Basic Making WOW Classic Gold Guides

WOW Classic Gold is needed in everything from purchasing basic equipment like food and water, repairing your gear after a hard day’s adventure, and even buying trinkets and gizmos to have some fun,In WOW Classic there are several ways to make Gold, U4GM would like to introduce a few of them in this guide.

Step 1 — Change from Crafter to Gatherer

Change your trade skill into two gathering skills if you see that your trade skill doesn’t bring much profit, in fact, trade skills mostly bring very few profit because there are just too many high-level crafters with the time progressing.
Leveling trade skills or gathering skills in WOW Classic is really not hard, at high level, it requires maybe 2–3 days of work to max skill. If there was really some big profit to make with enchanting/leatherworking/smithing/tailoring, don’t you think that other people who can spend more time than you online each day, would have already long ago maxed those trade skills and started to flood the market with items?

In fact they did; actually shortly after people start to hit 60 on a new server people start to exploit all possible ways to make Gold to the maximum, so you got two possibilities to make Gold. You can find a niche, a little secret way of making Gold, which is extremely profitable but which is not known (well) by other players. As long as your secret stays one, you will continue to make nice Gold, but be sure that you won't find such a secret on any public forums as spoiling it would also ruin the profit from it. (As soon as people know a way to make Gold, many starts to provide the same sort of item and flood the market with it = decrease of demand = decrease of price = no profit for you)
The second way, which is an interesting way for us, is to provide the market with items that are needed on a large base and that is always demanded. What are those items in general? Right! Ingredients for trade skills.

Step 2 — Choose your Gathering Skill

Almost every trades killer won't, at some point, be able to provide himself with all the ingredients he needs. The more people there are who stick to their trade skills and don’t want to give them up, the better the profit will be for you. This is why you should choose two gathering skills (cannot choose more than two).
People will ask themselves now… but wait, if I give up my trade skill I won’t be able to make myself armor anymore? For that problem there is a simple solution, use mostly drop/quest items. If you use items that drop instead of crafted items, you won't be much behind (the difference between items you can make and items you find at your level while questing and hunting are mostly very small) and also you will be able to concentrate fully on gathering ingredients which you will sell on the AH. This way you will — in a short and fast way — make a lot more Gold than any crafter and will eventually be able to buy yourself any crafted item (if you should really want one).

Now there is only one problem, which gathering skills to choose?
Well, this is really your choice and depends on the economy of your server, but We will try to make a general list of the gathering skills, ranking them by how much profit they generate, helping you to get an overview.

1)Mining — Mining is maybe the most profitable gathering skill. Why? It’s used for 3 different trade skills => Weapon/Armor Smithing + Engineering. Also, some ores/metal bars are used for potions and other trade skills. You can mine several ores from one mining spot and you can melt the ore yourself to bars.
The other VERY important fact is that you get rare gems from mining spots which are needed for trade skills and other things. At high levels, these rare gems start to pay off a lot, as one arcane crystal, for example, can be sold for a lot of Gold on the AH, because it is needed for making Arcanite Bars the most precious and rare metal there is.

2)Skinning — Skinning is also a very profitable gathering skill as you get all your leather while hunting. You have to kill the beast type of mobs which can drop different sorts of leather. Sometimes you get rare scales and quest items which are also extremely precious. Skinning is so profitable because you can do it while killing mobs, that means you go into a cave with beasts and kill them for a certain among of time which brings you extra loot + Gold as well as loads of leather.

3)Herbalism — Herbs are a bit hard to find, but if you know the spots it becomes actually easy if you have no competition. Herbs sell surprisingly well on the AH and are not offered often. If you really search good spots in high-level zones, with not too many people you can make nice Gold out of this. Especially because you can get up to three herbs from one plant.

4)(Dis)Enchanting — The last and certainly least profitable gathering skill is disenchanting items. You take blue/green/purple drop items and disenchant them to get ingredients for enchanters, who then can enchant armor with stats. This is by far the most
pricy skill to raise as you miss out on all the profit from dropped items which you could sell. Enchanting ingredients can be sold for nice Gold on the AH, but keep in mind that you will not be able to sell any good item that you see dropping if you take this skill serious. Also, you will have to ask and begin groups to get not needed armor/weapon drops in order to disenchant them, if you don't play in a guild, you will certainly not be successful with your requests often.

Step 3 — Organised Gathering

Now you need to start gathering items. It doesn’t matter if you raise your gathering skills while leveling or as a high level, you will always want to keep these things in mind:

• Ingredients drop according to zone level. That means, the higher the level of the ingredients you need, the higher the level the zone gets in which you have to search.
• Always keep up your tracking. If you do mining or herbalism, make sure to ALWAYS have the tracking for those items switched on,
  after dying, for example, it turned itself off and you won't see any yellow dots anymore on the map.
• Find good zones. There are certainly better zones than others for gathering skills and good spots for finding beasts to the skin, you will have to find your very own favorite spots which are not too crowded, but there are already people who found out about the good zones for gathering. On our forums here you can find a complete compendium of the best zones for each herb for example and there is more to come about this shortly. In the meantime you don’t have to go and search through all zones, you can simply use https://classic.wowhead.com/ and check where the ingredient you need can be found most frequently.
• Make dots on your map. Either use the dot system (from cosmos or insomniacs) for making dots where you find certain minings spots/herb locations or use a mod that will do this for you automatically; you can find one in our download section.
  This will allow you to go directly — without losing time — to the possible spots for ingredients and check if they are up. The longer you do this and the more different paths you take through a zone, the more dots you will get and the faster/more efficient you will become while gathering.
  For skinning it's slightly different; here you will most likely find caves with a lot of beasts (like the ape cave in Un’Goro or the Yeti cave in Winterspring), but make dots anyway so you can

quickly go to another skinning spot if there is already someone hunting at yours.

Step 4 — Use all Your Options

You will have to combine your gathering skills with a few other things to really make the biggest profit.

• While searching ingredients or while waiting on the respawn of your mining/herb spots, KILL THINGS. Kill things as much as you can on your way. Don’t kill any trash like Oozes for example, but kill stuff that drops cloths (humanoid mobs) or mobs that drop other useful stuff. If you really don’t get the time to kill mobs on your way then go into instances from time to time. Make sure to find a rule for the loot that is distributed and make sure to always ask if anyone needs an item, if not everyone should roll on this dropped item. Eventually, you will win stuff and be able to sell in on the AH.
  Additionally, in instances, you will find a lot of clothes from mobs which you can sell in stacks on the AH.
• Always empty your bags before going to gather stuff or before going to an instance. This is extremely important, bag space = Gold. Therefore try to invest early in 14–16 slot bags to carry as much loot as possible.
• When you do quests, and when you don’t need any of the items that are offered as a reward, make SURE to always pick the biggest Axe/Sword/Plate Armor. Those sell for a much nicer Gold than cloth items at the merchant.
• Friends who do trade skills can help. If you got friends who do trade skills PROFIT from their knowledge and ask them about how the economy goes for ingredients, what do they need the most right now, what is the hardest item to find currently, etc?
  *Make Mules. If you lack bank space don’t buy pricy bank slots, just make a mule and log it in when needed, using the postbox system or a friend or a second computer (if the mule is on second account) to transfer items.

Step 5 — Auction House is Your Friend

Now we get to one of the most important factors for Gold making, the Auction House in short AH. Almost all ingredients/gems/armor pieces can be sold for a bigger Gold at the AH than to the merchant. Even if the price difference is only 1 gold, it pays off with the time coming. And there we already get to the most important rule about the AH — PATIENCE.
You will have to get to know the AH, it’s pricing and it’s moods, it’s timing and it’s secrets. Don’t mind studying the AH for a lot of time, it’s well worth it. There are UI mod’s that write down automatically on item windows the prices that they were seen for last time on AH, this makes your work much much easier.
A few things that you need to work out about the AH:

• Get to know the prices, play with the prices. Get to know the going prices for items that are offered on the AH. This will allow you to estimate the best prices for your own items and will allow you to even play with these. This means, if you know exactly how much an item is worth normally, why not offer it for a slightly higher price when there is no one else offering the same item?
  Right, this is where the actual profit comes from, knowledge about prices and the AH.
• Offer all your items. Even if it might be a bother at the beginning and even if it might take a while, you will get used to it and find out eventually which items sell on the AH at all and which not, allowing you to sell the ones that don’t sell well at all to the merchant immediately. You will pretty quickly get the drill and become a pro, you will be able to memorize prices and use them quickly to set values for your goods in order to move on faster to more farming.
• Watch the AH. This will allow you to detect certain leaks and holes. Sometimes items like ores are offered at a huge amount and prices drop, you might want to keep your items and sell other things first while waiting for a moment when there is less of these items for sale. You might EVEN consider (if you find cheap merchandise on the AH) to buy up all of it yourself and sell it for a higher price afterward, people will be forced to buy from you and forced to pay the price you set because they won't be any other source for this item, then yours.
  *Whatever you do, DON’T UNDERBID. People tend to make the prices for items lower in order to sell them faster and to underbid competitors, this, however, is very narrowminded. It will hurt you in the end and cause you to have to sell your items cheaper and cheaper, getting less and less Gold in the long run.
  Look at this example: Mostly trade killers start off selling crafted items for a big profit, then when the competition comes they have to lower the prices and at the end, they end up selling their stuff for slightly more than what it cost to make it.
  So if you can prevent a price decrease, rather be patient and leave your items at the same price, eventually, they will get bought, even if it takes several tries.
• Look at what times items sell the best. This sounds easy but it’s actually something you always have to keep in mind.
  If, for example, you hunt in an instance and get a blue item, you will want to put it on the AH fast. But let us assume that you are playing at a very late time like 3 am. If you put the auction for your blue item now with a 24h duration, the auction will expire at 3 am the next night, not leaving many people the chance to overbid each other at the end. (most bids are made at the last moments) So always look at what is the best, 8h duration or 24h, always check if you shouldn't maybe wait for the next day rather offer your item for sale, etc…
• Always put up buyout prices. Never make auctions for items without having a buyout price. Many people who want to raise crafting or want an armor piece fast don’t want to wait 1 day in order to know if they won an auction or not. This is especially true for crafting ingredients. Imagine you are a crafter, would you want to bid on one stack of mithril bars and then wait like 1 day just to know if you won, although you need the bars now? Most likely you wouldn’t, so always put a buyout. Also, there are many people who have a lot of Gold and really want an armor piece, those will gladly pay the buyout price if they really desire what you sell and if your buyout price is not way too high.
• the Last point is.. what to put as a buyout and what to put as a base bid? This is something you will have to find out yourself but a general rule that you can apply at the beginning is, don’t ever go lower than the default base price that is given to you as starting bid. Also if you are not sure what to put as a buyout, look at other auctions selling the same item, if there is none, but the double of the base price (+ a bit more maybe) until you get to know the economy. But beware, this is only a vague rule for beginners, getting to know the prices of your AH is OBLIGATORY.