World of Warcraft Gold Guide | Gold Making Tips, Tricks & Guides

Hey there and welcome to my Cataclysm Gold Guide.

The first tip I would like to share is picking your professions. This is where you have to start in order to make gold in Cataclysm. If you set this up right, you have very little to worry about.

Firstly, you should pick a server that you want to call your home. You should set up all your money making toons in one faction and build your economy up from there. The idea is, you’re building a team that will complement each other in making gold.

Gold Making Tip #1: Your Race Matters

Some races have a special bonus when it comes to a profession. You should take advantage of this!

Special Alliance Racial Traits:

Archeology
Dwarves get a +15 bonus with the Explorer trait

Engineering
Gnomes get a +15 skill increase as with the Engineering Specialist trait

Jewelcrafting
Draeneis get a +5 skill bonus for their Gemcutting ability

Skinning
Worgens Flayer trait increases this profession skill by +15

Special Horde Racial Traits:

Herbalism
Taurens are able to gather faster and have a +15 skill bonus via their Cultivation trait

Skinning
Trolls have Beast Slaying abilities that gives a 5% damage bonus against Beasts

Enchanting
Blood Elves have Arcane Affinity that gives +10 bonus for this profession

Alchemy
Goblins get a +15 skill boost from their Better Living through Chemistry trait

Special Gathering Profession Bonuses:

Mining
You will get a passive trait, Toughness, which increases your Stamina

Herbalism
You will get a special Heal Over Time ability that is pretty useful for PvP, PvE and raiding

Skinning
You will earn a passive ability, Master of Anatomy, which increases your Critical Strike Rating

Gold Making Tip #2: Getting Started

An ideal set up to get started on one server is to have at least 2 gatherers that will mine, skin and collect herbs for you. This will certainly increase your gold income significantly. This is because there will always be high level players who are willing to pay a good amount of gold for profession materials. They need this to level up their professions quickly.

Here’s a quick recap on the other professions that use the materials from the 3 gathering professions:-

Easiest Gathering Profession: Skinning
Leatherworkers and Tailors need skins for their craft. Skinning is also one of the easiest of gathering professions, as you can kill beasts while leveling up. You can also skin beasts that other players kill. So, in a packed server, skinning can be really really easy.

Medium Difficulty Gathering Profession: Herbalism
Alchemist and Scribes (Inscription) need herbs for their craft. Lot’s of it! This is the second most easiest amongst the gathering professions as herbs are plentiful especially in the low level areas. You should aim to gather herbs during off peak hours on your server. This can save you lots of time!

Hardest Gathering Profession: Mining
Alchemists will buy the ore that you sell to transmute it to more profitable ones (like iron to gold). Blacksmiths also need ore for everything that they craft. Engineers and Jewelcrafters will need them too. As you can see, this is a very profitable gathering profession to pick up, but it can also be the most time consuming. Ore is typically found at the boundaries of the any leveling zone, so you will need a fast mount to move around while mining.

Gold Making Tip #3: Picking a Class

So, what class should you pick for your gatherers? Easy. Here are a few attributes that you should consider…

#1: Mobility
Shamans with their Ghost Wolf ability, Druids with their Travel Form and Mages with Blink are the ideal candidates for fast gathering. You can move from node to node without spending 3 seconds mounting and dismounting. Mages can also port back to a major city to deposit bags full of materials. That’s really cool!

#2: Crowd Control
Hunters and Warlocks have pets who can tend to wandering hostile mobs while you gather. This means that you can solely focus on gathering while your pet protects you. High level Frost Mages can also summon a pet to help them out.

#3: High Level Characters
You can also gather easily while ignoring the hits you take if your character is of a high enough level, This means that you don’t need to stop to pay any attention to the mobs. Long live the Death Knights!

Gold Making Tip #4: Leveling Up Your Gathering Skills

Here’s a really good tip to level up your gathering skills. When you create your first toon, pick up Skinning and Herbalism right away. You will find lots of animals to skin as you quest and herbs will be strewn all over the low leveling zones. These are the 2 easiest gathering professions anyway.

When you reach level 40, you now have the option to pick up mining. Mining is very profitable as the demand for ore, stone and gems are very high. Also, as mining nodes are out of the way of the leveling zones, having a fast mount is a logical necessity before picking up mining.

By then, you would have made enough gold from Skinning and Herbalism to comfortably purchase your fast mount and training that comes with it. The only downer about picking up mining at level 40 is that you would have to double back to the starting zones to get this profession running. But it should be well worth your time.

Gold Making Tip #5: A Quick Word on Crafting

The price for leveling up crafting professions is usually pretty hefty. It is very material intensive and many items that you make won’t sell for much on the AH.

In my experience, there are only 2 professions that can make you a decent amount of gold below level 70 and they are Inscription and (Dis)Enchanting. Other professions like Tailoring, Leatherworking and Blacksmithing will only yield a nice amount of gold once your professions go past level 300.

For Inscription to be profitable, you will need to have a Herbalist to keep you well stocked for inks. Learning glyphs can also take a long while as there is an in-built cooling off period between the hours you can learn special glyphs that sell for a good amount of gold. If you’re patient, this can be a very lucrative profession.

With the recent changes to the Glyph System in Cataclysm, everyone will want to buy Glyphs. So, there will be a healthy demand Glyphs over the next 6 months or so. This means that herbs will also sell pretty well on the AH too.

As for Enchanting, materials gained from Disenchanting weapons (specifically) can fetch a really decent amount on the AH. You need to be aware of the price of Essences for this to work.

On the flip side, leveling up your Enchanting profession can actually cost you a lot of gold. After level 200, you can sell your enchants on the AH by using Enchanting Vellums to cover your losses. You must take Tailoring with Enchanting or this craft will not be worth your time.

As a rule of thumb, any crafted item that requires some other materials that you must buy in the AH (and not from your profession vendor) should fetch you some gold. The problem is, these materials can be rare and costly (like Spider’s Silk). The the demand for crafted items at the lower levels also seem pretty low.

Gold Making Tip #6: It’s a World of War’Craft’ after all

As I mentioned, the 2 best professions to pick up to earn massive amounts of gold when Cataclysm hits are Mining and Herbalism. My next pick would be Skinning.

If these don’t appeal to you, go for Inscription. If you choose crafting, ensure that you have a complementing profession to help you level up. Here are the best pairs in my experience:-

Tailoring – Skinning –> useful for cloth wearers like Warlocks, Mages and Priests
Blacksmithing – Mining –> best professions for heavy armor classes like Warriors, Paladins and Death Knights
Leatherworking – Skinning –> best professions for leather wearers like Rogues, Shamans or Druids
Jewelcrafting – Mining –> best professions for your hybrid characters like Paladins, Druids and Shamans
Engineering – Mining –>  best professions for your PvP and dungeon raiding toons
Inscription – Herbalism –> useful for all classes
Alchemy – Herbalism –> useful for all classes
Enchanting – Tailoring –> useful for all classes

Alright folks, that’s it for now. I hope you’ve found this Cataclysm Gold Guide useful!