Now what?

[Abeezil]

OK, this is my first MMORPG. I've played CRPGs for over 20 years and have to say that they're far more generous to lower levels in terms of loot, money, skills, all sorts of things. But that's not my question. I've read everything I could find about how to level up and how to make gold. All makes sense. I'm leveling up my lvl 40 Warrior with the help of a same-lvl friend (we take turns boosting each other) and have found some nice green drops. BUT....... what happens when the next stage of the route to making some money fails? What do you do when the AH just doesn't sell things? Sales at the SW AH have been poor for a while now, about a month. And I'm not talking mega gold purple items, I'm talking reasonably priced greys, greens, that sort of stuff. My rule now is put it on once and if I get it back, put it on again at a slightly reduced price, if that doesn't sell, take it to the vendor. That works in a sort of a way, but it sure doesn't make much money, and at this lvl, needing to train, wanting a mount, and with a couple of lower lvl alts to fund as well, I'm really strapped for gold. And I don't fancy trudging around SW advertising my wares - that's very time-consuming and often unsuccessful as well. Any suggestions?:sad:

[Dreddlok]

Which professions have you chosen?

[Abeezil]

Which professions have you chosen?

The Warrior's a miner/blacksmith, the hunter a skinner/leatherworker, and the warlock a herbalist/alchemist. All are still under 200 in their professions, although getting close. All three produce some decent low-lvl green stuff that ought to sell at modest prices. But it doesn't.

[Twoflower]

the only way to make some profit out of low - midlevel green items is by disenchanting them :)

You also have to watch the stat combination. "of the monkey" gear for example is good for selling ( leather with stamina and agility ) since all rogues want it. Alot of the other green stuff is nothing but crap though. You will never sell some mail with spirit on it.

I'd say keep pushing the farming professions, sell all you gather and wait with advancing the crafting professions. Also focus on your main char. The higher level he gets, the easier money comes. At level 70 gold comes like nothing.

[Abeezil]

Well, OK - I can play maybe an hour in the daytime, maybe two hours in the evening (not every evening) instead or in addition. My Warrior just hit 40 and, despite having done all needed training at 38, now needs about 16g worth of training. He had 6g, spent that, but hasn't completed half of it (including, and I regret this, plate armour). So he's stuck, can't enhance his skills to level further, can't get much to finance that enhancing. I've got 15 items on the AH, none of which has sold, so they're going to the vendor. Maybe I got spoiled - over summer, when the kids were all out of school, you could sell almost anything in a twinkling on the AH.

And as for drops, Swamp of Sorrows is OK XPp-wise, but offers little by way of drops, nor does STV. I'm not advocating buying gold, nor would I do so, but by golly, I can see why people do. It's frustrating, frustrating and disappointing. :sad:

[Kugan]

Leave blacksmithing (or stop levelling it for now). Seriously… if you are having issues with money, there is no reason to have a HUGE money sink.

I had similar issues as you do on my first toon, and I can lay the blame fully on Blacksmithing. When I dropped that, I suddenly had more than enough money.

Go mining (you can do circuits of badlands at your level for mithril. The rock elementals there drops nice vendor trash as well) and sell either the ore or the bars (depending on which sells for more on your server).

You will see a decrease in items sold at the ah at your level simply because there aren’t many level 40’s around. There are millions of level 20s that will buy stuff up to level 30, but then they go and level something else.

And I'm not talking mega gold purple items, I'm talking reasonably priced greys, greens, that sort of stuff.

I assume you meant whites? :wink:

[piscene]

Herbalism can be a good moneymaker. Find out which herbs sell for good money on your server, and then farm the areas that are heavy with those. You can spend a couple hours covering the same area over and over and make some good gold.

Or you can go the easy route, download Auctioneer, scan the auction house on a regular basis, and try the 'buy low, sell high' method. You don't even have to do it on big-dollar items, you can find a stack of cheap iron bars, or shards, or whatever, and make 50s profit on each one in the stack.

[Renata]

Greens produced by professions don't sell very well, with only a VERY few exceptions and those will depend in large part on the individual economic conditions of your server. As Twoflower said, the only way to make money off most low level crafted greens is to DE them.

Honestly-- you're under 200 in blacksmithing -- you're not going to lose much there, so just drop it. Most crafting professions don't really shine until your late 60s/70. Alchemy is an exception to this, but until then most manufacturing professions simply consume cash worse than a Ford Expedition eats gasoline.

Check out the prices of herbs and leathers in your local AH and see. Skinning is more convenient to pair with mining because you're only tracking one thing at a time, but leather sells poorly on some servers and amazingly well on others (on one server I play on, a stack of light leather goes for 20s, and on another server it goes for 2g. Seriously). If leather sells poorly, then go for herbalism and just get used to dithering between tracking herbs and tracking mines. Get the Gatherer mod if you don't have it and download the new Gatherer Wowhead database that will show you were most of the mines and herbs are so you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Your target AH customer is NOT broke level 40 and below players like yourself. It's rich 70s who would rather spend money than time farming cloth, leather, herbs, and metals when they decide to change professions, or for rich 70s with twinks who want to do the same.

At your level, farming for trade supplies is the key to wealth.

...Ren

[Zendarin]

Easy fix. Run through lower level areas just searching for mines. A stack of copper should sell for 1g or higher on most servers and there are areas where you can find mines all over the place. Just starting running through and mining everything in sight. When your bags are full go to the auction house and put every stack ore you got up for sale. Log in the next day and collect all your gold. Do this for awhile and you will have more than enough gold to buy your mount.

[Kodonn]

It could also be that you are leveling (class and professions) too fast.
Trying to advance a crafting profession AND save mount money AND funding some lower level alts is a definite strain pre-40.

If you like the professions you have, you don't have to drop anything. Just change your playing strategy for a bit. Instead of using all your playing time to gain exp on your warrior, take 1 night a week (or so) to just gather mats (ore if you are on warrior, etc) and sell those on the AH. It saves time if you just leave one of your alts in the city and mail items to that alt for posting. You also gain rest-exp bonus on that alt while they just do AH chores for you. If you ever find your current character with a purple (instead of blue) exp bar, just swap toons for a few nights.

Also, instead of going to an area where you feel under-prepared from lack of training funds, go back to a slightly lower area for a night and farm some mobs there for extra coin. Don't worry about maxing your exp. What you want to do is max your kill ratio and minimize your resting between fights. Loot everything and sell, or find humanoid mobs (which drop mostly coin) and minimize trips to the vendor. Another advantage here is you can collect a lot of cloth and level up your firstaid. (A side benefit of this is that if you are only vendoring cloth instead of AH-ing it, firstaid helps you conserve bag space by converting stacks of cloth into stacks of bandages)

Another thing that some have mentioned is disenchanting the green items that don't sell. Some stat combinations are just plain worthless. Having an alt that knows enchanting will allow you to shard or dust those items into mats that DO sell on the AH. This is also a help when you start producing undesirable green and blue crafted items in your other professions simply because that is the only recipe you have that is orange. Send those to your enchanter to disenchant so you can sell or use the resulting mats.

As for the AH, some servers just have slow nights. On my server for instance, the weekdays are very slow and offer some good deals. I scan and look for good buys during the week and then save my reposting for the weekends when it seems a lot of the "richer" characters are working on powerleveling their crafting professions or stocking up on potions and such for their next raid night.

Hope some of that helps. There are many different ways to earn some coin in WoW. Unfortunartely there are also as many ways to spend it.

[xDarkDrifterx]

IMHO

Mine, Mine, and Mine and sell the raw ore on the AH as on most servers the price went up dramatically due to Jewlcrafters prospecting it to find gems. Also, check the price of what ore is selling for the most and also what bars are selling for the most and mine and make those unless the ore is just better all around on your server.

Don't buy ANYTHING - stop boosting for a while, as you're having to split the money with your budy and just grind on humanoids and quest (so you can get cloth to make money with and also to make yourself some bandages). When you boost you loose out on a lot of money and items to sell to vendors for more money. If you're getting boosted through much higher instances like level 50+ when you're at 40 then the money should actually be okay, though I'd still stop boosting for a bit.

Get auctioneer. Run it and use it. Try not to craft anyhting except maybe sharpening stones, as myself and many others with baby rogue twinks etc. will put a sharpening stone on the MH weap and then a poison on the OH. I buy a stack or two of sharpening stones a week (and since you'll get stone from mining just use that).

Also, utilize your herbalism as that can be a great money maker.

Oh and, though you have llimited time to play, you're going to have to jsut stop doing what you "want to do" and start doing what "you need to do" to make money. So that short time you have on should be spent IMO just trying to earn as much money as you can in tha playtime. Setting a goal for yourself for the hour or two is incentive as well.

GL!

[Abeezil]

Thanks to all of you for the suggestions. I think I will just go and kill, until I get some money. I can make about 1g a night in Swamp of Sorrows. I'll do the same thing I've been doing, join my friend there who's in the same boat and we can take turns boosting each other, not grouping. There aren't many lucrative areas if you're under at least 60.

Summer in the SW AH was super - you could put anything on and it sold, often before you'd finished listing all your items. When school started up again and there were fewer players on for long times, it folded. Weekdays are bad here - I've started banking things I want to sell during the week and waiting for weekends. But weekends are slow now too.

I've got Auctioneer and use it all the time. But it's no help, really, if things don't sell. And they don't. That's the flaw in the whole thing. Sharpening stones don't sell - I end up using them myself or taking them to a vendor.

On my realm, minerals sell very poorly. Leather and herbs don't fare much better. Twice this week I've spent about two hours wandering through Elwynn Forest, Westfall, Duskwood and Swamp of Sorrows, just mining, mining, mining for copper, tin, and silver. Can't mine mithril yet or iron. I put large amounts of ore on the AH on Tuesday ( a few at a time so as not to flood the market), it didn't sell. So I smelted it to see if it would sell as bars. Nope. Tried the same thing today - I'm talking about 75 gathers of ore. Nope, no sales. Patience, I suppose, because I do love this game and wouldn't give it up. I still think it's very ungenerous with lower levels in contrast to conventional CRPGs, but that's just how it is.

But thanks, all, for being so helpful.

[clevins]

A couple of things I didn't see above:

The default length of an auction is 8 hours. Make it 24. The deposit will rise, but it avoids putting things up at a dead time of day

Note what days things do sell. On most servers some days are better than others for some mats. For example, if a high level is running raids during the week and skilling up a profession on the weekend, the mats for that profession will sell well on Sat and SUn, but not at other times.

Mats are really dependent on if high levels are skilling up. I've seen periods when, all of a sudden, demand dries up. DO NOT STOP mining. Keep doing it. Just bank it. Put up a stack every once in a while to test the market. If it sells, put up a few more. Don't flood the market with 20 stacks all of a sudden. Put up a few, maybe 5 or so. That way if there's demand but not a ton, you won't wipe out your profit by selling 5 and losing the deposit on 15.

Don't buy things you don't have to. Training and repairs should be it.

Don't AH greys. Or, at that level, most whites. Just vendor them. In fact vendoring greys and whites generally paid for my repairs during levelling.

WoW is very generous to low levels, but most people struggle because they buy things... you don't need to. You level fast enough that gear is not something to worry about - quest rewards and instance drops will do you fine. Yeah, occasionally you can buy things... but you really never NEED to. Don't try to fund an alt when you're 40, don't try to boost a lower level friend (with gold).

Finally... if you have a low population server, you might just be screwed with an economy that's not that active. If that's the case, think about transferring to a higher population server where things turn over more.

[Urbanink]

lvl mining,at lvl 40 on my first char i could make 32 gold in 3 hours np just from mithril.

(bout lvl 220 mining)

[Amra]

When I put bars up for sale, I break them up into smaller stacks. I think that helps sometimes.

Also, if all you want is the gold, then take 2 gathering professions. You may want to work on cooking and fishing too. But with 2 gathering professions you will be raking it in. At least on the server I'm on.

[Zendarin]

ACK - a few at a time? NO. Put up ore in stacks of 20. Don't worry about flooding the market. When people want to buy up their craftskill they don't want to mess around with making hundreds of small purchases - they will go straight to the 20 stacks.

Try putting up a few stacks of copper ore at 1g per stack and set it for a 24 hour time. I would put good money on it that you will have several gold waiting when you log back in.

I put up 16 stacks at a time and almost never fail to sell out each night and I actually sell them at 1.25 gold as we have a slightly higher market. For most servers they will sell fine at about 1g per stack.

[clevins]

Z - reading ftw...


Put up a stack every once in a while to test the market. If it sells, put up a few more.

A few stacks at a time, not a few pieces. And, great that YOU sell out, but if you actually read the OP's post he's having issues with stuff selling. Since you and he are likely on diff servers, your experiences or mine aren't helpful - our server economies are different from his.

[piscene]

I play on 2 different servers, and the economies are completely different. I make great money skinning on one, and its not even worth picking up the skins on the other. The same goes for other items as well.

Once you check out what sells on your server, use those professions and make your money there.

[Abeezil]

I play on 2 different servers, and the economies are completely different. I make great money skinning on one, and its not even worth picking up the skins on the other. The same goes for other items as well.

Once you check out what sells on your server, use those professions and make your money there.

Yep, think my server is not good for selling many things, and that's unfortunate, because the economy so much depends upon the sale in the Auction House of all sorts of things. In any event, I'm concentrating now on lvl 40 Warrior and the other two can fend for themselves for the time being. :laugh: The Warrior will spend time levelling (that works well if he and my friend's char boost each other) and mining like mad. Might or might not use blacksmithing as well. And every penny earned or found is going into advancing him. Once he gets to a higher level he can help the others. I may also consider transferring to another realm. Not sure right now about that, but for the time being I'm going to play him as if he were my one and only and see what happens.

Thanks to all for your many very good and well-thought-out suggestions.

[zodiac66]

As far as putting ores/bars for sale, it all depends on what you are selling. I can sell a stack of raw mithril but break of a stack of silver. Look at the ore and see how many professions can use it.

Also look at items that are needed for quests. I needed a mithril casing and the smallest bundle was 10 at the AH. I bought the 10 for 24g, got the one I needed and gave the other to a friend and sold the remainder for 4g each. I got what I needed and made a bit of profit.

As I am sure was stated, cloth always sells. The other weekend a stack of mageweave was going for 4 gold. That is more than netherweave was going for. Just watch and hoard your items and sell when they are going high.