Making gold is a huge part of your World of Warcraft experience, yet for new players, the process can feel confusing and overwhelming.
Why is WoW gold so important? Where does it come from, and how to earn more by actually doing less? In this guide, we’ll answer all those questions, and even more! Follow us as we break down the main gold-making methods and share a bunch of practical tips to help you stay well-funded, even if you’re just starting out.
What Is Gold and Why You Need It In-Game
Gold is the main WoW currency, sitting at the top of the game’s monetary system, where 1 gold = 100 silver and 1 silver = 100 copper. WoW has a bunch of other local currencies tied to specific factions, expansions, or activities, but gold has always been a universal currency that you use for most of your character’s needs.
With gold, you can:
- repair your gear after battles,
- level up professions,
- buy consumables for raids and dungeons,
- pay for crafting materials,
- buy mounts and gear pieces,
- and fund plenty of other purchases and upgrades, essential for your character’s progress.Â
The stronger your character gets, the more gold you’re expected to spend to prepare for tougher content. Naturally, that also means you’ll need to earn more as you go. We’ll be honest with you: making gold does take effort, but luckily, the game offers plenty of different ways to do it.
Main Ways to Make Gold
Raw Gold
In WoW, raw gold means any gold that goes straight into your character’s wallet, without using the Auction House.
You earn raw gold from killing mobs, completing quests and dungeons, and selling items directly to vendors. Vendors can be found in every major city.
When you vendor an item, the price is fixed, and you get your gold right away, unlike the Auction House, where prices fluctuate with the market, and you may have to wait hours to actually get paid. Most of the time, you’ll be vendoring gray and white “trash” items that’ll pile up in tons in your inventory while you level up. Some of those you’ll need for yourself, and the rest can be safely vendored away for some extra coin.
Farming
Farming involves repeatedly doing certain activities to gather particular items. For example, you can farm:
- Resource nodes using gathering professions like Herbalism and Mining.
- Open-world mobs, which can drop crafting materials, gear, and other valuable items.
- Group content, such as dungeons and raids, where mobs and bosses can drop various loot, including unique, expensive items that you can’t find anywhere else.
No matter what you’re farming, sooner or later, everything you loot ends up on the Auction House, where you sell your goods to other players for gold.
Crafting
Gold-making through crafting is also centered around the Auction House. The main difference is that instead of farming items, you’re creating them yourself.
To get started, you’ll need to pick up a crafting profession, like Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Tailoring, and so on. From there on, it’s all pretty simple: you learn a recipe, gather the required ingredients, craft a new item, and then sell it for profit.
As you level up your profession, you’ll unlock more recipes, and the quality (as well as value) of your crafts will improve. To start actually making profits, you’ll first have to invest some money into materials, but luckily, all those expenses will pay off pretty quickly, because crafted items, especially gear, consumables, and bags, tend to sell very well.
Item Flipping
Item flipping is a more business-focused way of making gold. The idea is simple: you search the Auction House for underpriced goods, buy them, and then repost them at a higher value. Your profit comes from the difference between what you paid and what the item eventually sells for.
When you play the market this way, you don’t have to go out in the world to farm or grind mobs. You can earn money without ever leaving the city, which makes item flipping one of the most time-efficient gold-making methods in the game. On the downside, to make things work, you’ll have to understand the game’s market and price trends really well, not to mention having a healthy bankroll to actually buy stuff to flip and stay afloat if your investment doesn’t pay off as expected.
Overall, item flipping isn’t the best choice for complete beginners, but once you get the hang of it and learn the ins and outs of WoW’s market, it can become a surprisingly low-effort way to make thousands of gold.
Tips for New Goldmakers
Now that we’ve covered the main ways to make gold in WoW, let’s go over a few practical tips for players who are just starting their gold-making journey.
Don’t Buy Gear from the Auction House
Buying gear on the Auction House is a total waste of gold, especially while leveling, because you’ll basically be buying overpriced items that you’ll outgrow and replace in a few hours. The game naturally provides you with gear upgrades from quests, dungeon rewards, or simple mob drops as you progress, and that’s more than enough to keep you going. The Auction House is much better used for things that you can’t easily farm or produce yourself.
Check Item Prices Before Vendoring
As we’ve said earlier, gray and most white items are usually safe to vendor, but some greens can be worth far more on the Auction House. Before vendoring a green item, it’s better to check its price first. As for blue and purple items, those are better kept for your main, sent to alts, or sold on the Auction House rather than vendored.
To make price checking faster and easier, you can use addons like TradeSkillMaster or Auctionator. They’ll show you up-to-date market values and vendor prices of your items, so you can compare them and decide where to sell.
Don’t Lock Yourself Into a Single Market
When it comes to selling on the Auction House, try to spread your sales across a few different markets. You don’t need to cover everything, but having listings in two or three niches definitely won’t hurt. For example, you can sell crafting mats, a handful of transmog pieces, weapon enchants, and some Tailoring bags. This keeps your supply more diversified and helps you attract a wider range of potential buyers. And, most importantly, if one market crashes or slows down, you’ll still be earning gold from those other ones and won’t lose all your income at once.
Always Keep Some Gold Stashed
It’s a good habit to keep a small gold reserve at all times, especially if you’re into crafting or item flipping. Both of these methods rely on upfront investment, so if you don’t have enough gold on hand to pay for materials or potential flips, you can easily miss out on good deals when prices are low, which, in turn, can hurt your future profits. Besides, having some gold set aside simply feels better than playing with empty pockets.
Combine Different Gold-Making Methods
Mixing various gold-making methods helps you make better use of your time in-game. While you’re out questing, you can farm mobs in the same area, do a bit of fishing if there’s a body of water nearby, and later run a few dungeons, picking up some loot to sell along the way. This way, you’re making the most out of your playtime and essentially just playing the game, earning gold as a nice bonus. On top of that, using only one method over and over again can get boring pretty quickly, while combining a bunch of them not only adds variety to your routine but also helps you figure out what you actually enjoy.
