Starting from Scratch

Good morning and happy maintenance day.

Though I have not played  much at all lately I did try out a little experiment.

Actually it was more of a bet with my son than anything else, but I found a way to make it useful.

I made money.

Pretty good money considering.

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It started as a question. When we go over to the Horde side to level our Goblins how are we going to have money and bags and stuff?

Well, I answered, we could do a lot of different things.

We could roll a Death Knight or three on the target server. They start at a high enough level that we could easily make decent money through gathering mid level mats.

We could do it on the same server that we already have a high level character on, even if it is Alliance it would help out a lot. With multiple accounts transferring money through the neutral AH would be easily done, if a bit expensive.

But what if you don’t have all that  available to you?

What, he asked, if this is your first character ever? 

How could you possibly have any money?

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A good question, and one with as many answers as there are people playing the game.

Probably the favorite is to take two gathering professions as soon as you leave the starting zone and grind up some leather while gathering either herbs or ore for sale in the Auction House. It’s a favorite because it works.

I decided to do something just a little bit different. Since the character is nothing more than a placeholder until Cataclysm anyhow I decided I did not really want to spend a bunch of time leveling and grinding just so I could turn around and delete him.

Enter a shiny new baby Tauren Shamen. One who is in essence just a placeholder anyhow.

I leveled him through the starting zone and picked up skinning at level 6, right after reaching Bloodhoof village.

Walking right outside of town I proceeded to kill and skin my way to two whole stacks of light leather, reaching level 7 in the process. I was also fortunate enough to loot two 6 slot bags by this time, which helped a lot. Total time invested at this point was under two hours, probably closer to one.

I really should have done a /played just as I got the last piece of leather, but didn’t think about it.

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Taking my level seven self to Thunder Bluff I ran over and listed my Light Leather for a few gold a stack, whatever the market would bear, and then logged out of him for two days.

Logging in to find my inbox had a bit of coin in it I headed back to the AH to run a quick scan. I then bid on items where the bid price was lower than the vendor price until I ran out of cash. Then I logged out until the next day.

The rest of the week saw me doing the exact same thing. Log in, check my mail, scan, bid, log out. Maybe a total of 10 minutes a day, most of which was me scanning while tabbed out reading blogs.

In the space of  just a few days of this I was able to turn the two stacks of leather and perhaps 30 silver I walked into town with into 21 gold.

I wonder just how well off my little Goblin will be by the time Cataclysm gets here?

I also wonder if I should grab some screenshots and write up how I did that, amongst other things that work as well, as a newbie money making guide.

I wonder if there would be any interest?

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