Weekly Wrap Up [Mar6-Mar14]

I know, I’m behind in my weekly posts – but I’ve been having a difficult time with an MS relapse, so my I decided it was probably best if I just minimized the amount of extra ‘stuff’ I had to do – sadly one of the first things to go in that case is content creation. During that time I decided to also stop re-listing most of my items for sale, the exception being – pets. I kept listing my pets.

I’m currently selling around 1200 pets spread across 20 servers. It takes me less than 1h a day to re-post those, and I leave them up for 24h with no cancel scanning or anything like that.

It has been interesting to watch the trends – when it was pet battle week I had a significant number of sales vs. non pet battle weeks, and the types of pets I was selling also changed.

My most sold pet of all time is Rotten Little Helper, and it’s used in quite a few pet battle scenarios so it makes sense. This is the first year where I’ve branched into a multi-realm selling scenario, and I have to admit, I see why it’s so popular with larger goblins. You rely less on expecting huge sales from one place, and are still able to make some fairly significant gains with smaller sales spread across multiple servers. I personally don’t want to invest more than 1h a day listing items for sale and handling the basics – but I absolutely see how others could be drawn to this and why it’s appealing.

I’m also still making significant amounts of gold with craft orders which are not tracked by TSM. On the profession side of things I have JC/LW/INSC/ALCH/ENG/BS “completed” (ie: at 100 skill, but not yet completed their knowledge trees) and I tend to check all of the public craft orders a few times a day if I’m in game, and then have a steady number of people sending me personal orders on top of that. I’m using journalator to track these (which is amazing, I love this addon).

Overall? Things are going very well! I’m excited to see what 10.0.7 brings, and hopefully I’m able to continue on creating content now that my hands don’t feel like molten lumps of lava. As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!

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Dungeon Dive: 100 Runs of RFK (1-10)

Way back in July 2022 I started this challenge of 100 runs of RFK – and then for some reason I stopped. The purpose was to show the estimated amount of loot from each run vs. the actual gold per hour of items sold. Things have changed a bit since then, especially since I’m using a speed geared druid instead of just a random druid. My base speed in dungeons at 61 is somewhere around 240%-260% and that’s FAST (here is a link to a druid I followed when it came to gearing). My first post of RFK has me sitting at 57m to complete 10 runs. It now takes me about 2 minutes to run the entire dungeon. Since so much time has passed I decided to start over fresh, and these are the results for the first 10 runs.

You can see that the estimated gold (using TSM region market value avg) is just over 500k – and when I put them on the auction house (I’m using a profile from BilisOnyxia that I’ve tweaked and customized) it’s just over 300k if everything were to sell on my low population server.

Next week we’ll see how much (if any) of it actually sold, and I’ll use that to generate a more accurate idea of what GPH this dungeon rewards. As it stands now, the GPH is 712g – the amount I got from raw gold during the run. It also stands to note that it only takes me 26m to run this dungeon 10x. Ideally you’d want to optimize your time since you can’t run any more dungeons for the remaining hour, but you could always do overworld farms instead to fill that time up.

Addons used:

  • TradeSkillMaster
  • LootAppraiser
  • Faster Loot
  • Dejunk
  • MonkeySpeed
  • Nova Instance Tracker
  • WoWThing Collector

Another thing to note is that ALL of these types of runs are going to vary server by server. I happen to be on a low population server where things sell slow. Even pricing them low won’t guarantee a sale.

Weekly Wrap up [Feb6-Feb13]

This week was a pretty good week, with 1.6 million gold in profit. The numbers are skewed a bit because I was shuffling some gold around, but overall, sales were up, with a number of larger sales. My process? I spend 1h a day working on active gold making, in this case it’s logging to 20+ different servers to put items back up for sale. Most of those items are pets, but on a handful of servers it also includes transmog and mounts. I don’t bother doing cancel scans or getting into AH pvp with anyone – I have tried in the past, and it’s just bad for my mental health.

I leave everything up for a 24h period, and rinse and repeat. If I can’t re-post, I’ll leave the items until the next day. In most cases it tends to work pretty well. If I need a break, I’ll post for 48h. Being on multiple servers means I can get smaller sales here and there and it simply adds up over time. Once I reach 100k on any realm, I tend to shuffle the gold back to my main servers. This can be through the AH, or through buying tokens, or maybe moving a character to shuffle goods around. It really depends on what I need at the time.

I did have a few other sales in there, the steelbound harness is crafted by a blacksmith, the ‘ol smoky recipe is engineering. Most of the sales continue to be pets since that’s the largest market that I’m in these days.

I’ve said this before but I think it should be repeated – the amount of effort you put into gold making is going to be directly related to the amount of gold you can potentially earn. I am content with my earnings considering I only spend 1h a day working on it. It leaves me with a lot of time to do other things, and some days especially during an MS relapse (like right now) doing even the mundane like looking at the computer screen, becomes a difficult task. I know if I wanted to push my gold making I’d have to devote more time to it. Then as you learn to optimize your method, you’ll shave time off. The amount of time devoted (in my specific case) tends to ebb and flow. When I add a new server, or restock my craft items, the time spent increases. Once those things are done, I optimize my time spent, and it reduces again.

I would absolutely love to spend more time learning markets and making mistakes and honing in on the parts of gold making that I really enjoy – but alas, I do only have so many hours in a day, and so for now it is what it is.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Addons to optimize Craft Orders

With Dragonflight we were introduced to a brand new craft UI, and with it, crafting orders. The ‘end game’ to professions relies on these craft orders to obtain your skill points and in some cases, those first time craft points. Unfortunately, the base UI leaves out a lot of information, and so I’ve been using some very specific addons to enhance the experience and I want to share them with everyone. First up – Journalator.

Journalator is an optional addon that relies on auctionator, and it comes with a whole slew of features for recording what your character is doing in game when it comes to gold – but what I’ve been using it for is tracking those pesky craft orders. Not only can you see who sent what, but it also records the materials used. Are you uncertain if the customer provided the mettle? You can mouse over the crafted item and it will tell you.

If you’ve placed an order it will also track that and who you placed the order with – you no longer have to remember the name of your favourite crafter. Maybe you want to order something else from them in the future, or get a recraft. I would be lost without this addon.

Next up – CraftSim. This addon calculates stat weights & average profit, as well as helps find the most profitable profession gear, and can simulate any knowledge point distribution. If you want to know what materials to use, how close you are to procing up the next rank, how much inspiration you have, or any of the other little tiny numbers that the basic UI likes to hide – this addon is for you.

TooManyAddons – this addon doesn’t help me make gold directly, but it does help cut down some time. You can create addon profiles and swap between them with the click of a button. I have one set for raiding / dungeons, another set for gold making, and even one set up for taking pretty screenshots.

Those are the main ones I’m using to help me out with my professions these days. I’m sure there are many more out there, but these are the ones that have helped me the most.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!

[Unpopular Opinion] Gold making is better on a low pop realm

I fully admit that this title is a pretty open interpretation of the events. I have played on low population servers almost exclusively for years now and I’ve come to love and hate them. Almost all of my gold making prior to Dragonflight was done on these servers, and I was able to made gold cap without too much issue. Things sell – slowly. They sell for (usually) higher than the higher population servers because there are less people selling there. It also means there’s less buyers.

I am comfortable with that low rate of sale because I diversify my markets. Before the regionwide auction house I knew there were limited raiders, so alchemy was probably not going to be the profession for me. Now with regionwide everyone is fighting about undercuts but there’s profit to be made for a player like me, where as in the past, there was not.

At the start of Dragonflight I went looking for greener pastures. I had never attempted M+ before, and I wanted a chance to raid. I wanted to experience more than just gold making. I have multiple sclerosis so finding people who understand my physical limitations can be a daunting task. My guild on the low population servers is quite small, which is not bad but it did make things like raids more difficult to obtain. There’s also no one advertising boosts or sales on my low pop server. Anyway, I moved to a high pop server and things were really awesome as far as seeing folks around in the world and interactions with others.

The server was less awesome when it came to gold making – except for craft orders. Craft orders were my saving grace. I picked up a cheap copy of the lariat neck, the hourglass, and titanic rings, and I was set. My JC reached 100 without buying a single component. The thing is I didn’t know what the market was like on a high population realm. I would have to learn the market over again from scratch.

After a month on the server, I missed the comfort of my low population gold making. I got into a few undercut wars with people and that is a fight that I absolutely could NOT win, both physically and mentally. I didn’t know what people on this new server wanted. I was frustrated.

Plus, I missed my friends. They’re in a different time zone from me but I missed occasionally seeing a friendly face around. I don’t make friends easily, and while I thought moving to a more populated server was the answer – it turns out, I was wrong.

It also turns out that there are some really amazing and awesome communities out there who do cross realm M+ and raiding and everything else you can think of. People who are known for being patient, and for teaching others. I joined WoW Made Easy, and I joined Dungeon Dojo. Both communities are on discord, and while I haven’t actually participated in any events yet, there are options out there if you’re on a smaller server like I am, or you don’t really have a place with ‘your people’ to raid with.

I believe gold can be made on absolutely any server if you put in the time to learn the markets. Low population, high population, all of it comes down to a personal preference. If you have the time and the willpower to play the auction house pvp game and battle it out, a higher population will grant you faster sales and an instant gratification that a low population can never hope to achieve – but if you’re like me, maybe those servers are just not the place you want to be. There’s no ‘wrong’ server to make gold on. You just have to find what works for you.

Weekly Wrap Up [Jan23-Jan30]

I know, I am behind with the post! It has been a particularly busy week between real life and game stuff, but here’s my weekly wrap up!

I finally broke 1 million in sales again which was a very nice feeling. Keep in mind that TSM is not displaying my craft order gold, which is where most of my income is coming these days. As far as selling on the auction house goes, I’ve been sticking to pets.

For some reason the TSM ledger is duplicating my sales when I select a specific group (in this case, pets) so you’ll have to reduce everything in that screenshot by 1/2. I’ve reported the issue but I haven’t heard back yet. Pet sales have been steady – nothing through the roof, but enough to have a very steady income.

I am planning a post this week explaining what I’ve been doing as far as crafting goes, I only have 100 in two professions (three if you count cooking) and crafting in Dragonflight is of course MUCH different than any other expansion we’ve seen so far. Some people love it and embrace the complexity, others are not a fan. I’m somewhere between the two thoughts.

I have been selling some transmog since 10.0.5 went live, but not a huge amount, which makes sense because I didn’t exactly stock up. I picked up a few items (blood elf bandit masks), but they’re on my low pop server – oh, and speaking of that. I actually moved BACK to my low pop server. I’ll write more about that this week too.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!

Weekly Wrap Up [Jan16-Jan23]

My gold making has been looking pretty sparse lately, with nothing but pets filling the sales queue, but it has given me a lot of time to work on my characters and enjoy the game for a while, which I’m glad of.

This week I saw 659k profit, 719k in sales, and spent 60k (mostly on leveling up some professions and crafting a few spark items for alts). I know there’s a LOT of gold making potential coming up tomorrow (Tuesday) with the 10.0.5 patch, and I’m INCREDIBLY excited – but I’ve also prepared zilch. Zero. Nada.

Some sure hits? The legendary base items (mail and plate) from Shadowlands – this will grant you mythic transmog. More hits? Grey/white items will be items you can (finally) transmog, and people are going to be on the hunt for them. I meant to run through a bunch of dungeons and pick some up, but life got away from me (again). I hope everyone else out there is preparing better than I have!

Taking a look at sales – pets. Pets continue to dominate my sales. Since that’s what I’ve been spending most of my focus towards, it’s no real surprise. Crafting orders are also still dominating the charts.

I imagine the amount of gold I make from public orders will change once we’re limited from 20 to 4 – I’m not a fan of this change, I don’t think it will do what Blizzard expects it to do. I wish professions were made more evenly, I don’t see a reason to ask someone else to craft things for me in a lot of professions. I think that’s why there’s a lack of public orders. JC/Insc/Eng have all treated me very well. The others, not so much. I haven’t had an MS relapse in a little while, so I’m always on the lookout for that, if it happens I’ll most likely be going back to fishing (I’m not even sure how much profit fishing is giving these days, I’ve had such a good run with no relapses I haven’t had to do any fishing for a few weeks!)

I’m trying to get my paladin caught up with all the things out there, and then I can focus a bit more on making gold. In the meantime, at least there will always be pet sales.


As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

An Experiment in Kindness

It bothers me a little bit that we get a weekly quest to complete public orders – some professions have significantly more ‘value’ when it comes to these orders, and for other professions, there’s rarely anything you would ever need. In a lot of cases, players end up sending these craft orders to their alts, and fulfill them that way. I think that’s a poor way to complete a quest – and on some servers I don’t even have any alts. So, I decided to ask on my realm for some help.

I asked in general (since that would target people in valdrakken) for someone to help me out by providing 3 blacksmithing orders. I would compensate for the cost, and provide the materials.

Within less than a minute, I had some personal orders – it had worked! Thanks to the kindness of strangers, my character was able to complete her quest. I even got a little roleplay out of it.

In the main screenshot to this post you can see where 1 person posted 40+ statue orders for the public to complete. They came with a note asking for the orders to be left unless you needed to complete your weekly.

I thought this was a really unique way to give back to the community, but on the same hand, I feel it’s not exactly the way that Blizzard had intended this quest to go. Three of my professions have no issues with this quest – Engineer, JC, and Inscription. The rest, I rarely ever see a public order for, and when I do, everyone else is fighting for them. It’s an important quest, if you miss out, you might feel as though you’re behind. Having alts request the craft order is one method of getting it knocked out of your journal, but it sure doesn’t hurt to be a little creative.

As always, happy gaming! No matter where you find yourself.

Weekly Wrap Up [Jan9-Jan16]

Another Monday means another weekly wrap up! There’s things to keep in mind with these, and the main one is that TSM isn’t tracking crafting orders, and these days a fair portion of gold I make comes from that. This week I earned just over 400k through public and private craft orders. I focus on jewelcrafting (neck/rings), leather working, engineering, and inscription. I have the other professions too but I haven’t been spending much time with them. I’m using the addon ‘accountant’ to track my crafting orders.

I tried to buckle down this week, focusing on my ‘main’ (I use the term loosely) and getting raids & world quests done. My renown levels are not that great, Tuskarr was the easy one since I could just throw gold at it. Everything else is taking some work. On the plus side I’m really enjoying Dragonflight a large amount, on the downside there are not nearly enough hours in a day.

Sales this week were pretty steady. You can see that I’ve moved into selling pets – with moderate success. The numbers are not huge, but they’ll add up and hopefully I’ll learn / get better. I’ve been trying to buy low, sell high, and build up stock. The Dragonflight “Rhinestone” sunglasses also did well this week (but not as well as last week) with another four pairs sold. I know I didn’t keep on top of it as much as I could have.

The prospector’s boots was a flip, I think I bought them for a handful of gold months ago. The haunted steel warboots are blacksmith crafted, and the two blue recipes are from fishing leftovers. I didn’t take any big risks, and I’m OK with that. I know a lot of people are frustrated with their lack of ability to make gold in Dragonflight but I actually think I’ve been doing better than I did in Shadowlands (remember I never touched legendaries in SL). I’m excited for 10.0.5 and I can’t wait to see what new exciting transmog it brings.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!

[Unpopular Opinion] So you Can’t Make Gold in Dragonflight

For the past few weeks I have been listening to people in the WoW econ discord, and on reddit, and on twitter, talking about how it is impossible to make gold with professions in World of Warcraft at the moment because absolutely everything sells for a loss. My unpopular opinion is that this is simply not true. What is true, is that it takes a lot more work and thought to make gold from professions then it did in the past. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it makes gold making much more engaging for those who manage to put in the time and effort. Keep in mind that ‘time’ is going to be relevant to how much you want to do, and what sort of server you’re on.

There is one exception to this rule, and I will say that lower population servers do have a much more difficult time simply because there are less people looking for things to be crafted, and more people crafting. My perspective for this post is coming from a medium/high population server.

The first issue – crafting for a loss. Well, if you’re used to simply opening your crafting book, taking a look at your list, crafting that, and then putting it on the auction house – yes, most items sell at a loss. Dragonflight completely changed how we craft, and those basic items we all start with are in low demand and VERY high supply. If this is how you expect to make gold, you will be selling at a loss.

Where Dragonflight actually shines is for those who have put in the work to make connections on their server, or those who manage to camp the work table. I do this for roughly 15 minutes each day on my jewelcrafter, and she has made over 400k in gold from public commissions. I do own the BiS lariat recipe, I also bought the two rings, the titanic & hour-glass. I did not spec down gems. I am spec’d into both rings, necks, and multicraft / inspiration.

So for JC alone, there’s necks, rings, gems, and then there are also some toys you can craft for people if you’re lucky enough to find the recipes. So far I have not managed to get a single one (frustrating). Then there’s the cosmetic items we can make, like the rhinestone sunglasses. Dragonflight has a recipe for those that comes from fishing. I usually sell at least one pair every single day, for 20k. Yes, it takes time or money (or both) to get started, but it’s a goal (I fished mine up). Then there’s the JC that’s selling from previous expansions. That’s right, don’t forge that Dragonflight is not the only expansion out there! For whatever reason, 233 and 262 gear is still selling VERY well on my servers. More so if you include speed sets. Then there’s transmog, battle pets, mounts! DIVERSIFY.

The second issue – You don’t HAVE to be hardcore about any of this. As you can see by the screenshot above, my renown levels are pretty sparse – minus Tuskarr, and that one I did by turning in fish. I also have around 130 JC knowledge points from just casually completing my weekly goals. Yes, I realize this is just one example of a profession, and sadly not all professions are made equal, I will admit to that. My JC is paired with Leatherworking, and I do not make nearly the same amount of gold. I also don’t spend nearly the same amount of time on it, I don’t own LW patterns from expansions gone by, and I don’t check out the LW table very often (most people want that artisan’s sign (toy), go get that and you should be getting lots of orders).

It is NOT too late to start. Be diligent about collecting your knowledge points, and wait for your way in if you’re absolutely certain you can’t make a profit. Check the work order table often! Talk to people in trade chat, let them know what you can craft. Use the crafting sim addon, and use a little research into where you want to spend those points. Stick with it.

Saying there’s absolutely no gold to be made with professions in Dragonflight is just wrong. It does take work. It does take knowing your server, and it does take using a different method that simply “level 1-100, bam, put items on the AH!” but it’s also completely worth it and rewarding. If you’re used to the pre-regional-auction house times, you may also need to simply adjust what your idea of “good gold per hour” is. I’m seeing brand new gold makers upset that they didn’t make a million a day – that is simply an unrealistic expectation. Set yourself with some realistic goals, and you’ll be a lot happier.

As always, happy gaming – no matter where you find yourself!