Ding!

I hit the cap at 2 am. Actually, across all characters, I'm sitting on about 220K gold, but if you've been reading this blog at all you know that I only count what is in my banking dwarf's guild bank. I made the deposit that took that sum to 215,000 at 2:00, then spent about 90 seconds trying to get 214,748g 36s 47c into his bags (to no avail, of course) and then hit the hay. But now I'm up, full of coffee, and in a celebratory mood.

It's been an occasionally fun, sometimes arduous journey. From the boom times when I was selling titanium ore at a profit of 200g per stack immediately after the TOC patch to the down times when someone crashed glyphs to almost zero profit, I've stuck with my gold acquisition, and it has made me rich. Now I'm at a point where I can buy anything I want in-game and do so comfortably. I don't farm, I don't grind, I just play.

My interest in gold started over a year ago, back in January of 2009. Back then, I had one main toon -- a wonderful draenei retribution paladin who was one of those casuals that Gevlon hates so much: a level-capped noob who would grind Badges of Heroism relentlessly, doing circles of Sholazar Basin looking for saronite and titanium nodes, occasionally cheering when he mined up a Scarlet Ruby by chance. He was 450 mining and only hit 450 blacksmithing because of a completionist itch, spamming trade to make titansteel gear for the other fresh 80s ("Your mats, no tip!")

My paladin would do the usual noob stuff: For the Alliance? Sure, I'm in! Zul'aman run? OK, great! Heroic Culling of Stratholme? I'd love to help you get your drake! (Not to mention checking in with the Oracles to finally get that Green Proto-Drake!) My alts were ignored, all my time in-game was spent on my pally.

Then one day I got curious: I leveled blacksmithing for a reason, right? I wonder if people buy stuff from blacksmithing. So I acquired a ton of cobalt and saronite (by farming and via the AH), all the crystallized/eternal elements I required, made one of everything that didn't require titansteel, and listed them all for 48 hours on the AH. To my great surprise, a lot of them sold! It was crazy! Someone bought a whole set of Savage Saronite gear, and I realized I was on to something.

I made belt buckles like crazy. They sold for 80g apiece. I was doubling my money every time one sold! I bought out the saronite bars in the AH. I mined furiously. I made Tempered Saronite gear. I made Savage Saronite gear. I cleaned out the adamantite ore from the AH and made enchanting rods. A stack of adamantite ore makes one rod. I bought a stack for 10g and sold the rod for 20. It didn't require re-listing. I sold the next one for 25g. The next one for 30g. Eventually I was listing adamantite rods for 60g. It was incredible! People just paid! Didn't they know how cheap the materials were? And why weren't others competing with me?

Pretty soon I had epic flight and was sitting on 22,000 gold. At that point I wondered, "Why bother? I'll never spend all this gold." And I stopped trying to earn money in-game and focused on my next goal: raiding. It was toward the end of progression and all the retribution paladin slots were taken. So I learned to heal, respecced holy, and was accepted into one of the second-tier guilds on the server. Every SP plate drop in Naxx went to me. I got the healing chest from Sartharion. I won the roll for the quest item from Sapphiron and was soon rocking an iLvl 226 neck courtesy of Malygos. I participated in my guild's first kill of Sartharion + 3 drakes and was a Twilight Vanquisher before Ulduar opened up. I was sitting pretty. It was good times. When the Ulduar patch dropped, I went in and participated in the Alliance side first kill of Flame Leviathan. We spent the night wiping on XT.

And I got benched.

Three weeks later (after getting benched three times in a row) the guild broke up. At that point I made a decision: I wanted to raid, but if I was getting benched as holy, I wanted to raid as the playstyle that suited me: I wanted to raid as retribution. The #5 guild on the Alliance side of our server was recruiting a ret paladin, so I went all out before applying. I re-enchanted, re-gemmed, grinded Valor badges. Then there was only one thing to do: pick up the Greatness card.

Now, I had 20,000 gold on hand. But that Darkmoon deck was running 13K-14K at a time. I checked the AH numerous times each day and bought the cards individually. In a coup, I assembled my deck for the low, low price of just 9000 gold. I auditioned with the guild, killed everything in Ulduar up to Mimiron ... and was rejected.

But I had learned something in all this. I learned that Inscription was a huge moneymaker, because those Darkmoon cards were crazy expensive! I took time off from my paladin and rediscovered the old world with a brand-new warlock. As he went, he leveled inscription to the maximum at every opportunity, those beautiful Nobles decks ever getting closer to his grasp. (Isn't that funny? I leveled Inscription to get to DARKMOON cards. Glyphs? Are those profitable? Who cares!)

When he finally became a Grand Master Inscriptionist (haha ... Scribe!), Eternal Lifes were prohibitively expensive, and Darkmoon deck prices had been cut in half. It seemed like dark times ... and then I started reading about making gold. And eight months later, here I am, at the gold cap.

Of course, more than 220,000g has passed through my hands. Since this is pretty much a bragging post, here's the tally:

* 220,000 gold on hand
* Several Darkmoon trinkets ready to sell
* 3 80s, a 75, a 42, and a passel of bank alts
* The 80s all have epic flight. The 75 has cold-weather flying.
* One chopper (a level 40 gift for my hard-working JC/Enchanting shaman)
* Epic gems in every socket
* GDKP loot for my main, the warlock (TOC25 gear for main-hand weapon, back, and a Reign of the Unliving I spent 12,500g on, plus four-piece tier 9 thanks to four purchased Trophies)
* A whole boatload of FUN in-game!

So, what's next? I dunno. I think the same thing that everyone else says when they hit their gold-making goal: why stop? I know what to do now! There's easy money at every turn! I'll probably cut out the more annoying tasks, like making/listing/canceling/relisting glyphs and focus on easy stuff like belt buckles and daily transmutes/titansteel smelting. I'm going to get my 75 and 42 to the level cap so that I'm ready to go when Cataclysm hits and I can have every profession except Skinning maxed out. I may try to find my way into a guild that doesn't raid on Tuesday nights or weekends. I'll give 20,000g to my friend who introduced me to WoW and then focus on keeping my bank balance over 200,000g. I might give my noob friend who I've been leveling with some money for dual spec or epic flight. I want to buy my Ulduar proto-drake. Ultimately, I want to kill the Lich King. I was only doing 6K dps on Patchwerk though so that might be a way off. And I want to make a huge profit in Cataclysm. I bet I can easily reach half a million when that drops with some savvy profession usage.

Thanks to all the people who've made this whole deal possible! Gevlon, Marcko, Zamboni and the rest of the motley crew in the JMTC forums, and a whole bunch of other people who are part of the gold-making community. I got here slowly, but steadily, and without boring myself to death or grinding.

As for the future of this blog ... who knows. It was never regularly updated, it was never intended to function as a "resource." If that changes, I'll let you know. Either way, I'll be in Azeroth, asleep on a pile of hard-earned lucre, enjoying my virtual fortune the way I want to.

Peace!

190,000 gold in the bank

Creeping so, so slowly toward my goal of hitting the gold cap. I haven't done a good job of crafting lately -- haven't sold much gear from blacksmithing, haven't made many scrolls. The vast majority of my time in-game has been spent using the dungeon finder tool. I love it! I do the random daily heroic on my main (gotta get those 95 Frost emblems!) and I've also decided to level my priest and DK to 80 solely through instances. I am going to craft the cobalt tank set for the DK once he hits 70 (which will be after like 8 more quests in Borean Tundra -- amazing) and he will happily plunge through multiple runs of each Northrend dungeon. My priest just hit 40 and is healing his way to the level cap. I'm starting to get sick of running SM-Cathedral and Uldaman with him but those are the breaks. (I'd be even sicker of questing in Desolace and Felwood, so there is that to take into account.)

The other thing I've been doing is getting into GDKP runs. Runs of TOC25 take about an hour and a half and have been excellent for gearing up my main. He's in 2-piece Tier 9 gear now and has the remaining two Trophies to finish off the set. Also, Reign of the Unliving dropped off of Anub and, although I should've stopped bidding, I wound up spending nearly 13,000g on the damn thing. However, there's a silver lining here: I made almost all of that money back already. My entire outlay for the day was 14,000g for the trinket and the trophy, and then I bought three BOE pieces to sell off. I got 2500g back from the GDKP pool, taking my expenditures down to 11,500g. Then, within 24 hours, two of my BOEs sold, including the DPS cloak for over 11,000g. Profit on those two items combined turned out to be 11,000g. So if I can flip the last ring for more than a 500g profit I'll have my biggest moneymaker of the week being ... the very run that was supposed to take gold OUT of my pocket. I have to say, I love that. (As it stands I've got the ring listed at a 5500g profit so I'll actually be pretty unhappy if I have to keep cutting the price down till it's only 500g. Ha.)

24,749g to go! Let's get this done!

184,000 in the bank -- but there could've been more.

Yesterday I hit the 190,000 gold mark. I cheated, though; my shaman finally dinged 80, and after securing crafted blues for his chest and shoulders to replace his heirloom gear, I (a) passed the mail shoulders and chest off to my DK, (b) trained up his level 80 spells, and (c) shipped off his gold to my banker -- just a shade under 2000g if you're curious. Now after months of leveling, he'll be leaving Dalaran once a day to do the JC daily and cutting the gems my DK transmutes. He'll be a goldmaking bot but he'll net me at 1000g in profit every week if he only does the bare minimum. Seems sad, but at least he's not like my paladin, who raided at the bleeding edge up to the second or third week post-3.1 and now basically logs in to smelt titansteel. The shaman's in quest blues and greens and is eagerly awaiting the Cataclysm and the opportunity to max out JC and enchanting when that hits. I'm confident he'll be meleeing his way through postapocalypse Azeroth in a few short months.

So about that 190,000 gold; it turned into 184,000 courtesy of a GDKP run of TOC25. Only one true upgrade dropped for me, and I bought that. Plus, I picked up some Trophies, and redeemed one on my way out of the Argent Tournament grounds for a Tier 9.3 piece. After this week of dailies I'll be rockin' a sweet two-piece set bonus. I have an awkward extra Trophy as well, which is clearly third-wheelin' it and needs a partner. So I have to raid TOC25 at least one more time in order to get my raider up to speed. This GDKP run was interesting; people were getting really gunshy when bidding on a piece of loot hit 2000g. Makes me wonder; why don't they flinch about paying thousands of gold for a crafted BOE item, but the BOP stuff from raids doesn't fetch that? I think it's because people think that dungeon loot is "free" and they feel weird paying for it. Luckily I know better than that, and I was able to snag something from every boss except one -- and get over 1000g back when we downed the last boss. Also I was pulling upward of 4000 DPS and that was only good enough for 16th on the damage meter. Now that's humbling.

So now I basically need to not get bored with making gold so that I can hit the cap. Don't get me wrong -- I have been getting very bored. And I think people have been catching on to the low-level enchants I've been selling to make ridiculous profits: the mats for those have been getting terribly expensive, and with the prices of epic gems dropping like a rock, my profits are coming pretty strictly from transmutes, smelting, and the piddling few hundred gold I make on glyph sales every couple of days. But 30,000g should be easily doable before Super Bowl Sunday and after I give my friend his gift, I'll be able to relax on the obsessive goldmaking front. Well, kind of; the fact that I'm planning on leveling my DK and priest to 80 now are effects of the goldmaking craziness. What am I getting myself into?

175K in the bank ... thank you Battered Hilt!

Well, I didn't hit the gold cap in 2009 like I thought I might, but I'll be pretty surprised if I don't do so before the end of the month. That is, of course, unless some major GDKP opportunities come along in January. In fact, I've banked over 50,000 gold in the last two weeks so we should be well beyond the cap in short order.

However, I have to thank the RNG for 12,000 of that gold. Yes, the famous Battered Hilt dropped in Heroic Halls of Reflection and I won the roll! What a beautiful thing. If I hadn't when hog-wild in a GDKP run a few weeks ago and purchased the dagger out of ToC25, I might have actually started the quest line to get Quel'Delar, but since it's only an upgrade up 6 iLvl points, all I saw were dollar signs. Luck was with me, and even though we wiped after it dropped (and the run wound up breaking up a couple wipes later) I was thrilled. I put it on the AH for 14,000 gold, and within half an hour someone was announcing "WTB Battered Hilt 12K" in Trade. Well, I couldn't pass that up, so I ate the deposit and made the handoff on the Ironforge bridge.

Other than that, it's been the usual ritual of buying saronite ore, smelting it, transmuting it to titanium, and profiting from those bars; transmuting and cutting meta and epic gems; and the occasional foray into blacksmithing for profit. Actually, Eternal Belt Buckles were miraculously selling for 40g or so a couple days ago, so I made a stack and turned a few hundred gold profit off those. I also moved two Tankards O' Terror at 1100g apiece somehow, so I only have five of those left. I've started firing up the glyph machine again, although I don't know what the hell is wrong with the glyph sellers on my server; I sold two glyphs for over 40g for the first time in months yesterday and now everything's back below 10g again. Whatever, for someone who still has stacks and stacks of herbs anything I sell feels like a profit now.

Oddly, my focus has now turned to Cataclysm. Yeah, we don't have a release date yet, but what I'm referring to is making sure that I'm putting myself in a position to maximizing profits when the expansion hits. That means that my two 80s won't be sufficient; in order to level my professions to the new maximum, I'll have to have everyone at 80 and ready to go in advance of the launch. Worse, the two toons I have sitting at 80 only have two crafting professions (inscription and blacksmithing) and also have herbalism and mining. Yuck! I'm not going to drop those because they're kind of a pain to level and farming mats while leveling in the new zones will beat paying inflated AH prices. My JC/Enchanter is 76 (halfway to 77) so that's not bad, but my DK with LW and Alchemy is 69 and my tailor is still down at 36! Thus, my new plan is to:

A) Level the shaman to 80. He's rockin' heirloom shoulders and chest, so his last few levels shouldn't be too arduous. Definitely doable within January even at a really slow pace. Plus, he's getting a bunch of experience from the jewelcrafting dailies (to give you an idea, he's halfway to 77 and only half-done with Dragonblight. That's a lot of extra XP from JC dailies!)

B) Then I'll pass off the heirlooms to the DK and he'll be in enhancement shaman mail through Northrend. Hopefully my fellow dungeon runners won't inspect me!

C) At the same time, I need to gather 40 Emblems of Heroism (remember those?) and buy the heirloom chest for my 36 priest and speed him through the content. I want to at least get him to the point where he can make netherweave bags -- I really think there are untold thousands to be made from selling bags once Cataclysm hits and everyone and his mom is creating a worgen on the Alliance side. Getting all the way to Frostweave capability would be great but I don't know how much tolerance I have for going through Outland again. The second profession the priest has is Enchanting, but since the shaman has that maxed out already, he'll be dropping it for Engineering. At that point I'll have all of the crafting professions covered. By leveling the DK to 80 and waiting on the priest, I'll be gambling that at least one of the other six professions will be more profitable than engineering or tailoring. I don't think that's too far-fetched.

I've decided that I only have the tolerance for gearing up one toon as a raider at a time. Through Naxx/OS/EoE this was my paladin, and he cleared up to Mimiron in Ulduar before my schedule became too ridiculous to raid. Then, when this patch hit, I picked up the warlock and never looked back. Because of the hours I spend goldmaking, any additional time in raids and chain heroics would be absurd. So the warlock will be the only one going on GDKP runs and spending gold in huge chunks (he dropped just under 3000g on Bejeweled Wizard's Bracers yesterday in fact.) So these level-capped 80s that I'm proposing to accumulate will be sitting there as professionbots, seeing no new content, getting no achievements, nothing. As a point of reference, by paladin's last achievement besides logging in during the 5th anniversary of the game came in early August. I have over 20 days /played on that toon. Kind of heartbreaking, isn't it?

Less than 40K to the cap! Don't stop me now!

134K in the bank and a quick flip

The sales continue apace. I found a few good deals over the past day or two and have turned those to my favor. Someone was selling uncut Cardinal Rubies and Ametrines for 100g apiece right before I was about to log off last night; I bought those and flipped 'em fierce. I picked up a new epic cut thanks to the JC dailies -- Purified Dreadstone -- and now can cut all the epic gems but Eye of Zul. The fact that they almost always sell makes me not worry about diversifying the cuts I have. Happily enough, Greater Cosmic Essences and Titanium Bars were going for 23g and 25g respectively this morning; I've been selling them for 16g and 17g apiece so the profit margin is skyrocketing. My daily transmutes and Titansteel smelting are keeping me fat and happy.

But the best thing of all happened today just as I was about to leave for work: someone was offering up the Agility version of the Greatness Card for 3000g bids in Trade. I jumped on it and offered 2700g, but the seller wound up putting me in a bidding war with another Darkmoon Card flipper (I know he is one because I sold him one for 4000g this week and saw him immediately list it on the AH for 4800g. Of course, I put one of my own up for a 5g undercut not a minute after he listed his.) In the end I wound up paying 3200g for the thing. Not 15 seconds later, I kid you not, someone in Trade is offering 4200g for the EXACT version of the Greatness card I'd just bought. I became immediately suspicious that I was somehow being set up for some type of scam (I don't know how that's possible, but hey, seemed too good to be true.) I immediately invited the person and we met up at the Deeprun Tram and made the exchange. In less than 5 minutes I had made 1000g. No effort. Not even as much effort as collecting something from a mailbox and listing it on the AH.

I doubt I'll have that opportunity again very soon but holy cow. That was one thousand of the eighty thousand I have to make before I hit the gold cap. Incredible!

122,000 in the bank

Sales have been moving at a pretty nice pace lately. I haven't seen the same post-patch results as many other goldmakers but I'm not well-organized and I didn't do any preparation. My bad; epic gem prices are up 100g across the board. If I would've focused on that niche alone I'd be looking at thousands in profit. Still, the glut of new gear from instances of all sizes is causing enchants and gems to sell like crazy. I've taken advantage of the titanium transmute being taken off the cooldown and have been selling tons of converted saronite ore that way. I've also been buying cobalt ore at 25g a stack, making axes, DEing those, and selling that essences for about 19g per ... I'd love that to be higher but I'm not going to complain about turning a ~80% profit.

I have been burned on a few things; primary among these was a large purchase of abyss crystals that the RNG saw fit to turn into dust.

And let me just say that if I hadn't leveled JC and enchanting, I'd be bleeding gold right now. Glyphs are still in the basement; I do a QA post every couple days at random times, and I can't remember the last time one of them sold for more than 10 gold. I have held off completely on buying herbs, and in fact cleared the AH out of Frost Lotus even though my alchemist is transmute specced, making Flasks of Endless Rage for 60g lotus and effectively-free Lichbloom and selling them at 46g apiece. Nice profit there. I've even taken to buying out our resident idiot discounter's stock of flasks (he lists at 33g) and flipping them. He lists more, I buy em, mine sell, screw you.

One of my goals this weekend is to get serious about managing my enchanting scrolls. I have a couple hundred stacks of saronite ore to burn through and a bunch of recipes to buy from the shard trader. Hopefully I can find a way to soak up these piles and piles of cheap dust and turn them into heavy profits.

Up above 115K, finally

Quick update since I finally guessed the right password and got into this account.

* Glyphs have crashed. I'm barely participating in that market. I haven't done a restock in weeks.

* I've leveled my shaman (previously "my little shammy") to 73 already. Nearly 74. He's got maxed out JC and 440/450 Enchanting. The recipes for both are pretty sparse but the ones I have are big sellers. I'm so grateful that I got the MC/heirloom SP enchant, I sell one every few days at ~250g profit.

* I'd be further along but I got epic and cold-weather flying for the shaman. Man does that speed things up in Northrend.

* I do my daily transmute with my DK and my daily JC quest on the shammy and everything works out.