If you’re running your first character through World of Warcraft you’re probably short of gold. I know when I got started in WoW I knew nothing about add-ons, nothing about what items sold well at auction, and nothing about how to earn gold beyond lucking into a rare drop from a mob and selling it to a vendor.
So, in the interest of saving you from having to decide which spells or skills you should buy when you level up because you can’t afford them all here are a few tips for making gold in WoW at low levels.
5. Sell Your Cloth or Make Bandages
Especially at low levels, you can typically make more by selling bandages made from cloth to a vendor than by selling the cloth itself. I don’t recommend you sell the cloth to a vendor at all (auction it off instead) but selling the bandages to a vendor is a good way to recoup a little gold as you’re leveling your First Aid skill.
4. Don’t Pick a Crafting Profession Before Level 30
Crafting at low levels (below level 30 or so) is a gold sink. You don’t have the skill to make anything anyone wants to buy and all those materials you put into your crafting could easily be sold at auction. Instead of choosing Herbalism and Alchemy for example, choose Herbalism and Skinning or Mining and Skinning (I recommend either of these combos and not Herbalism and Mining because you can only show one type of resource (either herbs or ore nodes) on your mini-map at a time).
Then, instead of wasting the stacks of low level herbs, ore, or leather that you gather, put them up at auction. You can easily get 20 to 50 silver per stack of even the lowest level resources as many high level players buy these materials to level crafting in their alts.
3. Spend Time at the Auction House
If you’re read many of the articles here, you know how much I love WoW Auctioneer. After you’ve used auctioneer to accurately price the stacks of herbs, ore, and leather you’ve been gathering take that gold and start buying underpriced items and selling them for what they’re worth. Take a look at these auctioneer tips for more details.
2. Consider Disenchanting as a Profession
Enchanting components (strange dust, magic essence, etc.) typically sell for much more at auction than the item that was disenchanted would sell for. This is especially true for low level green items that you’d have to sell to a vendor anyway because of lack of demand for low level items at the auction house. In fact, you can make quite a bit of gold buying out those low level greens that other players auction, disenchanting, then putting the components up at auction yourself!
1. Pay Attention and be Patient
No matter your level, the easiest way to make gold fast in World of Warcraft is to simply pay attention. Visit the auction house and pay attention to what’s selling well. Is there more demand for ore or smelted minerals? Is there a glut of a certain blue item that’s now selling for much less than it’s worth that you can buy and re-sell in a week or so when supply has gone down? Is someone selling a stack of quest items for a few silver that will be in demand later by other players completing the quest? Is there a stack of herbs or ore you can buy cheaply, split up, and sell in smaller stacks for a big profit?
Most players will simply put items up for auction without thinking about supply, demand, or the potential value of the items a week or a month in the future. Just pay a little attention each time you visit the auction house and I guarantee you’ll be a lot richer by this time next week!