Tronskis all legit gold guide (5.4)

[Tronski]

*Disclaimer* this is a work in progress, I'm saving it on regular intervals as it's gonna be rather long - I'll also try to update it as new content roll out.

If you constantly find yourself being on the verge of poormanship, but you, like me, hate farming and don't want to risk your precious account to the likes of botting or gold buying, this is the guide for you.


I want to start this guide by saying that there is no get rich quick scheme if you want to do it legit. Making gold requires some effort and patience. Some luck doesn't hurt either.
This guide won't let you buy that spectral tiger by the end of the month, but it will certainly make it affordable faster.
It will also be based more on common sense and utilization of tools to make it easier rather than on cool tricks and shortcuts.
Spending 1-2 hours a day should be more than enough to ensure some healthy profit.


Furthermore, this will more or less be a repost of a whole bunch of reposts, so I will to the best of my abilities try to link to other peoples' guides so they can get their credit for writing the guides first, that, plus it saves me the hassle of rewriting it. I will spice it up and personalize it by mainly focusing on my methods, but I'll make sure to include alternative methods too.

Understanding the nature of economy, the Auction House and the different Markets

First off, understand that saving money also equals a larger pile of gold in your pocket, anything you can farm or make yourself is in most cases gold saved. Even if it's just cutting that raw gem or smelting that ore into bars, and that gem or ore is bought on the auction house. You'll always have to consider what your time is worth though. Is it worth spending 15 minutes to save 50g? No, no it isn't.

Second, know that people are lazy, and this is the essence of exploiting them to make gold. You have to deliver what they don't want to hassle with making or gathering themselves.

Third, you also have to understand when demand on "consumable" items is high and when it is low. The short version is that it in general is high on reset day and low just before the reset. The long version is that people in genereal don't plan very far ahead, and when they need something, they go and buy it. They know they are bound to get new gear during the first three days of a new reset, be that through lfr or heroic raiding, they are bound to get something, but they don't go and buy it before they actually need it. And thus, on reset day, when many people need the same items at once, the prices skyrockets.

But there's also markets not tied directly to consumption. Transmog gear, Pets, Mounts and other vanity or fun items will always be in high demand. Some, depending on rarity, will only be worth more as time passes. Haunted Memento is a good example of this. But most of them will be worth less in time, so don't wait for it to be worth more unless it's no longer possible to get a hold of, or it's unreasonable unlikely, like Teebu's Blazing Longsword.
You should always be careful when investing as you never know when someone finds a way to dupe items or when blizzard suddenly makes it available through new means.

Well then, let's get on with the moneymaking.

The first thing you should have are several characters, having them at 90 really doesn't hurt. Leveling is a hassle, but here's a few shortcuts.
60-80(or 85) with help and 80-85 solo
85-90.

The second thing are addons! They really do save lifetimes. I myself like to keep it simple, I use TSM with all its modules. It was recently overhauled in patch 5.4, and this is not the place to go in-depth on it's functions, so head on over to The Forum for a run down on how it actually works. There's a few really nifty videoguides there too. It takes some time to set it up, but when you've got it running, you'll never regret spending that time.
What it does is basically letting you put up a large quantity of different auctions up at the same time. It has some function to help you craft and mail items between your characters. And it also helps you keep track of what you've sold.

Another one that will improve your non-TSM auctioning life is AuctionMaster. A simple addon that let's you easily undercut competition on odd items you haven't added in any TSM groups.

Then we have Altoholic - because it never hurts to easily find out what's in your alts bags.

The third thing you should have, are professions. All of them would be preferable. Here's my recommended priorities if you are limited to less:

2: Enchanting and inscription.
4: Alchemy (transmutation) and jewelcrafter
6: Herbalism and mining - preferably on a druid and make sure you have Forager's Gloves and Ancient Pandaren Mining Pick
8: Engineering and blacksmithing
10: Skinning and Leatherworking
12: Alchemy (elixir) and Tailoring

Obviosuly, you can have as many as you want in any combination you like, but I think this is a good priority if you don't have or want to have that many characters at max level. The reason for this is that this is a setup that minimize farming. Though, one might wonder at what point the farming of the herbs and ore would yield more profit than just buying it, when wondering what to do with the third char. The reason I have engineering and blacksmithing below herbalism and mining is that anything you can make with those as of now takes at least 15 days to produce, with huge investments that might not pay off all that much. In addition, to amke the blacksmithing weapons, which still are pretty good to make, you need to farm a buttload of spirit of harmony, which is a pain.

Character One

Enchanting: Relatively easy to get the necessary materials for anything through regular play, and having it on the character you play the most will naturally increase the likelyhood of getting them dusts and crystals. Especially with timeless isle, timeless items rain down upon you ready to be disenchanted.
Even if you don't get that much to disenchant through regular play, the materials will always be readily available on the auction house, and the demand for what you can make will always be high.

What I like to focus on these days are basically everything you can make with sha crystals. as the profit margins tends to be higher. That means Weapon and Bracer enchants.

Inscription: Glyphs and shoulder enchants, demand will always be high, and the competition are rarely that tight because the nature of high competition in this market makes it less profitable the more tiresome it gets. The positive thing is that also here, the materials will always be readily available on the auction house. The only drawback with this profession is that the product are buy-once, and as such, the demand will deteriorate over time.
TSM has some nice features that let you easily send glyphs to another character with better bagspace. Setting up TSM for glyphs is yet again better explained on its forum.

In addition to this you can make Shoulder Enchants that's in somewhat high demand. Those are Greater Crane Wing Inscription, Greater Ox Horn Inscription, Greater Tiger Claw Inscription and Greater Tiger Fang Inscription
.
I prefer having a char dedicated to making and posting glyphs, then I just pop in a few times a day to repost my glyphs.
This is one of them fields where the more active you are, the more you will earn, reposting my glyphs twice a day usually nets me about 3k.

Character Two

Alchemy - Transmutation Master: Alchemy is another class that can supply items in which the demand is high, but to me, the "easiest" gold to make from this profession is the transmutations. If you make a flask with elixir mastery and it procs 2x: "yay, 60 more gold for me". If you make a primal diamond and it procs 2x: "yay, 600 more gold for me". Nothing stops you from making them flasks and potions though, and sometimes that might be very profitable even without potential procs.

What I do, is the living steel transmute every day, and the primal diamond transmute when I get the gems needed for it at a total price being 100g lower than the primal diamond itself. And I almost fall off of my chair when I see that x5 proc. When the ghost iron ores/bars are relatively cheap compared to trillium ores/bars, I use the transmute trillium. I seems to me that it rarely procs, but it's still worth it just in case.

Jewelcrafter:: Yet another profession with a really high demand. This profession has a high potential to make very much gold, but the competition usually makes the glyph market seem calm and soothing.

I more or less only use it to cut gems to myself and primal diamonds for the market. but then again, I am really lazy.

Character Three - Preferably druid because of flight form.

Herbalism and Mining: A vicious farming combo on a druid with Forager's Gloves. Obviously, any class would be good to farm with, but druids have the little perk of being able to harvest flowers in flight form. Ancient Pandaren Mining Pick is also highly advised, just because in those rare cases when you actually get a gem, it might be something good.
There's one spot I prefer above all others, and that's the skyrange in Valley of the Four Winds, the high-rise with the monkeys. The respawn there seem to be very local, and really fast.

Another great place to farm, although with more of them bothering mobs, is Windward Isle:
http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...-iron-etc.html

I spend about 30 min there daily, and in that time I get everything I need for engineering, blacksmithing and inscription and alchemy transmutes. Mostly ghost iron ore and green tea leaves, but also the occasional golden lotus. If you farm at windward, you'll also get more you can use in alchemy-elixirs.

A good place to farm leather and scales is the Timeless Isle. Especially the turtles are lying around in heaps and unskinned.

Character four

Engineering: Apart from granting you access to the Auction House in new main cities, and in general being being fun, it's traditionall not a very profitable profession, as the only interesting thing it has provided was scopes like Lord Blastington's Scope of Doom. But very recently that really took a turn in the right direction. Now we can make Pierre, Rascal-Bot and The Sky Golem. They take some timeand effort to make through Jard's Peculiar Energy Source with a daily cd, but when made, these are really worth something. We are also currently awaiting the famous Skyclaw, which as plans have it, is a mount you can gather herbs with.

Blacksmithing: blacksmithing is good for a few more items in high demand. Living steel belt buckle and Living Steel Weapon Chain. Then we have them 502 Reborn weapons you can make with the daily craft Lightning Steel Ingot. They are still in demands as there's no "free" weapons available. With the exception of boa weapons at 463, you have to get your weapons from dungeons or lfr, and some people prefer the shortcut of buying them. Even when looking at pvp weapons, there is still some barriers people have to get over first, and that farm for points is usually not less painful without a weapon. The only drawback is that you have to farm spirits of harmony.
At last we have the new daily craft Balanced Trillium Ingot. as you make these you learn recipes for 553 boe gear requiring nothing else to make than the ingots themselves. 21 for belts and 28 for leggings. If you got easy access to spirits of war you can make more Ingots faster.

Character five

Skinning: Gather leather and scales for leatherworking. Skinning is one of them lame professions that easily can be replaced by another more beneficial profession of your choice with a daily craft. I just like having it just in case. And the achievement. I like achievements.

Leatherworking: You can make leg enchants: Shadowleather Leg Armor, Ironscale leg armor and Angerhide Leg Armor.
You can make Magnificent hide with 20 exotic leathers or 20 prismatic scales once a day, and for 50 exotic leathers as many times as you like. Then we have the new daily craft Hardenened Magnificent Hide that gives you recipes for 553 gear similar to blacksmithing.

Character six

Alchemy: Elixir Master for flasks.

Tailoring: This is the way to spend the massive amounts of cloth being thrown your way, we have the daily craft Imperial Silk that can be used to craft Greater Cerulean Spellthread Greater Pearlescent Spellthread and The Royal Satchel 28 slots bag.
And then we have the daily craft Celestial Cloth for 553 gear.


Breakdown

Let's have a look at how we make the money then:

So, what you need to do, especially if you have that mean farming machine with both herbalism and mining, is spend 30-60 minutes farming and then distribute the harvest between your characters as you see fit. The rule of thumb is to always make your daily crafts, as it will turn a profit as long as the product is relevant, be it with self harvested or bought materials:

Send all boe gear you get to your Enchanter.

10 Ghost iron bars to the engineer for Jard's Peculiar Power Source

70 ghost iron bars to the transmute master to make 7 trillium bars -> 1 living steel and 1 trillium bar to your blacksmith

10 ghost iron bars and the aforementioned trillium bar to your blacksmith to make Lightning Steel Ingot and Balanced Trillium Ingot

All your Golden Lotus to your elixir master to make flasks

90 windwool cloths to your tailorer to make Imperial Silk and Celestial Cloth

70 exotic leather or 50 exotic leather and 20 prismatic scales to your leatherworker to make 2 magnificent hide -> Hardened Magnificent Hide - Item - World of Warcraft

Excess ores be sent to your Jewelcrafter

Herbs divided purposefully between the inscriptionist and elixir master.

I strongly suggest doing the farm yourself because you get 100% of the income as profit. you don't have to worry about the auction house prices, either for raw materials or final product. Should you find that ore, bars, herbs or ink is undecently high priced on teh ah, you can just throw your own out there and farm some more.

But, there's always a but, late in a patch/expansion cycle, like now, the prices of most raw materials have plummeted to the point of laughability, so they can also just be bought. This usually also means that the end product has fallen in price as the materials are so easily available, Farming oneself becomes less profitable, but of what there is to make out of them, you still retain a 100% profit.

The Auction House

Scanning
I think there's a feature of Auction Master called History/Scan. That let you pick items you want to watch prices of over time. Scan the AH a few times daily to see the history and always know the marketprice on items you want for yourself or to resell.

Sniping.
Sometimes people just type in the wrong amount, sometimes they just put items out before their addons can adjust the price, and this can end up in seriously awesome purchases. Go through the different sections of easy identifiable bargains. Mounts, pets, epics, golden lotuses, sha crystals, ores, herbs - You get my drift. Your addon should

A few months ago I got a Darkmoon Rabbit for a whooping 47 Silver from the regular auction house. It certainly doesn't hurt to take a look.

The Undermine Journal

Go get to know it. It's a lovely place to find out what items go for what prices and in what quantities. It also show you item history and even a function to see when specific people are active on the auction house. But what I love the most is "Great Deals" sections. It picks out those items that are far below the average listed price for that item. Use it with care and caution as the deals aren't necessarily as good as they may seem.

European servers: https://eu.theunderminejournal.com/
American servers: https://theunderminejournal.com/

Trade Chat

Always keep an eye on trade chat. There is bound to be a good trade popping up every now and then. If you see something that looks good, check the item's value against the Auction House, Wowhead or your memory. Try to bargain with people. Be shameless. If someone is buying something, give them a price above AH price, I kid you not when I say a great deal of people don't bother checking the AH price.

Just recently I advertised that I wanted to sell a moonfang paw. A bloke offered me 500g for it. Standing right outside of the auction house, I sold i to him and made my way to the auctioneer to buy one of the four that was there for 175g. Like I said earlier, we want to exploit people's lazyness.

When people are selling something in trade, that usually means they want the gold now and they might be willing to accept less for faster trades, be outrageous in your offer and haggle your way upwards to your walk-away price. If we are talking about really expensive items and they are trying to keep close to the AH price, it's worth mentioning that there's a 5% ah cut.

Again, when writing this, a guy wrote something as vague in trade as "selling gem-pack". Upon asking him what this was about he ended up selling me about 80 cut gems with a value of almost 10k for 1,5k. This, he told me, was just because he was 1,5k short of buying a pair of boots to get into raid finder

Sunsong Ranch

Just do it. On several characters. It takes 1 minute to travel there and another 4 minutes to harvest and replant. Go for Enigma seeds If you want golden lotuses and randoom herbs, and Songbell Seeds if you're in need of Spirits of Harmony.

But it has to be mentioned, regular vegetables used for the various cooking tables are also a moneymaker around progression times, I've seen stacks of 100 being sold for 800g, and it doesn't take that much work or time to get a stack of 100.

Get one char to exalted with the tillers, buy the rep boost, and get your subsequent characters to revered for access to the good seeds.

Rares

Farming rares, especially zandalarian warbringers and warscouts, is also a way to get some quick loot. These both drop insignias worth 17,5g a piece and bags containing loot valued from 50-1000g

Profession Kits

This one requires some work before you see end results.

MoP Profession Leveling Guides | 1-600

Just gather opp all the mats required for a profession.

Farming Places for some expensive and much needed materials

Hypnotic Dusts and Embersilk

Uldum. Two places:

http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...evel-spot.html
and
http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...ey-income.html

Or

Grim Batol if those places are constantly occupied.
http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...tiles-etc.html

What I recommend doing is going there with a tailor, with Cloth Scavenging, a Potion of Treasure Finding and big empty bags.

What embersilk cloth you don't sell, you make Deathsilk Bracers of and send to your enchanter for disenchanting


Rugged leather

Onyxia Trash. Sadly it's no as good as it used to be, but spesning 15 minutes here still rewards more than enough.

Knothide leather and Fel Hide

Karazhan is a nice place to farm these.
http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...ther-easy.html

Boosts

Advertise boosts in trade or the forums. Especially 80-85 and 85-90 are lvl gaps people hate. Arena or Challenge Mode boosts are also sought after.

Myself, I sell boosts on the Timeless Isle. Agian, you have to consider what your time is worth. I'm happy with 4k an hour, but there's always people willing to pay more.

Misc Hot items

Redbelly Mandarin
Has become too troublesome to acquire in patch 5.4, so most people don't bother with trying to fram them themselves. They have a rather limited use, that is Banquets and a part of To be a master, but they still sell at ridiculous prices. I'm currently selling them in stacks of 5 for 150, but I wouldn't be surprised if they went for more.

What you do to get a hold of them is getting Ironpaw Tokens both through questing with the Tillers and/or Replenishing the Pantry through Empty Containers bought from Merchant Cheng. Get a hold of cheap meat, myself I try to get stacks for less than 20g, but obviosuly, anything below what you sell the Redbelly for turns a profit.

The following are the meat types and quantities you can Exchange for an Ironpaw Token:

20x Raw Tiger Steak
20x Mushan Ribs
20x Raw Turtle Meat
20x Raw Crab Meat
20x Wildfowl Breast
20x Raw Crocolisk Belly
20x Jade Lungfish
20x Giant Mantis Shrimp
20x Emperor Salmon
20x Redbelly Mandarin
20x Tiger Gourami
20x Jewel Danio
20x Reef Octopus
20x Krasarang Paddlefish
60x Golden Carp

What Else is there?

This guy sums up most of the alternative methods very well. To be frank, he sums up almost everything: http://www.ownedcore.com/forums/worl...ins-guide.html Again, Reposts of reposts can be a good thing.

Then we have WTBGold at youtube, who has a lot of neat tricks for making gold. I've tried quite a lot of the methods, some yields lots of gold while others are not so good. Check it out!
As for those I can reccomend:
Alysrazor Boost
Zul'Farrak For Transmogs, misc sellable gear, cloth and enchanting mats.

More youtubes with good tips are:
Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj

[Naxos1337]

Interesting start, keep going mate!

[Tronski]

Phew, getting somewhere.

[Lokiskye]

"The reason I strongly suggest doing the farm yourself is because you get 100% of the income as profit." The amount of time being put down to farming is a waste of time, unless you actually enjoy farming.

1) You farm mats for one hour, process the mats for 15 mins and sell them for a total of 3000g. That nets you 3000g for 1.25 hours of work. That is 2400g/hour.
2) You buy the mats off the AH for 1000g and process the mats for 15 mins and sell them for a total of 3000g. That nets you 2000g for 0.25 hours of work. That is 8000g/hour.

By choosing to farm the mats you give up 5600g/hour if you were to do this continuesly.

[Tronski]

"The reason I strongly suggest doing the farm yourself is because you get 100% of the income as profit." The amount of time being put down to farming is a waste of time, unless you actually enjoy farming.

1) You farm mats for one hour, process the mats for 15 mins and sell them for a total of 3000g. That nets you 3000g for 1.25 hours of work. That is 2400g/hour.
2) You buy the mats off the AH for 1000g and process the mats for 15 mins and sell them for a total of 3000g. That nets you 2000g for 0.25 hours of work. That is 8000g/hour.

By choosing to farm the mats you give up 5600g/hour if you were to do this continuesly.

1. You should get materials for much, much more than 3000 by farming for one hour. I get close to that by farming for 15 minutes.

2. This assumes that your server has an average material cost of 33% of the final product. Most servers haven't got this luxury. On my server you are lucky if you can get 50% profit on buying before processing. You can barely make flasks with a profit even with elixir mastery due to the golden lotus and herb prices, same goes for ores and gems. The 200% profit you're speaking of is really a wet dream and nothing more.

Right now, the most profitable thing I can do is buying 10 sha crystals for 1200 and sell a jade spirit enchant for 1900. That is nearly 60% profit. And this is with a material that's troublesome to farm.
And even if you were to invest 12k to make dancing steel enchants, there is a risk that by the time you get them sold the price has plummeted to 1300, which gives us a 1k profit.

You're also assuming that doing one of the things exclude the other. What stops you from buying those materials you can actually make a profit from processing, and then go and farm the rest? As with the dancing steel enchants, you can only sell so many of one item in a set period of time, so it's easier to sell different items. Diversification is a key word.

It is also a point in itself that I suggest having a farming character only if you have 3 characters or more

[snooze87]

" I really can't understand how you made 15min into 1,25 hours"

i assume he means farm 1 hour, and process 15 minutes - 1 1/4 hour

[Tronski]

" I really can't understand how you made 15min into 1,25 hours"

i assume he means farm 1 hour, and process 15 minutes - 1 1/4 hour

Yes, I guess that was what he meant, and actually wrote, I just managed to not see it

[lalaballs]

"The reason I strongly suggest doing the farm yourself is because you get 100% of the income as profit." The amount of time being put down to farming is a waste of time, unless you actually enjoy farming.

1) You farm mats for one hour, process the mats for 15 mins and sell them for a total of 3000g. That nets you 3000g for 1.25 hours of work. That is 2400g/hour.
2) You buy the mats off the AH for 1000g and process the mats for 15 mins and sell them for a total of 3000g. That nets you 2000g for 0.25 hours of work. That is 8000g/hour.

By choosing to farm the mats you give up 5600g/hour if you were to do this continuesly.

Keep in mind that most things were BOP or daily CD's that he was making, therefore you cannot do this continuously, so your 8000g/hour would be impossible using this method.

[Tronski]

Updated 29/01

[Shodokan]

"The reason I strongly suggest doing the farm yourself is because you get 100% of the income as profit." The amount of time being put down to farming is a waste of time, unless you actually enjoy farming.

1) You farm mats for one hour, process the mats for 15 mins and sell them for a total of 3000g. That nets you 3000g for 1.25 hours of work. That is 2400g/hour.
2) You buy the mats off the AH for 1000g and process the mats for 15 mins and sell them for a total of 3000g. That nets you 2000g for 0.25 hours of work. That is 8000g/hour.

By choosing to farm the mats you give up 5600g/hour if you were to do this continuesly.

There is nothing you can flip every hour on the hour for that sort of margin m8, no matter the server.