Once More, With Feeling

Day 3 of 20 Days of Gold Making.

This fast turning into 20 Months of Gold Making.  So much going on for me in real life, I rarely take the time to try to blog/write anything that isn't assigned/required.  But I digress.

Day 3: What were the first techniques/tricks/tips you used when starting out?

Early on in Vanilla, all my auctioning was done manually.  While mods existed, I wasn't aware of or even knew to look for AH mods.  I'm not exactly sure when I started using Auctioneer, but it had to be sometime in Burning Crusade.

There weren't any dailies in Vanilla, so that wasn't an option.  Flipping wasn't even on my radar.  So I either had to farm stuff to sell for gold, or get gold directly from mobs.  I chose the former.

For me, that mostly meant farming fire elementals in Un'Goro Crater.  As a matter of fact, that farming at least partially inspired the first WoW video I made.  Be warned, this video is 7 years old now.



I spent a lot of time farming Essence of Fire, Elemental Fire, and Heart of Fire.  While doing so, I made a few acquaintances.  Gold farmers.  You see, back in the day, gold farmers actually farmed gold and items.  Truth be told, I'm conflicted about that kind of farming.  If someone is willing to legitimately farm items, and someone else is willing to pay real money for them, the capitalist in me is ok with that.  However, I know it's against Blizz TOS and the condition in which gold farmers lived was abysmal.  But since gold farmers don't actually do this anymore (I guess they still farm raids maybe?), it's no longer much of a question.

While not focused on much by gold bloggers anymore, this still actually works pretty well.  Farming high demand items is quite profitable, even looking at the time it takes and opportunity cost.  It's probably worth your time to farm ore these days, though herbs not so much.  Herbs have tanked in 5.4, save Golden Lotus.

In past expansions, farming elemental items could be especially lucrative.  But in MoP, that died with Spirit of Harmony.  There's pluses and minuses to that change, that's probably a good topic for a separate post.

I hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane.  Sorry I don't have many early tips/tricks from when I first started.  Gold making wasn't on many people's radar back then.