What Will I Do When I Reach The Gold Cap?

This is my entry for the blogging carnival over at JMTC & it's really made me think. My first reaction was 'Spend it, of course!' but then I realised that nothing in game actually costs that much so what would I be buying?

Well, I would really like the 100 mount achievement so I guess I'll buy mounts to make up that total & also the pet achieves. I still haven't bought a chopper or the traveler's tundra mammoth so I guess I'd have to allow myself those luxuries but whether I splash out for all my level 85's or just for 1 or 2, I don't know yet. I suppose I should treat my ever suffering husband to something special & probably a few of my closest guildies too but I don't quite know what yet!

I have a feeling that 1 million won't be enough though. I'm fairly competitive in some ways & knowing that other bloggers are out there with more than me or getting there faster than me, kind of makes me want to go full steam ahead & try for the 2 or 5 million mark. Hopefully by then I should have my systems streamlined so I can actually sit back a little and watch the snowball gain momentum as it races down the hill but I also think that I'm not very good at sitting on the sidelines so I'll be tempted to fine tune & fiddle all the way.

Hitting the half way mark last week has already changed how I've been working this week but that's for my weekly update post. I definitely won't be glyphing all the way to 5 million though, that is for sure!

Spare Inks? Faire Inks!

As a side benefit of milling herbs for all the different levels of inks for my scribe, I usually end up with shedloads of uncommon or 'green' inks like Hunter's Ink or Royal Ink. I'd been selling a few at the AH but they just seem to dribble out of there & I decided I really needed to do something with them or my bags were gonna explode!

So two Darkmoon Faires ago, I made up all those inks into the various cards & sold the decks and spare cards at the AH. I managed to shift 64 low level decks at prices ranging from 35g to 85g (Rogues, Swords, Mages & 1 Demons Deck). That netted me a healthy chunk of gold across the week, just over 3000g, according to my MySales data.

Last month the Faire was in Thunder Bluff on my server so sales were lower but I still managed to shift about 20 various decks but prices were much lower so only about 500g on my MySales but I did find someone asking in trade for decks & managed to sell them 36 decks (mainly Rogues) for 1000g.

This month I have fewer inks to use up. The prices of Cataclysm herbs have dropped a fair bit whilst supplies of the lower herbs have reduced and forced prices up, so I've been using Blackfallow Inks & the Ink Trader much more.

Also this month, I have a fair few Primal Lifes - my warrior & hunter are both going through Outlands & my Main has been working on her Loremaster out there so I've collected them at random. I've made up as many Greater Darkmoon Cards as I can & have listed each one at 75g. These are the old TBC, lvl 70 equivalents of todays' Hurricane/Tsunami cards so they don't have huge value but I get more Darkflame Ink than any of the others. I've tried selling the ink but it just doesn't seem to move at all!

I keep the cards in stacks & make up the decks just before I'm ready to post, they stack in 20's whereas the completed Decks don't stack at all. The Faire is in Shattrath for us this month so it will be interesting to see how the demand is.

What do you do with your uncommon inks? Any other suggestions for me?

Look After The Pennies...

and the pounds will look after themselves. That's an old saying in UK, not sure if it's common anywhere else so please excuse my ignorance. But what does it mean? Do you save all your small change in a jar by any chance? When was the last time you counted up all those coppers? Yeah, soon adds up, doesn't it?

Today's post is one of those small tips that over time, really adds up. It's only for Alliance players too unless you're a very brave hordie who wants to hang out in Stormwind with us :)

Wandering the streets of Stormwind is a lonely young lad called Lil Timmy, talking to his White Kitten. He has 1 for sale approx every 3 hours for 48silver & they sell on the AH for 150g at least. I've marked his route on the screenshot below - sometimes he does this route clockwise & sometimes, anticlockwise so park your alt near the west gate of the cathedral zone if you want to camp his spawn point. I tend to leave my alts by the mailbox near the Old Town Bridge - it's near enough to the Trade District for easy bank/AH access but far enough out that my PC doesn't take 30mins to load a working screen!

I've managed to intercept Timmy about 4 times this week just while collecting mail - that's about 600g (ish)for an outlay of less than 2g. I like profit like that, don't you?

Oh Yeah! Half Way There! & What's Been Selling This Week?

So it's been another good week for me - pretty much glyphs all the way again this week with the odd showing from Mammoth Mining Bags & Inferno Inks. My usual quick bit of maths tells me I spent 17k this week but I bought fast flying & my Flight masters licence for my warrior which takes almost 5k off that figure! My overall liquid cash inflow this week was around 45k & I've not really stockpiled much at all.

I was trying to use the ink-appropriate herbs but for Ethereal Ink & Ink of the Sea, this just hasn't been possible for the last few weeks but I've been getting Whiptail & even Twilight Jasmine for around 40g a stack so I've been using Blackfallow Ink & trading it in for those inks. This has left me with loads of Inferno Inks but I'm not interested in the Darkmoon Cards & the relics (Notched Jawbone, Tattooed Eyeball & Silver Inlaid leaf) aren't holding their value either so I tried selling the Inferno Inks & it seems to be working. With Inferno Ink selling at 60g each or more, my Blackfallow Inks & therefore my glyphs, are pretty much, pure profit.

But the best bit of the week was this morning! Overnight I sold almost 5k of glyphs which finally took me over the 500k mark! Screenshot below for any doubting Thomas's & for my own satisfaction!

Now I have to say, most of my gold comes from glyphs with the occasional foray into the gem & enchanting mats markets. Now that I've reached this goal, I feel I should really start to focus on one of my other markets to the same extent that I do with glyphs. I'm not sure which one yet or maybe I should just try both but I feel the need to get a bit of levelling done so I may take a short holiday from serious gold making efforts.

How am I going to celebrate this milestone? I may finally buy myself the chopper or the mammoth with the vendors (or both I suppose!) but knowing my scroogish ways, I'll probably wait until I get to 1 million before I actually do get them! After all, I've got this far without them, what's another half mil? lol

Multi-Tasking FTW!

I think I've mentioned before that I'm working on my Loremaster achievement but I'm also working on various reputations for The Exalted achievement & I'm doing the rep grinds that give mounts or pets for those achieves too! When I say I'm working on my Loremaster, what that really means is that I pick a zone based on what rep, mount or pet I can get or what materials I'm having problems with at the AH. Last week I went to Winterspring and as I've never quested there on my pally, I decided to keep a good list of what I picked up through the zone.

I was at about 0/3000 Neutral rep with the Wintersaber Trainers but I really want the Frostsaber mount so I decided to combine the rep grind with the questing. My pally is also my skinner/LW'er & I'm constantly struggling to find affordable Thick Leather & Rugged Leather at the AH so I emptied my bags & off I went.

2-3hrs of questing & a bit of rep grinding later & this is what I'd picked up, with their current AH values on my server:-

74 Thick Leather (222g)

94 Rugged Leather (376g)

4 Thick Hides (28g)

7 Rugged Hides (35g)

38 Runecloth (27g - 40g)

25 Bear Flank (30g)

18 Giant Egg (36g)

Recipe: Elixir of Giants (48g)

1 Elemental Water (7g)

1 Core of Earth (2g)

1 Globe of Water (5g)

1 Ironweb Spidersilk (4g)

5 BoE Green items

So that's a total of 820g and 130g from loot, vendor trash & quest rewards makes a grand total of 950g - woop woop! lol

I didn't get very far with my rep grind though - only about 1200 into Friendly because I googled for a guide & found out that the method for getting the Frostsaber mount is changing in patch 4.1. Instead of killing chimaera, bears & furbolgs, Blizzard are introducing a 20 day quest chain to feed, train & generally care for your cub. I didn't think I could grind the rep before the patch hit (there was a possibility of it hitting today) but now I have another week to do it, I may carry on & stockpile the leathers at the same time.

If you're a miner, Winterspring is still good for Thorium, particularly the old favourite Yeti Cave as well as Owlwing Thicket & Frostwhisper Gorge.

For herbalists, Winterspring is the only place to find Icecap as far as I can tell & there's a fair bit of Mountain Silversage here too.

For those of you who sell limited supply vendor items/recipes/patterns, look for Xizzer Fizzbolt in Everlook - he usually has 5 engineering schematics - including Fused Wiring which I wrote about last week!

If you haven't got your Timbermaw Rep up, I'd recommend Alto's post but do Winterspring first - you get Winterfall Spirit Beads when you kill the Ursa's & Shamans for the rep quest which are useless if you already have Timbermaw rep as they are soulbound & can't be passed to an alt or sold.

So, where do I go next on my Loremaster/Exalted/mount chase? Any suggestions welcome or if you'd just like me to cover a particular zone in a similar vein to this post, let me know in comments or you can contact me via my new gmail address at the top left of the page :) I look forward to hearing from you *she says, hopefully* lol

What's Been Selling This Week?

Well, seeing as I mainly spend my time milling & glyphing, I guess the answer is ...yup, glyphs! I did manage to shift the last 3 Maelstrom Crystals that I bought when the Alchemist Stone was nerfed although I did make a small loss of maybe 200g each - 600g loss I can take as the other 40+ crystals all sold for profits, although not as much as I was hoping for!

I also shifted a fair few cut Inferno Rubies this week & managed to snag a great deal on some Borean Leather - 200 pieces for about 1gold each! I only make the Mammoth Mining Bags although I do have the pattern for the Trappers Travelling Pack as well - the trapper bag sells for maybe 100g on a really good day whereas I seem to have very little competition in the mining bag market. I've managed to creep the price up to 225g so far although 1 competitor in particular seems to think that 175g should be the max! I just wait for them to either sell or end then list mine.

After my adventures in Zangarmarsh last week, I had picked up a fair bit of Knothide Leather. I looked at my leatherworking patterns to see if there was anything worth crafting to sell but in the end, I decided to just sell the leather. At 80+ gold a stack, it seemed the better option & I still have a few Outland zones to finish for my Loremaster so that will be a nice bonus.

And last but not least, making it to the top of my sales figures this week is Inferno Ink. I have made a few Darkmoon Cards but I seem to get 'of stones' almost everytime. The Outland herb market is virtually non-existent & even Northrend herbs are pretty scarce so I have found myself milling a lot of Whiptail over the last week or two, to use the ink trader for my glyphs. This leaves me with lots of Inferno Inks so I'm just trickling them into the market when I like the price & there aren't many already listed.

As for my spending, well, about 12.5k spent this week, leaving me with a healthy overall increase in liquid gold of 54.5k as well as a bit of extra stock items (mainly herbs & inks).

Will patch 4.1 hit this week? I really don't know. I'm still learning how markets move in response to these patches but my blogroll guys seem to think it likely so today & tomorrow, I will be watching the gem & ore markets carefully. I don't keep huge stocks of gems - I just don't have the space - but I will be watching to take any advantages I can or to avoid any pitfalls. Luckily, being an EU player, I should get a bit of warning if it hits US servers on Tuesday.

How I Found a New Market...

Just a quick post today but it comes with one of those vaguely funny stories of the 'you just had to be there!' type.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to get the Pet Bombling schematic - well, I eventually found a guildie willing enough to run me through Gnomeregan & I got the schematic. Off I went to the AH to get my Heart of Fire & my Essence of Fire - I'd done my homework on the mats previously but I hadn't been buying them up cheap for some reason. Anyway, I went to a quiet corner to craft 11 of my new pets, only to find that I couldn't make the Fused Wiring yet *insert sad face*. Never mind I thought, my mate in guild is maxed engineer, he'll do them for me so after duly whispering him, meeting up near the forge, I traded the mats to him - 33 Delicate Copper Wire & 22 Essence of Fire. 'All of these?' he whispered back, 'Yup, pls hon' I replied.

So those of you out there who are engineers can probably guess what's coming next but for those readers, who like me, don't always pick up on nuances or fine details, here's the funny bit - he traded me back 55 Fused Wirings! Each craft made 5 fused wirings per 1 set of mats & I only wanted 11 :-D

This morning, there I was with 44 Fused Wirings sitting in my bank & I needed to make some space so I took a stack to the AH - you can imagine my surprise & happiness to see them listed at 18g each! Something that had cost me less than 1g to make.

Now I don't know how many will sell but as one of those tiny niche markets that add up over time, it looks very nice to start with. I guess I'd better get my Engineering a bit higher, see what other gems are hiding at the trainer.

What's Been Selling This Week?

Well, all I can say this week is 'wow! what a week!' Doing my usual bit of maths, I find that I've only spent about 13.5k on stuff leaving me with a healthy liquid gold increase of 48.5k. I didn't conciously reign in my spending, I've had a few 10k plus income days & I've pretty much been doing my usual routine but looking at my list of items, I can't even see that I've been using up stock items so I'm not really sure what's been happening!

Following on from last weeks' update, where I mentioned the glyph market has gone crazy, I thought I'd post the top 3 pages of my sold items. I finally got rid of the Earthquake Deck that I picked up a couple of weeks ago. That was probably a mistake as I just about got my gold back on that investment! Prices for the Darkmoon cards & trinkets have really dropped with even Tsunami & Hurricane decks selling around the 8-10k mark during the Faire last week.

I did do a bulk deal to get rid of my low level Darkmoon decks - 36 decks of the Rogues, Swords & Mages for around 1000g. I possibly could have made more during the week, selling them via the AH but I wanted the bank space & I wanted to take the deal now rather than waiting. I also used up some of the other uncommon inks to make the Demons Deck but that went to the AH, along with spare cards of all decks. Cash is still trickling in from those but I now have an extra 20 spaces in my bags :)

So, apart from the usual, most popular gems & cuts, the only items making the top 3 pages other than glyphs is my mammoth mining bags & a single solitary set of Bloodied Leather Boots. You can easily see the prices I've been getting for my glyphs - I don't set the markets - I use TSM to post which pretty much means I undercut glyphs already there.

I have changed my glyph process slightly but I thought I was just making my life a little easier, I didn't think it would prove so effective in increasing my sales! I used to have a weekly glyph crafting session, where I would spend maybe an hour or two, checking, milling herbs, ink making & glyph crafting then I would top up my stock midweek. Now I'm spending maybe 15 minutes extra per day, topping up only where the gaps are & only the top profit ones (per TSM scans).

Other proffs have kind of fallen by the wayside - I've been making some of the low-mid level LW items & they have been selling & at a profit but I'm not sure the time spent is the most efficient use of my time. I'm going to keep making them to see if I can raise the prices a bit more & also for future posts info. My Blacksmith has just hit Northrend so she will be mining cobalt this week - time to see if there's any life in the BS markets at this level!

I really need to get my enchanter working - I batch make scrolls periodically but she gets little love in between times. I find the scrolls market so confusing, I tend to put it off. I guess TSM has made glyphs so simple for me, I just wish there were an easier way for enchants too!

Enchanted Thorium Blades - Again?

Yeah, I know, some guys have already covered this - Cold was the first I saw but Kuja also wrote about it earlier this week too! So why am I covering it again? Well, I added a little spreadsheet to look at the costings (I am an Accountant by trade, you know!) and I thought it might add a little to the information that is already floating around the blogosphere.

As you can see, it's a pretty basic spreadsheet - just for my personal use but I tidied it up to have it's picture taken :) I just bash in the sell prices for the mats when I'm thinking about crafting & it easily tells me whether to buy ores/bars or the enchanted thorium ready made. On the day I did this screenie, dream dust was pretty high priced so I started looking for cheaper sources of dream dust.

Now Dream Dust disenchants from armor items level 41-50 with itemlevel above 46 giving on average, 3.5 dusts, so I went looking at the AH to see what I could find. I mentioned wow-professions.com the other day & as Stokpile pointed out in the comments, it's a great site for finding out what not to craft for profit! Everyone levelling a profession will be producing 5 or 10 x itemZ so although there's no point crafting them yourself, they do make excellant disenchanting fodder as most levellers just shove them on the AH at silly prices to get a little cash coming back.

The following list shows some of the items to look out for on the AH at silly low prices - I usually bid on these as I'm not in a rush for them - but obviously, only if the cost is less than the current 3.5xdream dust cost!

3.5 dusts per
Thorium Bracers (BS lvl 255)
Imperial Plate Bracers (BS lvl 270)
Runecloth Belt (Tailor lvl 255)
Runecloth Gloves (tailor lvl 275)
Wicked Leather Bracers (LW lvl 265)
Diamond Focus Ring (JC lvl 265)
Simple Opal Ring (JC lvl 260)

1.5 dusts per
Ruby Pendant of Fire (JC lvl 235)
Truesilver Healing Ring (JC lvl 240)
Nightscape Boots (LW lvl 235)


You can also apply this principle to any of the enchanting mats - Illusion Dust is also expensive so whilst I was bargain hunting, I made a note for that too - it D/e's from items lvl 51-55 & they give 1.5 dusts on average. With the current cost at 10g per dust (eeek!) that means bidding on the following at less than 10g should make sure you get your mats much cheaper!

1.5dusts per
Frostweave Pants (Tailor lvl 280)
Runecloth Boots (Tailor lvl 280)
Onslaught Ring (JC lvl 280)
Thorium Boots (BS lvl 280)
Emerald Lion Ring (JC lvl 290)

The beauty of the Illusion Dust bargains is that if you don't get Illusion Dust, you get either Greater Eternal Essences (which is what started this bargain hunt!) or Large Brilliant Shards (which relates to my Timbermaw post a few posts ago!).

I used this idea to get cheap Heavenly Shards at the start of Cataclysm - LW'ers in particular were having to make a lot of Cloak of War to get their last few points so they were dumping them on the AH. I was buying them at maximum price of 35g when the Heavenly Shards were selling for 50g upwards. Have you got any favourite items for disenchanting (besides the JC shuffle stuffs). Maybe I missed something major off my list above? Let me know!

D'oh! An Epiphany - of Sorts

I was reading some old forum threads on JMTC & The Consortium, looking for old skool tactics that could be adapted for gold making in the current market when a light bulb went on in my head. It was one of those 'OMFG! Why didn't I realise that before?' moments. Two cigarettes worth of forehead slapping & some pondering later, this post was been born!

I've just taken my warrior through Outland including my hated Zangarmarsh. I dutifully killed Bog Lords (Sporregar rep per kill) in the Dead Mire Bog and handed in my Unidentified Plant Parts & Bog Lord Tendrils for the quests there. I also picked up some Motes of Life & got a few mining nodes as well as the ever present vendor trash & a few Greens. I sent the Motes to my alchemist, the Greens to my enchanter & the excess Unidentified Plant Parts to my banker and moved on to the next set of quests.

A few days later, I was back in Zangarmarsh on my lvl 85 pally main boosting some guildies through the Coilfang Reservoir dungeons. We decided to go through the HC versions so off we went to get the Coilfang Reservoir key & that was that. Until I realised that I was getting reputation for the kills with Cenarion Expedition, picking up Coilfang Armaments & Sanguine Hibiscus (also for Sporregar rep) - all of which I had merrily vendored on my warrior just days earlier!

So where's the D'oh! moment? Well, when I sent the Motes & Greens off to their various alts, I did it automatically. That's just what I do when I have full bags - I stand at the mailbox & send useful stuff to various alts without really thinking about it - and that's the moment! I suddenly realised that this whole gold making lark is a mind set, a way of thinking about the whole game, not just your crafting/farming/AH activities. My main income is from Glyphs & JC - on 1 alt. The others are questing or achievement hunting or dungeoning but all of them are out & about in this wonderful world Blizzard have created & they all make money while they are doing it! I just have to change the way I think about these activities & make connections in my brain from one alt to another.

Those items I vendored on my warrior could have helped my achievement pally with her reputation for Cenarion Expedition & Sporregar or I could have put them on the AH for other rep grinders to buy.Why did I send the Motes to my alchemist - because they were hard to find when she was levelling her Alchemy so I got into the habit of always sending Motes to her - she's my collecting point - but what do I do with them? Not a lot, to be honest! I periodically look at Primal Might prices on the AH but that's about it.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I need to think more about connections, how the current quest area can best be utilised for benefits (whether for another alt or for my gold balance), what things can I take away & write about (always a tough job!) or just which quests I really hate & want to skip next time through!

I would bet that the best gold-makers have already sussed this mindset out but for those of us who are still learning or just getting started, slow down for a few minutes & really think about it, not so much what or how you do things but the WHY you do them? Have you got into habits from when you were levelling your first one or two alts that perhaps aren't needed anymore but you still do them?

Have a think, see if you can pinpoint things you do automatically that perhaps seem silly now & let me know - maybe we can help each other kick these bad habits!

What's Been Selling This Week?

I should have posted this a couple of days ago but RL has a way of interrupting even the best laids WoW plans so here it is now! At first glance, it looks a lot like last week but doing my bit of maths tells me I spent 30k to make that 55.5k sales, leaving me a liquid gold increase of 25.5k but I spent 8k on a weapon for my pally just the night before I take my screen shots so actually, I only spent 22k on materials & stuff.

I don't know about you guys but I don't watch every penny that I spend on mats - I just know that if I spend 1k on herbs I can make good money on glyphs (maybe 5-7k return) & I'm happy with that. Same with the old Obsidium/Elementium shuffle - I don't watch every penny or where every gems goes - I cut & list the rares but only 2 per cut & I don't have a huge number of cuts, I list the jasper/nightstone/zephyrite on JC daily days & I often craft & D/E the alicite/hessonite for dusts for my enchanter. If I increase my stock one week, it will sell the following week.

You can see from my list of top sellers that I've slowed down on listing the Inferno Ruby cuts - I just can't keep up with demand to be honest - I've transmuted a load of carnelians & I've prospected a ton of ore but the RNG doesn't like me much - I get a lot of Ocean Sapphires & Demonseyes but not that many Inferno Rubies.

Having said that, the glyph market has gone crazy this week. Having posted just over a week ago about 2 guys tanking our glyph market, it seems that once again, the WoW gods have decided to call bullshit on one of my posts! After waiting a day or so from that post to get some comments & follow their advice, I logged in, all ready for a fight to find that neither of the two guys I mentioned were anywhere to be found! I don't know yet if one of my competitors took them out or I was just late posting about it but they haven't been back in the days since! As you can see from my list, prices have shot back up - I can live with this, That's for sure!

I also picked up some lower level LW mats & have been exploring the lower level patterns - some make nice profits, some cover costs but they are all a pain to pick up mats for! I've put things like the various dragonscales & rare leathers in my TSM dealfinder list so I'll just craft those as & when I get enough mats. I covered a few in my post on mid-level LW'ing last weekend.

The only new venture on my horizon was to try the Leather Agility PVP gear - I made a full set of the Bloodied Leather Armour - they pretty much all sold within the first day or 2 - the chest & legs for a very nice price so I guess I'll be making more of those! I suppose I should pick up the rest of the pvp patterns but I've been lazy & not done my Tol Barad dailies this week so I'm short on leather. *slaps wrist*

I'm slowly levelling my Blacksmith & my Engineer - I managed to get a boost through Gnomeregan & picked up the Pet Bombling schematic so now she can make 2 pets! I always try to keep a couple listed & they sell but not in enough quantities to make it to the top of the list!

So that was my week, last week - this week so far, has been a frenzy of glyphing & boosting guildies. I'm hoping the extra effort  will show up but we'll have to wait until the weekend for results!

Scavenging For Gold

When I started writing this post, it was to be a follow-up to my Low Level Leatherworking post but as I delved deeper into the numbers, it became quite obvious to me that Leatherworking on it's own is not quite as profitable as I'd originally thought! If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I dropped mining & picked up skinning again on my leatherworking pally as I was finding it expensive to max my skills using bought leather.

Now I'm guessing but I think a lot of players dropped skinning as they neared Wrath max LW'ing because the top level items didn't actually use that much leather. With the release of Cata, top level LW recipes once again increased the need for Savage leather but I'm not sure many players went & relevelled skinning.

The other change that seems to have affected leather supplies is the ability to track herbs & ores at the same time - the old advice was to put 2 gathering skills on a new alt - usually herbing/skinning or mining/skinning but with the ability to track herb & ores at the same time - most people now recommend herbing/mining for a new alt - further reducing the number of skinners out there.

My original post mentioned 4 low level recipes you could make for profit but I've since added a few more to my repertoire, including :-

White Leather Jerkin - 8 light leather

Swift Boots - heavy leather, swiftness potion & thick spider's silk

Black Dragonscale Breastplate - 25 rugged leather, 25 black dragonscale & 1 cured rugged hide

Shadowskin Gloves - 8 thick leather, 8 shadow silk & 4 cured heavy hides

Blackstorm Leggings - 10 rugged leather, 2 cured thick hides & 8 breath of wind

Warbear Harness - 28 rugged leather & 12 warbear leather

So I've added thick spider's silk, black dragonscale, shadow silk, breath of wind, warbear leather & swiftness potion to my snatch/dealfinder list & I pick them up for silvers whenever I see them. Breath of wind is probably the most expensive but as a rule, I've not paid more than 4g each for them over the last 2 weeks. I'm not able to find all the mats at my prices all the time so I buy them as & when I see them cheap & let my stock build up a little. Once I have enough mats, I craft a few items & post them for sale.

But this week I've been having trouble getting rugged & thick leather - there's been virtually none on the AH most times I've looked & if there was some, it was at silly high prices - as high as 8-10g per piece!

This is where your scavenging skills come in! It's perfect if you have low capital too as the only outlay is time & perhaps a few flight path fees if you don't have flying yet.

If you haven't found it before, wow-professions.com is a wonderful resource for levelling any profession - it's also great to give you an idea of where to find each type of leather - I'm not suggesting to go out to kill stuff just for the leather mind you, oh no - we're gonna be a bit sneaky! Say you need borean leather - well, we both know that Sholazar Basin is full of creatures being killed regularly so type in /who sholazar basin & if there are more than 2 or 3 players of the appropriate level there, it may be worth following them around as they quest to tidy up behind them. If you're lucky, they won't be skinners themselves or you may find some opposite faction players levelling there too - it's all 'free' leather for your scavenging pleasure :)

The one tip I would give is to hang back a bit though - I've found that some players leave a bit of trash loot on the carcass once they realise you're skinning their kills - it makes the carcass un-skinnable :(

The most obvious place for scavenging is Tol Barad just after your faction wins - everyone dashes over there to do their dailies & you can easily pick up 3 stacks from the crocs in 10 minutes or so if you don't have much competition.

I'm currently working on some reputations & my Loremaster achievement so I pick my zone depending on what leather I need. You could do the same or you could pick your zone & skin whilst waiting on the dungeon queues. Either way, you're not standing around in Stormwind or Orgrimmar wasting time, after all 'Time is money, friend'.