Credit:Elvenhunter
Phase One Levels 1-40 Hunting and Gathering
So youre just starting World of Warcraft, youve picked your race and class
(gnome rogues ftw!), and youre at the point where you get to pick two
professions. You might say to yourself oooh Im a rogue so Ill get
leatherworking so I can make my own armor! or Im a warrior so Ill 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 wont
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 its 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 thats 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 characters level.
And what are you gonna do, wait until you can farm them yourself? Hell no, I
know you better than that! Youre 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 awaywalk up to a mineral vein
or a plant or a dead animal and grab those mats! Its 100% profit! And since
you are going to be spending a LOT of time running around doing quests and
killing animalsit 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 youll find your bags
fill up VERY quickly. Dont worry, the first thing youre gonna buy are 14 slot
bags. These things cost like 2g50s on my server, which youll have after
selling like 4 stacks of whatever you got. Buy 4 of these 14slot bags, youll
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 someto
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 trashat your level every little bit counts.
If its WHITE text, that means its used in a profession somehow. Hold onto it
and see what its worth on the Auction House. If you can sell it to the vendor
for 25s but sell it on the AH for 50syouve just doubled your profit! Dont
laugh at 50s profit eitherdo that 1000 times (which you will do this 1000s of
times in this game) thats 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
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 were gathering?! If
theres no money in crafting, nobody will buy our materials!
A: It actually makes a perfect circlelowbies gather the mats, while highbies
buy the mats and make crafted items (well 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 theyre 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, and Im a lvl YY Crafting Profession and a lvl ZZ
Gathering Profession. And Im BROKE! Should I drop my crafting profession and
take up a second gathering profession?
A: It depends on several things. If you are already close to lvl 40, you might
as well keep the crafting professionUNLESS its really low level (like <125 or
something) then ya drop it like a bad habit. If you are relatively low level
but have a mid-level crafting professions, I would still drop it and take up a
second gathering profession. Youll end up making much more money by the time
youre 40, which is the real goal of this guide.
Q: My materials arent selling! The market is flooded with them and I keep
getting them returned in the mailbox!
A: Ya thats going to happen from time to time. Some days you can sell a stack
of something for 1g, the next day the entire AH is flooded with stacks selling
for 20s. Its what I call the Retard Factor. The best thing you is get a
general idea of how much stuff is selling for at that time, price your
materials a little bit less that that, and hope for the best. Dont throw your
hands up in despair when someone undercuts youits gonna happen. Just take your
unsold mats and put them back on the AHsomeone will buy them, trust me!
Phase Two Levels 40-59 Its time to learn a craft
Youve hit lvl 40, you have your mount (sure beats walking huh?), youve learned
all your new skills, and youve decked yourself out in some fancy new duds. Now
what?
Well, you *could* stick with your two gathering professions. They will still
make you a lot of money, actually more money than in the first phase because
youll know have access to higher level materials. If you dont feel like
busting ass trying to make money with crafting professions, stick with
gathering by all means. You could stop reading this guide right now and have
enough money to make you happy.
Still reading? Okay good lets talk about your first crafting profession
Pick a crafting profession that sounds fun to you. Dont worry, its going to
make you money (except maybe AlchemyIm sorry I *still* havent seen proof that
you can make lots of money off of Alchemy). What your going to do is drop the
gathering profession that doesnt complement your new crafting profession. For
example, if you want to take engineering, drop skinning and keep your mining.
The one profession I do not recommend you take at level 40 (besides Alchemy)
is Enchanting. Enchanting is a great profession but its not for the faint of
heart, and its a #@%$! to level up. If you are dying to be an enchanter now,
welcome to the poor houseotherwise try to hold off until youre level 60 (well
be discussing that in the next phase).
Now that youre level 40, it should be very easy to powerlevel your new
profession to a certain point. Do everything possible to farm your own mats
while leveling, it will save you a ton of money. This is important because you
need your money for
SCHEMATICS, PLANS, FORMULAS, RECIPES, ETC!!! These are what separate you from
all of the other people taking up crafting professions. I see twenty new
threads every day asking how do you make money in leatherworking or whatever,
and people usually reply you dont take herbalism its a goldmine. Im going to
let you in on a little secret.
It takes hard work and a LOT of time and gold to make money in crafting!
You will NOT be rich from a crafting profession just by learning what the
trainers provide! You have to spend gold on schematics/formulas/plans/etc to
make the stuff that people really want to buy. Im not saying that every plan
on the AH is going to be a moneymaker, but the ones that ARE moneymakers youre
going to have to pony up the cash. Dont bother farming for them its a waste of
effort just pay a reasonable amount for it on the AH.
Guess what? Youve just put yourself above probably 75% of the other crafters
out there! Why? Because 75% of WoW players either dont have the gold to buy
plans, or they refuse to spend money on them because people price gouge on the
AH. Now instead of competing with 1000 engineers, you are competing with 250
of themand out of that 250 there will be quite a few that arent as aggressive
in making money like you, you sly dog!
Its important to remember that crafting professions are a long term
investment. Unlike gathering, you actually have to spend money for crafting
professions to make money. On my server sniper scope schematics go for 100g.
100g is a ton of money, but as soon as you pay it off (you can make 2-3g
profit off of each scope), youve got another weapon in your arsenal of
moneymaking!
The questions I get asked all the damn time (people even create alts on
Malygos to bug me during my Molten Core run lol) is what items sell for a
profit, how much do you sell them for, etc. And the answer is find out for
yourself. Make a spreadsheet or list of everything you know how to make. Then
for each item list out how much RAW material it takes to make that item. What
do I mean by raw material? Its the total amount of uncrafted items you need to
eventually make the item. For instance:
Hi Impact Bombs x 8 = Mithril Bar x16 + Solid Stone x16 + Mageweave x4
Notice that Hi Impact Bombs really take Mithril Casings, Solid Blasting
Powder, and Unstable Triggersbut the RAW material list is as stated aboveget
it?
Ok now that you have that for every item you can make, figure out the UNIT
PRICE for each raw material. UNIT PRICE is how much it costs if you buy one
Mithril Bar on the AH. Dont look at the prices for just one Mithril Bar
thoughlook at how much a stack costs and divide by 20.
Got that? Great! Next step is to find out how much you can sell each item for.
Do a search on the AH to see what the going prices areit might take you a few
days to get an accurate number due to the Retard Factor of people putting up
items for ridiculously low or high prices. If the items just dont show up on
the AH, determine if anyone would actually *buy* the item first, and if you
think they would just take a guess of how much you could sell it for.
You know what the final step is right? I sure hope so. You know how much it
costs to make the item, you know how much you can sell the item fordo some
simple subtraction to see if you can make a PROFIT off of your items! You will
be surprised how many items will make a profit. The obvious choices are items
needed for quests, items that need to be purchased several times (such as
armor kits, sharpening stones, scopes, potions, etc), and blue items.
The two top comments I get from this section are:
Gen, you really expect me to make a spreadsheet of all my crafted items, with
materials, and costs of mats etc etc? that seems like a lot of work cant you
just tell me which ones sell best?
Get out of my forum! If you cant do the legwork and put the effort into itgo
pick flowers and collect rocks.
Gen, why do I have to make a spreadsheet based on cost of mats in the AH? I
can easily go farm my mats and make 100% profit!
Ah HA! This is the statement that is the death of crafters everywhere. Im
going to make the next statement in all caps not because Im angry, but because
I want it to stick out so much you cant help but read it and remember it:
***IF YOU CANNOT BUY THE MATS ON THE AUCTION HOUSE, CRAFT YOUR ITEM, AND SELL
THAT ITEM FOR A PROFITDO NOT MAKE IT!***
Seems so simple yet time after time again people will say things like yeah of
course you arent going to make money if you buy your mats on the AH you have
to farm the materials. Well, if the materials are worth more than the finished
product, why would you bother making it? Just sell the materials for a larger
profit! The purpose of the spreadsheet is to help you identify what items you
can make a profit on.
The next logical step is to realize that if you can buy the mats on the AH and
still make a profit, why would you spend all that time farming materials? In
the time it takes you to farm the mats to make one item, you could buy the
mats to make 10 items.
You should be making more than enough money to pay for new skills, updated
armor and weapons, repair costs, stupid trinkets (I love my Orb of Deception!)
etc. But keep in mind you are working towards two things when you hit lvl 60:
1. Buying your epic mount, which is going to cost you 900g
2. Having nearly all of the schematics/plans/etc for your crafting profession,
and being able to make a steady income off of it.
3. Having at least 100g (preferably more) saved to help you level up your 2nd
crafting profession
Do not bother with Phase Three until you have the above three items complete.
Patience is the keyif you rush into this stuff you will have more expenses
than you do income.
Phase Three Level 60 Farming is for suckers
Ok so youre sitting pretty at level 60, congratulations! Youve got your epic
mount, youve completely owned your crafting profession, and you got your nest
egg of gold. And your entire time spent in WoW now consists of you either in a
high-end instance or sitting in Ironforge trying to get a raid group together.
And that means youre not running around gathering! Plus by now youve probably
said to yourself Man, I dont even need to farm mats anymoreI can buy them off
of the AH and still make a sweet profit! Welcome to Phase Three
Now Phase Three is 100% optional. Some of the gathering professions are useful
in high-end instances. With mining you can get Dark Iron Ore and Blood of the
Mountain, which both sell well AND help you raise your reputation with the
Thorium Brotherhood. With Skinning (plus an enchant and a finkles skinner) you
can skin Corehounds in Molten Core and The Beast in UBRS. Both have their uses
for sure. But this guide is about how I made moneyand since I HATE FARMING
(farming is for suckers!) I dropped my gathering profession and picked up a
2nd crafting profession (in my case enchanting).
You level the 2nd crafting profession the same way you did the first, with the
exception that you dont have a gathering profession to assist you in the
leveling process. So that means youll be buying your materials from the AH
(yeah you could make alts or whateverI just dont like making alts). The key is
to level as cheaply as possible until you can get to the point where you can
make a profit (or even break even) on the things you create as you level up.
Again, same thing as the first crafting professionbuy up all the
patterns/plans/etc that look like you could make a profit with, make a
spreadsheet, etc etc. This will be a slower process than the first crafting
profession, but you already have your epic mount, and youre hopefully getting
good weapons and armor from instance runsso theres really no rush anyway.
Theres one more thing you can do to make some extreme money, but keep in mind
that everything requires an investment of time and moneyand this will require
a lot of both. There are lots of faction based patterns/plans/etc recently
implemented in WoW. Some of them are as simple as killing tons (and I mean
thousands) of Furbolgs until you are honored/revered with the Timbermaw
Furbolgs, some as daunting as turning in thousands of Dark Iron Ores to the
Thorium Brotherhood. Were talking a couple thousand gold worth of investment
right there if you dont mine it yourself. 99.9% of the players in this game
wouldnt touch this with a 10 foot pole, simply because they either dont want
to waste their energy to achieve this level (which is totally understandable
you have to be crazy to do this), or they dont understand the benefit of
knowing how to make these epic items. Its basic logic thoughlets say you
invest 2000g to become revered with the Thorium Brotherhood. You learn how to
make the revered epic items. Congratulations youre probably one of the .01% of
the people on your server than can make them. And you know what? 99.9% of the
people on the server want those items because theyre some of the best
gear/weapons in the game! Theres one guy on my server that makes weapons for
4000-5000g each. It doesnt take a math genius to see that the return on
investment can be very lucrative! Some of you will say Oooh but Gen how in the
hell am I supposed to get 2000g to invest in this? Well, you could either plan
ahead and mine the dark iron ore yourself (for Thorium Brotherhood, for the
others anyone can do it), or do what I did and sell what you can sell like a
madman and save save save! Others will say Yeah but Gen all of those high end
materials come from Molten Core and they cost thousands of gold to buy the
mats! This is true, but as I said before this is the upper echelon of making
money, and it takes big money to make big money. You dont go to Las Vegas with
20 bucks and expect to win thousands of dollars do you?
Phase Four Any Level Oh you crafty bastard!
So this isnt really a fourth phase, its more of a bonus chapter of things I
did/do to make money. Theres no real rhyme or reason to it, its just the extra
things Ive done along the way that arent really profession related. I never
mentioned them in my first guide because A) I wanted to keep it legit, these
things arent anything you can do to depend on an incomebut if they happen look
out! And
Im still making money on several of these so I didnt want to spill the beans
just yet lol! I wont go into super detail here because I want you to use your
brainnot to figure out exactly what I do, but to figure out things I havent
even thought of!
Oh Im a poor guy! On rare occasion you will see someone selling an item in the
trade channel. If its something you know is a hot seller, msg them and ask the
price. Sometimes they will flat out be stupid and give you a low price. Buy
it, wait one day, and put it on the AH for what its really worth. If they
reply with a price thats pretty much what its worth, say oh gee, I can only
afford <insert low number here>I doubt youd sell it for that. Oh well thank
you I appreciated it. You will be surprised how many times they will sell it
for that amount or close to it. Ive done that at least 20 times with sniper
scope schematics alone! Am I proud of myself for doing it? No, I am not. Am I
happy to have the extra gold? Hell yes!
Wholesale Materials If you find yourself crafting the same items over and
over, youll start to pick up a trend of certain materials that you use in
large quantities. The best thing to do is to buy them in bulk for a cheaper
unit price. Sure, youre eating more money up front, but your profit margin
will be way larger (what, you werent going to pass those savings onto your
customers were you?!?!) Theres several ways to do it, but my two favorites are
the AH and goldfarmers. On the AH you might see 100 stacks of heavy leather,
all with 2g buyout, with a 1g min bid. Bid them all at min bid. Chances are
youll win a percentage of them at half of what you would normally pay! For
goldfarmers, if they can understand you (LOL), strike up a deal with them to
COD the materials to you for a reduced cost. I have many farmers constantly
working for me!
WTF is that??? troll the AH for items people auction, and browse thottbot and
allakhazamtheres tons of items that you can buy, do something with, and resell
for a huge profit. I personally know of a few items that I can make 50g+
profit on every time, and a buddy of mine has found another completely
unrelated item that does about the same. What are they? Not telling!!! But do
the research and youll find several little nuggets of moneymaking!
Hey hey! I got blahblah on the AH! Im not condoning spamming like a fool, but
a well crafted funny msg every 10min or so about something SPECIAL youve put
on the AH will really help sell your product! Do not do this for everyday junk
like light leather and copper barsthis is something you use for rare/epic
items or things that are in HIGH demand. Be witty and funny and people wont be
as annoyed by you. Hell, ask people in Malygos, I spam stuff and say pst the
gnome in the wedding dress! cuz yeah I wear oneand a Goblin Rocket Helmetand
two Cookies Tenderizersand Im a male gnomeyou got a problem with that?!
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