Gold Related Tips and Tricks

There's many things out there that make money, but there's always one or two things you can do to make your life easier. I'll divide these into level ranges, although some of them are general tips - just particularly useful in this level range. Note that this isn't necessarily for the idea of farming gold, just a guide to how to keep your funds high enough to afford your skills and other useful things. It's work in progress, so it'll be updated from time to time. It's also probably Horde-centric, but I prefer the horde, they're just so much less evil than the Alliance.

Levels 1-10

• Buy bags. As soon as you can afford 5 silver, buy bags from the vendors. They're not expensive, and if you can carry more, you can sell more junk.
• Bandages. Turn your linen cloth into bandages before selling it. It's basically not worth anything, but bandages sell to vendors at twice the price of the cloth.
• Skinning. In the early stages, you can make an extra few copper per creature by skinning them and selling the leather. You can make even more if you take the leather to an auction house, but that takes time and isn't always worth it at the earlier stages.
• Gathering skills. Even if you plan to change to a manufacturing tradeskill later on, you can always pick up two gathering skills at level 5. Skinning is great, and involves no extra effort, but the returns from mining tend to be greater. Herbalism suffers a little earlier on, although later on the values of herbs are much higher.
• Auctioneer. Get a mod which gives item values, such as Auctioneer. If you know the vendor price of an item, you can safely dump the worthless ones when you run out of bag space. Similarly, when faced with a quest reward where you don't want any of them items, you can easily pick the most valuable one. Auctioneer also gives you some idea of the auction price of items.

Levels 10-20

• Deviate. Particularly for the horde, you can get a lot of money for the various deviate related things; Devaite Fish and Savory Deviate Delights sell well at auction, and if you pick up a recipe for Savory Deviate Delight, it's worth much gold. You still will get a better return for using the recipe and selling the Delights, but if you're lazy just sell it - it's worth more in the shared auction house, which you can get to easily via Ratchet to Booty Bay if you're Horde, although it's harder to get to for Alliance.
• Swiftthistle. At this point, a herbalist should be getting swiftthistle in some quantities. Sell this, it fetches a good price since it is used by rogues for thistle tea. It's also hard to farm explicitly, since it is not found reliably.

Levels 20-30

• Strong Trollsblood Potions (Horde). These are needed for a quest, and sell very nicely at around a few gold. Just don't flood the market, and sell singly rather than in stacks.
• Wool cloth. Around this time you'll pick up a lot of wool cloth. This is very valuable, since it's hard to farm, so make sure you sell it in auction.
• Grey weapons. From here onwards, if you see a grey weapon, pick it up! They're some of the most valuable vendor trash, often coming in at several gold for one inventory slot at the higher levels. Similarly, people often leave behind any weapons crates, so make sure you loot these (although obviously check first if you're in a group).
• Twink Items. If you find a blue item for level 18-19 or 20-29, the chances are it's a twink item. You can sell these at enormous prices. Don't worry about hanging on to them a little, sooner or later someone will buy it. These can be sold in the auction house, but since you might need to spend some time selling, it might be easier to do it on the trade channel.

Levels 30-40

• Fadeleaf. This is very valuable, since it's required for blinding powder for rogues, so it's worth seeking out and selling at auction. There's plenty of it around the areas you'll be in at these levels.
• Fishing. If you've got a decent fishing skill at this point, you should be able to fish in areas such as Stranglethorn and Desolace. Look in particular for floating wreckage, since this often gives useful items such as patterns which can be sold. If you're above skill 200 or so, consider fishing at Steamwheedle Port in Tanaris; this can be got to safely and the entire coast is also safe, and the floating wreckage here is particularly valuable at this level. See also my fishing guide.

Levels 40-50

• Bags. For a tailor, at this point you'll probably find you're beginning to pick up decent amounts of Mageweave and possibly a little runecloth, so it's easy to make decent sized bags and sell them on.
• Mithril Casings. Used for a quest in Un'Goro crater, these will sell reasonably well, but again, sell individually.

Levels 50-60

• Item farming. If you're bored around these levels, go and do some lower level dungeons like wailing caverns or the scarlet monestary. They're an interesting challenge, and you can pick up some decent green items which you can sell to lower level players.
• Runecloth. Both the furbolgs in winterspring and the skeletons in the plaguelands give reasonable amounts of runecloth, which sells well and will also gain you reputation.
• Elemental essences. Although perhaps less valuable since the burning crusade, essences can be farmed from the elementals such as those in Silithus and the tar beasts in Un'Goro.

Levels 60-70

• Quests. At this point, in particular in outland, quests give you a lot of cash, and items that are worth a significant amount. Completing quests can be very simple, especially initially, and give a large return for your time.
• Level 58-60 drops. Since at this point the outland kit is available, most people will want to upgrade to it. If you choose your sales carefully, you can sell some of the green items that drop here for a much larger profit than usual. Ensure you only sell the useful ones, though; bear in mind that some types of equipment are really not very useful (or the initial quests give you better), and these should just be vendored.

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Last updated: 20 April 2007