Meet MsOhnekase....on Deathwing: Week One

So, I have an hour or so this morning, so lets begin.  I will try and chronicle this (hmmm, maybe I will do this as a Twitch.tv later.....you can all let me know what you wanna do.)

Day One

Got some hot water boiling for some tea, lets get into it.

We have nothing.  We have 2 characters:  a level 1 bank toon and a level 49 Prot Paladin.  Our paladin, Gondamer, has Tailoring and Enchanting and some tanking blues that need repairing.  So, lets look at our options for this morning.

1) We can go get low level stuff.  Linen Cloth, Chunks of Boar Meat, and low level greens can all make us some gold.

2) We could also use this to solo a low level dungeon.  it would be about 15-20 minutes and would get us a lot of cloth and greens.

3) Or, we can insta-queue a lvl 49 dungeon, get 1g65s, possible quests, and greens and some cloth, all while leveling.

Honestly, I think I am going for option 3.  So lets do it.

Insta-queue

I instant queued for Blackrock Depths.  Lets see what I can get from it.

Special note:  If you are a Disenchanter, greed on everything instead of disenchanting.  The Guild perk Bountiful Bags applies to stuff you disenchant, but will not apply to pressing the Disenchant button.

Here is what I ended up with...

Most of it I am going to vendor.  I am going to keep the Runecloth cause I am a tailor and I can probably use it, but everything else I will vendor.  The Blue item I thought about disenchanting, but I vendored instead for 2 reasons: it vendors for 1g90s and the DE value is 2g00s.  As such, not worth a DE.

Now, I am going to run one more and then I am going to put my plan in order.  I will explain either today or tomorrow.

Sweet, got Undead Side Strathholme.  Haven't done those quests yet.  So we get a lot of stuff.  Things of notw are Revenant shoulders (a low tier Transmog piece, but a cool set), Dream dust from a useless green, some more runecloth and mageweave, and some offspec healing plate.  After everything totalled we hit 50 and have 23 gold.

No new training at 50, just a couple new glyphs.  So, lets buy some stuff.  Lets get some vendor stuff and see what we can do with it in SW.

Cat Carrier (White Kitten)
Cat Carrier (Bombay)
Cat Carrier  (Cornish Rex)
Cat Carrier  (Orange Tabby)
Cat Carrier  (Silver Tabby)
All the Cooking recipe's in old town.

These are all going to go to MsOhnekase for selling.  Then we are done with Gondamer.  All we are gonna do is post and we will be done for the morning and probably the day.

After remembering that Msohnekase needs money to post, I posted everything, and now I am going to log off for the day.

So, for now, I think we are done.  Questions, comments, suggestions, maybe if you want to see livestream of it (I will have to look into it anyway, but if you guys want, happy to do it), let me know.

Day 2


So I get up and try and jump in and....right, it is tuesday, so they are doing realm restarts :(.  Oh well, after an hour I can now get in.  Lets collect any auctions we might have and get started.

Ok, no auctions.....nothing sold.  That is ok, I only paid a few gold for them anyway.  They will sell eventually, its what they do.  However, because the White kitten is a limited quantity, I am gonna go pick up one on Msohnekase.

Onto Gondamer.  So, what are we doing with him, you ask?  Well, first we are going to do the cooking daily so we can get a chef's award and see if we can sell the Cocoa beans we can get from it.  I got 40 Beans and put them up for a gold (there weren't any up so I can kinda set the price).  Ok, time to move on.

Then we move on.

So, what is this plan I have for Gondamer?  Well, being at level 50, it gives him the perfect opportunity to quest in an area and work towards a potential gold mine of money:  Enchanting recipes.  Not just any recipe, heirloom recipes.

Behold...

This baby is the staple for rogues and some hunters for their heirloom weapons.  +15 Agility on a weapon that you only have to enchant once is amazing for them.  At low levels, they basically double their agi.  At high levels, its a nice boost above and beyond the heirloom bonuses.  Plus it sells for anywhere between 500-2000 gold (avg is probably about 750-1k).

Quick note:  To get to Felwood from Stormwind, I am taking the boat to Darnassus, then flying to Felwood from there.

OK, so I am basically doing a lot of questing.  All of the greens are being DEed (except for those that are good for transmog, which I have yet to find one).

And I think that is it for the day.  Not terribly much goldmaking, but we are basically investing some time into leveling plus getting that really good enchanting stuff.

But before I go, best....trinket......ever.

Alright, and I will end us there.  I will show you all how we did tomorrow.

Day 3


So, lets see how we did yesterday...

Ok, nothing sold.. but no matter, we are still sitting ok on our 20 gold and yesterday was an investment day, which we will continue today.

So I did the next piece of questing in Felwood.  A cool thing happened and I would recommend that you always keep an eye out for these.

Treasure chests give you a blue and several other goodies.  I am not sure, but i think I might have even got a bunch of XP, cause it dinged me after I looted it.

I did the quests, DEed the Greens I got from them, then decided to just head up to the Timbermaw and grind rep (it is easier than you think).  On my way though, my Silverdragon addon found me this.

Another green to add to the pile.  This one is the Royal trousers which I don't think are that sought after.  That is ok though, cause it will go into the DE pile, which I will definitely use.

Once I got up to Felpaw Village, there are quests waiting for me and the Furbolgs give 24 Rep a kill, which isn't bad.  They also give me XP so I am still leveling.  Plus they give Beads which turn in for like 1000 rep each.  So, I am going to grind up some rep with them.  I will lets you know how I do.  Plus as I am a prot paladin I might be able to AoE a bunch down at once.

Ok, so after 30 minutes of questing in the Timbermaw area and killing Furbolgs, I am honored with the Timbermaw, now I just need to get my enchanting up and I can learn the stuff.  Plus, I will use a little secret that @Faidtastic posted several months ago.

But for now, I need to be done.  It is time for work after all.

Day 3


Hello everyone.

OK, time to check our money.

So, nothing of Msohnekase's stuff sold, but I am not worried cause I know that those will.  They tend to sell anyway.  However, Gondamer sold all of his Cocoa beans for a nice profit.

So, we are going do another cooking daily for more profit.

And it was worth a level.  Gratz to me on 53.  At 55, I have devious, nefarious plans.  Or just a way I am gonna make me some money.  We got another 40 Beans, then put them up for 2.5 gold each, we will see if they sell.  OK, now to other stuff.  Also, that chest we found yesterday in Felwood had a blue polearm in it, I am gonna put that up for 35 gold and see if anyone buys it.

So, I did get Plate Specialization at level 50 and never took advantage of it, so lets go train some, then I am gonna do some dungeon for cloth and essence/dust.

We also have some mageweave cloth that we can tailor for 2 purposes.  First, it will level our skill.  Second, we can DE the greens for dust/essence, which we need as well.

Speaking of which, I should probably explain.  I went Tailoring/Enchanting on my paladin purely for goldmaking.  Tailoring is really good for getting extra cloth and if I actually farm it, it gets even better (and it is easy to AoE farm on a paladin).  The enchanting is a nice combo with tailoring and I can make money simply by DEing the stuff I get.  Speaking of which, I need to write an enchanting profession guide.  Maybe I will use Gondamer as a quick one...hmmm, maybe next week.

So we got 4 points of tailoring and now we DE them to get roughly 10 dream dust.  Not spectacular, but at least we are using as many tools as we can.

So now we do some enchanting.  It looks like the best way to enchant is through Bracer - Greater Strength (+7 Str).  So I am going to buy some Vellums  and try and sell them on the AH.  Low level PVPers might like an extra 7 str to bracers.  Besides, worst case, they are 6 silver deposit, its worth the risk to me.

Ok, so I just spent 20 minutes on a daily and crafting (this is what high levels can do to focus on making money and not play), so I would like to do a dungeon to try and get gold and stuff.

Interesting, I queued as Damage.  This should be fun.

Now, piece of advice.  When you are in dungeons, greed on all of the greens.  The reason is 2 fold.  First, you want to be able to DE it if you are one of those.  Second, Transmog pieces sell for a lot.  For eample, I juts got the Overlord Shield, which is this Big white shield with a clenched fist.  I think it looks awesome.  I think it will sell, so I greeded it and won.  Plus if you look on Power Word Gold Blog or the Hatchery, it is on Keelhaul;s mogging list.

So, good news.  The gear in BRD (the latter part) DEs in Large Brilliant Shards, which we will huse for our Agility Enchant to weapon.  And, thanks to being in a lvl 25 guild, we have the Bountiful Bags perk.

Now that is done, I am going to send the Overlord shield to Msohnekase and have her put it up.  I am going to put it up for 900 gold.  I could probably get more for it, but I will shoot for 900.

Alright, so I think I am done for the day.  I will be logging off today, but I will keep see you tomorrow....maybe.

Meet the Cast of Deathwing

Gondamer

This is the tune I was playing for a bit before I got started.  As of right now, he has nothing (except for the Truesilver rod, cause I hate making those.)

MsOhnekase

My new bank toon.  The reason it is a Human female is because they allow for me to look at Transmogriphication.  If I want to sell it, a Human Female is usually the easiest model to look at the pieces on.

More to Come

Results of the Onemonthonetoon challenge. Also, what happening next?

Ok, so lets go ahead and give the results of my onemonthonetoon.

In short, I would call it a success.  I wouldn't so much say it was a glowing success, but it was a success.  I did only play one toon (except for my 15 min of DMF for the blog, which I would say is fine), however, I didn't really stick to WoW so much.  If you check out my twitter feed, you will notice that a lot of days I didn't play WoW.  Some days this is fine (I have been getting back into MTG and I have a DnD night on Thursdays usually).  However, I played a lot of ME3.

So, what was the point?  What did I learn?  Well:

1) A Dedication to Goldmaking is a different game than other ways of playing:  This may be obvious to some, but it really hit home to me.  So, before the challenge, I would spend a few hours on WoW.  And I pretty much didn't do any end game content.  I had never done LFR, I had done the End of Time Dungeons, but not in a month or so.  Once I wandered around, I started to be able to do these things more consistently.  Is this good or bad?  Neither, really.  Just different ways of playing the game.  But it does help to be able to talk about both sides of WoW.

2) I am an altoholic:  I love my alts.  I think part of the reason I moved to ME3 was because I wasn't as interested in the one character after a while.  I needed other stuff to do.  Granted, ME3 was fantastic, I loved it and would have done it anyway, but there were days when I got back to wow and kinda just gave up on it.


Ok, there are others, but lets move to the other thing I was thinking.  So, the Onemonthonetoon challenge did help me to focus my efforts to do anything on one server.  As it stands, whenever people I know play on WoW, I tend to put a character on their server and play that one.  I am really scatterbrained when it comes to WoW.  I was pursuing auctioning and such on multiple servers (somewhere between 3-5 servers), which didn't really give me much time to play or focus on goldmaking.

So, what am I gonna do about it.  I am going to focus on a server.  I am going to create a toon on one of my friend's server, and focus to try and get as much gold as I can.  My toons will be shown and noted on the blog.  I am not going to hold anything back.  You will know their names even and what I am going to do with them.

The server:  Deathwing US.  An alternate interesting thing for this is that I am going to try and make gold on a PVP server, which adds a layer of interesting.

So, here is where we are sitting on this server.  This server had Ohnekase the Hunter, who was the first goldmaking and sold turkeys for a while to make a couple hundred gold.  Second, we have Gondamer the Paladin.  He has about 2600 gold cause I did some inital foray into transmog here.  Plus, he has some Enchanting stuff.

In the next couple of days, here is what we are going to do"

1) Delete Ohnekase:  I am going to have him get rid of his gold (probably by just giving it away, then delete him.  Why?  Well, first I want to start with a new Bank toon solely for this challenge (female Human).  And I haven't played for a while so eh.

2) Empty Gondamer's bags and money:  I don't want to delete this paladin cause I like this paladin.  However, he does have a gold start.  So lets get rid of that.  Mats, stuff, gold?  All gone.  I might even get rid of his gear (though it isn't all that amazing, and I could get it all back with a little LFD).

So, for now, I am just going to throw this out to keep in touch.  We will shortly introduce the new cast and we will go for that.

See ya next time...

Meet Ohnekase: The Power of Alts

Meet Ohnekase

Welcome to my Main Server.  I am Horde Side on Sentinels-US.  Meet my bank toon (I want to do a full article about the advantages of Bank Toons later).  Ohnekase is wealthy.  He is sitting around 500k gold, just on him.  Across all the characters on my server, I am about 725k, which is cool.  However, Ohnekase himself is kinda useless.  He doesn't really have much in the way of professions, and I don't use him for crafting at all.  How does he have so much money?  One word:  Alts.

So, if you look back on our Getting the Grade series, we found that Jewelry on Earthen Ring sold really really well.  That is great, but it really only took me 5 - 10 minutes to do with that.  And if there was really really cheap jewelry, I couldn't do anything but sit there and wait for it to go away.  But, what if that was not the case.  While each character can have only 2 primary professions, you can have more than one character.

Alts are an amazing tool.  If you look at @Faidtastic, @PowerWordGold, they each have a large pile of alts.  Why?  Because if you have extra alts, you can have them do extra professions without erasing the progress on a different character.  On my main server, I have every professions to max, except Herbalism (cause I dropped it to get Engineering on a character).  This is how I have as much money as I do.  When I just had Alchemy and Herbalism on my main, and only focused there, I didn't really make a lot of money.

So, lets go over the reasons for alts in more details.  Be aware that some of these are gold-making reasons more than game reasons, I will list what they are for.

Goldmaking benefits

1) Diversity:  On a recent Justin.tv stream with @Faidtastic and @PowerWordGold, the question was asked what the one profession is that made the most gold.  While some good answers were had, the best answer is that the best way to make gold in general is not through 1 profession (though you can), it is to diversify.  Let me give an example from my server.

My DK is a Jewelcrafter.  He can cut gems and sell them.  There is a market for this, but why stop there.  When I shuffle (and I haven't done it in a while) for cata ore, I buy Obsidium, Elementium, and Pyrite Ore, prospect it all down, cut the blue gems and sell those on Ohnekase.  If I just stopped there, I would still make money, but why stop there, there is more than one way to bake a cake.  My green gems turn into jewelry, which goes to my mage to DE for dust to make scrolls.  I buy herbs on my Priest for Inscription, then make glyphs, scrolls, and other Inscrip stuff.  I take some of that ore and make stuff on my Warrior for Blacksmithing and my Rogue for Engineering.

By itself, the gems might make me 100s or 1000s of gold over time.  But with the diversity, now I make make more and more and more, just by having more diversity.  Alts provide that diversity.  Even at low level, you can always have an alt or two to turn your useless greens from leveling a profession into dust (low level enchanting allows you to DE any of the low level stuff you get, and gets better as you level it, not hard to do).  Dust sells.  Lets say you get ore somewhere and aren't a miner.  Well, a miner alt, or a Jewelcrafting alt can make use of it, again at low levels.  And you don't need to be high levels to get high level professions.  A 10th level character can train up to 150, 20th level character can train up to 225 (both easy to get).

2) Anonymity:  This I am not going to touch on this much, because it is its own category really.  Anonymity gives you the abillity to do more than a single character would.  This is why most people have bank alts.  You can buy items on one character to send to another character.

For example, lets say someone was selling Valor Bracers (at high end) in trade for a great price.  You know that you can buy them and put them on the AH for double that.  Well, use another character (one that might make use of the items, Rogue for leather, Shaman for Mail, etc.), buy them, ship them to another character, and put them up on the AH shortly after.  That way, the person doesn't think he just sold some bracers to someone who just put it up (which creates animosity) and you can still get profit.

Also, this helps you organize your rage emails to a character.  If someone gets upset at a character, you know what they do?  Frequently, they will mail that person about it.  Or message, or switch factions and grief that character (on PVP servers), or just do some general hating wherever people will listen.  Trust me, very nice to be able to do it on a seperate character to avoid that.

3) Self-Sufficiency:  Part of making money is spending as little as you can for yourself.  If you can make your own stuff, why do you need to pay AH prices for it.  For example, Inferno rubies are really expensive (Last time I checked, they were 300 g + ea).  But if you have an alt, you can cut your own, which saves money, or if you have extra gems, you don't really pay for it itself (this isn't true cause the cost you could sell it for you technically take a hit for, but the idea is still there).

Other (possibly gold making) reasons

1) Diversity:  Yes it is the same, but I still think they fit both there.  If you have a Hunter, you can only DPS.  But if you have a Hunter and a Priest, you can DPS and Heal.  And sometimes, healing comes with its own rewards (Call to Arms comes to mind).  Sometimes you are at 85, wanna do a dungeon and the queue for DPS is 20 minutes.  Well, the Queue for healers and tanks is almost never that, so do it.

A side note on this for people on a PVP server.  Having an alt also gives you the diversity to avoid griefing if you want to.  Have you been killed by the same 85 Rogue for the 5th time in STV and none of your guild is on.  Well, skip him and move on another character.  Its not like that Rogue knows where you are.  And after an hour of doing something else with your other character, the Rogue will have gotten bored and moved on, I am sure.

2) Seperation of Goldmaking and playing time:  This is something that I think might be a good idea for some of my own characters.  So, I have a problem.  Some days, I don't feel like I really play the game.  Sure I am on for 5 hours, but I don't feel like I played.  Why?  Because those 5 hours were done Running Dungeon X, then doing my Jewelcrafting, the crafting on my blah blah blah.  That kind of thing.  All in all, I was on for a while, but all I did was craft.  This is something that can make the game stale. An alt (say a leveling alt on another server or something like that) can make the game continue to be fun.  Honestly, this is why I think I have altidus is that I hit max level and then kinda just stop afterword.  Sure I run a few dungeons here and there, and occassionally play a BG, but that is it.  But then I play a new alt and it is exciting again.  Being able to have some characters that are away from the all the gold making hubub I think can make you appreciate and play more.

But I have yet to do this on my main server, so maybe it isn't quite so.

My Alts

So I have talked about the power of Alts, but what do I have myself and why?  There is a reason after all.  So lets go over them.  Note:  For now, I am not going to include my other characters names cause I want to take advantage of my anonymity.

My Bank Alt

Originally, this character was created to play with my wife.  He still does occasionally, however, she is very good about staying on her Mage, so I let her be there.  For now, this is pretty much where I do all my Auctions.  On a given day, I can post 100-500 auctions.  I use TSM for it cause that addon makes a 4 hour posting cycle take much less.  His guild, <And What Army>, was a guild that I have turned into a bank guild for extra storage, which works really well.

My "Main"

My main, in all his Transmogriphication Glory.  I like the look.  However, he has some advantages as well.  He is an Alchemist and Engineer.  So he occassionally makes and sells pets, Flintlocke's Woodchucker, and transmutes.

Btw, let me know what you think of the Transmog set.  Also, to add to it, I made sure to use the title "the Argent Champion" and I use the Argent Hypogryph.

My Profession Alts

My Jewelcrafting alt.  I also had him grab Tailoring cause I like it for farming cloth.  But the JCer makes me the money definitely.

My Blacksmithing character and Tank.  For Blacksmithing, there are a lot of good things that everyone seems to want (Belt Buckles and Epic Shields).  Occassionally, I will run the Call to Arms and get me a nice set of Bags with money, flasks, and pets.  Happy face.

My Mage is a Tailor and an Enchanter.  Lots of good money from him, even if he is wearing a pregnancy belt.

My Priest is only level 75.  But he has max Inscription and has Alchemy as a side Profession.  He make a lot of Glyphs and some potions.

This is what alts get you.  I can literally make anything I need for any of my characters and can usually keep Ohnekase Stocked.

One last example...

If I did another getting the grade challenge (which I will do something similar), I would add in the ability for using alts in there as well.  Even at low level, I would find a use for them.

Think about it.  At one point, I was debating where to move Ohnekase to: Jewelcrafting, Blacksmithing, or Engineering.  Well, lets say instead that I just made an alt that was Engineering and Blacksmithing and made Ohnekase a Jewelcrafter.  Remember that Ohnekase has a lot of Copper.  Now I can start looking at using more of it.  Then my copper can make even more stuff to try and sell on the AH.  Even the Rough stone could possibly be used.  Even better is that I could make another alt that is Enchanting (and probably tailoring) so that I can DE items as well.

So if I did all that, lets look at what I could do for money.

I buy Copper at 20s ea.  I send it to my JC to make jewelry which sells for 10-15 gold ea.  I then make some low level armor to try and sell for maybe 5 gold ea.  Then I make greens with that copper as cheap as I can and DE them for Strange Dust and Essence.  Strange Dust fluctuates a lot, but we will say I can sell it occassionally for 1 gold ea.

So with copper, I have literally shuffled it all around and made money on it.  Will every avenue work?  Of course not, but then I have the diversity to move around if I need to and try other things.

Conclusion...

So, if you are serious about goldmaking, I would say that you really need alts.  They provide you with so many benefits that one character just cannot provide.  It also gives you some leway to try different things.  Even if you want to just power a character through to 85, make a quick Enchanter to DE whatever it can, so you can prepare for it later.  The benefits are huge.

See ya next time....

Meet Ohnekase: Poll Results and discussion

Meet the poll I ran last month.

Ok, so no Ohnekase again this week.  Instead, I wanted to back up a bit and talk about the goldmaking path. 

Goldmaking itself is not the easiest thing to accomplish.  It takes time, dedication, and a slightly different style of play than most people are used to.  Hell, look at me.  I am doing the #onemonthonetoon challenge and I haven't really made that much money in the past 2 to 3 weeks I have been posting, because I changed the parameters that usually have me at better goldmaking level.  That being said, once you start goldmaking, it isn't like you hit the gold cap in 2 days with no effort.  There are barriers and bumps.  As such, I wanted to find out from the Goldmaking community where the problems they found were, so I could write a blog about it.  Based on the results I am seeing, I think I have some good material.  So today, I would like to talk about the each goldmaking step and why some of these are difficult for others.

Goldmaking milestones

Ok, so looking at the poll, I would break goldmaking tiers into 3 tiers: Goldmaking at low levels (up to around 50k), Goldmaking at medium levels (~50k to 500k) and high end goldmaking.  The way I see these poll results, I could have listed it with just 4 poll results rather than the 10 options I gave you all:  Each of my 3 tiers of goldmaking and "Its all been easy".  However, I find it facinating to see what people put as specific monetary values for goldmaking.

Each of the 3 tiers of goldmaking has its perks and disadvantages.  At each tier, certain strategies work better and certain strategies are weaker for you.  You gain some pieces, but may make other pieces less profitable.  I would also expect that these variations are why some people put low tiers are harder, and others put high tiers, etc.

So, lets get into it.

Low-Tier goldmaking (up to about 50k gold)

Most everyone put that this tier is the hardest to make gold, including me.  After all, you have no money to work with and could very well be low level or just not able to take advantage of high level strategies.  For example, if you don't have a lot of gold, trying to make a killing off of Darkmoon Faire decks back in the beginning of Cata was probably a lot more difficult, if not impossible, because a lot of strategies could cost an awful lot of money.  You also have to be more wary of competition.  If someone wants a market, it is likely they have a bigger bankroll than you and can push you out of the market pretty effeciently.

However, on the flip side, I feel that the low level goldmaking can still be profitable by using the ultimate goblin formula:  Time = Money.  At high gold making levels, you want to make as much money as you can in as little time as you can afford to.  After all, it is more time effecient usually to go buy your materials off of the Auction House, even if it is at more of premium (why do you think Goldthorn can sell at 20g a piece).  When you have hundreds of thousands of gold, buying mats more expensively really doesn't hurt you and helps you keep your business going, so if you have to, it is not a problem.  At low level, we don't have that option.  What we can do, though, is put more time into making smaller amounts of money.  We can go farm some Goldthorn for a while and it is still worth out time to do so.  We can worry about making at least one more gold than we had before because that is a meaningful bump.  Finally, we can look into silly little markets where the established goldmakers dont worry about.

As a note on the idea that we can use the time side of the equation, look at @DEAzeroth.  I would bet that he did not have more than, say, 40k gold when he started trying to get transmog gear.  However, he took a lot of time and dedication, both in and out of the game, to gather his own resources and begin to set up for when the market would explode.  What happened?  He broke into the Transmogriphication market and made zounds of money.  His time and effort paid off big.  Will that happen to everyone?  Goodness, no.  But you will break the low level goldmaking tier as you keep putting in the time.

One last thing about low level goldmaking tier.  Personally, when I voted, I voted for "Breaking 30,000 gold" myself, and there is good reason and a reason that I would say this is the hardest hurdle to break.  So, here is my story of how I got into gold making.

I have been playing since Classic WoW.  Seriously, I have probably made more than 60 characters (I have since deleted many of them) and probably would have made more but I made myself focus.  As of right now, I finally have a "Main" character.  I use that as my primary character.  He finished all the Holiday achievements, I have occassionally raided with him, etc.  This character, back in WotLK had 12k gold or so.  I wasn't rich, but I wasn't interesting in making a ton of money.  For myself, I always just did a little effort to make a little money here and there when I needed it and did not worry about it otherwise.  Come Cataclysm and the Vial of the Sands, and I started to get more interested.  Wow that could be so cool, but 26k minimum was so freaking expensive, I could never pull that off.

Well, as it turns out, after a few months, my guild needed some flasks and were offering 100 gold per flask or something like that..  So, I decided to go farm some mats up for them and make them for my guild.  I spent one saturday, something like 12 hours, farming materials and jumped myself from 20k to 30k gold.  I loved it.  It felt so nice having that kind of money.....for the 3 days I had it.  I pretty much spent it back down to 20k within a week.  But I remembered the feeling of having money.

So I started looking and found all the wonderful goldmaking blogs.  I found a video from @Faidtastic on the Jewelcrafting Shuffle (Post 4.2 I believe) (I had an alt that had max JC).  So I started it.  And I got hooked.  Now, on my main server, I have over 700k gold, all from getting that spark.


So what is the moral of my story and why I voted on the low end.  One word:  Motivation.  The reason that I said that low level gold making is the hardest to break is because you have to really want to start making gold in some fashion or for some reason.  For me, it was that 30k gold mark that I had to break and I had to see how time and energy put into goldmaking could pay itself back.  And I love it.  Both I and my wife now have Vials of the Sands and Mechanohogs, and I can pretty much buy whatever I want whenever.  I wish we had some TCG mounts on our server, but we don't.  The story, however, points to motivation.  You do really need to do something to push yourself into goldmaking.  Making 1 million gold will not just fall into your lap.

Mid Tier Goldmaking (~50k - ~500k gold)

OK, so once you hit a bit of money, you now gain some freedom.  And with freedom comes the ability to expand your stock and your business.  Now, things that might have been out of your price league now are achievable.  For example, at 50k gold, the ability to buy 100 stacks of Cata ore wont break the bank for you.  Buying Maelstrom Crystals from the Avengers of Hyjal (buy cloaks at 200ish gold and DE them).  Any of these suddenly become available in higher quantities cause you can afford them.  Even if something busts, you can recover. 

However, everything isn't perfect.  I would say that it is still difficult at the low end of this to do some of the high level things that take time.  For example, buying lovebirds to flip is considerably harder and takes longer, so you might not want to do this if you are still in the lower tier.

On the flip side, your numbers begin to matter some more.  At the low tier, I feel that even small victories (1+ gold profit or what not) are still worth it.  It can still be worth it to farm.  However, you are now at a point where your time becomes more valuable for crafting and shuffling and it becomes worth it to adjust your goldmaking away from some of the ways you tried to make little.  Now, you certainly don't have to and can certainly still work for it, but now you have to start judging for yourself whether it is a good time investment for the time that you have.

Also, you still will have to fight competitors in your markets, though fewer than you did previously.  If any of them are huge bankrollers, you might have a tough time keeping yourself in the market.  You will be able to stand toe to toe to him for a while, but just be prepared.

Still, once you break probably 100k to 150k, I like it because I still feel it is easy to try new things, but even if they belly up, you aren't back down a tier again.

Finally, why do I think people put this is the hardest tier?  Well, first off, we talked about the numbers and the time change.  But also, it can be difficult to fight the urge to stop here.  After all, once you break about 100k, you aren't really priced out of anything, except for high end mounts (and for some, they aren't even on your server anyway), so why keep going if you can have anything you want.  Literally.  At 100k, I made the decision to drop my herablism and level engineering from scratch.  It cost me a lot, but I could afford it.  For some, why not stop there.  Many others can get their Vial of the Sands and Mechanohog, even at inflated prices, and still be fine.  Hell, buying 10 Traveler's Tundra Mounts (1 for each character) only costs 144k, which once you are at 300k isn't really too bad, so getting up to high tier gold making may not be a big deal.

High Tier goldmaking (Anything higher than the other tiers)

Congratulations, you are the 1%, possibly the < 1%.  Even blowing your money on something ridiculous, you will probably never be poor.  Want to gear a fresh 85 in all 397 gear, you can afford it and still be good?  Want to buy a TCG mount for 300k, you can afford it and still be good.  The world is your oyster.  Hell, you are probably used to several hundred gold or more AH Fees every day/week/month, but it doesn't stop the train trucking.

Those are the upsides, anything that you can get in game, you could likely purchase at this tier.  Hell, even things that may not be obvious for sale can be bought (level 25 guilds, anyone).

Here are the downside I see on this.  The biggest one is that your time now can matter a lot more than at the other new tiers.  Now, your gold/hr may drop if you go farm an herb, just because you can spin cloth into gold, or ore in gold, or whatever else into gold.  That is not to say that you cannot, however, now if you are interested in keeping yourself trucking along, certain avenues may just not be worth it for you.  For example, you could decide, with your bankroll, to jump into the mysterious fortune card/fortune cookie market and make bank.  You could afford everything that would go into it, even if it meant buying all the cooking stuff at a premium to level it from 1 - 525, etc.  However, the question can become is it worth it.  If it takes you an extra 1 hour a day to make, say 100 gold profit, when you are making several thousand every day, is that worth the time an effort just to up it an extra 100 gold (I am not giving actual numbers, just ballparking).

Second, motivation here is something that you have to contend with yourself.  Honestly, I have done days where I do nothing but shuffle or mill and make glyphs or whatnot and I have had to take breaks.  If I am spending hours on end each day shuffling or milling, that can be a job.  So, the pull to keep going may not be there.  Who cares about shuffling for another 30k gold in 2 weeks if I am not getting anything out of it.  Even rewarding yourself may not help because it just doesn't do it for you.

So, the biggest reasons I would say that people would have put that are above.  The two reasonings are actually similar: when your routine becomes to routine, it may not be as fun for you anymore.  In addition, it may not feel worth it to switch them up because you don't make as much money.  Maybe in D3 this might change, when you can get big money from things, but I can definitely see where the burnout could be a contender here.

But for those of you that can hit the gold cap and find enjoyment in the goldmaking that is great.

Its all easy...

So, for those that put this one, I will assume that they are serious.  After all, technically, it is incredibly easy to make gold.  The philosophy and principles are good, and not too terribly difficult to do.  So, for those that get an enjoyment out of making gold, or feel like they are competing with the WoW 1%, then this might be how they truck along.  I certainly cannot fault them for that.

The purpose of this game is to do what you love, and some people really love having more and more gold.  I would bet that some of these 1%ers would buy a gold statue of themselves if they could (yes, even at 1 million gold).

I'm Rich...

So, yeah, that about wraps up what I wanted to say.  I like that this poll turned out as well as I would have hoped.  Enough people voted that I felt like I could write something about it and it is interesting to see different people's perspectives on these things.  Me personally, I am in the high goldmaking tier, and I may just keep myself at the level I am.  I have no real need to make more money.  However, with this #onemonthonetoon challenge for me, I may change up the way I do things after my month is done.

Please feel free to comment on anything you read here or want to question me.  It is a fun topic to write about in my professional opinion.

In conclusion...

See ya next time...

Meet Ohnekase: Going to the Carnival

Step right up, folks.  Step right up.  Come and meet the fantastic Troll Ohnekase.



Earthen Ring, US

We have all seen the great gold-makers working.  @DEAzeroth, @PowerWordGold, @Faidtastic, @AltosGold.  Now, see the magnificent low level gold maker Ohnekase.  He is here today to tell about the wonders of the Darkmoon Faire.  Bring your alts, bring your kids, everyone is invited.

And while you are here, don't miss the great Darkmoon Faire Ponies and Rams.  Get shot out of a cannon, whack gnolls, shoot guns, and for a different flavor, fight to the death in our arena.

And now, without further ado, here he is:  The Troll, the lowbie Ohnekase.

Thank you, Thank you...

So, its the beginning of the month, you are bored and have nothing to do.  You have some auctions up, but you are looking at what else to do.  Go to the Darkmoon Faire.  The Darkmoon Faire (I am going to Abbreviate it to DMF) is a new feature introduced in 4.3 that is an excellent gold making opportunity for those that know where to look.

"But wait," you ask, "the Darkmoon Faire wants me to pay gold for stupid tickets.  I can't get anything from there, its just a dumb island."  And that my friends, is why we make sure to look in places where others don't think about.

So, lets get started on ways to make money in the DMF.

But where the heck do I go...

To get to the Darkmoon Faire, just go see this NPC.

This is the Darmoon Faire Mystic Mage.  For a small fee (which scales based on level), she will teleport you to your factions DMF portal:  Alliance to Goldshire and Horde to right outside Thunder Bluff.  The fee is pretty paltry:  If you are 85th level, its 30 silver.  Low level characters pay much less.

Before you go, make sure to pick up their Darkmoon Faire Quest.  It will give you a Darkmoon Adventure guide and some free stuff.  Very worth it, trust me (we will get to that).

Once you get to Goldshire/Thunder Bluff, go through the portal.  You will then be in a spooky forest (ooooohh...) 

Don't panic, just follow the path.  The signs will direct you to the DMF.  Just don't look too closely at the Spooky eye, it will be looking around.  Speaking of the spooky eye, I am really interested to see what plot points could come out of the Darkmoon Faire.  Maybe the spooky eye is an Old God with crazy plans.  I am excited to see what they do with it.

Go turn in the quest (if you need to) and get your guide.

 Now that you know how to get there (which I am told is half of the battle), lets go over things to do before, during and after.

Before you go to the Faire...

OK, so the first thing I like to recommend is to get your professions (primary and secondary) to at least 75.  Once you hit level 75 in your profession, there are several Darkmoon Faire weeklies that you can go do.  Each of these weeklies will give you XP, money, Darkmoon Faire Tickets, and a 5 point skill up in your profession (which is huge).  It is a pretty good idea to do this if you ask me.

In addition, make sure not to go to the Darkmoon Faire empty-handed.  Some of these DMF weeklies ask you to make stuff, with some of your own stuff.  The following profession quests at the DMF require certain items.

Alchemy:  5 Moonberry Juice
Cooking:  5 Simple Flour
Inscription:  Light Parchment
Archeology:  15 Fossil Fragrments
Leatherworking:  Coarse Thread, Shiny Baubles, and Blue Dye
Tailoring:  Coarse Thread, Red Dye, and Blue Dye.

The rest of the professions should be able to be done without taking anything with you (if I missed something, let me know).

At the Faire...the secret DMF Black Market

There are several things you can do once you are at the Faire.

First, you know how I just listed a bunch of items you need for your profession quests.  Why not take a few of everything and bark in general that you have them for say, 5 gold.  You might get a little trolled, but I guarentee you people will look and go, "Oh shoot, I am a Tailor and I forgot my dye and thread.  Eh, 5 gold is nothing.  It is worth trying.  You might be out 15 silver at max, even if nothing sells.  But I expect a lot will (after all, lots of people have cooking).  Again, you are saving people time.

If you are going to do this (and I would recommend it), I would say to just keep the General chat open and post in it every 5 minutes or so.  That way, you aren't really spamming, you aren't horribly annoying, and you can get other stuff done.  I would bark something like this

"Did you come to the Darkmoon Faire, but forgot your profession items?  Don't wanna go back and grab that [Simple Four].  I have all profession mats for each of the Faire's profession quests.  5g.  PST."

Something like that.  Remind them of the Profession quests, remind them of the items they might have missed.  Worst case, you really aren't out much.

At the Faire...The Tickets.

So the games are just a gold sink right.  Just a place for you to throw money away.  Well....sort of.  The tickets themselves can be traded for heirloom gear, pets, mounts, and replica armor items.  For the most part, the heirloom gear, pets and mounts probably aren't gold makers (though heirloom gear can be a time-saver and time is money, friend).

However, @Faidtastic pointed something very interesting out at the beginning of the Faire:  The replica items are Bind on Equip.  So, for us enterprising gold makers, it might be worth it to, say, pick up the Replica items for sale later on the Auction House.

Now, this is not something I am intimately familiar with.  But I will try it out and see what we can.  Transmog is huge right now, and I think there is a market for it.

At the Faire...Frogs.

Meet Flik

Borrowed from Wowwiki

He is a little Orc boy who is selling items.  He has 2 pets you can buy from him:  The Tree Frog Box and the Wood Frog Box.  What better way to use those than to sell them on the Auction House.  While you are running around, look for him and pick up a couple of Frogs, they are worth a little bit at least :).

He also has Heavy Leather Balls for like 20 copper.  I would love to try and make a market out of those (cause they are so cheap), but I am not sure if they would sell.  Anyone wanna try and it let me know, could be fun.

At the Faire...Farming.

Ok, so here is fantastic way to get some good money from the Darkmoon Faire:  Ignore the faire.  It sounds crazy, I know, but lets look at the island itself.

Head down to the docks and just run around the the southern part of the island, then run the up western part.  What do you see?

First, we see crabs.  Darkmoon Tide Crawlers, I believe.  They are pretty low level @ 10 and 11.  We can kill them.  They drop Crawler Meat and Crawler Claws.  Those are good for Cooking.  Cooking is a good thing, and people want items they can push past.  (I think it is somewhere between 50-100).

So while you are collecting those, what do you see in the water?  well there is open water and a bunch of planks and such.  Wait a minute, that isn't just random planks.  Those are actual "schools".  Back when I was talking about fishing, I said that you can fish from schools and are guarenteed to catch stuff.  It doesn't matter if you have 1 fishing or 525 fishing, you will get a catch from those.

So what do you get from this: 

http://www.elsanglin.com/fish/sealed_crate_cataclysm.html

I figured I would just link you over to els extreme anglin, cause it has everything.  But lets list it here.

Cata Food and Darkmoon Faire Food (we can sell this to vendors usually, but still...)
Embersilk Cloth (at least 2 gold each)
Cata herbs (these are very volatile in price.  I have seen them as low as 75s ea and as high as 15 g ea.  Avg is usually 3-5 gold.)
Cata Ore (usually around 2-7 gold ea)
Small chance of potions, elixirs, leather, and volatiles (all of which can sell pretty well).

So, you can literally spend 1 hour running up and down the shores, killing crabs, and fishing and walk away with 100s of gold worth of stuff.  And we didn't have to do much to get it.  I call that a win.

Other things you can do at the Faire...

For now, I am just going to reserve this slot, cause I think there might be more at the Faire itself.  If you have anything to add to this, comment, email or just drop me a line.  I want this to be a better guide.

With the Darkmoon Adventure Guide, Gold can show up in other places.

What do I mean here?  Well, that Darkmoon Adventure Guide I told you to hold onto.  Well, keep it in your inventory.  When you have it in your inventory, you have a change to get a Blue quest item from Instance Bosses, Player Corpses in Battlegrounds, and raids.  The kills themselves have to be your appropriate level, but the drop rate is pretty good.  And they can sell ok, depending on the markets on your server.

On Power Word Guild, My Rogue PVPed a lot.  As such, I ended up with a lot of the three Darkmoon Faire Quest Items, and they sold for a while between 10 gold and 50 gold ea.  Not great, but not bad at all either.

If you are running Heroic Dungeons at 85, keep an eye out for the Treatise of Strategy, as that usually pulls a goodly amount due to its rarity right now.

So lets get Ohnekase to the Faire...

So, Ohnekase is going to visit the Darkmoon Faire, do the game, and spend about 1/2 hour fishing and farming.  Let's see what we can get from it.

Here we go...

Starting gold:  5119g 47s 11c

So, first, i am going to grab a few trade goods to see if I can catch anyone needing te professions.  Because it is Monday morning, I am not expecting much, but I will try.


Now to the Mystic Mage to get to the DMF.

Once I am in here, I am going to start barking every five minutes or so that I have the professions items if they forgot them.  My macro is going to be something like this

"/1 Did you forget your items to turn into the DMF?  Get them delivered.  I have the mats for the profession quests.  5g, PST."

OK, next I am going to go in and do what profession quests I can.  Its worth XP and $$$.  Plus I am going to see if Flik is around.

So, for profession quests, I can only do the Mining one, cause my Jewelcrafting and other professions are not high enough.  Oh well, I can do it next month.

Ok, now for the big money maker.  I am going to give myself an imposed 15 minute fishing limit so we can see how well I do in 15 min.   For this I am just going to run up and down the coast and fish from any of the crates that pop up.

Here we go:

Hmmm, so we are at a strange spot.  We have at least 1 other person fishing for these with us, possibly 2.  Both have mounts and likely the ability to track fish.  I do not.   I am thinking I may wait an hour or so.  If you were doing this, i would just recommend going and doing other stuff for a big, then coming back to this. So I think I will revisit this shortly.


Also, you can look at coming back here on times and days when fewer people are at the DMF anyway.  Times like Tuesday nights (people are raiding), anytime during the AM (people are sleeping, etc.  More or less, just keep an eye on your server specifically.

So, we will be right back.

OK, so we went up and down the beach.  It took me about 7 or 8 minutes.  I found probably 6 or 7 crates of stuff.  It is a lot of stuff.  So we will just call it there (that way I kinda hit about 15 mintutes with the time I spent earlier) and it was still profitable.

So, lets go to Thunder Bluff and sell a few things at the AH.

These were just a couple of nice things to sell.  They are selling for decent, so I will try.  If they don't sell, I wont lose sleep over it.  Lets look at the whole auction.

Ok, so we will check up on this later, but post it for now.

Later...


As I am finishing up writing this, I thought I would post the first part of later.

So, I will update with screen shots and we will go from there.

Conclusion


So yeah, the DMF is incredibly good for getting some good capital.  In 15 minutes of fishing (ish) I can pull probably over 100 gold.  For a low level with nothing, and little investment, that is huge.  I will keep you updated.  Try it out this or next month.

So until next time.


See ya next time...


Acknowledgements...


This is a great low level goldmaking tip and I need to give props to @Powerwordgold and @faidtastic for their tips on these.  It fits really well with my blog, but I think I heard it from them first.  Make sure you check out other posts on this as well.  Mine is just the piece of the pile.  Cause this is a great low level goldmaking tip.