Winter Veil - Are you ready?

Start collecting those small eggs. I've been tryin to pick them up as I see them but my AH has been dry of them lately. I have managed to buy about a stack at 20s per egg but I'd like some more for the event as I'm pretty certain prices will be way higher.

Profiting Off Laziness Followup

Few days ago I wrote about profiting off peoples laziness and selling vendor sold items in the AH. Today's blog is short and sweet but I wanted to show you that ANY level char can make ANY amount of gold. I made a level 1 character with 5g. No bags or anything. This is my backpack and what I emptied out of the mailbox since I've made that post.

Not exactly record breaking but in a couple of days I turned 5g into 150g with less then an hour of play time on the character. All I did was hit up various vendors and pick up 5 of each item used in trade skills. 5 of various dyes, threads, parchments, etc. If the merchant had recipes I picked them up.

Currently I'm at 50g or so but I purchased 4 netherweave bags and restocked on a bunch of stuff and started selling various spell reagents and such. I have no idea where I'm taking this but its a fun little experiment. When I get to around 1k on this character I'll probably start flipping items and what not but for now I'm building capital.

Profiting Off Laziness

This is something even low level auctioneers can do to make some initial start up funds. Generally they can be bought out for a fairly low price (couple silver to a couple of gold depending on the level of area) and can net a pretty good return.

Finding recipes such as Frost Oil which is sold from 1 vendor out in the middle of Alterac Mountains can net a profitable return. Vendor sold for 25 silver and depending on your server you can get as much as 10g or more simply based off peoples laziness. Great way to earn some extra cash while leveling up an alt.

Another great money maker is selling recipes xfaction. Sell horde recipes on the ally ah and vice verse. You can pick them up for dirt cheap and sell them as high as 50-100g to people going for the cooking recipe achievement. What I've heard works best is making a DK (if you don't have one already) on the opposite faction. Pick up On a Pale Horse (crusader in the unholy tree) and run around collecting recipes. Have a friend help you bring them back over and sell them.

I have a friend who was doing this for the longest time. I'd help him bring recipes over and he'd toss me 1 of each recipe for my time. Doesn't sound like a lot but I was making 50g per recipe. Also selling vendor pets xfaction is another source of easy gold. Combine this tactic with farming the black tabby and you can make some hefty profit for very little work.

Rituals of the New Moon

So I went out and farmed up this technique to try it out on the market. I scanned for about a week daily and they were nowhere to be found. Nobody was making them and I think even less know about it. One of the main reasons being that it doesn't have the tags on it.

The item is farmed up in grizzly hills from the Silverbrook humanoids. It took me about 5 minutes to get as I just ran around in my tank gear and gathered 15 of em up and aoe'd em down. First pull and it dropped so I'm guessing its relatively easy to get.

The book takes 5 Ink of the sea, 3 eternal shadow, 10 resilient parchment. Breaking down the mats it costs:

5 ink = 10g (1 stack of low end northrend herbs)
3 eternal shadow = 9g (3g average for me)
10 resilient parchment = 5g (50s from vendor)

This book costs 24g to make and I've played around with the prices and the highest they sell for every time is 70g. For some odd reason if I bump it up to 75g it doesn't sell but whatever. Find your servers price where it consistantly sells at and post 1 at a time.

I post them as they sell and usually will sell one a day. I could probably sell more but by selling 1 at a time and being the only person who's making these it makes it look like its just a random drop and keeps from setting off the potential competitor alarm.

So check out your AH and keep an eye out. You may just have a new market with zero competition. :)

Making Money While Leveling Part 1 (1 - 29)

Now this isn't my typical kind of post. I generally talk about playing the AH from a level 80 point of view but meeting a newb on my server somewhat inspired me to talk about playing the AH while leveling. And it might help those of you make some extra cash while leveling your alts :)

The back story for those of your who don't read the JMTC forums is recently I've had to spend time in Exodar as my connection is utter crap (I'm using my neighbors network about a block away). Well sitting out here so much I tend to see names come and go but 2 people seemed to spend a ton of time in Exodar. I got to talking to them and found out they are brother and sister and new to wow. The brother is a AH junkie and has figured out he can monopolize on certain markets. He is currently level 38 and as of last night he broke 3k liquid gold (has over 10k in auction sales). This is someone who is completely new and so I've been giving him small pointers here and there and explaining what I can without spoon feeding him. Truly impressive and he is a JC and will be a future competitor which I really look forward to because I'm not going to treat him like a typical competitor. 1. His sister is cute and I'm a sucker for cute females and 2. I could possibly have him help me control the gem market and between the two of us we both can be rich. Sort of like an apprentice.

This guide is not a step by step guide on what to do. It is more or less showing you what to keep an eye out while your questing to make some extra money in the process (or if you like to mindlessly grind to level). Occasionally I will give exact coords but many times I will not. I'll tell you the general area and let you do the exploring yourself.

Well here it is. My guide to playing the AH while leveling. Broken up into the BG brackets

Level 1 - 9
Starting out I suggest picking up your professions early and figuring out what you want to do with it. There are various combinations and they all make money if played right. Here are the common combination's:

Mining / Herbing (suggest using spotter)
Mining / skinning
Herbing / skinning
Tailoring / enchanting

If your feeling really confident you could do mining / jc but forewarning your mainly going to prospect extra ore for your money. So unless you plan on taking your dear sweet time leveling this is not recommended (or if you have a main who is a JC lol).

Now because you can essentially level 4 characters and travel through completely different parts of the game I'll try to name certain spots as examples to teach you what to look for.

Level 1-5 will be in the newbie area and you honestly won't be making that much money here. You might find the occasional 4 slot bag but nothing worthwhile.

At 5-9 You'll be at the first starting town. (Goldshire, Bril, Kharanos, etc) This is when you can start picking up your professions. All of the previously mentioned combinations will work but I suggest two gathering professions unless you know what your doing. Mine and herb anything you come across (or skin). At these low levels you still wont be making a ton of money but you can get enough to get by. Things worth keeping would be various meats, eggs, greens, cloth, potions, ore, herbs, cooking recipes.

If your a skinner and a Dwarf / Gnome the wendigo cave southwest of Kharanos is a great place to skill up at and farm up some leather. The wendigos respawn relatively quickly.

If your an Orc / Troll farming for boar meat off the Dire Mottled Boar's is excellent source of income.

If your a Night Elf there are numerous furblog camps throughout the island. Linen cloth, the occasional gem and potion and coin are the common drops. (plus vendor trash grays)

At this level your pretty much farming while questing. One of the best tips I can give you is to kill EVERYTHING. It might take you an extra minute or two to reach your destination but the exp and loot adds up.

Level 10 - 19
At level 10 you should be finishing up the starting zones or just entering the second newbie zone such as Westfall, Silverpine Forest, Barrens, Darkshore, Loch Modan, Bloodmyst Isle, etc. Your pretty much following the guidelines as before.

Westfall - An abundance of beasts and humanoids here. Also along the coast you'll find murlocs. There are a handful of mines spread across the zone for you miners and packed full of humanoids for your tailoring needs. Along with the humanoids there are like I said tons of beasts. The birds drop feathers and eggs. Eggs tend to sell well on the AH because they are pretty boring to farm up and the opportunity cost for a level 80 makes it inefficient to farm.

Barrens - Fishing comes into play here. Deviate fish tend to sell well if your ally (not sure about horde). There is a zone wide recipe for savory deviate delights that can only be found here. On my server it sells for 700g+ (again I'm ally and it will vary server to server). Skinners can skin up extra deviate scales. There is one hidden jewel here that I absolutely loved while leveling up. The Kolkar's Booty chest. Level 13-16 kolkar mobs drop the key and the chest (last I checked its been awhile) drops a green item almost every time. Being ally I didn't quest out here but I did spend a good amount of time farming these guys for the keys.

Loch Modan - Like the Barrens there are humanoids and beasts everywhere. Also you'll find a decent amount of spiders which drop silk + cooking reagents (spiders legs / meat). Not my favorite zone in terms of questing. Westfall is a much better choice in my opinion but you could hit this area up first then hit up Westfall in terms of questing. I do however like this zone for herbing more then Westfall but that's about the only perk.

Silverpine Forest - For you horde players out there. Two words. Dalaran Spellscribe. This guy is a rare spawn over in the 63, 63 area and has a 19% chance to drop Cat Carrier (Black Tabby). Have a trust worthy friend help smuggle it through the neutral AH to the alliance side and sell it. I have a friend who has a horde DK parked out there and he sends over 4 or 5 every few days. Sells em for 1k each (prices may vary).

Again not to much you can "farm" but more then the previous bracket.

Level 20 - 29
If your on a pvp server this is where you generally will start entering contested zones such as Wetlands, Ashenvale, Duskwood, Thousand Needles and Hillsbrad Foothills.

Wetlands - Suprisingly this is a great zone for low level farming. There are quite a few items that drop here and generally sell well. Flamesnorting, Crimson, and Red Whelps all drop Tiny Crimson Whelpling. Granted this is an extremely low drop rate (about .7%) but generally sells pretty well. Especially for the level required to get it. Another great item is raptor eggs. There are raptors all over the place and they frequently drop eggs which sell fairly well also. (bonus for skinners). The Incendicite veins in the spider cave are a great spot to level your mining up (note: the ore does not sell well). Another decent Zone for herbing and a great zone for skinning. Mining not so much (besides the spider cave).

Ashenvale - Not my favorite of zones mostly because of the nightmares growing up on a pvp server during the initial launch of the game but there is one spot I loved and I farmed to death. The thistlefurs north of Astraanar are awesome. They drop pages to the shredder manual (horde only I believe) pretty frequently along with wool cloth. There is a cave somewhere in those hills and I would spend hours out there farming and grinding out exp.

Thousand Needles - Supposedly one of the best low level mining zones in the game. I honestly haven't spent much time here. However I do know that you can farm the Screeching Harpies for Vibrant Plumes.

Hillsbrad Foothills - Another zone I haven't spent a ton of time in but I do know of the turtles along the river are pretty awesome. You can farm up turtle meat, skinners can skin, they also drop Thick-Shelled Clams. Also the southern shore is packed with murlocs which drop the same clams as the turtles. Also skinners can check out the yeti cave in addition to the turtles.

Tomorrow I'll be posting levels 30 through 59 and leaving Friday open for 60 to 79 (Outlands and Northrend). I know most of you don't farm and don't like farming but there is only so much I can talk about in terms of playing the AH without getting to repetitive. So I'm trying to mix it up a bit. Let me know what you think and feel free to tell me to stick to talking about the AH cause I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to farming. :P