Monday, August 9, 2010

Basic Steps to Earning Gold in WoW

Despite the complaints you may hear from some, in the World of Warcraft game it's easy to earn extra cash. Spend some effort, work at it a bit, and you'll have plenty of gold to spend on your items. Most of the basic stuff you can do while leveling or exploring and this basic stuff applies whether you're leveling to 85 in (the upcoming) Cataclysm or just playing Classic WoW.

First off, there are only a couple of ways to earn money in the entire game. You sell services or stuff to someone (whether a player or not) and/or you complete quests for the rewards. (If you're a Rogue you can open locked boxes or pick pockets to earn a little more.) Selling stuff to vendors is small change, but it adds up in the long run. At higher level the cash rewards for completing quests become pretty good.  Advanced players will often have a routine where they complete a number of the Daily Quests in an hour or two and make 200 to 300 gold.

But selling stuff to other players is the best way to go and the Auction House (AH,) is how most people sell their stuff although some will do it in trade chat. (Selling your skills for tips is another good way to go.) The only trick is where to get the stuff to sell and discovering which stuff is worth the effort.

So where to start? Make a level 1 character and run that character straight to the big city. I like Ironforge on the Alliance side and Orgrimmar on the horde side. This character will be your designated banker/buyer/seller. Everything that your main characters want to sell will be mailed to your banker for posting on the Auction House. This means that your characters do not have to go to all the way to the big city every time they want to sell their loot, which saves you lots of time. Just visit the nearest mailbox, mail your stuff, get rid of the vendor junk, turn in your quests, and get back to the game.

Grab skinning as your first skill. You're going to be killing a lot of skinnable critters as you level up and some of those skins sell for good money, even as a a low level character. Next pick up either mining or herbalism, that way you can be detecting herbs or ores while skinning things. Just gather stuff and skin everything and spend a bit of time, if necessary, to make sure your gathering skills are high enough for the next zone.

If you're higher level you can do pretty much the same thing. You're going to start in the low level areas and level your skills until they're high enough for the next area. If you're high enough level, and you're on a PvP server, you'll also be in position to help out your side if the other side is harassing them. PvP can be a nice bit of recreation, even though it won't help your gold stash.

As you gather loot from your kills keep anything that isn't gray and sell it. All the gray stuff will go straight to the vendor to sell. Anything that's white or better, and that you're not going to use, goes to the banker. (By the way, pay attention to current AH prices so that you don't over or under price your stuff.)

You can also run your higher level character through the low level dungeons. Cloth, sellable items, and lots of vendor junk are yours for the keeping in these instances. Bring large, empty bags, as you'll fill them with just a couple of instance runs. If you're lucky you may even find a blue item which can be sold for a pretty penny.

These tips will keep you in gear and mounts as you level, if you apply them. Some people, though, are more ambitious. If you want to earn a lot more gold then there are a lot of advanced strategies to follow, and you can find a great number of these strategies in a book titled, "Warcraft Millionaire." Whether you just want enough gold to keep your characters in good gear or you want to hit the gold cap (a bit over 200k gold) this book has you covered. Read this review of the WoW Millionaire and see if it won't massively increase your gold stash.

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