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WoW Economist Vol. I, No. 2
Welcome to another issue of The Wow Economist. This issue focuses on helping out players starting from scratch. It covers picking professions for making money at early levels, some useful mods, and the importance of bag space.
Last week I got some great emails in response to my first editorial, including one from Olle Persson, which I've included below. If you have thoughts, tips, or topics you'd like covered in a future article, reach me at jeremygamer@gmail.com. Thanks for your emails and keep 'em comin'.
I. Tools of the Trade
These great mods are relevant to this week's article:
Gatherer - Tracks mining, herb, and chest nodes on your map and mini-map.
Auctioneer - Another of Norganna's excellent mods, Auctioneer makes tracking prices and creating auctions much easier. The latest version also includes a great bag mod, which shows every item in your bags at once, and organizes each item by its purpose. We'll get in to the AH in further detail next issue, but for now you should use the SCAN button (you'll see it next time you open up the AH) to create a database of prices.
AuctionFilterPlus - Not as well known as Auctioneer, but just as useful. AFP makes finding deals on the Auction House easier. I use it to quickly spot which stack of items has the best price per item, but AFP does a lot more than that. It's great if you're just learning what things sell for on your realm-faction, especially if you haven't had Auctioneer long enough to create a good database of prices.
Auto Profit - Adds a button to any vendor that allows you to automatically sell all grey items. It's smart enough to make exceptions and remember them - if you're hoarding Small Fury Paws for Darkmoon Faire tickets, you can tell AutoProfit to never sell them.
CT_MailMod - Makes sending and managing mail so much easier. The ability to mail up to 21 items simultaneously, just by Alt-clicking them, is a huge time saver.
II. Gathering vs. Crafting for n00bs
We'll start with the caveat that picking a profession you find fun and/or useful is generally the way to go in WoW. But if you have a new character without a copper to her name, the profession that makes you the most gold is the most useful profession you can have.
With that in mind, your first character should take two gathering professions, and keep them until:
A) You are high enough level to reach 300 skill in the crating profession you set your heart on. This is often level 35.
OR
B) You have enough money to comfortably afford buying recipes and materials off of the Auction House.
OR
C) You have your mount and 100g or more left over.
The first part should be familiar if you've read GeneriKB's Guide to Making Money. His guide suggests switching to a crafting/support profession at 40. If achieving stratospheric wealth is your primary goal in the game, this is a great plan. If money is not your ultimate purpose, you should be more flexible in terms of when you stop being a dual gatherer.
Regardless of how important gold is to you, going with two gathering professions is absolutely the best way to go when you're starting out broke. Gathering professions have little or no startup costs and reliably make money at low levels. Every crafting profession requires the user to buy recipes, either from a trainer or other players, to buy the occasional material, and often times the materials in a low level recipe are worth more than the crafted item itself.
III. The Gathering Professions
Below are descriptions of the four gathering professions and their relative merits:
MINING
Advantages
-Copper Bars are the most valuable low tradeskill (TS) item
-Stone is found in almost every node, and every Stone except Rough Stone sells well on the AH
-Gems get increasingly valuable. High level gems, such as Arcane Crystals, Souldarite, and Blood of the Mountain can fetch 20g+
-Quick to skill up at low levels
-Value per node is generally better than Herbalism
-Nodes are physically large, making them easy to spot even without a tracker active
-Bars stack in 20's
Disadvantages
-Universally high AH deposit prices
-Ores stack in tens
-Heavy competition for high level nodes
-Slow to skill up at high levels
-Rough Stone is vendor trash
-Competition can be high
-Need to find a forge to smelt ore in to bars
Extra Tip: Gold Ore is more valuable than Gold Bars. Gold Bars are tough to sell and have a high deposit price. Gold Ore is sought after because it's one of the few ores you can smelt to gain skill. Once your mining TS is 155, smelting gold ore is a great way to skill up. After smelting gold is grey to you, sell your gold ore. If you need gold bars for crafting, buy the gold bars off of the AH.
Overall: Mining is an incredible money maker at low and mid levels, but once you're looking for Thorium Veins, the going gets a lot harder. Mining/Herbalism make a great combo because you can find nodes of one or the other in any zone, and the money you make off mining immediately can be used to gear up, so that you can quickly reach the zones to gather mid-level herbs and mining materials. That's where the real money is.
HERBALISM
Advantages
-Mats are used in consumables, keeping demand on many herbs extremely high
-Low AH deposit prices
-High level herbs fetch consistently large sums
-High price per item relative to tradeskill
-Generally low competition for nodes
-The value of herbs tend to rise over time on mature servers (especially PVP servers)
-Easy to skill up
-No tools needed
-Even the two pariahs of the herb family, Firebloom and Purple Lotus, are valuable now that they're used in the new enchanting oils
-Extra herbs can be given to alchemist friends to make potions for you (or you can just make them yourself)
-Every herb stacks in lots of 20
Disadvantages
-Most nodes are nearly impossible to spot without an active tracker
-Need to reach TS of 75 before you can really make money on herbs
-Until the next War Effort comes along, low level herbs like Peacebloom will remain practically worthless
Extra Tip: It pays to know what areas a specific herb's node spawns in. If you're in the water, be on the look out for Stranglekelp. Silverleaf and Briarthorn spawn next to trees, Earthroot and Bruiseweed are on hills, Kingsblood and Sungrass are in open fields. Herbs are found in more diverse locations than mining nodes, which are almost always found in a cave or on a hill. If you're going mining/herb, leave the tracker on herbalism by default and switch to tracking mines every now and then.
Overall: As an overall money maker, no gathering skill beats Herbalism. Even at high levels, nodes are abundant. Almost every herb is used in an alchemy, cooking, or enchanting recipe sought after by some class, so demand on the AH is universally high. Because they are used in consumables, herbs should remain the best material to gather until Blizzard figures out a way to make crafted equipment more valuable.
SKINNING
Advantages
-No hunting for nodes, just kill non-humanoid mobs and skin
-Makes money as soon as you can skin light leather, which is almost immediately
-Dragonscale sells extremely well on the Horde side of most realms
-You can make money just following around other people and skinning the mobs they kill
-Every raiding guild needs a lvl 60, 310 TS skinner
-Quick to skill up at all levels
-Reasonable deposit prices on Auction House
Disadvantages
-Many skinned items stack in sets of 5 or 10, making bag space a serious issue
-Low-level skinned items typically don't fetch much on the AH
-Lots of competition on Light, Medium, and Rugged Leather in the AH
Extra Tip: Reader Olle Persson had some nice thoughts on Skinning:
Overall: Skinning is my least favorite primary gathering profession for money making purposes. The incredible demands it puts on your bag space and the low price per item at low levels means more frequent trips to town to sell or mail your inventory. If you're a Hunter or Warlock this is especially problematic, as your bag space is limited as is. That said, skinning makes great money at every level and is easy to pair with mining or herbalism.
FISHING
Advantages
-It's a secondary tradeskill - everyone can fish without trading off another profession
-Some fish, like Deviate Fish, Firefin Snapper, Oily Blackmouth, and Stonescale Eel are used in Alchemy recipes, some of which are then used by other crafts
-The addition of Fishing Nodes and two new types of fish in patch 1.9 made fishing more lucrative and more fun.
-Skilling up at low levels is quick
-You can skill up fishing at any fishable body of water, all the way to 300
-Many people find fishing exceptionally boring. Those alchemists, enchanters, and blacksmiths who need their Blackmouth Oil will wind up coming to you for Oily Blackmouths.
Disadvantages
-Many people find fishing exceptionally boring
-Slow to skill up at late levels
-The introduction of Firefin and Oily Blackmouth pools increases the supply of both items, putting downward pressure on their value
-Need to buy fishing poles and bait
-Fish catch rates vary based on the season and time of day, so it takes some work to figure out the best times to catch the best fish
-Painfully slow to skill up at high levels
Extra Tip: The next time you're in Azshara, do yourself a favor and swim around in search of an Elemental Water Pool. You could already fish for Stonescale Eel in the Bay of Storms (coast of Azshara), but now they've added nodes from which you can fish Elemental Water and Essence of Water. There seems to be at least one Essence of Water in every pool, which typically sells for 9g.
Overall: I've always liked fishing, both as a means to make money and as something to do while I'm paying attention to something else. But pre-patch 1.9, it was something most people really only did when they had to. Now that it's much easier to get something valuable from fishing, it's something you should do if you're starting out broke, unless you absolutely hate doing it. But once you've caught your first Deviate Fish and sold it on the AH for 40 silver, you might hate it a lot less.
IV. Bags and Mules
Regardless of what professions you pick, get as many 14+ slot bags as quickly as possible. Generally you can hold off on the 16 slotters until later, but a dual gatherer will often find it's worthwhile to get a Traveler's Backpack even before she buys her lvl 40 mount.
No matter what you do, create another character (called a "mule"), and run her to a capital city as soon as you can. Use her to store non-quest items and as a place for your main character to mail stuff to. Make sure your mule has some money to pay the deposit price on auctions, and the only reason you'll need to visit a capital city is to look for a group, check your bank for soulbound items, train, or take part in a quest.
As mentioned above, you should be scanning the AH as often as possible. In most cases, this can take up to 15 minutes, and your data won't be terribly useful if you don't do a full scan. It doesn't matter what character does the scanning, so do it with your mule while you're away from your computer or doing something else besides playing WoW. After a couple scans, every item you highlight will show you what it sells for its tooltip.
V. Closing
I hope you found this issue useful and look forward to hearing some of your thoughts. Again, you can reach me via e-mail jeremygamer@gmail.com or in-game on Silvermoon (US). Good luck!
-Sharptongue
Last week I got some great emails in response to my first editorial, including one from Olle Persson, which I've included below. If you have thoughts, tips, or topics you'd like covered in a future article, reach me at jeremygamer@gmail.com. Thanks for your emails and keep 'em comin'.
I. Tools of the Trade
These great mods are relevant to this week's article:
Gatherer - Tracks mining, herb, and chest nodes on your map and mini-map.
Auctioneer - Another of Norganna's excellent mods, Auctioneer makes tracking prices and creating auctions much easier. The latest version also includes a great bag mod, which shows every item in your bags at once, and organizes each item by its purpose. We'll get in to the AH in further detail next issue, but for now you should use the SCAN button (you'll see it next time you open up the AH) to create a database of prices.
AuctionFilterPlus - Not as well known as Auctioneer, but just as useful. AFP makes finding deals on the Auction House easier. I use it to quickly spot which stack of items has the best price per item, but AFP does a lot more than that. It's great if you're just learning what things sell for on your realm-faction, especially if you haven't had Auctioneer long enough to create a good database of prices.
Auto Profit - Adds a button to any vendor that allows you to automatically sell all grey items. It's smart enough to make exceptions and remember them - if you're hoarding Small Fury Paws for Darkmoon Faire tickets, you can tell AutoProfit to never sell them.
CT_MailMod - Makes sending and managing mail so much easier. The ability to mail up to 21 items simultaneously, just by Alt-clicking them, is a huge time saver.
II. Gathering vs. Crafting for n00bs
We'll start with the caveat that picking a profession you find fun and/or useful is generally the way to go in WoW. But if you have a new character without a copper to her name, the profession that makes you the most gold is the most useful profession you can have.
With that in mind, your first character should take two gathering professions, and keep them until:
A) You are high enough level to reach 300 skill in the crating profession you set your heart on. This is often level 35.
OR
B) You have enough money to comfortably afford buying recipes and materials off of the Auction House.
OR
C) You have your mount and 100g or more left over.
The first part should be familiar if you've read GeneriKB's Guide to Making Money. His guide suggests switching to a crafting/support profession at 40. If achieving stratospheric wealth is your primary goal in the game, this is a great plan. If money is not your ultimate purpose, you should be more flexible in terms of when you stop being a dual gatherer.
Regardless of how important gold is to you, going with two gathering professions is absolutely the best way to go when you're starting out broke. Gathering professions have little or no startup costs and reliably make money at low levels. Every crafting profession requires the user to buy recipes, either from a trainer or other players, to buy the occasional material, and often times the materials in a low level recipe are worth more than the crafted item itself.
III. The Gathering Professions
Below are descriptions of the four gathering professions and their relative merits:
MINING
Advantages
-Copper Bars are the most valuable low tradeskill (TS) item
-Stone is found in almost every node, and every Stone except Rough Stone sells well on the AH
-Gems get increasingly valuable. High level gems, such as Arcane Crystals, Souldarite, and Blood of the Mountain can fetch 20g+
-Quick to skill up at low levels
-Value per node is generally better than Herbalism
-Nodes are physically large, making them easy to spot even without a tracker active
-Bars stack in 20's
Disadvantages
-Universally high AH deposit prices
-Ores stack in tens
-Heavy competition for high level nodes
-Slow to skill up at high levels
-Rough Stone is vendor trash
-Competition can be high
-Need to find a forge to smelt ore in to bars
Extra Tip: Gold Ore is more valuable than Gold Bars. Gold Bars are tough to sell and have a high deposit price. Gold Ore is sought after because it's one of the few ores you can smelt to gain skill. Once your mining TS is 155, smelting gold ore is a great way to skill up. After smelting gold is grey to you, sell your gold ore. If you need gold bars for crafting, buy the gold bars off of the AH.
Overall: Mining is an incredible money maker at low and mid levels, but once you're looking for Thorium Veins, the going gets a lot harder. Mining/Herbalism make a great combo because you can find nodes of one or the other in any zone, and the money you make off mining immediately can be used to gear up, so that you can quickly reach the zones to gather mid-level herbs and mining materials. That's where the real money is.
HERBALISM
Advantages
-Mats are used in consumables, keeping demand on many herbs extremely high
-Low AH deposit prices
-High level herbs fetch consistently large sums
-High price per item relative to tradeskill
-Generally low competition for nodes
-The value of herbs tend to rise over time on mature servers (especially PVP servers)
-Easy to skill up
-No tools needed
-Even the two pariahs of the herb family, Firebloom and Purple Lotus, are valuable now that they're used in the new enchanting oils
-Extra herbs can be given to alchemist friends to make potions for you (or you can just make them yourself)
-Every herb stacks in lots of 20
Disadvantages
-Most nodes are nearly impossible to spot without an active tracker
-Need to reach TS of 75 before you can really make money on herbs
-Until the next War Effort comes along, low level herbs like Peacebloom will remain practically worthless
Extra Tip: It pays to know what areas a specific herb's node spawns in. If you're in the water, be on the look out for Stranglekelp. Silverleaf and Briarthorn spawn next to trees, Earthroot and Bruiseweed are on hills, Kingsblood and Sungrass are in open fields. Herbs are found in more diverse locations than mining nodes, which are almost always found in a cave or on a hill. If you're going mining/herb, leave the tracker on herbalism by default and switch to tracking mines every now and then.
Overall: As an overall money maker, no gathering skill beats Herbalism. Even at high levels, nodes are abundant. Almost every herb is used in an alchemy, cooking, or enchanting recipe sought after by some class, so demand on the AH is universally high. Because they are used in consumables, herbs should remain the best material to gather until Blizzard figures out a way to make crafted equipment more valuable.
SKINNING
Advantages
-No hunting for nodes, just kill non-humanoid mobs and skin
-Makes money as soon as you can skin light leather, which is almost immediately
-Dragonscale sells extremely well on the Horde side of most realms
-You can make money just following around other people and skinning the mobs they kill
-Every raiding guild needs a lvl 60, 310 TS skinner
-Quick to skill up at all levels
-Reasonable deposit prices on Auction House
Disadvantages
-Many skinned items stack in sets of 5 or 10, making bag space a serious issue
-Low-level skinned items typically don't fetch much on the AH
-Lots of competition on Light, Medium, and Rugged Leather in the AH
Extra Tip: Reader Olle Persson had some nice thoughts on Skinning:
 | ||
|
Short story, skinning at low lvls is as good as herb. Probaly better. Prices fluctuate a lot though, as shown below. __________________________________________________ Some prices of leather taken from 3 servers: Stormreaver Draenor Ragnaros: (*prices in silver) ------------------------------------------ Light leather: 15 50 50 Medium leather: 30 65 70 Heavy leather: 75 100 50 Thick leather: 70 65 75 Rugged leahter: 200 200 150 *BuyoutPrice that will earn an instant buyout most of the time. (from personal experience) ______________________________________________________ You can start to get light leather after lvl 10. Before that it's most ruined scraps (1/3 of a light leather if transmuted by leatherworker). And it somtimes comes in pairs (2 per skinning). And you get it from every skinnable mob (differs from linen cloth). Ok, you get hides that are somtimes better, sometimes worse. (5 can be sold for 50s sometimes) Another good part about skinning is that you can skin what others have killed = "free" money. 1 thing you wanna do with the money is to buy bigger bags (14 slots). So what does this all mean? For every skinnable mob you get, on the right server, at least 5s/mob. That is almost comparabe to what a lvl 60 makes grinding..../mob But there is a drawback, grinding will be a bit slower, (to use your skinning time as a time to regen energy or mana is not that bad though). | |
| ||
Overall: Skinning is my least favorite primary gathering profession for money making purposes. The incredible demands it puts on your bag space and the low price per item at low levels means more frequent trips to town to sell or mail your inventory. If you're a Hunter or Warlock this is especially problematic, as your bag space is limited as is. That said, skinning makes great money at every level and is easy to pair with mining or herbalism.
FISHING
Advantages
-It's a secondary tradeskill - everyone can fish without trading off another profession
-Some fish, like Deviate Fish, Firefin Snapper, Oily Blackmouth, and Stonescale Eel are used in Alchemy recipes, some of which are then used by other crafts
-The addition of Fishing Nodes and two new types of fish in patch 1.9 made fishing more lucrative and more fun.
-Skilling up at low levels is quick
-You can skill up fishing at any fishable body of water, all the way to 300
-Many people find fishing exceptionally boring. Those alchemists, enchanters, and blacksmiths who need their Blackmouth Oil will wind up coming to you for Oily Blackmouths.
Disadvantages
-Many people find fishing exceptionally boring
-Slow to skill up at late levels
-The introduction of Firefin and Oily Blackmouth pools increases the supply of both items, putting downward pressure on their value
-Need to buy fishing poles and bait
-Fish catch rates vary based on the season and time of day, so it takes some work to figure out the best times to catch the best fish
-Painfully slow to skill up at high levels
Extra Tip: The next time you're in Azshara, do yourself a favor and swim around in search of an Elemental Water Pool. You could already fish for Stonescale Eel in the Bay of Storms (coast of Azshara), but now they've added nodes from which you can fish Elemental Water and Essence of Water. There seems to be at least one Essence of Water in every pool, which typically sells for 9g.
Overall: I've always liked fishing, both as a means to make money and as something to do while I'm paying attention to something else. But pre-patch 1.9, it was something most people really only did when they had to. Now that it's much easier to get something valuable from fishing, it's something you should do if you're starting out broke, unless you absolutely hate doing it. But once you've caught your first Deviate Fish and sold it on the AH for 40 silver, you might hate it a lot less.
IV. Bags and Mules
Regardless of what professions you pick, get as many 14+ slot bags as quickly as possible. Generally you can hold off on the 16 slotters until later, but a dual gatherer will often find it's worthwhile to get a Traveler's Backpack even before she buys her lvl 40 mount.
No matter what you do, create another character (called a "mule"), and run her to a capital city as soon as you can. Use her to store non-quest items and as a place for your main character to mail stuff to. Make sure your mule has some money to pay the deposit price on auctions, and the only reason you'll need to visit a capital city is to look for a group, check your bank for soulbound items, train, or take part in a quest.
As mentioned above, you should be scanning the AH as often as possible. In most cases, this can take up to 15 minutes, and your data won't be terribly useful if you don't do a full scan. It doesn't matter what character does the scanning, so do it with your mule while you're away from your computer or doing something else besides playing WoW. After a couple scans, every item you highlight will show you what it sells for its tooltip.
V. Closing
I hope you found this issue useful and look forward to hearing some of your thoughts. Again, you can reach me via e-mail jeremygamer@gmail.com or in-game on Silvermoon (US). Good luck!
-Sharptongue
