If you’re looking to make some extra gold in World of Warcraft (and who doesn’t want to do that?), there’s a few basic tips that I’ve discovered over time that may help you. Some of them are pretty basic, but it’s amazing how often I see people complaining that they are dead broke when they have completely missed some of the easiest ways in the game to make gold.
The following is the 7 most important gold farming skills that everyone should follow (you’ll be amazed at how much you can earn and save every time you log on).
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1. Grab It and Bag It
No one likes to grind to get gold, but everyone winds up grinding or questing as some point or another if you’re a serious player. One of the easiest ways to make gold is to make sure you’re looting efficiently when you’re grinding and questing. You may say “Well, duh, doesn’t everyone loot while they’re grinding?”
The truth is that a lot of people don’t! They’re either too lazy or they’re too cheap to buy a decent bag. A lot of players are missing out of thousands of gold every day because of small bags and being too selective with their looting.
Vend your stuff often so that your bags don’t get overran, and make sure you make full use of your storage and mailbox while you’re at it. You’ll be surprised at how much gold you’ll make!
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2. Gathering Professions are Golden
Professions can be fun, and sometimes they can be tedious—but no matter what, they should always be profitable! Basket weaving classes may sound great in college, but are you gonna seriously make a living off of it? Don’t waste your valuable playing time with a profession that doesn’t make you decent gold.
Gathering professions have the potential to be a steady, reliable source of gold. Mining, skinning, and herbalism will always result in high yields at the Auction House. If you’re going to be on the fast track to 80, I highly recommend a profession like skinning to help fund your questing. It’s fast and convenient, and you won’t have to spend as much gold leveling it up like other professions.
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3. Auctioneer Add-On
Okay, so Auctioneer is actually pretty well known and most players reading this will roll their eyes. If you don’t know what it is, shame on you because it is essentially the single most valuable tool you will ever use in World of Warcraft (click right here to download it).
While almost every serious gold farmer can write you a serenade about Auctioneer, quite a few suffer from some serious lockjaw when you ask them to perform an advanced, non-standard search like the ones that I now use to make thousands every day.
Auctioneer can be confusing, and I know it’s very tempting just to use the default features, but I really recommend actually reading the support manual to make full use of this automated wizardry tool of epicness—otherwise you’ll never be making the gold that you could be making.
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4. Mules Make Your Life Easier
If you don’t know what a mule is, it’s basically a low level character (mine is still level one—that’s right, I ran through the starting area because I was too lazy to level it) that holds all your auction items and some gold to play the Auction House. The basic idea is to park your mule next to a mailbox in a major city and let them do your Auction House business. Using a mule greatly simplifies the work of selling your Auction House items.
It’s important to make sure that your mule has at least a few gold coins to start. They’re going to need a little to cover the initial cost of starting auctions, but you’ll quickly get used to using your mule as a mailbox bank.
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5. Limited Supply Items
This is an area of gold making that is frequently overlooked. Essentially, limited supply items are items that are solid from vendors in restricted quantities. Many recipes are limited supply items, and once a vendor has ran out of a supply, the item will be unavailable for as much as several hours.
Fortunately for all gold farmers, most players are very impatient and are willing to pay a pretty hefty sum so they don’t have to stand around waiting for a vendor to renew their supply. There’s a ton of these vendors spread across Azeroth, and I regularly make a killing selling limited supply items through the Auction House.
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6. Timing Can Be Everything
One thing that many players tend to overlook is timing. Time is important–I’m sure everyone’s heard the phrase at one point or another “There’s no time like now”, and it’s absolutely true! If you’re playing the Auction House, what’s hot and profitable right now probably won’t be the same price tomorrow or a week from now. It’s important to learn about your server–When are the big “buying booms” of the day, and why? If you understand your buyers and why and what they are buying on any given day, then you have already figured out the secret to becoming rich.
This is the difference between the players that are truly rich and the players that are still struggling. A rich player can make more gold at any time because they understand the process of how to make gold, their success in the Auction House isn’t just luck, it’s skill.
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7. Seasonal Items Can Bring Sensational Profits
Whether it’s just a marketing ploy or genuine interest in their product, Blizzard regularly releases seasonal or limited time items. If you haven’t figured it out by now, these items can become extremely profitable shortly after their supply has ran out. It doesn’t even matter if the items are particularly useful. The truth is that the fact that players can no longer acquire these items is enough to drive some people to amusingly crazy lengths to purchase them from players just like you. WoW players are some of the most notorious gamers in the online world that seek out odd and rare trinkets to dress themselves in (some of them being quite ugly).
Grab some of these items and wait. You may be tempted to sell them a month or so after they’ve gone out of stock when the prices begin to rise, but it’s better to wait about three months until buyers become really desperate. I’ve seen items go 25x their original price, and it always makes me smile.
