Easy Gold with Essences
Filed Under World of Warcraft Guides
I mentioned this strategy in a post on WoW Auctioneer - Most Profitable Items but I though I would expand on it a little as it really is a great gold making strategy for any level player.
There are three different kinds of enchanting materials that enchanters get after disenchanting a magical item - shards, essences and dusts. This strategy is about making gold with the essences.
First, you need a little gold to start with - around 5 gold or so which shouldn’t be too hard to come by if you’ve read my other posts or have a copy of my favorite gold guide.
Lesser and Greater Essences
Lesser and greater essences (magic, mystic, astral, nether, eternal) have a special property - you can transform one to the other. For example, if you have 3 lesser essences you can make 1 greater essence and vice-verse turning one greater essence into three lesser essences. Just right click on the item in your bag and the conversion is done automatically.
At the auction house you can find both greater and lesser essences but here’s the gold making trick: on average, lesser essences sell for a higher price than greater essences.
For example:
* 1 Greater Eternal Essence sells for 6 gold at auction
* 1 Lesser Eternal Essence sells for 3 gold 50 silver at auction
Doing the math:
3 x 3 gold 50 silver = 10 gold 50 silver
10 gold 50 silver - 6 gold = 4 gold 50 silver pure profit
The trick to this is to get the greater essences for a reasonable price but WoW Auctioneer makes that easy for you to track. All you have to do is be a little patient and buy out any greater essence auction that’s selling for less than three times the average price of lesser essences of the same type.
You can also do this with the other essences too.
The Best Part
The worst thing about trading in magical items and other valuable items at the auction house is the deposit price - often several gold just to list an item which is gold you lose if the item doesn’t sell. What’s more, list the item for more than the minimum 2 hours and your deposit price quickly climbs to astronomical levels.
But the great thing about enchanting materials is that there’s no deposit price so you can list them for 24 hour auctions at absolutely no cost!
So, worst case scenario is that you buy some greater essences and it takes a few tries at auction to sell them (based on the current supply and demand on your server). Basically a win-win proposition and a strategy I’ve used hundreds of times to make gold with no risk.