How do you make quick WoW Classic gold? A friend who’s played World of Warcraft with me since the vanilla days is fond of the saying, 'gold is the most common item in the game'.
They're right, in the sense that nearly every monster drops it and many quests award it. But gold in World of Warcraft Classic, now that's tough to come by. You’ll be seeing rewards in silver and copper that'll cover you in many cases, but rustling up the cash for fancy mounts can be a real challenge.
That’s why you’ll use the following strategies like these to keep up. Welcome to our classic WoW gold guide and your untold riches to come.
Gather and sell as you level
Start by only picking up gathering professions as you make your way from 1-60. Generally this will be herbing and skinning, or herbing and mining, but enchanting counts as well (since you can disenchant unneeded gear drops and sell the materials). Don't collect the items for use by yourself, but sell to others who are engaged in more traditional crafting professions.
Choose the best gathering profession
Herbing is particularly good because some players will use potions almost immediately—including healing potions and defensive elixirs—due to Classic’s relatively high risk of damage and death at lower levels.
Skinning can be less lucrative, and takes less time away from leveling, since you skin things as you kill them. But you won’t have to compete for nodes the way you do with herbing or mining.
Mining is useful in several professions, including blacksmithing and engineering, and the demand tends to rise the closer players get to level cap. But, remember, gathering professions do not give experience in World of Warcraft Classic the way they do in the live game. Time spent herbing and mining is time away from leveling.
Whichever profession you go for, the Gatherer mod is useful as it lets you track herb and mining spawn locations.
Make a second character for disenchanting
If you plan to have more than one character active and leveling at a time—a nice way to take advantage of rested experience—make the second one an enchanter. This must be a character you plan to level, because your enchanting skill must also rise in order to keep disenchanting higher level items.
While you’re getting your primary character from 1-60, focus on entry-level disenchanting that doesn’t require significant effort on your disenchanting character to keep up.
It’s not typically worth it to make lower level enchants (endgame enchants are a different story). Enchanting materials can be lucrative, relatively speaking, compared to the green and blue gear they come from.
Scan the auction house for disenchanting material
It’s also worth spending time each day looking through the auction house at the current price of low-level enchanting materials like Strange Dust, then checking the prices of green items people have posted for sale that will make the dust when they’re disenchanted.
The Enchantrix mod will show you its best guess for the product of each disenchantment. While it has not been updated, reports say it’s working in Classic.
Farm dungeons
It’s harder to farm for rare items in World of Warcraft Classic because many of them are 'world drops,' available anywhere in the game world inhabited by monsters of a certain type or level. But there are plenty of materials specifically used by crafters that are useful to farm and repeatedly sell which spawn in dungeons, where you have no competition.
The key to farming dungeons for materials is being able to either kill the monsters yourself or not be seen by them. This is why most farming of this type is done by Rogues or Druids, because they can stealth their way through. Then there are Hunters and other strong solo classes who can kill everything that can drop something useful.
Grind dungeons for crafting materials
Some dungeon farming requires gathering skills: Fadeleaf, for example, is a popular item because it’s used in Rogues’ disappearing powder. Scarlet Monastery and other dungeons include spawn points that are easy to reach for classes that have stealth and herbalism. Grave Moss is most easily farmed in the Scarlet Graveyard cemetery. Dark Iron Ore is easy for Rogues or Druids to farm in Blackrock Depths in the long hallway that leads to Bael’gar.
Farm dungeons for drops
Other farmable items are dropped by mobs inside. Cloth is a classic example; most dungeon monsters drop a lot, and it often sells well. The 'Live Side' of Stratholme drops Righteous Orbs, which sell for quite a bit because they’re used for Crusader enchants. Elemental enemies in Blackrock Depths or Mauradon drop elemental essences that are used in a variety of potions and enchants.
You have a restricted number of dungeon resets per hour to farm all this so, in many cases, it may make more sense to hit dungeons where there are more items that take longer to obtain, or to do this kind of farming intermittently while you level another alt.
Use your downtime
If you’re not up for questing or killing, fish instead: Deviate Fish are always popular for Savory Deviate Delight, or Oily Blackmouth or Firefin Snappers for alchemy. If you have a few minutes before friends log in, use it to find a bunch of beast monsters to kill and skin. You can also scan the auction house for items to disenchant, or materials you could combine into a higher-priced item using your professions.
Auctionator is a useful mod that lets you see prices for stackable items in the auction house and records historic prices seen.
Be thrifty
If you want enough gold to afford your skills, repairs, and mounts, don't buy anything else. Don’t buy materials for your professions; wait and farm them later, or buy them after the prices have dropped. Don’t buy gear when you can craft or farm the materials instead.
It seems simple, but there's always something on which to spend your gold. Skip non-essential purchases of any kind, especially while leveling, and you’ll find you have more than enough for the big purchases you really want. It really does add up.
