Classic Goldmaking: Investing for future phases

Investing for the future is a high risk high reward strategy in general in WoW. In classic it is stronger than retail, as we pretty much know what is coming, even if we don’t know the exact tuning. 

Disclaimer

Investing always risky. You have no idea how many other players doing the same, and everything is known in advance in general terms. Proceed at your own risk, and don’t invest gold you can’t afford to lose.

BWL launch and Greater Protection Potions

The region price for greater fire protecion potions increased from 5 gold on January the 1st to more than 10 gold currently according to Bootybaygazzette.com. That’s pretty crazy. The potions are extremely useful in BWL, probably more so than in MC. This turned out to be a fantastic investment. On the other side Greater Shadow Protection Potions spiked up slightly, but the price is now tumbling of a cliff as people realize the are completely unnecessary for Nef, so the’re not really useful in PvE at all. 

No one knew the tuning ahead of time, so knowing which potion to really stock up on was impossible, but you could make out like a bandit. Assuming you unloaded the GSPP and realized they would be useful early enough you would probably not lose gold. 

Consumables or gear?

Future phases will impact both the demand for consumables and gear. In general we will expect most consumables that  are useful to go up in price when a new raid launches. More and harder raid bosses to kill means more players will be chugging elixirs. This is particularly true for elemental protection potions that are extremely useful on bosses where they are useful. 

For gear it will mostly be stuff like specific resistance sets that will go up in usefulness. In AQ40 Melee classes will need a nature resistance set, so anything with a high roll “of nature resistance” should be kept for then. Outside of that I don’t know of any gear that will drastically change value. 

Gates of Ahn’qiraj

This is the big one. The world event will require a huge number of items to open the gates and get into the raid. All of the materials required will likely start trending up in price as players start building stockpiles for the event. Some of the highlights include 800 000 linen bandages, 400 000 runecloth bandages and 90 000 Copper bars. For a full list you can check this wowwiki post. 

I expect most of these items will go up in price as we approach the gates. Make sure you only buy materials that are turned in on your side. You can also buy these now to make sure you have enough materials available on the day, but storage space will be an issue. 

AQ40 prep

Aq40 is the great nature raid. The biggest thing here will be melee gearing nature resistance for Huhuran, as well as of course players getting consumables including greater nature protection potions. We should expect these to rise in value, alongside all of the strong raid consumables like Mongoose, Greater Arcane etc. The new recipe for + fire spell power will also be incredibly useful as mages swap to fire. 

Twin emperors will most likely also need some shadow resist gear and shadow protection potions, but once again tuning will be the big question we don’t know. This will of course impact the sale rate. Other items that will be useful in AQ include Elementium Ore for turning in the Imperial Armaments style weapons. Of course elementium is extremely expensive right now, but by the time we head into ZG and players have farmed BWL for a while and gotten their Thunderfurys we can expect the price to drop. 

Naxxramas prep

For Naxxramas frost resistance will be the biggest deal, particularly for Sapphiron. Outside of that it may be useful with shadow and nature protection potions at least, so we should see a good mix of protective potions selling well. “Regular” consumables and flasks will of course also be high in demand. 

In addition to this there are several materials that will be needed. Turning in the t3 tokens for gear also requires you to turn in materials. One is warthorn leather scraps that drop from Naxx thrash, but you also have to turn in materials currently in the game. This includes Arcanite bars, Cured rugged hides and arcane crystals. Arcanite is quite expensive right now, but once the Thunderfury rush dies down we should see the price trend downwards as demand cools down.   

What did I miss?

I’m sure I missed things and I will be doing more research on what will be needed. This is just to get your mind going and looking ahead to try to take advantage of any situation similar to what happened with GFPPs in phase 3. There are tons of other examples of items that spiked up with the release of BWL and we will see similar stories ahead. On the flip side we will also see items crater in value, like greater fire protection potions at some point when MC and BWL are on easy farm and no one bothers any more. Investing is always risky, so don’t speculate with gold you can’t afford to lose. Steady goldmaking has always been my bread and butter, so this is really just to spice things up. 

If you want to level up your gold making come join me on Patreon and get access to awesome rewards like my full TSM setups.

4 thoughts on “Classic Goldmaking: Investing for future phases

  1. Grilled squid, created from winter squid will be going out of season by March 22nd. Hunters and Rogues use this buff food. Laws of supply and demand dictate the two items will be going up in price after the supply dies for 6 months.

    1. Eventually we get a better buff food, but you’re of course right. I’ve bought hundreds just for my own personal supply as my main is a rogue, but I should probably buy even more so I can sell it as well.

  2. For what it is worth, storage space is a non issue with proper TSM usage. Just pay 30c a month for one way character storage with an alt you never log on too.

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