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Despite the complaints you may hear from some, in the World of Warcraft game it’s easy to earn extra cash. Like everything else in the game, or in life, it takes a bit of work, but do it and you’ll have plenty of gold to spend on your items. Most of the basic stuff you can do while leveling or exploring and this basic stuff applies whether you’re leveling to 85 in (the upcoming) Cataclysm or just playing vanilla WoW.

The most basic point is that over the entire game of WoW there are only a couple of ways to earn money. You sell services or stuff to someone (whether a player or not) and/or you complete quests for the rewards. (If you’re a Rogue you can pick pockets and open boxes to earn a little more.) Selling stuff to vendors is small change, but it adds up in the long run. Completing quests is a good way to go and the rewards are pretty good at high level. Advanced players will often have a routine where they complete a number of the Daily Quests in an hour or two and make 200 to 300 gold.

But selling stuff to other players is the best way to go and most people do that through the Auction House (AH,) though some will do it in trade chat. (Selling your skills for tips is another good way to go.) The only trick is in discovering which stuff to sell is worth the effort and then obtaining that stuff.

So where to start? You’re going to make a brand new character and take that character to the big city, without leveling it (though you can if you want to.) I like Stormwind on the Alliance side and Silvermoon on the horde side. This character will be your designated banker/buyer/seller. Everything that your main characters want to sell will be mailed to your banker for posting on the Auction House. This means that your characters do not have to go to all the way to the Auction House every time they want to sell their loot, saving you lots of time. Just visit the nearest mailbox, mail your stuff, get rid of the vendor junk, turn in your quests, and get back to the game.

Grab “skinning” as your first skill. You’re going to be killing a lot of skinnable critters as you level up and some of those skins sell for good money, even at the lower levels. Next pick up either mining or herbalism, that way you can be detecting herbs or ores while skinning things. .Just skin and gather as you go and spend a bit of time, if necessary, to make sure your gathering skills are high enough for the next zone.

If you’re higher level you can do pretty much the same thing. You’re going to start in the low level areas and level your skills until they’re high enough for the next area. If you’re high enough level, and you’re on a PvP server, you’ll also be in position to help out your side if the other side is harassing them. PvP can be a nice bit of recreation, even though it won’t help your gold stash.

As you loot stuff you will collect gray, white, green, and (very rarely) blue items.  The non-player vendors get all of your gray stuff. Your banker gets all the stuff that’s white or better (if you’re not going to use it.) (By the way, pay attention to current AH prices so that you don’t over or under price your stuff.)

Something you can do with your higher level characters is to run them through the lower level instances. Cloth, sellable items, and lots of vendor junk are yours for the keeping in these instances. Bring large, empty bags, as you’ll fill them with just a couple of instance runs. If you’re lucky you may even find a blue item which can be sold for a pretty penny.

These tips will keep you in mounts and decent gear as you level, if you apply them. Some people, though, are more ambitious. There are many advancedtechniques that you can use if you want to earn a lot more gold and you can find a great number of these strategies in a book titled, “Warcraft Millionaire.” Whether you are looking to hit the gold cap or just want to stay in decent gear this book has you covered. Read this review of the “Warcraft Millionaire” and see if it won’t massively increase your gold stash.


Gamers Notebooks