So you decided to enter the vast world of Azeroth? You may wonder how do I level? How do I make money to afford gear and skills? How do I use the interface that they provide? Well here is a guide to follow! Just follow some of the simple strategies I’ve laid out for you and you’ll do just fine!
Contents |
Introduction to skills
There are a few things to do before you pick your skills:
- A) Make sure your skills are complementary to each other if you picking up something like blacksmithing, leatherworking, engineering, or alchemy. If you’re going to pick up Blacksmithing, I highly suggest you pick up mining so you don’t always have to be looking for materials and paying out the buttocks for one.
- B) If you aren’t really into crafting, don’t go into it! It isn’t worth wasting one of your 2 possible main skills on! Skills are meant to be useful and help you out, if you’re not going to use it pick up something easy to work with such as skinning.
- C) Make sure you go from Journeyman to Expert to Artisan as soon as you can! If you are maxed on skill (except for once there is no more to learn) you’re wasting what could be potential levels. In the major cities you can just ask a guard and look at your map and there will be a red flag for locations of most trainers. Like any other profession keep up-to-date on your skills.
Skinning as a Skill
One skill of the two skills I highly suggest grabbing is skinning. People will pay a good amount for the hides that you skin off a creature. Leveling skinning is easy too!
One of the reasons Skinning is a great skill is because you can incorporate skinning into leveling your character as you go your merry way.
At a skill of 179 in Skinning and you will probably loot Medium Hide or Medium Leather almost every time!
You can sell Medium Leather to another player at approximately 2
–3 depending on how desperate you are.
Medium hide doesn’t really sell well to players but can be sold it for 1 50
a piece to vendors. In a typical night in the wetlands, you could loot approximately 50 medium leathers and about 15 hides. That’s anywhere between 1
15 and 1 75 .
Skinning only requires you to buy a Skinning Knife which costs 79 at a general goods vendor. That’s roughly 1 15 that can be spent on training! All you have to do is find a buyer! If you are having trouble finding a buyer just throw it up on the auction house in Ironforge or the one in Orgrimmar.
Mining as a Skill
Mining is a great skill to learn because some materials can sell for a pretty penny! Just like skinning mining requires virtually no work for the player! All you have to do is run up to a vein and mine it.
Ore sells for anywhere from 5 (Copper) to 5 (Gold), but bars can sell for more depending on the item used. On some servers a stack (20) of copper bars can go for anywhere between 15 and 1 at the Auction House, depending on the demand. Even at a low level it is 100% profit unlike the crafting professions where you may need to take into account material costs. After the release of The Burning Crusade expansion, the cost of Ore, especially Copper and Tin, have risen dramatically due to the Prospecting ability learned with Jewelcrafting. It is common to see a stack of ore go for 20% to 50% higher at the AH than its smelted Bar equivalent.
Minerals are usually found on rocky surfaces and sometimes underwater — just turn on your Find Minerals and it will highlight them with a gold dot (•) on your mini map.
Quick Wrap-Up on skills
I have only listed 2 of the skills because these 2 are my favorite. If you have time to find materials and new schematics for some of the other ones more power to you! But if your lazy like me, I suggest sticking to these two skills!
- Skinning—Great way to get quick cash when your in need, just grab your spell book/hammer/sword/axe and kill some critters.
- Mining—Another great profession that requires almost no work — quick money if you know where to go (the Deadmines and other caves are usually a great place to mine). Getting an AddOn like Gatherer is a good idea for increasing your efficiency, as it will track where you mined, what you mined, and how much you mined and where it is on your map.
So in the beginning of the game, make sure you grab a skill and if you don’t like it, you can always unlearn it by hitting K and then clicking on the red X. It will comfirm your choice, so make sure you actually want to drop the profession. You can relearn the skill again, but you ahve to start from skill level 1 (one)
Interacting with others
So you have all those items and you have no clue what to do with them? You could put the item in trade channel( /2 WTS then shift+click the item) or you could put it in the auction house. I recently sold Moss Agate for 1 in the auction house when I was only offered 20 when I put it up in general chat!
I know there are some packrats out there! I’m one of them I recently looked in my bank and saw stuff I looted when I was only Level 5! Throw the stuff up on the auction house and see what happens
Other players are a great way to sell items. Whether you’re putting it up for trade in the auction house or you are selling it through the trade channel you’re getting more then you would get from an vendor.
When selling to another player be kind and courteous, accept all offers and if it isn’t high enough, don’t be a jerk, just kindly say no and ask if they could go any higher. Remember your job is to sell your product, when you want to sell a car, would you be a jerk to the buyer?
When using the auction house make sure you list your items at a time of day where there is a lot of traffic! Don’t list an item at 3 AM and have it end at 11 AM! If your going to only have time to list items in the early morning make sure you do longer auctions so you get the traffic you deserve!
Start it at a good price so it can get into a bidding war! I suggest starting it at the minimum you would get from a vendor (usually will do that for you).
Do a little market research before you post your item! If you see there are a lot of them maybe you should hold off a little while before you put the item up for grabs! An Addon like Auctioneer can help determine the average market value of your items (if you keep your scan listing up to date) even when you are away from the AH.
So lets review: The auction house is good for getting the best you can get because you have many different people with different needs and wallet sizes looking for items. You open up inventory space for items that you could possibly use for quest items/various things you may want to equip.
Grouping/Looting
Now you may be asking what he means by this. Well I mean your group looting! Most of the worthy group loot is in items and never in monetary loot. Make sure your group is looting fair! Turn on FFA so if people don’t want the loot you can grab it but make sure that the looting stays fair. If you see people hogging the loot either leave the group or kick them out!
Make sure you loot everything! Most items stack so they don’t take up too much inventory space! So much loot is usually left on a corpse and people rarely take time to loot it! Those left over loots can add up, especially if it is wool or linen. You may think it isn’t worth something but as it adds up you can make a pretty penny on the items.
Make sure you set the guidelines for looting when the group starts. You can figure out who needs what and make sure they have a reason! If you see a warrior saying I need cloth armor, you do have the right to ask why when you can wear Mail armor.
Quick Recap (not much on looting): Make sure the groups are fair, don’t be afraid to question someone’s antics and loot everything!
FFA looting will frequently result in group unhappiness. Any party member can loot anything left by the looter whose turn it is in Group Loot, Round Robin, and Need before Greed so the note to loot all left overs will still function under all of those settings.
Don’t waste on what you don’t need
What I mean by this is don’t waste your money on stuff you aren’t sure if your going to use! If you know you won’t use that spell or skill until you start needing it, don’t train it. If you see an item and you’re not sure if you’re going to use it, then you should not buy it. Just because it looks nice, don’t buy it unless it can help you.
Use the NPC vendors to your advantage
So you failed to sell it in the auction house and you’ve acquired all that loot I told you to grab (remember keep it fair).
Sell it to a vendor! Vendors are the rock bottom price you should sell anything for! If you need to quickly unload your inventory Vendors are perfect for this!
Make sure the item is repaired, You will not be able to sell a dead item to a vendor, but if the cost to repair is greater then selling price don’t bother just chuck it!
So really quick recap because selling to a vendor is pretty much self explanatory, sell what you can’t get rid of at auction house or what you don’t feel would be pointless in the auction house.
Fishing as an Income
After 1.6 this is no longer a viable strategy until you have 250 fishing or so. Most fish are now 1 or 2 each and when cooked sometimes go up to 3 or 4 thus an entire stack of cooked regular fish is less than 1 . After 250 skill, fishing for a few uncommon fish types, you can sometimes sell stacks on AH for some cash. Some of the currently valuable AH fish will lose value in the 1.9 patch because of changes in cooked food effect stacking and all non-regular fish will now spawn in little pools which will likely affect availability and thus prices.
Now after experiencing fishing myself I have discovered like many others it is a great source of income! Even at level 21 I’m finding items that make it worthwhile to rest awhile and grab your pole and give it a go! At a skill of 89 on fishing I have found items that sell for 15s to a vendor! Gems that sell to players for 5s and even if I catch a fish they are usually worth 50 to 1 apiece!
One good way to get the bigger bucks is to use a lure or a better fishing rod that add to your skill level! This is the only skill I have seen you able to do this! At a skill level of one buy a Bauble to add to your poll to increase your fishing by 25. By using this Bauble you will find better stuff at a lower level and raise levels.
Or, an even better money maker, is finding where to get special fish. Fish such as Firefin snapper, oily blackmouth, Stonescale eel, and deviate fish have special interest from other players and might sell for as much as 4 per stack
Cosmos has an option under tackle box (in “Options”) to use quick cast/fast cast. When you enable this the second you click the lure it will cast a new line while you loot the last line!
Once again, loot everything because it adds up even if they are only worth 25 apiece. Most stuff you loot you can cook into cooked fish and make more money off of it. Keep in mind you can eat this.
General Wrap Up
- Make use of your two skills wisely, make sure they complement each other. If you don’t think you’ll use it train in one of the two I mentioned earlier (skinning and mining) they require almost no work!
- Don’t be a packrat; visit the Auction House! The auction house gets the item out to a huge player base at multiple times and saves you the hassle of spamming the trade channel!
- Make sure your group is using a fair loot system and everyone gets what they need and what people done need you grab.
- Make use of NPC vendors for items players don’t seem to want or bound items you’ve outgrown.
- Don’t waste money on petty objects or skills that aren’t of use to you.
- Take some time to fish, It doesn’t take a profession away from you because it is a secondary profession so even if you are leveling it slowly your still making progress and it isn’t hurting you.