I've been jotting notes on low level/newbie goldmaking for a while with the intention of writing some starter type posts but earlier this week, I got chatting to Eiddor on Twitter. He's a brand new WoW player, so much of the blog content currently available is either out of his reach for now or full of terms/abbreviations/content that he is yet to discover. I suggested he send me an email with as many questions as he wanted answered and I would try & cover them in my planned starter posts. Bless him, he sent me a mini essay which has not only given me the impetus to actually write the posts properly (not just notes!) but also a target audience viewpoint that I can aim at.
The hardest part for me has been deciding where to start & knowing how much to include at this level. I'm not going to rewrite all the starter stuff I've found everywhere but rather try to pull a lot of it to one place as an easy reference post. So to other gold bloggers out there, if you have starter posts/lowbie gold making posts you'd like me to link to, let me know in comments or by email.
I'm planning a whole series of these posts over the next week or two so I'll just cover a few points today to help you get started & be making some gold while you're waiting for the more detailed stuff!
Okay, so you have 1 character started & maybe you've picked a couple of professions & you're happily questing away but you don't have much gold yet. What can I tell you to help straight away?
1) I know it seems fairly obvious but sell everything you can! If you run out of bag space, don't just destroy stuff, try to find a nearby vendor to sell it to or a mailbox to send it to your banker especially if you've picked up one of the gathering professions like herbalism/mining or skinning.
2) Make a second character to be your banker/auction house runner & extra bag space carrier! For Alliance, the easiest is to start a human & run them to Stormwind. For Horde, I think it's the Orcs & run to Orgrimmar or Blood Elf & run to Silvermoon but I'm not 100% certain on that! Your banker is going to sit in the city & run between the bank, the Auction House (AH) & mailbox.
As you are out & about questing, you'll pick up a lot of 'stuff'. Items with their names in gray can just be sold to the first vendor you find. Items with their name in white are most often trade goods & materials - these are the items you mail to your banker to list on the AH. Items with their names in green or blue (usually armour & weapons of a better quality) are also sent to the AH via your banker if you cannot use them or they are not better than those you are wearing already!
3) Get an Auction House addon - I like Auctioneer but there are others, including Auctionator which do pretty much the same thing but slightly differently. You can get all sorts of addons from Curse & eventually, I have no doubt, you will become very familiar with that site but for now, look for Auctioneer. It will add some extra tabs in the AH window for you including a Post tab. This will allow you to pop an item into a box in the top left hand corner, refresh to see what others are already listed & their prices and will suggest a sale & bid price.
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| tooltip data incl average price |
The main benefit of these AH addons is the ability to scan the whole Auction House & build a database showing average prices when you mouseover an item even if you are not in the Auction House. At the top of the AH window, you can see what looks like a 'fast forward' icon - this is the fast scan & usually takes maybe 3-4 minutes. Do this once a day for at least a week before you start trusting the numbers it produces. It's like anything that works on historical or average data - the more data you have, the more reliable it will be.
I think that's about it for now. I have posts coming soon covering professions, other addons, different strategies for gold making, getting organised, where to find information & anything else I happen to think of in the meantime! One link I will pop in here is Wowhead - it's a massive database of all things WoW & you can just pop an item name into the search box. Not only that but the comments tab on each item often has very useful tips & it's not only limited to items. If you're stuck on a quest, type the quest name into the search & read the comments.
Feel free to post your questions in comments or mail me anything you think I should cover and I hope this helps for now :)
Don't forget The Undermine Journal web site. I find that data invaluable! I think it would be much more useful to a new Auction House player than Wowhead (although I love Wowhead just as much). With TUJ (in addition to add-ons) you can look up how much things are worth on your server. Then you can go to Wowhead to see where items come from, and look up which recipes they are used in.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you would have mentioned TUJ soon enough, but I had to share it.
-- C.
PS: To new players, don't spend money on gear that you will replace in a matter of days. Also, don't spend too much money to enchant gear that will be quickly replaced. (Another tip I'm sure will be covered in a coming post.)
If this is a 'guide' you want to be able to aim at everyone. I'd perhaps leave TUJ out of it, or give it it's own speciffic section at the end. As an EU gold maker there's nothing more annoying than having check TUJ spouted at you constantly when we don't have access to it.
ReplyDeletex
Starting a toon on a new server, I like to check the AH for prices on stuff sold by vendors in limited quantity, and so cater to the folks with more gold than time. Buying dusts and essences from the enchanting supplier and selling them on the AH in full stacks has worked well, for example. Getting the strong fishing rod from the fishing vendor and selling it for 50s-1g on the AH can often be done as well.
ReplyDelete@Cerpicio Yup, TUJ is on the list for later along with TSM & the slightly more involved stuffs.
ReplyDelete@Anon I know how you feel :) I'm EU server too
@Tweell Yup all good stuff :) Vendor items to sell for profit is going to be in the 'different strategies' section.
I'm looking forward to these articles. It's been a puzzling situation for me to figure out exactly how much I should break down all the principles I'm writing about; how much detail I should lay down. I found it always very surprising how sometimes info that I would consider to be Basic is generally unknown to a lot of players. Having played WoW since vanilla puts me in a gamer-wise generational gap and I'm always trying to write with the mindset of someone that has played enough of the game to know their way around, but hasn't been through all the nooks and crannies of this huge game.
ReplyDeleteOn a different note, I wrote a handful of posts with the "Basics" tag - maybe you'd like to check them out! :)