, it's a nuisance just to sit around and answer the mail to pick up the items. When you buy 500 stacks, even quick operations take a long time. Are there any tips or mods you could spotlight? I have tips and mods a-plenty, but I do not ever advocate making purchases while you sleep. The written rule is that this is Blizzard's world, and they can and will kick you out for "economic manipulation" without needing to provide any justification. The unwritten rule (discovered empirically through hundreds of auctioneer interactions with Blizzard CS reps, as well as letters sent to some mod authors who are on the line between just enough and too much automation) is that you can not have more than one batch run per hardware event.
Gold Capped: Making money with jewelcrafting
Want to get Gold Capped? This column will show you how, and is written by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the Hunting Party podcast, and the Call to Auction podcast. Hi folks, this week we'll be going over jewelcrafting. Making money with jewelcrafting can be a challenge, but it's a rewarding one. In fact, very few professions have as much earning potential as this one does. We'll start with the easy part: if you have a jewelcrafter, where's the low hanging fruit? I like to call this "reactive" profits. Anything where you can get a fixed income sort of profit for minimal effort, but you can't grind falls into this category for me. Alchemy has daily epic gem transmutes, mining used to have a daily Titansteel cooldown, tailoring has a bag cooldown, etc. What does jewelcrafting have?
Gold Capped: Auction house addon list
Every enterprising entrepreneur needs tools to manage their business. These tools will help us overcome the inherent inefficiency of the default UI. The new interface changes coming in patch 3.3.3 will solve some problems (mostly for posting en masse) but will not help us with other parts of the equation. Auctions The first thing you'll need is something that will let you manage auctions. I use different addons for different businesses:
Time Is Money: Felwood's wildlife
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply). After all, Time Is Money. Today, I'm going to talk to you about a way to make money skinning in Felwood, although similarly leveled zones work as well. This can be done with higher level characters or those who are at-level (50-60), although it moves more quickly if you have a character capable of chain pulling without having to stop to eat or drink or run back to your corpse all the time. If you don't have a skinner that is a high enough level, you really should get one. Leather sells consistently well, and is very easily gathered. In fact, you could get one today! Create a Death Knight, train skinning, and go on a rampage, starting with a low level starter zone and working your way up. Now that we've settled that, let's get down to the particulars.
Time Is Money: Putting your emblems to work
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply). After all, Time Is Money. If you're like me, you have a lot of excess emblems sitting around. Maybe you never got around to spending them before the next tier came out, or maybe the badge gear just never quite compared to your raid drops. Whatever the case, there is no sense letting them go to waste when you could put them to work and earn some gold! First, here is a quick breakdown of the current badge system, from most recent and difficult to acquire on down: Emblem of Frost: These can be acquired primarily by raiding Icecrown, completing the Raid Boss Per Week "weekly," or by completing one WotLK heroic dungeon per day using the Random tool. Emblem of Triumph: Most raids now drop these badges, as well as heroics. You will also be awarded these for doing any number of WotLK heroic dungeons past your first one per day using the Random tool. You will also get some by completing your first normal WotLK dungeon per day using the Random tool, as well as completing the Raid Boss Per Week "weekly." Also of note: If you get Heroic Oculus using the random tool, don't drop group! Not only has it been nerfed like crazy, but when you defeat the end boss, every player will receive a loot bag that will contain these badges and more, plus a chance at getting the super rare Reigns of the Blue Drake, which used to be available only by killing Malygos, who now drops his 25-man version (Azure) in both 10 and 25-man. Emblem of Conquest: Originally, these were acquired by running 10-man Coliseum, or 25-man Ulduar. Emblem of Valor: Originally these dropped from Ulduar 10-man and Naxxramas 25-man. Emblem of Heroism: These were among the first WotLK badges, and dropped from Naxxramas 10-man and heroic dungeons.
Time Is Money: Dungeon finder
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply). After all, Time Is Money. The new Dungeon Finder that was added in Patch 3.3 has been garnering a lot of attention lately - and for good reason! But did you know that you could use it to make money?
Time is Money: Down with the cooldown
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply). After all, Time is Money. Among the goodies that patch 3.3 will bring is a very welcome change. Transmute: Titanium will no longer be subject to a cooldown! This means that you can turn all of the saronite bars you can get your hands on into titanium bars; and saronite is so easy to obtain. Check out our previous guide to mining saronite. So how will this change how you will go about making your money? Pass through the break to find out.
Time is Money: Fishing for angels
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).Angelfish, that is. Not only are they scrumptious, they're extremely profitable. How does 80 gold (give or take, depending on your realm) per stack of 20 sound to you?Time InvestedSet aside 10-30 minutes a day to farm up a stack or two. If no one else is farming Dragonfin Angelfish in the area at the same time, you should be able to knock it off pretty quickly.
Time is Money: On patrol
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).How would you like to make 45g in less than 20 minutes per day? Act quickly, and they'll throw in 850 Argent Crusade reputation and a shot at your very own Deputy Pa'trolla Badge!Individual results may vary. If you are not level 80 yet, you won't make as much gold, but you will gain a whopping amount of experience! So how can you take advantage of this once-a-day offer? By going on a Troll Patrol of course! You need to finish in 20 minutes or less to get the full benefits, but lucky for you, I have all the tips to get you movin'.
Time is Money: Capitalizing on Patch 3.2
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).New patches always bring unique and often limited-time-only opportunities to cash in. To take advantage of them you have to be aware, come prepared, and be willing to invest in anything from materials to spending some quality time with the Auction House. So what can you get out of patch 3.2? Scanning through the latest PTR notes, here are some potential gold-making highlights. Remember, results may vary:GlyphsStrangulate, a Death Knight ranged ability that silences, will soon also apply a 3 second Interrupt effect on non-player controlled targets (read: not for PvP). While a few other abilities are also getting this buff, you might note that there is actually a Glyph of Strangulate, which skims 20 seconds off its cooldown. Considering how many fights depend on the tank and DPS to constantly be interrupting effects (General Vezax anyone?), this particular glyph might become more popular. Frustrated Paladins everywhere probably have dropped Glyph of Exorcism from their PvP specs, but with 3.2 making it usable on players again, they may be wanting it back.Glyph of Claw is being added to the game, and you can expect pretty much all ferals pre-level 50 (when they train Mangle) to pick it up. Although you won't be able to make this pre-patch, you could farm the materials.
Time is Money: Farming for Nerubian Chitins
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).Nerubian Chitins are gathered by Skinners and used by Leatherworkers, and although they show up on a number of mobs, there are only a handful of areas that are actually worth farming. They sell for around 5g a piece, and Leatherworkers consume them in bunches from one up to 40! In fact, for several levels, the chitins provide some of the best and cheapest leveling options. On the low end, they are used for leg armor enhancement kits, and on the high end, epic gear.Azjol-NerubIf you can get a group to run Azjol-Nerub with you a few times, with you as the only Skinner, you'll make quite the profit. The skinnable mobs there have an average drop rate of about 25%.In Icecrown, before you start questing...Upon entering Icecrown, your first stop will likely be the Argent Vanguard, a mid-size outpost with several quests available to you. Before you begin these quests, or at least, before you hand in A Cold Front Approaches, start farming the mobs around the camp. Once you hand in that quest, you phase out permanently, and all of those spiders will be gone.
Time is Money: Saronite
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply). Saronite translates into easy WoW gold, and can be farmed in massive quantities in Sholazar Basin, Icecrown and Storm Peaks. Wintergrasp is also a great place to farm it, despite being ground-bound.MinersSacred Duty, a prot pally blog, recently posted an excellent example of a simple yet effective saronite farming route in Icecrown. If you cannot fly yet, I highly recommend Sholazar Basin. Follow the rivers, run around the pillars, and circle the province perimeter. In fact, pretty much anywhere you go, you will find saronite, and the mobs are mid-seventies, unlike the heavy hitters in Icecrown. As for Storm Peaks, make sure to fly up where you would think you have no business being. Giant cliff walls that stretch for miles and random peaks may be boring, but they do contain nodes. An hour could easily grant you a few hundred ore. Before you smelt it, check your AH prices for ore versus bars. Because two ore go into a bar, you will want to smelt your ore into bars to sell if one ore is worth less than half of one bar. Otherwise, sell the ore! Jewelcrafters will buy it up for prospecting.
Time is Money: Farming in Sholazar Basin, part one
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).A few weeks ago, I discussed the province of Storm Peaks and several of its gold-making opportunities. This week, we will be moving on to Sholazar Basin, a level 75-78 zone. This area is more accessible to mid-level Northrend characters, and doesn't require a flying mount to take advantage of most of the farming areas.
Time is Money: Owning your own guild bank
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).A character's bank is a special place meant to store gear, consumables, novelty items and a whole mess of other things (and I do mean mess!). Because of this, many players have at least one "bank alt" which is an additional character created primarily to house and auction items. The value of your banker's ability to store things should not be underestimated. Today, I will walk you through the steps to and costs of purchasing bank space, and show you an example of how it can be utilized to help you make gold. Banking Costs: Guild vs. PersonalEvery bank alt should purchase the first four bag slots within their own personal banks. This will cost you a total of 36g10s, and require that you purchase actual bags to place in those slots. The more slots the bags can hold, the more storage you will have.
Time is Money: Using the unmodified Auction House
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).The Auction House is something that you've probably been using since you were a wee little thing, still counting coppers. Despite this experience, there may still be a few things about the system that you might not know, and these tricks will help you buy smart and sell with confidence. Purchasing itemsi. Price per itemWhen asked what the focus of my public school math classes were, the first thing that comes to mind is grocery store navigation. Seriously. I'm pretty sure that we spent an ample amount of time, spread out over the years, working on making change, understanding tax, and learning that price per unit (such as $1 per pound) is sometimes convoluted in order to trick us into parting with more cash. When looking at the basic, unmodified Auction House, you can quickly determine which stacks of cloth are selling each piece for the cheapest. This is easy to do when looking at several stacks of 20, but often, there are several partial stacks for sale as well, and sometimes you can actually get a bargain by snatching those up. Other times, they're priced at a huge mark-up!Mouse-over the icon for the item, and the tooltip that appears will tell you the Bid Price Per Unit and the Buyout Price Per Unit. In seconds, you'll be able to tell what to bid on, what to buy out, and what to avoid.
Time is Money: Low-level cloth
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).Cloth has always been a farming staple. It doesn't require any special skills, and you can begin right out of the gate. Changes to the game over the past year have put some cloth in even higher demand, making it an incredibly lucrative business. While any cloth is worth farming, there are two types in particular, wool and mageweave, that fetch a high price. This is because, compared to the other types of cloth, they have a short window of appearance when leveling. Depending on how often you linger when questing, you practically jump straight from linen to silk, and from silk to runecloth. To add to this, Blizzard has increased the speed at which we level, and even added bind on account shoulder armor that speeds us up even more. You can even Recruit-a-Friend for an unprecedented bonus. The advent of achievements has also increased the demand for cloth, as people are eager to earn reputation, become pirates and then buddy up to the goblins again, and maximize professions. So how can you best take advantage of this market?
Time is Money: Farming in Storm Peaks
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).Today we'll be discussing some of the choice farming locations in the province of Storm Peaks. There are three areas in particular that I will point out, as well as some good gathering tips and information on where you can locate rare mobs. Don't forget to check the comments section, as I'm sure it will be full of sweet spots and mob-hunting information!
Time is Money: Selling vs. Disenchanting
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).Today we'll be discussing the benefits of disenchanting items, and weigh them against your other options, such as vendoring and auctioning. For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to assume that you aren't using the materials to level, but rather, are interested in making the most gold possible.
Time is Money: Addons to beat the Vendors
Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).Earlier this week, I taught you a system for making the most gold from vendoring quest rewards that you can't use, without bogging down your computer system with addons.If you don't like the cheat sheet, or think that "heavy items" are too difficult to remember, or you simply love the way that addons can enhance your gaming experience, I have the inside scoop on mods that will tell you which quest reward will sell for the most and that will help you manage your vendor trash.
