Income Vs. Spending

Posted by admin on 05 10th, 2009

Categories: Featured Articles | no responses

Recently there have been a lot of emails and people in general asking how to make gold. While this is nothing new, it seems like Ulduar and patch 3.1 has brought back some of the need for gold. Whether it is repair bills or consumables, we know that players are in need of gold for this new content. For beginners, before you tackle advanced gold making topics, let’s go back to some of the basics. We are not talking about farming items or even how to use Auctioneer, but the analysis of your income vs. spending. Auditor A very helpful addon to track your spending and expenses is Auditor . This will track where you are spending your gold, be it repairs or the auction house. It will also track where your gold is coming from, such as from quests or vendor trash. Seeing where your money goes is important because this helps you figure out where to cut back if you are having trouble maintaining a health amount of gold. Maybe you will learn that you are making a good amount of gold like everyone else, but are spending it faster than them, leaving you with less gold at the end of the week. Running this addon for a few weeks should let you in on what is going on with your finances. Hopefully for some, this may fix your gold troubles. However we would also like to cover some of the very simple, basic, and even passive ways you can keep that gold flow coming in and also how to reduce your spending. Repairs All players, even those that PvP, need to pay for repairs. These expenses can add up very fast, which your addon should be telling you how much you have spent so far. A few ways to reduce these costs is to repair at a major city or with a faction you are Exalted with. This gives a discount up to 20%, which for every 100g spent on repairs, you will be saving 20g. Make a habit of repairing every time you step into a major city like Dalaran, which by the way is associated with Kirin Tor reputation. If you are lucky enough to have someone with a repair mount or repair bot in your raids, you will also notice that the vendor charges full price for everything including repairs. So along with cheaper repairs at your home city’s, all the reagents are cheaper too. Try and do all of your buying at these major cities. Another way to save on repairs is to simply avoid durability loss in raids. This could be vanishing, feign death, divine intervention, or just stepping out of the room to reset the boss. All these little things can add up. I personally have spent over 6000g on repairs since level 76 when I installed Auditor and this is from wearing leather. Loot Gold A good rule of thumb is to loot everything you see. If it sparkles, then loot it. Chances are there will be money on the mob as well as other items. Even if you don’t have the bag space for the items, at least take the gold that the mobs drop. If you are in a raid, this amount is split between all the members. In this setting, the raid bosses will drop the most gold. So the more bosses you can take down, the more gold you will receive. Naxx brought in an estimated 250g per full clear. Obviously, if you wipe a lot and don’t progress as fast, your repair bills will offset what you are making in gold. There are a lot of different ways to increase your chances at taking down bosses ranging from joining a decent guild, reading up on strategies, avoiding pugs, ect. Aside from gold in raids, there is also gold to be made when doing Wintergrasp. Each dead player can be looted by a single person and gives about 1g per corpse. This can really add up, however achieving WG objectives and doing actual PvP there is a different subject. Vendor Trash Start freeing up some bag space when you go raid or questing. Do you really need all those random items in your bag? Or can you store them in your bank to make room for vendor trash that can be worth up to a few gold. I always have at least 16 slots or a full bag free for this stuff. It all adds up if you keep doing it over and over. Pick up every item of a mob is like second nature to me now. This is like making gold passively while your doing something else. All it takes is some bag room and a few seconds to pick up. Then after your done, go sell all the items to a vendor. Please note that there are some low quality items that are worth a decent amount of the auction house. Valuable Trash There are plenty of items that fall into this category. These can be white quality trash drops or even grey quality vendor trash that is worth a lot on the auction house. In Naxx for example, [Iceweb Siper Silk] and [Netherweave Cloth] drop on the various trash mobs. These items can be sold on the AH by themselves or use to create leg armor kits, bags, or other items. Either way these items are worth some gold. As for grey quality loot, you will be surprised at how much some of these things are worth. They are usually for RP players, bank alts, or just for people into vanity items. These items may include [Noble's Monocle] , [Antique Silver Cufflinks] , [Diamond-tipped Cane] , and [Battered Jungle Hat] . These items are actually from the old and new fishing daily quests. However there are a few others that are worth a lot that drop from various mobs. The important thing here is to realize the value of certain white and grey quality items, maybe with the help of Auctioneer tooltips, and sell them on the AH rather then just to a vendor. A good example is [Relic of Ulduar] , which is worth a good amount on the AH and drops from most mobs out in Storm Peaks. Although most people know what this is, some lower levels may not know and fail to loot it or just vendor the item due to the quality of it being white. Actually on a side note, there is an achievement inside Ulduar called [But I'm on Your Side] that you can only get by using an [Iron Boot Flask] , bought with [Relic of Ulduar] . As for you fishermen out there, if you have been going for the [Sea Turtle] mount, you may have noticed you fish up things like [Pygmy Suckerfish] and [Cobalt Ore] . Again these can be sold on the auction house, or for a slightly higher profit, items like these can be crafted into something more valuable. In this case, it may be [Guru's Elixir] and [Cobalt Bar] respectively. You could even go one step further and turn the bar into an item through Blacksmithing. Try it So try out some of these tips whether you are a seasoned veteran or a newbie to gold making. These things over time almost become second nature and you will be able to take advantage of every opportunity you get for making gold. Maybe even try the addon mentioned before, Auditor , to track all that extra gold from vendor trash, gold loot, quests, auctions, and various other things. Look for a follow up post next week where we publish what our Auditor addon says we spent and gained since the first month of Wotlk! We hope to see some of our reader’s results as well too.

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