Questing and Grinding for Gold

First, let me say I'm not an advocate for grinding, nor questing for gold.  However, some people enjoy it.  I like to optimize my time, whether I'm playing WoW, working or in the gym, and I just don't feel that it's a good use of time for me.  To each their own, however, and I know people do it.  Let's look at why:

1.) Instant gratification.  You either get 13g/16g instantly plus a quest reward turning in quests, plus trash and silver drops.

2.) Materials and Uncommon items.  Unless you're fighting mobs that don't drop loot, you'll more than likely come across massive amounts of cloth and Uncommon items to either Disenchant or sell as-is on the Auction House.

3.) Possibility to come across nodes.  If you're a skinner, you may be able to skin the quest mobs/mobs you're grinding on.  If you're a miner/herbalist, you could maybe find herbs or mineral nodes to harvest while you're questing or grinding.  More profit.

This is all sounding good so far.  Let's look at it a little deeper.

If you quested until 85, and did all the quests in all the zones (or at least most of them), without any instances or experience bonuses (heirloom pieces, guild perk, etc.), you probably hit 85 somewhere in the Twilight Highlands, assuming you started in Vashj'ir or Mount Hyjal (and didn't do the other starting zone).  That's a lot of parentheses.  Anyway, this leaves very little to do in the way of quests to make gold, however, you can do dailies!  Hooray!

Wildhammer/Dragonmaw Clan has dailies in Twilight Highlands, Therazene has dailies in Deepholm, and Ramhaken has a couple quests.  You won't get a ton of gold, but you'll get a little bit and faction rep (which is why people do these dailies anyway).  So where's the money?  Doing old quests.

WHAT but why would I do those, rewards are outdated and bluh bluh whatever.  Let's be cereal for a minute here.  Old quests (green quests) are easier to complete.  Mobs have 13,000 hp as opposed to 70,000hp, and there's nobody there.  So, what do?  Go kill those guys.  You'll be surprised to see that the silver drops aren't that much lower, but 1.) Nobody will be farming them, and 2.) You'll kill them a lot quicker.  Not to mention, the rewards for each of the Ramhaken daily quests (aside from the reputation) is 10g.  The reward from the Icecrown tournament dailies is 13g.  Which wins?  Yeah, I thought so.

In addition, there are 2 great spots in Icecrown to grind gold.  See image:

The yellow part is where you should go for AoE farming:  There are a lot of Converted Heroes here, for the daily and also for your grinding pleasure.  Each one will drop roughly 20s, and they come in packs of 5-6.  Mix that in with the grey items that vendor for around 1g each (on average), the cloth and greens, and you have yourself a nice little farming spot.

The red part is where you go for huge single-target damage.  The Hidden Hollow, below Onslaught Harbor, houses elite level 80 mobs, who have in the vicinity of 20,000hp.  Should be cake at level 85.  They drop about a gold each, around 6 frostweave, and of course the usual assortment of Uncommon and vendor trash items.  Onslaught Darkweaver is one, and I've forgotten the name of the melee mob that resides here as well. A half hour in the cave should net you at least 300g, if not more.

How's Your Stock Going?

Again, I play on a low population server.  This makes keeping my stock up somewhat hard sometimes.  I just bought 5,000g worth of Elementium ore last night, about 60 stacks (between 80 and 90g each).  I don't really use the Snatch feature of Auctioneer, although I should set one up.  If you do use it, great!  If not, you should really learn; it makes buying a ton easier.

This evens out, however, with my decreased output of gems and other materials.  Having transferred to a  new realm near the start of an expansion, it's been hard to get a lot of professions going on my new realm.  I'm currently leveling a hunter who will be my tailor and either scribe or blacksmith and engineer; I know that Inscription outclasses Blacksmithing by a ton when we're talking efficacy of making gold, but I'm also toying with the idea of getting my warlock over to Suramar, who is both a scribe and a tailor, but I digress.

This being said, make sure that you search regularly for good deals, and don't neglect using your bank alt(s) and get a bank guild (or more than one).  Altaholic is a great addon for this; it will show you what you have on each character and in each bank, so you won't have to log on and check it out.

Space is virtually limitless if you don't have a ton of characters you play (like on my new realm, there's 4 characters that I play somewhat regularly - my shaman, hunter, rogue and druid, this leaves 6 bank slot characters), so be sure to utilize it to snatch up any stock you can find.  Prices are becoming somewhat more settled, so the deals you find today will most likely be good when you need the materials in a couple months.  Don't be squeamish!

Selling Run-Throughs

I'm sure everyone's seen "WTB Run of XXX, 20g, PST!"  Let's look at this.

You're running an instance which there's no doubt that you can destroy.  There are benefits to this, and there are drawbacks.

First, the pros:

1.) It's easy to do.  Each mob will hit you like a wet noodle, and you'll hit them like a freight truck.  If you can't one-shot most of these mobs at level 85, there's something wrong with you.

2.) You have a loot-collector.  Just set it on "Free For All," and set the loot threshold to Uncommon.  This will allow you to pick up greens, and you'll also get the silver drops.  5s from each mob may not be much, but it'll add up.

3.) Chance at enchanting materials.  If you're an enchanter (or can group with one), instead of rolling on those greens, use the disenchant option.  You'll get materials which you can sell on the Auction House or use to make enchantments.

Now, for the cons:

1.) It's not much gold from the trash.  I know this was included in the pros, but let's be honest; you'll probably make 5-10g from the trash, MAX, throughout the entire instance.

2.) You can only do it 5 times in one hour.  I used to have my friend run me through Scarlet Monastery Cathedral.  It took about 5 minutes, and after a half hour, I was locked out.  This isn't something you can do over and over, unless it's Blackrock Depths or a similarly long instance where it would take you at least 15 mins each time to clear (and 15 minutes is a fairly long time when you move from trash mob to trash mob, one-shotting them.

3.) It's much easier for melee than it is for ranged/casters.  Okay, so this isn't really a "Con" or "Pro" per se, but if you're a caster, it will be slightly harder for you.

So to sum it all up, we're left with a decent amount of pros and cons.  I'd say run the person if s/he's friendly, and you're bored.  There are much better ways of making gold out there, but keep in mind that Warcraft is not a job, it's a game (PLEASE keep this in mind).  You have to do what's fun, and if you're not having fun canceling and re-posting on the Auction House, then find something that is fun.

Farming Old Content

Sorry for the late post, hectic day at work (again), and class afterwards.  Anyway, ON WITH THE SHOW!

Old content: MC, BWL, etc.  It's still there, it's super easy, and you can get it done quick.  Why?

1.) BoE Epics.  These won't sell for a lot, considering players are going to be constantly trying to level and get BETTER gear.  However, they will drop a few hundred gold on them.  Mostly look for DPS sets; BoE epics from level 60 content is usually more towards putting classes into neat little boxes - priests are healers, warriors are tanks, and so on.  Rarely will you see a warrior try to dps in tank gear.

2.) Crafting mats.  If you go to MC, some very popular items that will drop are:

Essence of Fire: One of the more common ones, and one of the major ingredients to Fiery Weapon, a non-level requirement enchant which is quite possibly the best one at that level.

Lava Core, which is used for reputation grinding for Thorium Brotherhood.  If you're like me, you like having Exalted reputations, so there is a niche in this market, both on the buying and selling end (okay not technically a crafting material but whatever).

And of course all the regular mats, like the cloth.  Uncommon items to sell on the Auction House or disenchant as well drop quite often.

3.) Cash drops.  Magtheridon has a wealth of 500g.  At level 85, you may need another person or two, but the whole instance should take less than 10 mins including travel time.  That's 1002g per hour, approximately, discounting the epics that may very well vendor for upwards of 10-20g each.

There you have it.  Now go nostalgia it up and clear some old content for fun and profit!

Jewelcrafting Spreadsheet

Here is a spreadsheet made by "flyinfungi" of Elitist Jerks.  It basically tells you if Obsidium, Elementium and Pyrite ores are worth purchasing at a given price.  It's a little confusing at first look, so let's examine it.

First, you'll want to go to File --> Download As and then save it as whatever you want (most likely Excel or OpenOffice).

The first segment, "Profit per Proc," just tells us the projected gold we're going to earn from each Prospecting cast.  5% under and so forth indicate percentages of that number: 5% under tells us what the price is if we sold it for 95% of the "Profit per Proc," and so forth.

The next part, "Jems" [sic] is where you enter the market value of each gem.  For the rare gems, you're going to want to enter the selling price of the CHEAPEST cut you have.  Why?  Because if you use the lowest common denominator, you'll only earn more than expected (which is good) as opposed to less than expected (which is bad).

Short tangent time:  You purchase Widget A expecting to make Product B and C.  B sells for $50, and C sells for $35.  If you make your purchases based on the assumption you will sell only B, you will buy widgets for up to $40.  Each B you sell, you make $10, but each C you sell, you lose $5.  The more Cs you sell, the more money you lose.

Anyway, what you do is go to the Auction House and find the values for the gems.  Then, input those values into the spreadsheet.  You could do fancy stuff like calculating the cost if you turned the Carnelians into Carnelian Spikes (as referenced at the end of this post), and then disenchanted them, but let's stick to the basics.

After you input those values, the rest of the values will change.  To make a long explanation short, the other part you need to worry about is the "Total per Stack."  This value will tell you how much you're expected to earn per stack of whatever ore you purchase.

The rule of thumb when dealing with ores is as follows:

Obsidium - will always get 1 uncommon gem, sometimes 2.  Rarely get a rare gem
Elementium - Always get 1 uncommon gem, sometimes 2.  Often get a rare gem, sometimes 2.
Pyrite - Always get 1 uncommon gem, rarely 2.  Often get a rare gem, sometimes 2.  Always get a Volatile Earth, sometimes 2, rarely 3.