Filed under: Gold Capped

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Every new expansion brings with it two things: more ways to make gold, and more ways to spend it. Making gold can be a very rewarding and engaging way to play the game on its own, but it's not for everyone. Here are a few tips that can help anyone make gold in the first few weeks of an expansion.

Pay later

A huge part of how much gold you have is actually how much you spend. Most people neglect this part of the equation, allowing their subconscious to choose when to splurge. A very simple way to have more money to spend on even more cool stuff is to avoid buying something until you absolutely need it.

For example, if you decide to powerlevel that engineer or leatherworker, you have a choice: either pay now, or choose to wait a few weeks and level your profession when the mats go down in price. The only difference is the order you do things in, but waiting will save you thousands of gold in materials.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

The ink traders you find near inscription trainers allow you to buy any lower-level common ink you might need for the price of one current ink. Glyphs take a variety of inks, and if you want to craft one, you're more likely to need ink from some earlier expansion than you are a current ink. In Wrath of the Lich King, we were trading in Ink of the Sea. In Cataclysm, we've been trading in Blackfallow Ink. In Mists of Pandaria, including patch 5.0.4, we'll be trading in Ink of Dreams -- or at least the tooltip at the ink trader would have you believe.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Note: This article is about the Mists of Pandaria Beta. There is no guarantee that this functionality will exist in the live version of MoP.

The new pet battle system in Mists of Pandaria is going to be one of the most exciting new features for a lot of people; however, a potentially unintended consequence of the way it's currently implemented is that by selling pets on one realm that you bought on another realm, you will be able to transfer wealth between servers or factions. Orkchop wrote me an email that got me investigating:

All these pets are bound to your account, across all servers, across both factions, and can be sold. You can log on to your level 90 main, buy some pets, learn them, then log on to another server, create a level 1 and go sell those pets at auction. All without touching the neutral auction house and its fees.

For someone who doesn't really know much about gold or the making of it, I've been posting a lot about gold recently! I recently posted a Breakfast Topic asking our dear readers what their gold-making secrets are, and we at WoW Insider thought the comments deserved their own post.

First and foremost, some gold making tips cropped up too many times for me to attribute them to any one commenter.

1. Loot everything, sell everything. CaptainFreddy puts it well:

And from someone who got his paladin Charger back in Vanilla, loot and sell EVERYTHING. You may feel grody picking that Troll Sweat up, but that's silver in the pocket.

SueNankivell adds:

And get a 'Vendor greys' addon to save time. If you're an AH player, these methods are not the fastest ways to make money. On the other hand, if you're NOT, then you need to make the most of what you DO do in WoW. Loot everything, and sell everything you don't need or use on the AH.

2. Use addons to your advantage. Many commenters mention the various addons that they use. TradeSkillMaster of course crops up a lot, along with others.

AltosGold says:

The "cunning scheme" is proper use of addons. Whether you are using TSM for posting auctions, Auctionator/Auctioneer for scans/resales, NPC Scan for farming rares, or Dailies Quest addon, the list goes on and on. Even a novice "gold maker in training" can utilize these addons and with a little bit of knowledge can rake in quite a bit of cash.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him.

Tailoring has always been a solid profession choice, especially for casters. You can create some of the best, epic-quality gear for your character with your own two (digitized avatar's) hands. You can even create some serious bank notes by selling leg enchants and bags. It's never been the most profitable profession -- but in every expansion, it's been a solid money maker.

A number of tailoring patterns have finally started appearing on the Mists of Pandaria beta. But is the outlook for the upcoming expansion as golden as it's been in the past? The outlook is a bit cloudy (misty? haw haw haw), but we'll still see if we can make some sense of some of the major changes coming to the profession in just a few months' time.

Just how major are these changes, you might ask? Major enough that it's worth considering whether or not it's time to give tailoring up for good.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Basil's re-reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

The Spirit of Harmony is going to be the limiting factor in a lot of craftable items in Mists of Pandaria. Just take a look at all the recipes it'll be a reagent for -- some 153 so far, and they haven't even finished designing the professions. The interesting part of this is that the Spirits (and the Motes you can turn into Spirits) are going to be bind on pickup, which means that you can't trade for them.

Does this means that you will not be able to level a profession up to the new maximum skill level without farming Spirits and Motes of Harmony yourself? Will it mean the end of readily available, entry-level crafted PvP and PvE blues?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him.

I know there's some disagreement between myself and Basil over this, but inscription is hands down my favorite profession. That's not really because I like the process of finding or buying herbs, and I absolutely detest the whole milling procedure. It's because I like money. Inscription made me stupid rich.

So, it would only follow then that I have great interest in what scribes will be up to come Mists of Pandaria. After all, Cataclysm brought the advent of the ultra-profitable and high-demand Mysterious Fortune Cards, so Blizzard must have something cool up its sleeves for this next expansion, too, right?

Well ... sort of! I mean, let's face it, Mysterious Fortune Cards are a pretty big bar to set. That being said, there's some serious love coming scribes way in terms of new things to sell, new items to equip, and new, fun things to have fun with. But don't take my word for it. See for yourself.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

One of the things I simply can't do is spend time on alts. Between the Auction House and playing my main, I simply don't have the time or interest to seriously use the other character slots on my account the way most people do. And then there's this guy:

Hey Basil, I've been playing WoW for quite a few years now, and just recently stuck my pinky toe in the water that is the Auction House to profit from various sources.

I have alts. Lots of alts. 8 at 85 currently. All of them are able to do HoT dungeons. Now my question is, is there an easy (or efficient) way for me to make multitudes of gold utilizing these alts at all? I would assume leveling as many professions as possible, but there has to be other ways I'm missing. Thanks for your time!

Mellark, altoholic, Hyjal US.

Having eight level 85 characters is a definite advantage when you play the AH. In fact, one of the things that holds me back to this day is lack of profession slots on level 85 characters. I have all the ones I absolutely need, but I'm missing some compared to a lot of my competition. Every character is an opportunity to have two professions, and each profession is a different way to make (or save) gold.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him.

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- if you're not having fun while playing World of Warcraft, you're doing it wrong. Sure, raiding is great, and so is having pockets full of gold. But if you don't find either of those fun, then why bother? Find something that is fun.

Fun, of course, is what the engineering profession is all about. It's certainly not about money, after all -- engineers make very few things that non-engineers can use. But while you're struggling to make money in MoP, you'll at least be getting a lot of new perks to enjoy while doing all that struggling. There are cool new pets, new conveniences, new gear, a new world-altering device, and even new mounts -- yes, mounts with an s!

Exciting times are most definitely ahead for engineers. So strap on your goggles and have a robot roll up your sleeves -- we're going to dive right in.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

The end of an expansion is a tough time to make gold. There's a lot more competition for a lot less demand. Many people see gold-making as a nice casual way to play while they wait for the next content dump, and fewer people are playing seriously (which is the root of demand for a lot of popular and profitable markets). To top it all off, we know that inflation is going to take a huge chunk out of our net worth when Mists launches, and there are a bunch of new things to save money up for. What kind of things can you still sell to make a profit?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him.

Last week here in Gold Capped, I gave you a sneak peek at the alchemy profession in Mists of Pandaria, including some of the new potions, flasks, and transmutes available to those willing to put in the work. That column apparently got a lot of you thinking, because immediately afterward, I got no fewer than three emails from players asking if they should change their professions to alchemy -- or more generally, whether or not they should switch to a better profession.

It's a question to which there's no easy answer. Each profession has the potential to be profitable -- some more so than others, sure. But one person might make millions of gold from inscription, for example, while another player struggles to make a few silver.

Aside from knowledge (which you're all getting right here from Gold Capped, natch), what's the biggest factor regarding a profession's profitability? It's your playstyle. Certain professions lend themselves to the weekend Auction House warrior, while others reward daily persistence. So what profession is right for you? And should you change to that profession for Mists of Pandaria?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen and Fox Van Allen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Check out Fox and Basil's reboot of Call To Auction, and email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail!

Ever see anyone trying to buy or sell a guild with bank tabs? There are people who will stop at nothing to store more stuff, especially those of us who play the gold-making game. One of the biggest challenges of making gold is, in fact, storing stuff. Bags are expensive, guild tabs are even more expensive, and there is a hard limit of 10 (for now) characters per realm. Each character has four bag slots and eight bank slots, as well as some built-in backpack and bank slots. This may seem like a lot, but what if you wanted to, for example, stockpile 10,000g worth of Hypnotic Dust, expecting it to sell for 70,000g in Mists of Pandaria? That could be over 700 stacks.

Luckily, there's a simple and virtually free way to store unlimited amounts of stuff and save all your expensive inventory slots.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him.

One of the most common questions I get as WoW Insider's (other) resident Auction House guru is this: What professions are going to be the best in Mists of Pandaria? Arguably, there's no absolute right or wrong answer to the question -- after all, each profession is going to have its pros and cons. (I like to hedge my bets by giving different alts different professions to have a max level of each profession.)

That said, one of my favorite professions for the early days of any expansion is alchemy. It's likely one of your favorites, too, and there's no mystery as to why -- transmutes. In the earlier days of Cataclysm, it wasn't rare to see Truegold sell for more than 1,000 gold apiece. That provided a small profit to any alchemist, but for those lucky enough to see bonus procs, a single transmute could turn a 4,000 gold profit or better. Not bad for about 20 seconds' worth of work.

Of course, that was then; this is now. Will alchemy remain as stupidly profitable in the early days of Mists of Pandaria? Only one way to find out -- ladies and gentlemen, it's time to datamine! To the beta!

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him.

As we approach the end of the Cataclysm expansion -- there are maybe four months left -- playing the Auction House gets a bit trickier. There's less enthusiasm on the part of buyers. More scary, though, is that the launch of Mists of Pandaria is about to render a lot of markets obsolete. It happened in Wrath and in The Burning Crusade too -- those potions and flasks that were top of the line suddenly became worthless. Gear that once cost thousands of gold could be had for hundreds. It's the nature of our in-game hobby. If you sit on stock, you're going to lose a fortune. (Shamefully, it happened to me out of laziness.)

But not everything is set to crash. A few select items are going to increase in value, if not in the days leading up to MoP, then shortly after launch. These are the items you need to fill your bank tabs with. But which ones are they? What should you sell ASAP, and what should you buy?

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Fox Van Allen and Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aim to show you how to make money on the Auction House. Feed Fox's ego by emailing him, tweeting him at @foxvanallen, or sacrificing your first-born to him.

I had an absolute blast with Mat McCurley, Mike Sacco, and Alex Ziebart at PAX East 2012 this weekend. If you've been living under a rock, the four of us put on a great live panel discussion in front of about 200 to 300 excited fans. We met our fans (you!), gave away a ton of crazy awesome prizes (including immortality as a WoW Trading Card Game card), and had a lot of fun. We also discussed the big news of the day, which was the new Mists of Pandaria beta patch.

There's a lot of news in there for class columnists. But of interest to us as those who make and break the WoW economy, we've unearthed a new mount for jewelcrafters. And another mount for jewelcrafters. And another. And another. And yet a fifth. Yes, you heard me -- there are no fewer than five new JC mounts in the beta files.

If any jewelcrafters in the audience are salivating, they have a right to be. These new mounts could be a veritable bonanza for those who take the time to craft them. And they could wind up saving the World of Warcraft economy at the same time.