Today we are taking a look at some TBC items that have really high value and that you need to keep an eye out for. Some of these are significant targets for farming and if you find them while leveling you need to realize their value, or when they will peak in value.
Short term focus
In this post I am focusing on the short term around launch. There are items you can consider investing in for later phases, but unless you are already rich you are better off getting more gold now that you can keep growing.
Two phases that matter
When a new expansion launches there are two important phases to play. First players level up and unlock the new content, including leveling professions. This puts a premium on materials needed to level professions and items that players use while leveling. Then once players hit max level the focus shifts towards gearing up and players start buying more max level items. Material demand shifts to emphasize materials used in max level recipes more than the leveling recipes. The shift obviously occurs along a continuum.
The first phase
During the leveling phase you can often get a good price on certain items that are only useful or bought in large quantities once a large proportion of the player base is max level. On the other hand many leveling materials will be at their highest price ever as once a good chunk of players have maxed their professions they are used at a much lower rate and the relative value decreases. These are items you want to target farm early if you are a farmer, before swapping to late game materials. Early in this case can be as short as a day or two, or it can hold relative value for weeks. Fel Iron for instance is needed early to level professions, but it can also be prospected so it will keep value relatively well as gem prices peak around the raids opening.
So what are some items to consider
Gems are a massive example of an item that does not have too much value early on. Most players will not bother putting rare gems in leveling gear or even low value level 70 gear. They will only start gemming with rare gems once they have their pre-bis or even bis pieces. WHen the original TBC classic launched a couple of years ago gem prices almost doubled around the raid launch and this also lead to price increases for ores. This was short lived, but if you had stock when prices soared you made a lot of gold.
Primals are the big bucks
The consistently most valuable materials in TBC are the elemental primals. All of them are valuable and expensive, with Fire as typically the most expensive one. There are some quest areas that drop motes once you get to the later zones and you can consider doing some grinding there while leveling to double dip on gold and experience. If you have engineering I would consider crafting a zapthrottle mote extractor and ultra-spectropic detection goggles so you can harvest clouds while leveling for extra motes. Depending on the price of goggles this may be too expensive though, so do consider if you will keep farming at 70 or not before investing.