This is how I made my money. I’ve been playing this game since the first week it came out and I’ve never made an alt…this guide is truly the path I took from lvl 1-60 (with a few modifications here and there as lessons learned from my mistakes!) There’s hundreds of ways to make money in this game. You be a gatherer the entire time, selling mats and make money. You could do nothing but manipulate the Auction House and make money. You could grind areas that are known to drop rares and epics and make money. There’s tons of ways, this is just my way. Enjoy!
Phase One – Levels 1-40 “Hunting and Gathering”
So you’re just starting World of Warcraft, you’ve picked your race and class (gnome rogues ftw!), and you’re at the point where you get to pick two professions. You might say to yourself “oooh I’m a rogue so I’ll get leatherworking so I can make my own armor!” or “I’m a warrior so I’ll get blacksmithing so I can make my own weapons!”…OK just stop right there n00b! Lemme tell you a little secret about all those cool crafting professions…
***With the exception of a handful of items per crafted profession, you won’t make money! And hey guess what, those few items that are profitable are pretty much unattainable at lower levels!***
I hate to rain on your parade so early on, but it’s better I tell you up front than watch you waste what little gold you earn trying to level up your crafting profession. The problem with crafting professions is that you fall into the trap that I like to call “Skill Leveling Fever”, where you will do whatever it takes to raise the skill of your profession. Some of you will say “Ya Gen, but that’s why you take a complimentary gathering profession so you can farm your own mats”. This is true, but you will VERY quickly reach a point where the materials you require will be unattainable at your character’s level. And what are you gonna do, wait until you can farm them yourself? Hell no, I know you better than that! You’re gonna go run to the AH and start buying materials for the sole purpose of leveling your crafting profession. Welcome to the poorhouse!
So instead, pick two gathering professions. The cool thing about gathering professions is that you start making money right away…walk up to a mineral vein or a plant or a dead animal and grab those mats! It’s 100% profit! And since you are going to be spending a LOT of time running around doing quests and killing animals…it only makes sense to take advantage of gathering professions. Mining and Herbalism are the biggest moneymakers, but since they share the minimap, I usually will pick mining or herbalism and then pick up Skinning.
The one negative thing about gathering professions is you’ll find your bags fill up VERY quickly. Don’t worry, the first thing you’re gonna buy are 14 slot bags. These things cost like 2g50s on my server, which you’ll have after selling like 4 stacks of whatever you got. Buy 4 of these 14slot bags, you’ll need the space! At this point some people make alts that sit near the Auction House and they mail all their mats to the alt. This is a good idea for some…to me it would drive me nuts having to mail stuff all the time
Also, items with grey text are vendor trash, meaning you sell them to a vendor. ALWAYS pick up the vendor trash…at your level every little bit counts. If it’s WHITE text, that means it’s used in a profession somehow. Hold onto it and see what it’s worth on the Auction House. If you can sell it to the vendor for 25s but sell it on the AH for 50s…you’ve just doubled your profit! Don’t laugh at 50s profit either…do that 1000 times (which you will do this 1000s of times in this game) that’s 500g!
You should be making more than enough money to pay for new skills, updated armor and weapons, gryphon flights, stupid noncombat pets (hey I love em too!) etc. But keep in mind you are working towards two things when you hit lvl 40:
1. Buying your mount, which is going to cost you 90g
2. Preparing for your first crafting profession, which will take money to level and buy schematics/patterns/recipes/etc.
You cannot enter Phase Two until you have purchased your mount and have like 100g in savings. Trust me on this one Very Happy
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT PHASE ONE:
Q: Gen, you are a god among gnomes, and handsome to boot. But if you tell everyone to take up gathering, who will buy the materials we’re gathering?! If there’s no money in crafting, nobody will buy our materials!
A: It actually makes a perfect circle…”lowbies” gather the mats, while “highbies” buy the mats and make crafted items (we’ll discuss highbie strategy in a bit). These highbies in turn sell their items (for a profit) to other highbies and lowbies who NOW have money to spend (because they’re not wasting all their money trying to level up crafting professions!) It works really well like this.
Q: Gen, you are kind, intelligent, and have abs you could wash clothes on. My character is lvl XX