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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsInsider Trader: Powerleveling professions on the cheap
by Basil Berntsen 
May 10th 2010 at 8:00PM
Professions are expensive! Getting a crafting skill to 450 involves geting all kinds of finnicky odd-ball mats from content that nobody ever runs these days, which typically means paying a whole lot for them. On top of it, all the stuff you make is pretty much valueless, and often fetches more at the vendor than it will in the auction house. What can you do to help turn these lemons into lemonade?
First off, it helps if you're popular, smart, and patient. Popular people have friends who have tradeskills that might be able to help stem the losses, smart people have addons that can provide them with valuable information, and patient people are not at the mercy of low supply.
Popular
Well, if not popular, per se, at least friendly and willing to network. Seriously, the most expensive part of leveling a tradeskill is vendoring all the stuff you make to level. If you had the ability to lean on, say, and enchanter friend of yours, you could ask them to disenchant anything you make that is disenchantable. You'd be surprised how much these older enchanting mats go for. In fact, if you ever find yourself making something where the mats you are using are worth less than the enchanting mats you get out of it, keep using that recipe until it turns grey, no matter what your powerleveling guide says. If you are making money at any step along the way, milk it. Also, note down what you are doing for later, as you might be interested in doing this over the long run to help finance later, profitless steps toward tradeskill mastery.
In addition to a pocket enchanter, it can help to have friends who can provide other services for you:
- If you're leveling something like blacksmithing or engineering which uses a lot of bars, being able to buy ore and have a friend smelt it for you will often reduce your costs. Ore is usually more plentiful and less expensive than bars. Usually.
- If you're leveling inscription, it helps to have a friend with a high inscription skill, because Northrend herbs are often cheaper than whatever the herbs you can actually mill at your level. After milling, Northrend herb based Ink of the Sea can be traded for any of the low level common ink in Dalaran.
- If you're leveling virtually any crafting skill, it helps to have a friend leveling a gathering skill. While I would recommend against picking gathering yourself, if you have a friend that doesn't take good advice, you can probably work out an arrangement with them where you can buy all the low level stuff they farm.
Smart
Knowing the basics of the auction house and having a few addons can really make a difference between spending 7000g to powerlevel something like enchanting and making a profit. The skills involved in getting skill capped cheaply are, conveniently, the same ones you use to make money in the AH once you're there. You need to know how to buy on the cheap, as well as how to sell efficiently. Still, whether you plan on doing a little auctioneering or not once you hit your goal, using the tools in those posts will help push you in the direction of profitability through lower costs or higher income from crafted goods.
Another tool you can use to great effect is Lilsparky's Workshop and the Lilsparky fork of Skillet. When combined with Auctioneer, these will allow you to see the cost and market price for the recipes you have access to, allowing you to minimize losses and maximize profits. Using this data instead of following a leveling guide strictly can be a huge advantage. The mats you need to follow advice in a leveling guide are the same mats everyone reading that guide needs. If there's a cheaper path, these addons can show it to you.
Patient
Slow and steady won't win you any races, but if you can afford the luxury of waiting, you'll be able to do just about everything cheaper. Make a list of the stuff you'll probably need, watch prices every day to get an idea of what it's worth, and make a point of picking it up whenever there's a good price. A lot of time, there may not be enough supply of whatever you need at a fair price to get to the next step. Being able to wait instead of buying the overpriced stock will save you money.
Of course, the problem with this is that you might buy too much. Don't let that phase you, though. You can always sell it back on the auction house. And if you wait long enough, you might find someone rushing through their skill that is willing to pay a premium.
If you're not sure about the value of items, get in the habit of keeping Market Watcher up to date. You can install that addon, add everything you'll need to its watch list, and look at a graph of the prices over time.
Being an auctioneer is like being able to print money (or gold, as it were). Wait, that doesn't make sense ... You can print on gold, but you can't print gold. That would be closer to transmutation? I can transmute titanium, but that's only worth it if the price of saronite is low enough to justify the time spent making it. I need some sort of analogy here. ... Whatever, I'll figure it out later. Making gold? Every time they let Basil write Insider Trader, he will endeavor to teach you the tricks of the trade. Filed under: Economy, Insider Trader (Professions)
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
vaarsej May 11th 2010 12:12PM
Herb Mining. Get an addon that allows you to track both .
For the 2nd, go Tailor/Chanting .
Then after you have these 2, you will be swimming in gold.
Tim May 11th 2010 12:13PM
On the point of being patient- How does everyone handle the changing of the market? Meaning, being patient and waiting for a better price for too long and realizing that the market has shifted.
Example. I buy Northrend herbs for 8-12 gold. My server has only had these herbs for the past 3 weeks for 20-30 gold. Should I wait it out or accept the changes???
Neyssa May 12th 2010 2:07AM
Prices are changing much as the expansion goes on. For example, epic gems on our server used to be 250-300g cut, now they are 120-180. Everyone has lots of triumph badges, and honor to get epic gems, and many people have JC alts because it is very profitable.
However, pricing on farm materials goes up (in my opinion), because not many people go out farming. If you raid, and only need money for upgrade/gemming/enchanting/repair, you are less likely to farm (just do the dailies, and even bosses drop nice amount of money). I see much less people farming nowadays, thus low supply - high prices.
Now leveling inscription, low level herbs on our server go for 1-5g EACH. Usually a stack of Kingsblood or Liferoot is around 100g, even peacebloom goes for 20-30g.
SumDuud May 12th 2010 7:37AM
On my server ore is usually half price of bars, on horde and alliance. I buy cobalt ore for 25 and sell a stack of ore for 60, fel iron 2 stacks for 40-60 stack of bars go for 110, even low level is the same. It is nice and being able to buy on one faction for 10g cheaper helps.
Also there is no way cata is comng in Nov mid Oct at the latest, more likely Sept. Some time, or maybe late august.
As for having a gathering alt, it can be nice, specifically for smelting purposes; but once you get into it I can make more money buying mats then I do gathering. Even when I dropped skinning/mining on my dk for bs/jc, I was going to collect it all stock it and then switch. I ended up buying almost all of my mats on the ah (horde and alliance side) and making 2k gold in the process from selling super cheap stuff on peak times to turn around and buy 4-5x more cheap mats store some and sell some. Was much easier and less time then gathering myself.