My Cataclysm gold strategy

I'm not one of the big gold-making sharks, nonetheless I have made a few preparations for Cataclysm and hopefully my gold reserves will increase by a decent amount during the first few weeks of the expansion. To be honest I'm not dedicated 100% to making gold because I've got plenty for now and I would also like to actually play the game the way it is meant to be played.

For Cataclysm I would like to try something new. It remains to be seen if my experience and observations will give good results (or not). My strategy is not overly complicated and is made up of several pieces. Here they are.

Glyphs

As always, glyphs remain my main source of income. When patch 4.0.1 was released I made several mistakes mostly due to my not reading the patch notes very carefully. The biggest mistake was that I didn't realize that glyphs would require 3 inks instead of 1. I had a few hundred inks stocked up but it wasn't nearly enough to make lots of gold. In retrospect, I should have crafted the most popular glyphs in advance and stocked them before the patch. Instead, I did all my crafting post-patch which was another big mistake.

This time, I've hopefully wised up and I've been buying cheap herbs off the auction house for a while, milling and converting them into inks whenever I got the chance. By "cheap" I mean anything that goes for 15 gold or less per stack. A stack of herbs produces about 2 glyphs so my costs are around 8G per glyph. For such a major patch I'm expecting glyphs to sell for tens of gold each so my profits should be proportional.

Another strategy that I'm applying here is this. Due to not having enough ink to craft 10 or even 20 of all the glyphs in the game, I've had to narrow things down to just the most popular glyphs. To find out which ones are the most popular I've headed to wowpopular.com and made a list in Excel with the top glyphs for every class.

Even narrowing down the glyphs to the most popular I still don't have enough ink so I've decided to craft only 5 of each. This also serves to spread out the risk because if a glyph drops down a lot in price I should still have a variety of other glyphs to fall back on. Having 5 of each should also help me to clear my stocks quickly. At the moment of writing this I have already crafted 400 glyps (that's 80 different glyphs, 5 of each) and have ink for another 200 or so.

I'm planning to list my glyphs on the auction house the night before Cataclysm is released, with a 24 hour timer. I haven't used this method before so I don't know what will happen but hey, even if I sell all my glyphs at a loss I won't end up on the streets (of Stormwind). Profit comes with risk.

As I write this paragraph, it is now post-patch 4.0.3a. This means The Shattering has happened and new race-class combinations have been enabled. I applied the strategy outlined above and listed all my glyphs with a 24-hour period but unfortunately I haven't sold a lot. What I did sell made me a nice profit. From about a dozen glyphs sold (perhaps even less), I made 1000 gold by selling each glyph for about 80-90 gold each. Not too shabby. On the other hand I'm still left with a lot of stock. The sad truth is that people are still willing to undercut glyphs to the ground, despite glyphs now requiring 3 inks and not being able to buy lower level inks with Ink of the Sea. I will maintain my position though and hope that Cataclysm will bring a lot more customers. At any rate, I don't believe I'll be losing money on this, on the contrary. It's just that this is probably the last time I will be selling glyphs en masse because it is simply not worth the time investment anymore.


Saronite

My next strategy is something that I've been preparing for a very long time. I've been buying cheap Saronite Ore from the AH whenever the price was right. This one is a 100% safe investment because I've purchased the ore below vendor price for the bars. This, for me, is 60 silver a piece, or 12 gold a stack of ore. Converting the ore into bars results in a cost of 1.2 gold per bar and Saronite Bars will vendor for 1.25 gold.

I now have several hundred stacks of ore. I haven't bought this ore to vendor it. Instead, I've stockpiled it in the hopes that people will need lots of Saronite Bars to level Engineering, Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting. You literally need hundreds of bars for these professions.

As I write this, once again, it is post-patch 4.0.3a. Demand for Saronite Bars has suddenly skyrocketed and I'm selling bars for between 2+ gold each up to 7+ gold each. Just a while ago I sold a whole stack of individual bars for over 7 gold a piece. Wait, scratch that. My 7+ bars are selling like crazy so now I've upped the price to 10+ a bar. Compared to how much I paid for the ore, I've made between 500% and 800% profit on these bars.

With Cataclysm, I'm expecting the demand for Saronite Bars to grow because fewer people will be farming it and there will be all these new characters who will want to level their professions. As such, this seems like a very good investment.

Adamantite Ore

I have also been buying some cheap Adamantite Ore so that I can prospect it for Adamantite Powder which can be used to create Mercurial Adamantite which is used by Jewelcrafters to level their profession. Now this has been a bit of a gamble because so far I haven't had much success selling the Mercurial Adamantite. It remains to be seen if Cataclysm will change this.

Farming

My favorite strategy will be farming. It may not be the most efficient in terms of gold per hour but for me farming is fun. I'm talking especially about mining and herbalism. In Cataclysm (if previous expansions are an indicator) there will be huge initial demand for the new types of ore and herbs. I plan to spend most of my time during the first couple of weeks simply flying around the new areas and farming stuff.

Farming is not for everyone. Some people despise it because they claim there are better ways in which to make gold. That may be true but for me farming is exciting. I love flying around and the new areas especially will make this sweeter. I love it when a node pops on my radar and I swoop down to claim it. There's always the thrill of discovery when a node yields a bonus such as a rare gem or herb.

So for me farming is therapeutic. It is also fortunate that my Hunter is a miner and my Priest is a herbalist. These are the 2 characters that I would like to level to 85 first. While farming I will be queuing up for the new dungeons. This way I can both make gold and level at the same time.

I won't be using any of the farmed mats myself to level my own professions unless I need them for some cool new crafted item. Looking back to previous expansions, this seems like the smart thing to do. Initial demand for these mats is incredibly high and supply is scarce because most people are concentrating on leveling and not farming. Later, when things have settled down and everyone has leveled their main, mats will drop down in price a lot. That will be the time to buy cheap mats from the auction house and level my own professions.

Conclusion

As you can see, these aren't extremely complicated strategies and I don't plan to agonize day and night about ways in which to make even more gold. What all these methods do have in common is that they require professions in order to work. There's Inscription, Jewelcrafting, Alchemy, Mining and Herbalism.

The truth is that although one can make gold without any profession, having one or two of them maxed out helps a great deal. Personally I have all professions maxed and this has helped me a lot because they are all inter-dependent and synergistic. Besides, you can easily swallow the cost of crafting one thing or another, especially if you can do it afk.

My advice is not to lose a lot of sleep over how much gold you will actually make at the start of Cataclysm. The true gurus will undoubtedly make hundreds of thousands of gold each. Personally I'll be content if I can make more than I would on a normal day, while having fun at the same time.

Note: This article was featured on JustMyTwoCopper's blog carnival for November.

Alchemy 450

After many years I have finally managed to level Alchemy, which is the last remaining profession that I hadn't mastered on my main server (Alliance). A couple of weeks back I decided the time had come for me to learn Alchemy on my priest and max it out. I didn't start earlier because my philosophy is that unless you're very close to max level, you'd be better off with two gathering professions.

Initially I had planned to wait until level 80 before I learned Alchemy. Then, I figured that 75 was enough. At 73 I caved in and decided to learn it, mostly because my bank was overflowing with mats and I wanted to clear some of that stuff.

For leveling Alchemy I used this guide. The guides on this site are very good and I recommend them. I used them to level most of my professions. The trick to power leveling a profession is, of course, to have all the mats beforehand. Because my priest had learned herbalism from the get-go and because I knew he would be my future alchemist, I kept all the herbs I gathered while leveling him.

As it happens in these cases, I didn't have 100% of the required mats. I missed a stack here, a stack there but since those particular herbs were very expensive on the auction house, I decided to farm them myself. So that's what I did. It didn't take me long though.

When you're close to 450 you'll probably get stuck and leveling will be much harder. Not to worry. I would suggest transmuting Titanium bars until the recipe turns gray at 440. If you don't have saronite bars, just buy them off the auction house and then sell the titanium bars back if you can't use them. Or alternately advertise on trade chat that you will transmute titanium for free. If you're a transmutation master, you'll even get extra bars which is very cool.

Speaking of mastery, I've chosen to be a Transmutation Master. I've always dreamed about being one, ever since Burning Crusade. By the way, there's a quest for becoming one, just read the comments on Wowhead.

The rest of the way to 450 is easily attained by crafting some flasks such as Flask of Endless Rage. Lucky for me I had enough mats to craft a ton of flasks which I promptly sold afterwards. Once again, if you don't have mats, just buy them off the AH and then sell the crafted flasks. You won't lose much gold or you might even turn a profit and that's especially true if you gather the herbs yourself.

One other tip that I will share is this: if you have access to a character who's exalted with a certain faction (for example a capital city or the Kirin Tor), get them to buy all the vials for you, for a discount.

Alchemy is pretty cool and it is synergistic with many of the other professions, such as jewelcrafting and blacksmithing. I had the pleasant surprise to discover a few things that I wasn't aware of before I leveled alchemy. One of them is this cool trinket called Mercurial Alchemist Stone. It's a level 75 item so I had to wait 2 levels before I could equip it. Still, it gives some very nice stats. That particular one is a caster trinket but there are dps and tanking ones too.

Then there's this awesome "flask" called Flask of the North which doesn't have a cooldown and gives you a nice buff depending on your class/spec. Essentially it's an extra buff that you can cast on yourself, which costs no resources and can be refreshed at any time.

But wait, there's more! Alchemists also get an Endless Healing Potion and an Endless Mana Potion. Think of them as two health/mana potions that never run out, yet only have a short cooldown. Note: the cooldown starts when you're not in combat. The beauty of it is that when you combine these two potions with the Flask of the North, you get 40% extra benefit from them! The mana potion is proving especially invaluable for my discipline priest when I'm healing. These days I seldom have to drink because I don't really run out of mana anymore.

As far as making gold is concerned, I've mostly used alchemy for transmuting titanium but also for transmuting gems. Remember, the titanium transmute doesn't have a cooldown but the epic gem transmutes have a 20-hour cooldown. Being a transmute master, I sometimes get procs and my best proc so far was from an Eye of Zul transmute which gave me 4 Eye of Zul. If I can't use the gems themselves I will send them to my jewelcrafter who will add value by cutting the gem into something useful.

So there you have it, Alchemy 450, the final piece in my profession puzzle. To be honest I'm a bit relieved that there won't be another primary profession in Cataclysm but on the other hand I'm looking forward to the expansion because there are rumors of an alchemy mount. Woohoo! I hope it's a flying flask!