Picking a profession may be a difficult choice for you when starting a character or power leveling a profession. For most people, they have to watch out what profession they choose because of the amount of gold it takes to level it up. That is why most people choose to pick a gathering profession and a complimentary profession to support it. If you are looking to make gold from your profession in the long run, you are best off choosing a gathering profession. However, the downside of having a gathering profession is that you cannot do anything else than gather.

The benefit of choosing a crafting or service profession is that you can benefit yourself. However, the downside is that you may have a hard time leveling the profession as it will cost you a lot of gold as well as time. The good news is that you can still make as much money as a gathering profession in the long run. You just have to simply figure out how to do it and learn the most profitable strategy.

If you are going to gather and earn money through farming herbs, ores, or leather, you should definitely analyze the market and see which items will yield you the most profit. You can then just load up on food and water (if you need it of course), empty all your bags, and you can begin farming in that area for lots of profitable items. If you really wanted to, you can save all your materials and level another profession with them if you have enough guildbank spaces. If you do not buy additional space, you will have a hard time storing all your materials unless you mail them to yourself. However, it will only last you 30 days.

If you are going to take a service or crafting profession, you should definitely first level your profession based on how much gold is available to you. Tailoring will require a lot of cloth, so you should definitely check to see if the cloth are affordable in the AH. The best thing to do is see which class you are and pick a profession that will benefit you. For example, if you are a priest, you should pick tailoring as one of your profession because you can make items for yourself.

Once you have a profession maxed out, it is time to see which things sell the best. Sticking to the tailoring example, you can make 2 ebonweave per session if you are specialized tailor. This means that every 2 days, you can generate and easy 150g profit just by making it really quick. Ebonweave is preferred over the other cloth (in my realm) because it sells better. If your guild has another cloth that sells better, you should definitely specialize and make that.

If you are a blacksmith, find items that people need such as rods. All the rods are needed my enchanters, so there will always be a demand for rods, especially with the ridiculously low competition. These are some of the examples in how to make gold using the items that are in demand.

There is another way to make money off these professions. Usually, the items that you can craft will be a lot higher than the materials needed to make them. You will simply have to go out and see which materials are cheap to obtain and compare it with the item price. The highest yield will be for epic items at level 80. You want to make sure you see the average selling price of the item before crafting them. If the items are items that do not sell very well, there is not really a point in making them as you will end up losing a lot of money.

If you are leveling a service profession like enchanting, you may want to give out free enchants in the process of leveling. If you yell in trade about a free enchant you are offering, you will most likely get tipped for the service. This way, you can get tips and be able to level your profession at the same time which is extremely convenient for you.

As you can see, there are numerous ways to profit from all of the profession. If you can use your profession correctly, you have the potential to make a ton of money through the professions no matter which profession you choose.

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What if that isn’t for you though? What else could you do?

Well, the next batch of professions being covered are for those death knights who seem to have a problem with smashing things on a funda-metal level. Using herbs and plants found using the herbalism skill, these professions create mysterious glyphs and powerful potions and flasks which are very, very important for raiders everywhere.

Be warned: these professions are costly to level.  If you have herbalism as your other profession, you will have a much easier time leveling these professions, and a ready supply of herbs whenever you need them.  If you don’t, be prepared to sink thousands of gold pieces into leveling your chosen profession.

Alchemy

The closest thing the World of Warcraft has to a chemistry type profession, Alchemy is a powerful profession with many benefits, including a large potential for money making and potent bonuses from passive skills learned by the profession and the signature alchemist stones.

Although Death Knights aren’t the only class to benefit from Alchemy, they certainly benefit from it a great deal.  Alchemist stones can provide a large boost to your survivability or DPS, while also providing a bonus to hit point gain when drinking a potion.  Unfortunately, alchemist stones cannot be sold on the auction house.

What can be sold however are the Flasks and potions that are so famously important for raiders everywhere.  Alchemy provides some very powerful buffs through flasks and potions, which not only can benefit you a great deal but can be sold on the auction house for a great deal of money.

Inscription

For those Death Knights who really took well to Rune Forging and can actually write (a small percentage of you, I’m sure), it might be wise to become a scribe.

Inscription is a powerful profession for 3 reasons: first, it is the only profession that can alter abilities.  Scribes can create glyphs that improve already existing parts of a spell (Glyph of Horn of Winter), remove negative parts of a spell (Glyph of the Ghoul, or even add something completely new to the spell (Glyph of Howling Blast).  Obviously this is in high demand, so you can sell glyphs for a fair amount of money on the auction house.

Second, you can create the best shoulder enhancements in the game.  The shoulder enchants you can create as a scribe are better than the shoulder enchants you can buy from the Sons of Hodir at exalted, which makes your job that much easier.  Unfortunately, these can’t be sold.

Lastly, it is the only profession with the ability to make the Darkmoon Cards.  Darkmoon cards are normally pretty useless, but are still in high demand; why? Because if you can combine all the cards in a suit(i.e all the nobles cards from Ace to King) then you can combine them to make some of the most powerful trinkets in the game, the Darkmoon Decks.  As a result, even the cards can sell for almost 1,000 gold pieces each depending on the card and the deck.

Crafting A Better Death Knight

Crafting professions are notably harder to pick than the Gathering professions.  Both of the professions I’ve explained here are good for Death Knights of any kind, and I heartily recommend both of them.  The choice is really up to you, dear reader.

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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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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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We’re going to be looking at the jobs that force you to work with metals and stones in an effort to create and construct powerful weapons, durable armor, useful gadgets, or stunning jewelry.

Beware: unless these are supported by a gathering profession, crafting professions can be a very expensive venture, costing many thousands of gold to maximize your skill in your chosen profession.  

For the professions we are talking about today, mining is the most closely related crafting profession and will save you a great deal of money when practicing any of the crafting professions we’re talking about today.

Jewelcrafting

Death Knights delight in death and destruction, slaughtering and maiming all those in their wake; but once in awhile, don’t you wish you could wear something pretty?

Jewelcrafting is a powerful profession: it has a great potential for making money and provides many unique benefits and bonuses.  The cost of having the (arguably) most powerful profession is a slow leveling process and expensive materials.

Although Death Knights aren’t the type to work with delicate and beautiful things, jewelcrafting is an excellent profession for any Death Knight.  Higher level gear comes with slots for gems that you can create, and everyone is going to need those gems! Since you’re a jewelcrafter, you have access to gems that only you can use that are much more powerful than the gems that non-jewelcrafters can use.

Being a jewelcrafter also allows you to create trinkets that only you can use.  There are trinkets for every occasion that allow Death Knights an easier time tanking or dealing damage from the start.

Beyond these trinkets, a jewelcrafter can create neck pieces and rings that not only can you use, but they can be sold on the auction house for a hefty sum.

Blacksmithing

For those Death Knights who can’t stand the frivolities of jewels, but still want to work with rocks by smacking them into nice shapes, blacksmithing might be your profession.

Blacksmithing is a welcome profession on all servers.  It has potential to make money, and can create powerful weapons and armors that are normally better than the gear found in heroic dungeons.  Blacksmithing has areas of specialization, but since Wrath of the Lich King came out there hasn’t been any improvement to these specializations, and they are now an archaic reminder of what once was.

The cons to having this profession are as follows: there are multiple materials that can’t be found through mining alone that will likely have to be bought to increase your skill in blacksmithing, it’s a slow process, and it can be very expensive.

Despite the aforementioned issues, Blacksmithing is a powerful profession with a great potential for money and great gear whether you’re a tank or a DPSer! You’ll always be in demand, and not only that…

You get to smack things repeatedly with a hammer!

Engineering

Are the rest of your Death Knight brethren completely stupid? Do you have “gud mathz”? Do you delight in explosions, fire, and explosions? Then maybe engineering is for you!

Engineering is a powerful profession that, thanks to all the gadgets you can make, makes your death knight feel very different from playing a normal Death Knight.  From Nitro boots and mote extractors to grenades and jumper cables, Engineering gives your death knight a little bit of everything from every other class!

Engineering allows you to create explosives and gadgets that, although they do backfire from time to time, allow you to have significant advantages over non-engineers in the same situation.  The sheer number of unique little gadgets you can make can be overwhelming, and are way too many to list allof them.

There are specializations for engineering, and they are still important in Wrath of the Lich King.  Gnomish and Goblin engineering has a different feel for each, with gnomish engineering leading the weird but fun engineering (such as the shrink ray) and the goblin engineering leading the explosive but dangerous front (such as sapper charges).

The most famous engineering items can only be used by engineers, making engineering a very selfish profession.  Engineers can add gadgets to pieces of gear to create Rocket launching gloves, EMP belts, or parachute capes.  These tinkers often come with other passive bonuses such as crit rating, stats, and better stealth detection.  They also create grenades and explosives that can stun adversaries or cause siege damage in an area on top of doing fire damage.

Another thing that engineers are famous for are their goggles.  The goggles in TBC used to be some of the most powerful gear in the game, although that has been changed to force engineers to get different headpieces.  The goggles are the signature of an engineer, and there are goggles for every kind of death knight.  They also create the best guns you can get before you enter a raiding environment for Hunters, Rogues, and Warriors; this has the potential to make money sometimes, depending on your server.  They can create items that can help revive players, repair items, access your mail, fly helicopters, make motorcycles, escape things, chase things, find things, stall things…

Engineering is a profession based on completely changing the feel of your class.  It’s not a profession, it’s a lifestyle.

The cons to engineering are proportionate to the pros.  Because of all the extra stuff engineers get, they do not have a high potential to make money.  In addition, engineering is very slow to level, requires many materials outside of mining to maximize your engineering skill, and has lower head on benefits (such as stats) than other professions such as jewelcrafting.

In short, engineers are eccentric, funny, full of surprises, and flat out broke more often than not.

Crafting a path is your job

The Crafting professions are notably harder than the Gathering professions.  All three of the professions I’ve explained here are good for Death Knights of any kind, and I heartily recommend all of them.  The choice is really up to you, dear reader.

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But you don’t have a job, do you?

Not to worry! Death Knights have a variety of professions they can pick from, so I’ll give you a breakdown of which ones to look at so that your plutonium wielding, rune illiterate Death Knight can actually do something other than kill people.

For starters, let’s look at the manual labour positions.

GATHERING PROFESSIONS

Mining
Mining is (on most servers) the gathering profession that gives the most money.  Not only that, but it gives a stamina bonus to your character when your mining skill reaches a certain level.  The stamina bonus is actually pretty hefty: 50 stamina once your skill reaches 450.  This makes mining a powerful profession for tanking and PvP Death Knights.  Even if you’re a damage dealing (DPS) Death Knight you might want to pick this up as it gives a huge revenue.

Skinning
Skinning can be used to make money, although you’re going to have to kill a lot of beasts to make as much money as a miner.  Not that any of you Death Knights have a problem with that, right?

The fun part of being a Skinner is the increased Critical Strike rating it gives based on your skill level, much like the Mining stamina bonus.  It currently gives 32 critical strike rating, which isn’t a terrible amount at all.  For DPS and PvP Death Knights, this bonus can be very beneficial to you.  Tanking Death Knights won’t see as much output from Skinning so they might want to pass.

Herbalism
Herbalism is for you Death Knights who are a bit more… passive.  Instead of smashing rocks and mashing animals, you daintily pick up flowers.  Despite just how un-Death Knightlike the profession is, it’s normally a big money maker.  This is especially true on servers where a large number of raiders are present: Potions, Flasks, and glyphs don’t make themselves you know.  Herbs are needed in 2 very important raiding professions, so if you know your server has a lot of raiders, this profession might be for you.

Like the other two gathering professions, Herbalism has a bonus.  Unlike the other two, the bonus is an activated spell called Lifeblood.  Lifeblood can be used whenever you like, and is a self targeted Heal over Time (HoT) spell that becomes more powerful the higher your Herbalism skill is.  With 450 Herbalism, Lifeblood heals 2,000 hit points.  For PvP and Tanking Death Knights, this bonus is a very welcome one.  DPS Death Knights won’t see as much use out of it, but it’s still nice to have.

So Which Is Right For You?

Like most of this game, all of this depends on what you want to do.  Do you want to make boatloads of money, or do you want to deal the most damage you possibly can?

One way to help make this choice is to decide what kind of Death Knight you’re going to be.  As an example, say you want to be a DPS Death Knight.  The obvious way to make your Death Knight do more damage is to pick up skinning.  What a tanking Death Knight? Mining would be a great way to go since it gives a great stamina bonus, or herbalism for the extra heal.

By knowing in advance what type of Death Knight you’re going to be, choosing a gathering profession can be very simple.  It’s also a great way to make money, since all 3 professions gather the materials the crafting professions need.

Next time, I’ll talk about the crafting professions for the job seeking, death dealing, and disease ridden Death Knight.

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The amount of gold you’re throwing away buy selling a cooldown is pretty crazy. I can sell Titansteel Bars and all three varieties of Tailoring cloth for between 75 and 100 gold depending on the market. It seems silly to throw that opportunity out the window for a cheap 25 gold. Even I you don’t have the materials on hand, a quick run to the Auction House to buy them can probably result in a profit larger than your tip would be for giving up your cooldown.

The Poll

So now I’m kind of curious. How many of you out there, who have Professions with abilities on a long cooldown, sell them to other players? If you’re a habitually seller of cooldowns I’d like to know your reasons for voting “Yes” in the comments.

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Fishing. In the World of Warcraft, the act of fishing was apparently designed to be the most miserable and sadistic act in a video game ever. It’s horrifyingly boring and monotonous. How anyone could derive enjoyment from this act is simply beyond the scope of my brain’s mental capacity.

Now let me tell you why I think you should start fishing every day.

There is gold to be made with fishing. Everyone needs Raid food these days and the best way to cash in on this demand is to help supply the hardcore Raider types with the cooking materials necessary to make the foods they need each week.

The Best Selling Fish

There are only four fish I actively seek: Glacial Salmon, Nettlefish, Dragonfin Angelfish and Musselback Sculpin. I find these four to be the fastest selling of all the fish available in the game right now. While you don’t need a maxxed out Fishing skill to catch all of these types of fish I highly recommend you get your Fishing up to 450 and have a decent pole. The time you’ll save and the areas you can fish in will be much improved.

Glacial Salmon
You can get these by the boat load in Wintergrasp. The have a decent drop rate and, on my server, the average selling price per fish hovers somewhere around 1.5 gold. When the supply is low that number can creep up and over 2 gold each.

Nettlefish
While I’m fishing in Wintergrasp for Glacial Salmon I’ll pull up a fair share of Nettlefish as well. I usually cook these into Poached Nettlefish and sell them for about 2 gold each. You can try selling them in uncooked form but I’ve found that they generally take much longer to sell this way, if you can manage to sell them at all.

Dragonfin Angelfish
The Dragonfin Angelfish is probably the most lucrative fish on my server at the moment. You can find pools of them in the south of Dragonblight. You can pretty quickly put together a stack of these fish just hopping from pool to pool. They sell on the Auction House, depending on supply, from anywhere between 2.5 gold each to 3 gold each.

Musselback Sculpin
The great thing about the Sculpin is that you can not only find them in the Borean Tundra but in Wintergrasp as well. These sell on the lower end at about 1.5 gold a piece but the sales come pretty consistently. I would not recommend you fish for these alone but pull them up while you look for other stuff instead.

Bonus Catches
In Wintergrasp, you will pull up a lot of Succulent Clam Meat, Siren’s Tears and Northsea Pearls. You can cook the Clam Meat into Dalaran Clam Chowder that sells for 3 to 4 gold each. Siren’s Tears are on a pretty low drop rate but will earn you a quick 50 gold profit. The Northsea Pearls tend to sell on a rollercoaster of price points on my server but should get you a gold or two for each.

Start Fishing!

If you haven’t maxxed out your Fishing skill yet you might want to start doing a little bit each day. Once you get the ball rolling you’ll find that it doesn’t take long to get the skill up to 450. If you’re looking for a decent fishing pole, I’m partial to the Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Pole. You can get it for cheap from the Kalu’ak once you reach Exalted with them.

Once you’re geared and skilled up I first suggest you head to Wintergrasp and try your luck there. After an hour or so of straight non-stop fishing action you should have several hundred gold worth of fish to sell.

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I like these locations so much because, while there aren’t any fish specific pools here, the random fish you manage to catch are great for Cooking and, ultimately for me, selling on the Auction House.

With a little time and dedication you can fish up stacks and stacks of Glacial Salmon, Musselback Sculpin and Giant Darkwater Clams (that have a tendency to drop Northsea Pearls and Siren’s Tears). All of those items go for a decent amount of money on the Auction House on my server. The Glacial Salmon go for about 40 gold a stack and the Siren’s Tear sells for about 65 gold each.

I’m a big Wintergrasp enthusiast so my new game plan is to arrive about thirty minutes early for the next battle and spend that time fishing. If you’re looking to either kill some time pre-battle or make some simple money than I suggest you give these spots a try yourself.

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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.

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Setting The Stage

I have a pretty decent set of characters and professions right now and it’s important that I properly explain just what it is I have to work with.

My main character, Nance, is a 450 Miner (a switch I made shortly after the release of Wrath). He’s the workhorse character of this group and is the only one I gather materials with by hand.

I have a Death Knight alt, Embry, that is a 450 Blacksmith. He spends all of his time at the Magus Commerce Exchange in Dalaran building Buckles and using the mailbox. He hasn’t seen combat in months.

And the last piece of this virtual economy puzzle is my Bank Alt, Daugherty. He receives all of the Buckles and posts them on the Auction House in Thunder Bluff. He’s pictured above because I think he looks cool. On occasion I’ll have another character post Buckles as well but I’ll get to that later in the post.

My total net worth, going into this week, was about 32,000 gold. I say that not to brag or anything (I’m sure tons and tons of people have more) but you should realize that I’m in a position to make these Auction House moves quickly with brute cash strength if need be. You can just as easily do what I’ve done without a big bankroll but obviously the time involved would be longer and the profits smaller.

Identifying The Market

As I said at the start, I’ve been selling these Belt Buckles for a long period of time on a semi-regular basis ever since Embry learned how. I maxxed out Blacksmithing just as the market for items like the Titansteel Guardian and Titansteel Destroyer crashed on my server by two-thirds or more. This left me hustling to find another use for Blacksmithing and I quickly realized the need and demand for Belt Buckles.

The average price on my server for one Buckle is approximately 65 gold. With that in mind, whenever I have enough materials to build a Buckle I make one and have it sell in relatively short order. A sale is usually guaranteed if it’s listed in the lower third of the buyouts.

A few days ago, when I was posting a spare Buckle I had on the Auction House, I noticed that the lowest buyout was 115 gold. That’s a pretty rare occurrence on my server so I decided to strike fast and get in on the action while prices were at that high level. I figured I could make a few Buckles and sell them for 100 gold each before the market went back to normal.

Gathering Materials

Thankfully it is pretty easy to put together an Eternal Belt Buckle. To make one you need the following: one Eternal Shadow, one Eternal Earth, one Eternal Water and four Saronite Bars.

I spend most of my time playing Nance, my Hunter. For at least a little bit every day, after I run whatever dailies I’m doing at that time or when I’m sitting in LFG, I mine in Icecrown. I’ve been mining exclusively in Icecrown since I made the jump to mining in Northrend and have, almost without exception, had very little competition as I make my rounds. As more and more people hit 80 I’m expecting this to no longer be the case so I’m anticipating moving the mining operation to Sholazar Basin sometime soon.

All of the materials for the Eternal Belt Buckle can pretty easily be gathered by yourself with a little commitment to mining. Any miner worth their weight should have a steady supply of Saronite on hand at all times. The Eternal Earths and Shadows should be easy to get as well. If you don’t feel like mining for them you can just as easily get your fill fighting the mobs in Wintergrasp or buy them on the Auction House. They average around 6 gold a piece.

The hardest part of the Eternal Belt Buckle equation is the Eternal Water. As a miner you’ll occasionally put these together hitting enough Titanium Veins but it’s going to be slow progress. You can try Wintergrasp, of course, but the mobs that drop the Crystallized Water are usually under the water and the fights are irritating to say the least.

With all of that in mind, the Eternal Water are the only materials for the Eternal Belt Buckles that I buy on the Auction House. Any time I see someone selling them for at or below 10 gold each I buy them up and mail them off to my Blacksmith character.

So that means I can put together one Eternal Belt Buckle with a little sweat equity and about 10 gold. If I was going to rush the process I would buy all of the Eternals at once for a cost of about 20 to 25 gold a Buckle depending on the buyouts at the time. When I have a nice stack to work with it’s time to sell the suckers.

Making The Sale

With a maximum cost of 25 gold, but more likely something under half of that, the Eternal Belt Buckle is a profitable item even when Auction House prices are slashed below average. The key, of course, is to take the right steps to make sure it sells quickly and for as much profit as possible.

As I said earlier, the average price of an Eternal Belt Buckle had been about 65 gold each leading up to this week. When the lowest buyout rose to 115 gold the rush was on to capitalize. My policy is to always be the lowest buyout for an item down to a certain level I’m comfortable with. In my head I know what an item I frequently sell usually goes for and if I have to post a buyout under that mark I store the item away for another day. For the Eternal Belt Buckle, I never sell below that 65 gold average but with a 115 gold competitor I had to take advantage and raise my price threshold.

But why did the market for Eternal Belt Buckles suddenly jump? I’ve written about setting market prices before but let me explain it again very briefly.

Occasionally, when I want to drive a market price on an item, I’ll post one or more at an inflated price and then come back on with another character and list more of that same item at a more reasonable buyout. Now my guess is that another player on my server was doing this very thing with Eternal Belt Buckles and that’s fine by me as long as I can ride the price wave with him until the 115 gold Buckles expire.

It’s been several days since the 115 gold low buyout and every time I’ve logged in I’ve collected my money for the Buckles that sold and then posted more at an adjusted buyout. I’m always posting as the lowest price but never more than 5 gold under the current low. I just kept repeating this process, making more Buckles as need be.

Knowing When To Quit

Prices are finally coming back down to normal. As I was writing this post I sold three more Buckles for 70 gold each. That’s pretty close to my breaking point and I’m pretty sure that by the end of the weekend the price will be back to 65 gold and the wave will be over on Buckles.

I didn’t keep exact figures but over the course of this run I made approximately 1,200 gold in Eternal Belt Buckles. There are other ways to make more gold in a much quicker span of time but my total investment in this little project was a bit over 150 gold in Eternal Waters. That’s not a bad deal.

Now that the price is stabilizing closer to the average I’m going to stop pushing the production of the Buckles for awhile. I’ll go back to making and selling them whenever I go about picking up the materials but I’ll no longer be actively buying those mats off of the Auction House.

Lessons Learned

This post was insanely long but I appreciate those of you who stuck it out and read to the end. Regardless of your character’s professions, it’s important to monitor the craftable items you can make on the Auction House. By learning the average buyout prices for certain items you can, when the market goes wacky, make a quick killing with a little common sense and a little effort.

I hope anyone who has been struggling to understand the Auction House, or is just looking for tips to make some extra gold, found this post helpful. If you have any questions, please leave a comment or use my contact form.

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A lot of people seem to be pumped about the future Glyph sales related to the new Dual Spec system. I’ll agree with these folks that, initially at least, the run on Glyphs is going to be intense as people rush to set their two specs up and get all the Glyphs they’ll need.

Let’s argue that this “rush” will last a month, or maybe even less, after 3.1 is released. By that time anyone who is going to be equipped with Dual Spec will probably be all set for Glyphs. What happens then? As it stands right now, some players are buying Glyphs in bulk on a regular basis as they flip back-and-forth from specs as they raid, or PvP, or what have you.

With Dual Specs I don’t anticipate anywhere near the demand for Glyphs. I’m sure people with Dual Spec will be respeccing still but nowhere near as often as they were used to before 3.1. This development is going to cause an immense amount of pressure on the Inscription business as far as Glyphs are concerned.

On my server, Greymane-US, the Inscriptionists are the best profession at screwing themselves over with undercutting and market flooding. Imagine how bad this will become when the supply is the same as it is now and demand is now cut dramatically?

Even with all of the undercutting and ridiculous supply I still know several Inscriptionists on my server that are making thousands of gold a week. But they’re doing it more with Cards and Decks than with Glyphs. People rocking out Glyphs might want to consider transitioning to things like Cards, Decks and any new items they’re adding in 3.1 (new off-hand items, for example).

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Well, it’s time to put my Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Pole to use and get fishing up to 450. When I started this the other night my skill was under 365. After some fishing in the Barrens for Deviate Fish I hit 385 and made my way to Northrend. By the time I hung up my fishing pole this evening I was up to 392.

Before I called it quits I did some research and decided I should start doing the Burning Crusade fishing dailies again for extra Sharpened Fish Hooks and just maybe I’d get lucky after a few weeks and the fishing hat would drop.

A quick portal to Shattrath and I was on my way to completing The One That Got Away. I had this done in short order and when I opened up the quest rewards I was lucky enough to snag the Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat on my first try. I wish I had that kind of luck with that awful Mysterious Egg and its “Seven Day Timer of Disappointment.”

So why the sudden interest in fishing? Gold, of course. There’s always a crazy market for Raid food and, with 3.1 rapidly approaching, I’m counting on that demand to increase dramatically after the patch is released. I figure I might as well be at the front of this growing need for Cooking materials.

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• Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity.

I’m naturally as pumped as the next Hunter to be getting an extra bag slot back but if I was an engineer, who had been earning a decent living making ammunition, I would be furious with this proposed change. This news just reaffirms my decision to dump Engineering right after I hit 80 to pick up Mining instead.

If anyone reading this wants to leave a comment to justify a player sticking with Engineering anymore I’d love to hear your thoughts. The only thing I can see now is for the two unique mounts.

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That’s pretty pricey for some pet food. Fortunately, there’s an alternative from the Burning Crusade you should go back and check out. The pet food is called Kibler’s Bits and it offers the same buff as the Mammoth Treat but it only costs one piece of Buzzard Meat to make. That might run you less than one gold per Bit on Greymane right now.

I can only assume that the Mammoth Treat will be buffed in a future patch. It makes no sense to waste your time making them when there’s a perfectly fine and much, much cheaper alternative left from the Burning Crusade.

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As far as I see it, there are two ways to clean house with Cooking: making food to sell on the Auction House to raiders or selling some of the rare cooking materials on the Auction House to the Cooking folks themselves. I’ve chosen to go the route of material selling thanks to one particular item called Northern Spices.

Northern Spices are one of the quest rewards for each Cooking daily in Dalaran. You normally get anywhere from 2 to 4 of these each day. In addition, you can turn in the Dalaran Cooking Award you receive as a quest reward to buy 10 more Spices. So you should be able to earn 12-14 Northern Spices every 24 hours.

On my server, Greymane-US, one Northern Spice goes for between four and five gold. That means everyday I can earn around 60 gold everyday selling Spices on the Auction House. That’s a pretty sweet deal when you consider that every Dalaran Cooking Daily only takes less than five minutes to complete.

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If you’re trying to level your Blacksmithing and are in the 375 range I highly suggest you hustle over to Sholazar Basin and starting grinding for the Plans for this item before the next patch is released. It’s dropped by the Venture Company Excavators milling around the Suntouched Pillar that is slightly northeast of Nesingwary’s Base Camp.

The drop rate on the plans wasn’t all that great for me. It was quite a struggle picking this up with my Level 70 Death Knight. I bet I had to kill close to 30 of the Excavators before it dropped.

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Well, here we are several months later and I’m going through the same agonizing Profession grind once again. This time the pain of choice is Blacksmithing. Thanks to the outrageous prices of ore (an economy I’m partly to blame for with my own Mining Hunter) and my lack of patience to simply mine my own materials I’m already several thousand gold in the hole buying at the Auction House. And I’m not even to 250 points in Blacksmithing yet.

I just wanted to throw a word of thanks out to the site WoW-Professions.com today because without their excellent Blacksmithing guide I’m sure things would be even more depressing for me than they already are. They have great walkthroughs for all of the primary, gathering and secondary professions in the game for those of you who need a little guidance along the way.

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The biggest concern I had was the cost of switching professions but, of course, those concerns turned out to be false in the end. I should have known with my background with Skinning that I could make a quick fortune with Mining while I leveled it up. I did drop a pretty penny on ore to quicken the leveling process but I made all of that money back and more by selling the smelted bars and any leftover ore I had.

The whole point of switching out of Engineering was to help me in my quest for my favorite meta-game in WoW: gold. I love earning gold through the Auction House and Daily Quests. Now with two gathering professions I can maximize my gold earning potential as I continue to earn money for my main and my small stable of alts.

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