This post was inspired by one of my newer guildies. He’s quite young & although a very good player, he’s never really looked into gold making. I sent him to my blog & pointed out my blog roll. Ten minutes later on skype, he said that he’d learned something new to him & told me what it was. I was kind of surprised that he didn’t know it already because he’s a pretty smart cookie but it made me think of what else I take for granted that might not be so obvious to new goldmakers & so this post was born! I hope it helps any inexperienced readers to make some gold but also, it is a sharp reminder to the more experienced of us, not to forget some of the simpler thngs that we can do once we’re playing with our maxed professions.

Skinning & Leatherworking

When you first start skinning, you get a lot of Ruined Leather Scraps which I clearly remember selling to a vendor when I was totally new to game. If you don’t have a Leatherworker, you could learn it on a bank alt as converting these scraps to Light Leather is one of the very first skills you gain. Light Leather always sells for a better price than the scraps but there are also Knothide Leather Scraps, Borean Leather Scraps & Savage Leather Scraps at the higher levels which a Leatherworker can convert to their respective leathers or even, one step further into the ‘Heavy’ versions.

During Wrath, I found that Heavy Borean Leather always sold for a higher price than the normal version & so far, in Cataclysm, the same seems to be holding true for Savage Leather & Heavy Savage Leather. I used to use Heavy Borean Leather to trade in for Arctic Furs & now I use Heavy Savage Leather to trade in for Pristine Hides.

Mining

This was the little tip that my guildie didn’t know – bars of metal often sell for a higher price than the ore. This can work at all levels – if you think which professions use bars (Blacksmith, Jewelcrafting & Engineering as well as a few for rare Tailoring or Leatherworking patterns) then it seems to a newer player that pairing those professions with mining is an obvious choice. However, once they have maxed their Blacksmith/JC/Engineer, players often drop their mining for a second crafting profession. This leaves them reliant on the Auction House for their supply of bars & that leaves them open to paying slightly higher prices!

This can work at all levels of mining from Copper & Tin all the way upto Elementium & Pyrite ore but that’s not all. There are also a few ‘special’ bars that a miner can make – namely Enchanted Thorium Bar, Hardened Khorium, Hardened Adamantite, Titansteel & of course, Hardened Elementium.  Currently I make Enchanted Thorium (to craft & disenchant) & Hardened Elementium but as always, check your own servers’ markets. The Khorium & Adamantite are very rare on my server mainly because they are the older outdated max level items & there is not much demand for level 70 epic gear anymore. Titansteel is also the old outdated version of the current max level bar but it is used by Engineers to make the chopper/hog which is still selling for  good price on my server – there may be a market there on your server.

Jewelcrafting

If you have mining as well, this one can be very useful – check the prices for gems at all levels – often the lower level ores sell for a pittance whilst the gems you can prospect from those ores sell for silly high prices. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a miner, just buy those low priced ores & prospect away! If you’re not sure which ore prospects to which gems, auctioneer can add that information to your tooltip or you can check it out under ‘prospecting‘ on wowhead.

Tailoring

Unlike ores, converting various cloths into bolts is not quite so reliable. However, some bolts of cloth do sell very well & for me that’s the Imbued Frostweave. I would say, as always, check your own server – in the past, I had good sales with bolts of Netherweave cloth & even Wool.

The other items not to overlook in Tailoring are the Netherweave Bags (very good seller on almost every server, it’s a very common tip) but also the shirts, trousers & robes especially if you are on a Role Play server. With the introduction of Transmogrification in the next patch, there could be an upsurge in the shirts market especially if people want to colour match to their new set.

Enchanting

As with Tailoring, this one’s not quite so reliable but I have been having some nice profits from this one for a while now. Raid your AH for all the very, very cheap ‘green’ armor & weapons & disenchant them. You will mostly be finding the very lowest item level greens but sometimes you can pick up higher level items to disenchant to dream dust or arcane dust for example.

I’m also an alt-addict so I almost always have an alt somewhere levelling & picking up cloth as they go. For any linen & wool, if the price of the cloth on the AH is very low, I craft it into the cheapest green item I can then disenchant that. I often look for very very cheap linen cloth on the AH  & craft that too.

Well, there ya go, I hope this helps. Let me know in comments if you think of something I should have included here or if you try one of these tips, let me know how it goes!

Happy Goldmaking

Nev