I promised more Alchemy and Herbalism tips after last week so let’s jump right into it with five more pieces of advice.

1. You’ll find that certain areas and herbs are consistently good for Alchemy and Herbalism.  The Swamp of Sorrows is particularly good for collecting herbs – it’s a relatively small zone, with a large quantity of herb spawn-points, and generally has a very low population.  Ghost Mushrooms from the caves in the Hinterlands also offer a great opportunity to earn gold.  Pick those whenever possible.
2. Watch for non-alchemy herbs like Deadnettle which are found along with other herbs.  You won’t be able to use these yourself, but they sell really well on AH for inscriptions, rogue-poisons, etc.  Most herbs seem to have a use for some type of profession.  When you come across a new one, check it out on the Auction House.
3. Once you’re maxed out on Alchemy and Herbalism, you have some great opportunities to start making serious gold.  Transmuting Skyflare Diamonds and Earthsiege Diamonds are a great way to double your investment (material costs), provided you’re paying attention to the market: buying mats when they’re cheap, and selling Diamonds when they’re high.  Example: If Eternal Fire (the main material for Earthsiege) is selling for 30g, but Earthsiege Diamonds are selling for 25g, it’s a bad time to be in the Earthsiege Diamond business.  If you can buy Eternal Fire at 20g, and sell Earthsiege at 40 – 45g, you’re making bank.
4. Watch for sellers who post their Earthsiege Diamonds (or any other item) significantly below the going prices.  You might find that someone posts 5 Earthsiege Diamonds for 19g each.  Next after him though, the price is 45g each.  (I see this more than I’d ever imagine.)  Although a bit of a gamble, it’s a sound strategy to purchase all 5 of the cheap diamonds (costing you 95g total) and immediately repost them for 44g 99s.  If they sell, you’ll have 224g 95s – a profit of 129g 95s.  If you end up having to sell them cheaply, you should at worst get your money back – and you’re still better off than buying the Eternal Fire when it costs more than the Diamond you’re wanting to make.
5. Frost Lotus is a much-coveted herb and generally sells for around 20 – 25 gold in the AH.  But instead of posting the Frost Lotus that you find, I recommend checking the AH cost on Flask of the Frost Wyrm first.  A single Flask often sells for about the same – 20 to 25 gold.  Frost Lotus is the “main” material for it (being the most expensive), and one batch of materials is good for 2 Flasks.  Since you’ll benefit directly from using that potion (assuming you’re an awesome warlock like me), you may decide to either keep the Flasks or go with a “keep 1, sell 1″ strategy.  If I don’t have much gold to spare but need the Flasks, I’ll buy several Frost Lotus, along with whatever other mats I need, and brew up the Flasks.  Then I’ll keep half of the Flasks and put the rest on AH… generally making enough gold to come close to covering my material costs.  Free flasks, basically!

Wrapping Things Up

A last bit of advice: never undersell your items.  If an item is selling for 20 gold, and you want to sell your item fast, do NOT price it at 15 gold.  Price it at 19g 99s.  You’ll still sell your item first.  In fact, you don’t even have to be cheaper on the buyout price – you can match the current buyout price, but be cheaper on the bid price and still be ranked “cheapest”.  So if at item has a bid price of 19g and a buyout of 20g, if you price yours at 18g 99s bid, and 20g buyout, you’re listed as cheapest, and you will sell your item first, and enjoy the added flavor of feeling like an auction ninja.

Ultimately, the bottom line is buy low and sell high.  Pretty obvious, I know.  But with AH prices swinging wildly from one day to the next, it’s worth restating.  I’ve sold Earthsiege Diamonds for 45g one day, and the next day the price was down to 18g.  So pay attention to your costs.

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Related posts:

1. 5 Gold Tips For Alchemy And Herblism
2. Making Gold With Cooking Dailies
3. Starting With One Gold

It’s time to turn those Alchemy and Herbalism professions to the task of earning some WoW Gold. This is some straight-up, useable advice on how to keep some decent gold coming in consistently without stopping your normal game-play to farm materials for endless hours. You should be able to quest or group as you normally do and always have some auctions running that bring you decent gold, no matter what level you are.

At the lowest levels, farming is the obvious start to obtaining gold. Getting stacks of 20 can start earning you decent cash in AH, but since the promise here is to earn gold without endless, mind-numbing farming, let’s look at some other ways:

1. Develop a strong case of A.D.D.: While questing, stop to pick any plant that can be harvested. “Hey, there’s that boss I need to kill! Oooo wait, pretty flowers!” You’ll find that you acquire a good amount of herbs quickly this way, and it’s not so painful as running around solely looking for herbs.
2. Fairly quickly, you’ll be able to pick Bruiseweed and Briarthorn, as with those materials you can make Strong Troll’s Blood Elixir. The Strong Troll’s Blood Elixir is pretty much worthless to you as a potion, but fortunately, it is a quest item. And there are plenty of low-level alts with gold to spend, so this is one of your first real opportunities to start earning gold. You can make Strong Troll’s Blood Elixir and sell them in single units for 2 – 4 gold each, depending on the market in your Auction House.
   These sell fairly quickly and consistently. Just keep an eye on the market, and do NOT sell them in stacks. People only need 1 for their quest. If they decide they actually want to drink the things, well, they can buy multiple auctions.
3. Pay attention to the cost of materials vs. created items. Strong Troll’s Blood Elixir is fairly hard on materials, requiring 2 of each herb to create (4 total herbs + bottle). You may periodically find that the materials themselves can bring you more gold than the Elixirs will give you. If so, sell the materials directly (obviously) – and skip on creating Elixirs. By keeping an eye on cost materials vs. the created items, you’ll be maximizing your gold-earning potential. Keep this in mind always, as we’ll see in a minute when discussing transmuting diamonds for fun and profit.
4. As you begin to advance in levels, you should be able to keep your Strong Troll’s Blood Elixir business going without having to farm materials. You’ll reach a point where it’s cost-efficient to just buy the mats and make your Elixirs. I used to always keep 4 or 5 Elixirs on AH at any given time, provided the market price was holding up.
5. As you gain the ability to harvest new herbs, always do 3 things: 1) Check the going AH rate for stacks of those new herbs. 2) learn what potions can be made, and check the going AH rate for those potions. 3) find out what those mysterious additional herbs are used for, and what they’re worth. This keeps you in the know on where you can make the most gold.

More Tips Next Week

Next week I will have five more great tips for earning gold with Alchemy and Herbalism.

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To subscribe to the newsletter, simply fill out the form below and then confirm your subscription via the email you’ll receive afterwards in your inbox.

Related posts:

1. Making Gold With Cooking Dailies
2. Starting With One Gold
3. How Much Gold Is Enough?

In the last few weeks I feel as if I reached what, as far as I’m concerned, is the maximum I can accomplish on my Hunter without being in a Raiding guild. Since I don’t have much desire or inclination to join a real guild I’m trying to find other things to keep my Hunter active and, to that end, I took up Fishing.

Wasted Opportunities

What in the world had taken me so long? Fishing is a money-making machine and I was too stubborn to realize it. I think not being a serious Raider, and therefore not appreciating the importance of Raiding food, is what kept me in the dark about the buckets of gold a person can make with a little Fishing and Cooking skills. I wasted a lot of time neglecting Fishing but that’s all going to change from here on out.

Dragonfin Angelfish

One of the big sellers for me, so far, has been Dragonfin Angelfish so I thought I’d put together a post detailing my favorite farming spot for these.

Right now I’m having the best luck fishing for Dragonfin Angelfish in Dragonblight. There’s a lake just to the northwest of the Moa’ki Harbor that has frequently spawning pools of the fish. Even without the pool action you can pull up a fair share of the Angelfish as well as Bonescale Snapper.

I haven’t really timed myself but, if I had to guess, I would say you can easily pull up 3 stacks or more in an hour of fishing. When you add in the other fish you snag during that time it’s worth the effort when it comes to Auction House time…

The Pay Off

On my server, I can sell a stack of Dragonfin Angelfish for about 60 gold. Sometimes I get lucky and can push it up to 70 gold but that’s been rare. If they don’t sell I just keep re-listing until they do. I haven’t investigated what foods I could cook with these yet and whether or not I could see a bigger payday with them in cooked form. With the price of Northern Spices plummeting more and more each day I’m not really concerned with using them up on Cooking anymore.

Anyone who is looking for a high reward gold making idea with a low barrier of entry should think about Fishing. The big investment is time which might be enough to drive some people away but if you can put aside a few minutes each day I think, in a matter of a few days, you’d be pleasantly surprised with the results.

Related posts:

1. Farming Spot: Chilled Meat
2. Farming Spot: Worg Haunch & Rhino Meat
3. My Mission Is More Fishin’

On the southwestern side of the Borean Tundra, near Warsong Hold and the Riplash Strand, is a series of cliffs and hills full of Worgs. Check out the map above for the exact location. With a drop rate that hovers somewhere around 50% a player can haul in a ton of Worg Haunches in a relatively short amount of time. The area also offers the added bonus of having plenty of roaming Rhinos dropping Rhino Meat at a 50% rate as well.

Wowhead has the buyout on each of these items as 1g/each and that’s pretty much in line with what I’m seeing on the Auction House at Greymane-US as well. This makes this spot not only a good place to farm for cooking supplies for yourself, but for others as well. In a matter of minutes you can probably make a decent chunk of change.

Related posts:

1. Farming Spot: Chilled Meat
2. Farming Spot: Sanguine Hibiscus

Thank You Achievements

The reason that Sanguine Hibiscus is still relevant today is because of an achievement called The Diplomat which gives a cool title once you’ve achieved Exalted status with Sporeggar, Timbermaw Hold and the Kurenai (for Alliance) or the Mag’Har (for Horde).

Achievement crazy folks, or those into getting slick titles, have been pounding away on those Reputation grinds since the 3.0 patch. Of the three, the Sporeggar is the only Faction you can basically buy your way to the top with. That’s where the Sanguine Hibiscus comes into play.

So Where Do I Find It?

The best spot to farm Sanguine Hibiscus is inside the Underbog. At level 80 you should have no problems soloing this in its entirety. If you’re looking to be speedy and efficient you can skip the Naga section of the Underbog as you won’t find any Hibiscus from loot drops. The rest of the instance is fair game though.

I did a run recently and came out with 21 of the Hibiscus. I think that I would’ve found more had I checked for random spawns on the ground more often but I was in a hurry. I posted the stack of 21 on the Auction House for a 105g buyout and they sold by morning.

Related posts:

1. Farming Spot: Chilled Meat

Luckily, if you fly just south of the Explorers’ League Outpost, in southwestern Howling Fjord, you’ll find a nice little spot of beach and rocks full of several types of Lion Seals (see the map above).

The seals drop Chilled Meat at about a 40% rate according to Wowhead in addition to some occasional green items. If you’re a Skinner, this is also a decent place to snag some Borean Leather and even an Arctic Fur if you’re lucky.

Just spending a few minutes here should get you all the Chilled Meat you need for your recipes as well as a decent pile of gold in skins and vendor trash. If you’re not into Cooking, but into the idea of making lots of gold, this is also a great spot to pick up Chilled Meat to sell on the Auction House. Right now a stack is selling for 40g on my server but I’m sure prices vary widely.

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1. Wrath Item Prices Starting to Settle Down