Mages Making Money

By most estimates, Cataclysm is two to four months away from release. With it, everything relating to crafting and professions changes again. Some materials will become junk for a time, while others will soar in value. People are also playing less, raiding less, crafting less. Demand seems to be down for materials everywhere. My gut feel is if I’m going to be making money in this expansion, this is the last chance I’ll get to do it.

As such, I’ve been taking a good hard look at my bank contents, my professions and my gathering skills and trying to work out just how to turn it into a healthy amount of gold. There are still a few things I’d like to pick up on my main (like the Traveler’s Tundra Mammoth), plus there are a couple of alts I’m planning to level that will need riding skills and so on. I’m trying to lay the groundwork now while there’s little to do so that I’m not having to scrimp and save when the expansion hits.

Trouble is, actually making money as a Mage seems to be a bit of a tall order. I’ve started off by following Jaedia’s guide on setting up an auctioneering alt in order to start clearing through my various bank vaults. As I mainly tend to play on roleplay servers, Wilfred T Fuselage was born to take care of all the junk, surplus reagents and so on that I’ve managed to find on my characters. So far he’s doing a fine job, although getting to grips with the nuances of the auction house seems to be a bit tricky.

My main mage, Shaemus, is a tailor-enchanter. Currently most of his gold is earned through daily quests, as well as going through all the Northrend quests he missed while levelling. Any BoP blues and all greens that he finds get disenchanted and shipped off for selling. BoE blues get a chance at auction before being disenchanted as well. I’m having a bit of a rethink on this strategy, as Dream Shards tend to sell for about 5g each while the item could sell to a vendor for more.

Apart from this, I’m not selling enchanting Scrolls on the auction house at present as the market seems to be particularly fierce. I’m currently looking for tips on how to make this market more playable, but I’m worried that with raiding winding down that people won’t be upgrading their gear as much, which means fewer scrolls being bought.

Tailoring’s a bit of a bugbear for me at the moment – Frostweave bags don’t seem to make any money, while Glacial Bags only become viable if you’re a Moonshroud tailor (Shaemus is Spellweave). Sales on the speciality cloths are sluggish at best. Sometimes I get the feeling the best thing I can do is make a bunch of greens, disenchant them and sell the result.

That said, using skill barkers while I’m in a city helps a huge amount. I’ve managed to turn around a fair bit of gold by making items on demand for people, as it seems they prefer to obtain the materials then hire someone to do the crafting.

My other main contributor is Mendelev, a miner-jewelcrafter. I’m sending him out once or twice a day to go mining around Icecrown. Saronite at the moment gets sent straight to Fuselage for auction. Epic gems also get auctioned uncut – again, I’m nervous about entering the cut gem market even though it could make more money purely because of the competition. I’m also selling my surplus blue quality gems, although some get shipped to my alchemist for transmutation. Green quality gems are currently hanging around doing nothing – they won’t sell at all.

All the titanium that Mendelev mines gets prospected for gems. Eternals that he mines up either get placed on the AH, or go into the transmute queue to become epic gems or more valuable eternals.

Voltimand, my herbalist-alchemist, is currently being used as a transmutation robot. Herbs seem to be pretty flat on the auction house, mainly because no-one’s making flasks any more. As a result, once a day he makes an epic gem or an eternal transmute. He’s making me about 100g a day for five minutes work, but I can’t help but feel he could contribute more.

So this is how things are now, a few days in. I’ve managed to make nearly 3000 gold from the clearout and a few simple things, but I feel like I’m pouring in a ton of effort (and materials) in order to make money. The next challenge is to move on from this and see if it’s possible to move from selling raw materials to finished items safely. I’ll be on the lookout to find more simple tips in order to help with this over the next few days, but if you have any advice then feel free to share!

How about you though? Are you running down your stocks in anticipation of the expansion, or are you still holding on? Are you building up reserves of old-world materials to cater for an avalanche of Worgen and Goblins with professions to level?

Image taken from the Wickham Market Hoard, one of the largest hoards of coins found in the UK.