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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Dechion's Place 
oooh! great idea. Not sure you’d reach the appropriate audience. Newbies don’t tend to read Blogs. But I have to say aside from rolling a DK, that sounds like a great way to make money as a newbie.
The question is how would I reach the right audience.
While the same tactics would also work for a veteran player starting on a new server, or even a new acccount, the ones I would really like to help are the newbs.
Perhaps posting (or linking) on the official forums… but then again thats just inviting the trolls over for dinner.
any ideas?
Since I’ve never played Horde, a friend and I started a couple noobs on a new server. She’s an Undead Mage; I’m an Orc Enh. Shaman. She took Herbalism & Tailoring; I took Mining & Skinning.
We hit level 20 on Sunday night, and we’d both made around 200g by then (we’d also spent some on gear and stuff to level tailoring), with a net of around 180g. Not too shabby…and if we do roll Goblins or other Horde come Cataclysm, we’ll no doubt do so on this server…where we already have some gold built up.
It also gave us (well, me, mostly) a chance to learn the Horde side of things. I must say, Horde capitals are WAY more difficult to learn to navigate than Alliance (except, of course, The Exodar).
I agree completely about making a pile of money through leveling with gathering professions.
Actually myeslf and my two kids are planning our Goblins as Skinner/Miner, Herbalist/Alchemist, and Tailor/Enchanter. We should do pretty well with that combo.
I mostly wanted to get enough gold together to buy five 16 slot bags each and give each toon maybe 15-20G to help with training and such till we get the ball rolling.
I will disagree with you on capitol cities however. The Horde ones, especially Undercity, are superbly laid out. The Alliance ones on the other hand….
I still have to ask the guards where everything is after being Alliance for half of TBC and all of Wrath.
There are lots of really fun gold making blogs out there. I know one or more have posted just such adventures. Sadly, I can’t remember which one.
Given the popularity of such blogs, I’d say there would be interest.
I love my end game raiding, but it isn’t the only aspect of the game I enjoy. I’d get bored and leave Wow if raiding was my only fun. Another chunk of the fun for me is planning out twinking my baby toons, and so is starting new ones off server to see how what I’ve learned affects my leveling experience without a sugar momma to fund leveling. Reading about your AH adventures would interest and amuse me and probably some of your other readers as well.
Since I’m not fond of playing the AH I’d rather roll a horde-dk, invest 2hours to get him out of the starting zone and then farm stockades in stormwind for wool cloth (~25g/stack on my server). As a lvl60dk it takes about 10-15minutes to clear the stockades and you have about 3-4 stacks of wool cloth afterwards – if you’re fast you can do it 5times an hour and be done for the week. Or if you want to roll alliance than farm zul’farak for mageweave cloth (~10g/stack on my server) – takes a little longer but you also get more stacks (+silk). As a dk you can always offer to tank for these instances to speed it up even more.
Personally I have given up on reading gold-making-blogs, at some point its always the same-old-same-old.
Every 80 I have goes raiding at some point, that includes proper gear, gems, enchants, food, flasks, and so on. I don’t even farm except for reputation or my own professions, I only do 2 dailies with some of them (cooking/fishing) + jc-daily + random heroic on those toons that still need EoF. My gold only increases even after 2week-wipe-fests on LK – for me there is no need for gold.
My latest toon (probably last, since I then have every class, every race, every profession maxed) is a warlock (44) and he is more busy to find THAT cooking recipe to level up cooking. Which reminds me of the trick I used to do: quest your way out of a starting zone, buy those lvl1-10 cooking recipes and sell them for 500% markup in the AH – they sell like candy.
Good point on the starting zone recipes, it works pretty well for vendor sold vanity pets as well.
The quickest way to raise money on a new server would most certainly be to roll a DK there as you said. Whether farming instances for cloth and cash or simply picking up a gathering profession (or two!) and farming up high level vanilla or low level TBC mats it would be the way to go.
Unless of course you do not have a level 55 or better character, or you already have an opposite faction DK on the same server. Thats the case with me.
Granted I could simply buy a Primordial Saronite Alliance side and ship it over to the Horde side for resale. I am simply trying to see what I can do in minutes a day with just a level 7 toon.
If for whatever reason I bore of it i’ll just ship over some money from my Alliance side toons.
This all assumes of course that I am playing enough to run instances. In the last few weeks I have run a few random heroics and one 4/12 pug. Other than that I have been doing other things.