A question I get a lot is the basic one how do I make gold, and today I will take a step back and give my best recommendations for players looking to start out now in BfA. Crafting professions are by far the best way to make gold right now, and I think nothing else comes close, so let’s look at which professions I like.
8.3 is coming
8.3 is coming and it will change the item levels of gear and of course bring about the AH revamp. The AH redesign is likely to have a severe impact on material flipping and may end up killing the market completely. As such I don’t think material flipping is a good market to enter for new gold makers now as the risks are too high. Crafting professions on the other hand are much more immediate in their nature and I expect items will sell well all the way up to the patch and for some items after the patch as well.
Power increasing items always sell fastest
This is the most important thing to realize in WoW goldmaking. Items that increases a characters power, whether permanently as in gear or temporarily for consumables are always in demand. So for crafting professions in BfA we want to focus on items that increase character power rather than cosmetics. You can either target players looking to improve their main or their alts.
Gear crafting
Gear crafting will right now mostly be to gear alts. The Notorious combatant gear is item level 370, which makes it quite uninteresting for mains, but it is still the fastest way to get some very cheap item level boosts. Scribes get to craft item level 400 trinkets that are even better. Personally I have found that blacksmithing is best of the armor professions, followed by leatherworking and tailoring. All three are great and you can make some nice gold with the notorious combatant gear. In earlier patches in BfA I have found that the gear keeps selling all the way up to the patch, but it loses value instantly once the patch drops. The recipes are usually profitable at rank 1, so don’t worry about marks of honor farming.
I would suggest crafting 2-3 of each item initially, then gradually scaling up to about 10 of each notorious piece as you get some sales. Personally I like to keep all of them in stock, but do check the TSM crafting profit before going to hard, and remember that you need to set a material value for expulsom. As always you will need tailoring or leatherworking to get access to cheap bracers for the expulsom shuffle.
Consumables
Consumables and item enhancements are generally some of the most reliable ways to make gold in wow, but right now it’s a huge lull for these items. Eternal Palace has been out for a long time and players are not in progression mode. Once 8.3 rolls around we should see demand pick up and they will hopefully become profitable again. Enchanting, jewelcrafting and alchemy are less attractive right now, although jewelcrafting seems slightly better, primarily because prospecting Osmenite ore is quite high value.
Which professions should you choose?
Check the spreadsheet. This will quickly get you an overview of which recipes are profitable and which ranks they need to be. Leveling professions is fairly quick in BfA, so pick the ones with most profitable recipes that you can actually get. Alchemy should not really be picked at this time as you rely completely on getting rank 3 recipes to make a profit.
A quick check on one of my realms indicates that all of the notorious gear is profitable, alchemy is profitable at rank 3, enchanting is generally not profitable, both darkmoon decks and compendium trinkets are profitable for inscription and prospecting is very profitable for jewelcrafting. In this case picking whichever professions you have leveled outside of enchanting or alchemy would be the go-to move.
Summing up
Pick whichever crafting professions you have, or look most promising by checking the spreadsheet for your realm. Then start crafting the relevant power increasing items and post them to the AH using my settings that you can find in one of the myriad guides listed here. Catch up gear is more relevant than consumables right now, even if new gear and new BoA catch up gear is coming in 8.3 buying notorious combatant and highborne compendiums is still by far the fastest way to gear a fresh level 120 right now.
Good luck!
Hello. Thanks for your help. Just getting into gold making as I want that Brutosaur. Looking at the changes in the Auction House, should I still try to learn TSM now, or wait? Or will the changes make TSM not work as well. Right now I fiddle a bit using Auctioneer and Auctionator. Thanks very much.
I’ve been wondering about why you like dbmarket for your crafting calculations instead of avgbuy. As you state in this post, its important to post items that are profitable at some threshold but that crafting cost is slightly different depending on your pricing source. Also, you’re still selling darkmoon decks? how?!?
Thanks for everything you do, its amazing, and very appreciated.
I would start learning it now, I doubt the differences will make the effort useless.
I’ve been wondering about why you like dbmarket for your crafting calculations instead of avgbuy. As you state in this post, its important to post items that are profitable at some threshold but that crafting cost is slightly different depending on your pricing source. Also, you’re still selling darkmoon decks? how?!?
Thanks for everything you do, its amazing, and very appreciated.
I’m not selling darkmoon decks personally, but according to the spreadsheet they could be profitable. I am selling the Highborne Compendium Trinkets quite well though.
I prefer dbmarket over avgbuy because dbmarket always follows the market. Every once in a while the market will change and if you use avgbuy you won’t post your tiems. As long as it is profitable to buy materials at the current market price to re-craft it I can be reasonably certain I am making 20-30% profit. I’m also not always active enough to have an avgbuy price source that is effective, and you also have the issue of when you buy volume, overall I just prefer using the actual market value of the item rather than whatever arbitrary subset I’ve purchased, but other people prefer avgbuy, there isn’t a correct answer really.
Thanks for the reply! Are you saying that you never stockpile materials bought cheaply? The problem I’m trying to address is when dbmarket snapshots a material poorly (say crimson inks @ 5g yesterday) that seems to throw everything off. Would something like 50% dbmarket + 50% avgbuy be worth thinking about to try to absorb the random changes a bit?
I buy materials cheaply, I just prefer to use the actual market value for my decision making, rather than whatever arbitrary cheap price I have been able to get. 50%avgbuy+50%dbmarket would obviously work, it’s all down to preference mostly, as it depends on how it fits with your posting and purchasing patterns.