The Mining Goldmine in World of Warcraft.

Mining is one of the more basic resource gathering skills in World of Warcraft. It requires a lot of grinding, a lot of time, but in the end you will have a lot of stacks of materials which regularly go for huge amounts on the auction house.

Mining has always been one of my favorite ways of making money, and helped me get the epic flying mount which is oh so beautiful to use in the outlands. While the grind can, and will, be tedious the financial reward of a bag full of gold can be more than worth it.

Some ores, even copper, are readily available, and yet still many people would rather just buy a few stacks off the auction house than spend ten minutes grinding. This gives the rest of us a fatastic opportunity to make some cold hard gold in World of Warcraft.

Firstly, this isnt a long or complicated guide. A lot of it is so basic most peolpe do it automatically.

Look on the auction house, see what is selling for a lot, figure out how easy it is to grind, go grind a lot of it, sell it high. The basic principals are all there.

There are several small things when choosing which minerals to mine in WoW, all of them fairly simple

Iron ore might be going for twice as much as copper, but Iron takes at least 4 times longer to grind. It is therefore so much easier to grind copper and make twice as much than if you had tried to do the same with Iron.

Rarer ores, such as Thorium, Tend to go for a huge amount on the auction house. These can be very lucrative, but time consuming, to gather.

When you hit the outlands you may find there is a bit less money in mining. Due to the influx of people grinding some of these ores prices are very cheap. It is not all bad though, if you take jewel crafting as your secondary profession you can prospect ores, which can give you high quality gems from your ore.

Mining is without a doubt one of the highest, most gaurenteed ways, of making huge amounts of money in world of warcraft. You may need to spend some tmie getting there but anyone, no matter what their skill can make gold by the thousands by mining in world fo warcraft.

Making Gold in WoW - The Basics.

Whatever race you are and whatever class you play you will at some point need to grind some gold to progress in the game. If you are raiding in WoW you may find that on progression instances, where wipes are common, you end up spending huge amounts on repairs, flasks, elixirs, food and buffing mats

So how can you make gold in World of Warcraft?

There are a few different ways, all of them have their pros and cons.

Grinding, the most common way of making money is grinding. Whether it is for netherweave cloth, primals (Primal earth, air, fire, water, mana, life and shadow, although some are worth more than others!)

Grinding is pretty much guaranteed to make you gold, at a speed dependant on the skill of your toon, it is however very boring and very repetitive. Grinding can be done in many places, I prefer Nagrand, For the elemental plateau, the lake below it for motes and the warmaul ogres for their netherweave!

Auction House Trading. Playing the action house game is a risky, but lucrative way of making money. Buy low, sell high. Search for things you think are under priced and sell them on for a massive profit. You can make big money doing this, the downside is you can easily lose the gold as well as earn it!

Using your Professions. By the time you have hit 70 you should have two high level professions under your belt. Some of them are fantastic for making money, others less so.

Alchemy
- A great way of making easy money, personally I find Healing Elixirs, Mana pots and Tanking Elixirs sell well. DPS items seem less popular, since DPS do not personally take responsibility for their actions as easily as healers or tanks they are much less likely to stock up on expensive raiding mats when they can just as easily coast through an instance.

Enchanting
- Another great way to make cash, though more by disenchanting than enchanting itself. Enchanting mats are worth a lot of money, and picking up greens in instances can net you a fortune in gold

Engineering.
- Engineering used to be the worst profession for making money, however recently they have brought out a mote extracting device, using this in conjunction with a helmet that lets you see 'clouds' from which you can extract numerous motes is an amazing way of making cash, especially for those with epic flying mounts.

Skinning/Mining/Herbalism

Gathering professions inherently bring in money, you can make a lot for this simply by gathering what is lacking on the auction house and selling at massively inflated prices. However it is also quite boring, and requires you to keep an eye on the minimap as opposed to simply grinding by killing all the mobs around you.

Leatherworking/Tailoring/Blacksmithing.

Fairly useful for yourself, but not so much for the making money. There are however some fantastic patterns that drop endgame, these can bring in some massive sales, with some epic patterns making items that can sell for 1-3 thousand gold, though much of that is in the price of materials.

Running Instances

Yep that's right, running the instances in normal mode may only net you a little reputation, but with a high drop rate of greens and blues you can make a lot of money here, especially if you have an enchanter to turn some of those blues into large prismatic shards (Sell for around 30g pre patch 2.4, expected to drop by a huge amount afterwards!)

Make Gold With Alchemy and Herbalism in WoW

As I have mentioned in a previous post, gold is the cornerstone of the world of warcraft economy. Not only do you need it to progress, but you will constantly find yourself spending money on materials, items for raids and so forth.

My main character is a herbalist and an alchemist, a perfect match for making money, a gathering profession with nearly the only WoW profession that gives a wide range of regularly used consumables. This gives fantastic opportunities for making some gold, whether you need it to support raid progression, or just to get that flying mount you have been lusting after.

Firstly, gathering.

Easy, if mind numbingly boring, this is a guaranteed way of making money. Alchemy mats are constantly being bought, and herbs can be found in abundance in most outland areas.

There is no real 'money making' herb, instead simply look for a few different herbs and go to gather those which are most expensive!

You can find different herbs in different locations,

(List to come shortly)

Making money from alchemy is a different story, and requires a pretty large amount of patience. I find Super Mana Pots to be a lucrative source of gold in WoW, however if there is a lot of competition at the time I can struggle to break even.

Elixirs of Healing Power can also be a good source of gold, they require expensive mats but can sometimes sell for twice what it costs to make them. If mats for items are going for a huge amount on the auction house you may want to consider grinding the mats rather than buying them, it may take a bit longer but can net you a healthy profit!

Of course these examples are purely from personal experience, I also find tanking elixirs, flasks and potions also sell well. Though the profit tends to be smaller as mats are more expensive (Poor tanks)

It does seem best to avoid DPS flasks and elixirs. While there are some great things out there for DPS they have a tendency to avoid the expense, after all you can berate a tank or a healer for not having every buff up, but can you shout at a hunter who doesn't have one yet beats some of the poorer players in the group?

Of course all DPS should be using flasks and elixirs for that one last boost, it rarely seems to happen outside of high-end, good guilded raids though.

Making money from these professions is largely a matter of intuition and experience. There is no guide out there that can say 'grind this' 'make that' 'sell at this price' because the market for herbs and pots is one of the most flexible in game.

At some times you will find Golden Sansam, a rather low level herb, selling for upwards of 35g a stack, and dreaming glory going for as little as 7g, the trick is simply to stock up while things are cheap and sell while they are expensive. Sometimes you may find yourselves buying herbs at a cheap price and selling them a few days later. Remember to look at the cost of mats and pots on the AH, if it is more profitable to sell your materials separately you might as well do it. Each stack of potions instantly has the 1.75g imbued vial cost as well as the auction house cut to contend with!

After several weeks of playing the auction house you should be more than capable of making informed decision on what to buy, what to sell and more importantly what to make.

As a final point a great bonus of high level alchemy is speccing into a particular branch of alchemy, these are

Transmute Master
Potions Master
Elixir master

Taking any of these will give you around a ten percent chance of proccing an extra 1-4 of whatever you are making.

I do not suggest making a transmute master. Because you can only transmute once every 23 hours you are literally gimping yourself to one proc every ten days.

Potions mastery and elixir mastery are great options for money making, both proc regularly and you can make hundreds of potions in one day.

If you wish to unlearn your alchemy specialisation and respec into a new branch of alchemy (Ie unlearn transmute mastery and learn potions mastery) you simply have to go to the person who taught you the mastery of your spec and ask him to release you from it. This WILL cost you 150g

Ignore the people who tell you to go to a specific person whatever spec, you do have to visit the person who trains your specific alchemy mastery. These guys are

Transmute Master - Zarevhi at Stormspire in Netherstorm
Elixir Master - Lorokeem At the Lower City in Shattrath
Potions Master - Lauranna Thar'well in the Cenarion Expedition in Zangermarsh

To learn a new specialisation simply got the Master trainer you require and he will teach you his mastery, you will NOT need to do their quest.