COLD's GOLD FACTORY
Guide to Easy Gold
Using Achievement and World Events to Get Rich
This guide has been written and tested by my main character as well as my 9 other alts. I have been playing World of Warcraft for 4+ years and continue to learn new ways to make a profit. These strategies have all been used by me and have continued to expand with the development of the in-game Achievement system. This guide is based on tried and true experience and knowledge. Please enjoy and learn from this guide, adapting it as your needs see fit. As with all easy gold making strategies that actually work, keeping the information to yourself is of vital importance. You don't want competition to arise on your server because you shared the secrets with everyone you knew.
First Things First
Most of the concepts in this guide are based on very basic economic principals: The Law of Supply and Demand. Very simply it states that
The price of some good changes in relation to the supply of it and the demand for it.
Supply and demand is perhaps one of the most fundamental concepts of economics and it is the backbone of any market economy. Demand refers to how much (quantity) of a product or service is desired by buyers. The quantity demanded is the amount of a product people are willing to buy at a certain price; the relationship between price and quantity demanded is known as the demand relationship. Supply represents how much the market can offer. The quantity supplied refers to the amount of a certain good producers are willing to supply when receiving a certain price. The correlation between price and how much of a good or service is supplied to the market is known as the supply relationship. Price, therefore, is a reflection of supply and demand.
My system of making easy gold works on taking full advantage of the huge spikes in demand that occur when a World Event – Holiday begins. The race to get these Achievements and Meta-achievements completed causes a HUGE demand increase, especially for the first few days of the holiday when not many characters have completed the required achievements. The demand will always be high for these achievements as new players are added to your server daily and as old players continue to work on their Meta-achievements to get the rare dragon mount from completing all of the Holiday metas. There also are some regular non-holiday achievements that can be utilized for profit making that have a much more normalized demand level.
Example: cooking recipes. Before the achievement system, no one cared about getting all of the cooking recipes collected and learned. Now it's a requirement for the Chef title so the demand and resale value of all cooking recipes has gone vastly higher.
Your goal to making easy gold is to be the main supplier and set the prices based on the huge spikes of demand, taking full advantage on the early days of and the days leading up to the holiday. Monopolizing the market will reap even bigger profits. I will break this guide down into specific holidays, specific items that can be price-gouged, and also offer other tips for making easy gold during each holiday. The other concept that helps make this rewarding is that high level players do not want to waste their time farming materials to make these items, or taking time flying around to find / buy them. High level players are rich and will throw gold away easy because it is so much easier for them to get. One daily quest at level 80 gives over 13g and you can do 25 per day, so what is spending 20g to get their items and achievements done fast? Chump Change, but to a low level player that is a ton. I use these strategies to make easy gold even at level 80, because the time investment is minimal if you know the market. Some holidays are far more easy to make gold than others, and I will start with the most profitable, The Feast of Winter Veil (Christmas).
Winter Veil
During the Christmas holiday every year I make a super quick and easy few thousand gold with only a small requirement of work. Every Year! This works for low level players as well as high level so it can be a HUGE BENEFIT to a new low level player, stocking up thousands of gold in a few hours of farming and a few days of sales. As with all of the holidays, you want to have your items, materials, products, on the already posted on the auction house when the server rolls to the new day that starts the holiday. That means posting them the day before since auctions can last for 48 hours now. You want your products to be the first and only ones available as the achievements become available at midnight. This allows you to set the early prices and collect huge sales in your mailbox as you aren't even in the game.
During the Winter Veil Holiday, your #1 moneymaker is a very simply farmed item drop: <Small Egg>. These can be found on any swoop or owlkin type mob. Through my experiences the 2 best places to farm them are from the owlkin in Darkshore or the dragonhawks outside Silvermoon City. These mobs almost always drop them and often drop 2 at once and are very close to towns.
The <Small Egg> is required to make <Egg Nog> which is required for an achievement, as well as <Gingerbread Cookies>. The quest Treats for Greatfather Winter also reuires 5 <Gingerbread Cookies> and is available to every level character so the demand for the cookies is huge, with the demand even higher for the <Small Egg>s.
I spend a few hours farming the eggs and get hundreds of them the days before the holiday begins. As I farm them I search for them on the auction house and buy up as many as I can because they will be really cheap and I want to get them off the market to decrease the auction house supply as well as increase the demand. So I am decreasing the market supply, increasing the demand, the achievements going live explodes the demand, and I now have a huge supply of my own. At this point I pretty much have a monopoly and can set my own prices. The <Small Egg> which usually sells for a few silver on the auction house, is now being bought like crazy off the auction house at my market value of 3g each or 5g for 2. Talk about price gouging, but it works! Every year I make thousands of gold in the first few days. When some others catch on, if they price themselves way under your prices, you can just buy their eggs and mark them up. When a lot of people catch on and you don't want to waste your time on these anymore, its already 3k gold in the bank and you can sit back and laugh at the price war going on that you started and reaped huge profits as you were the monopoly for a few days. Now you can save your eggs for next year, or you can lump sum them off at a good rate to cooks that are shouting in trade selling the <Gingerbread Cookies>. You also can make and sell cookies, but I find that is the obvious profit maker and many people sell them since they require a cooking skill of only 1 and cooks even shout in trade chat so the competition is very high, which increases supply thus lowering the price. See you are learning about economics now, huh? Selling the eggs in stacks of 1 and 5 move the best.
Winter Veil is also the time for leatherworkers and tailors to get rich, as well as those supplying the materials they will be using to make endless gold. The <Green Winter Clothes>, <Red Winter Clothes>, and <Winter Boots> are needed to Complete the Winter Garb set for the Achievement. Crafting the boots can easily earn you minimum 25g each and the clothes sell anywhere from 15g to 50g with the opposing factions color reaching 150-200g each. You must visit the opposing capital city and purchase the pattern, which can result in may deaths and corpse runs, but the money you will make will be worth it. Main items that should be farmed and saved until the holiday starts are: <Wool Cloth>, <Bolt of Wool>, <Runecloth>, <Bolt of Runecloth>, <Copper Bar>, and <Rugged Leather>. You will not be able to find these on the auction house during the first week of Winter Veil. I took all my <Wool Cloth> and made <Bolt of Wool>, then posted them for 7g each bolt. I could not keep them in stock. It takes only 3 <Wool Cloth> to make a <Bolt of Wool> so you can see how much money that made me. That was just using the <Wool Cloth> I had left in my bank. This year I will be much better stocked and ready to sell them. The other tailors don't mind paying 7g for a bolt, when they are selling their <Red Winter Clothes> for over 100g! Just figure out what the boots and clothes are selling for, make some to post, then sell your mats for a huge profit too. The mailbox will continue to fill up with auction house earnings.
Argent Tournament
The Argent Tournament achievements require raising faction to exhalted with the major cities of your faction. The easiest way to do that is with 60x <Runecloth> turn-ins. This is a continous World Event, so any stacks of <Runecloth> should always be a good seller.
Lunar Festival
The <Festival Firecracker> can be bought in stacks and held onto to be sold at a later date, as the Frenzied Firecracker Achievement can be attained at any time, not just during the Lunar Festival. They also can be purchased and posted immediately to the auction house for people who don't know where to find the vendor or just want to get them quick for an alt.
Love Is In The Air
The Fistful of Love Achievement can be a tricky one to get as you must find specific race / class combinations to throw the rose petals on. If you see someone shouting for a specific combo and you own a character that fits the description, you can often message the person and they will tip you 5-10g just for logging that character in for them to shower you with rose petals. Pretty easy money, but not everyone thinks of it. I've been tipped as much as 90g for logging in and waiting for an opposing faction character to meet me in Ratchet for their achievement.
The Flirt with Disaster Achievement requires your character to be completely smashed. Problem is there are no alcohol vendors in Undercity where the Horde version takes place. So I made a ton of money selling Alcohol on the auction house for 3g per drink. Buy it for 50 silver and sell it for 3g. Takes 3-4 of the potent drinks to get completely smashed. Super easy mark-up for profits and again, not many people think of it. When you hear people shouting in trade "Where can I buy Alcohol," just shout back "Check the Auction House" regardless of what character you are on. That gets everyone in a major city thinking that they can just grab it off the auction house, thus further increasing your customers and sales.
Noblegarden
Again this holiday, you can make easy tips by logging in the female characters that other players are looking for to put the bunny ears on to finish their achievements. I found that the 2 most rare are female orcs and female dwarves. So if you have one level 18 or higher, this can earn you some easy tips.
The only other way I can think of to make money on this event is to charge low level characters for escorting them to the deserts required to plant the flowers, as there is no way a low level can reach those zones without a bodyguard clearing the way.
Children's Week
This is the 2
nd best money making holiday, especially if you are a cook that has done the cooking daily quests and earned your <Delicious Chocolate Cake> recipe. The cakes sell for 25-35g each and the materials are not hard to gather. I cannot make enough of these to keep any in stock longer than a few hours. <Small Egg> and <Mageroyal> can also be farmed and sold here, although the eggs don't sell as well as during Winter Veil, since only select high level cooks will buy them. The <Flask of Port> can sell also because it can be tricky or time consuming to find and buy off the limited vendors that sell it. <Tasty Cupcake> sells during this week also. The easy money makers here are the desserts required for the Sweet Treats Achievement, which is needed for the Meta-achievement. <Red Velvet Cupcake>, <Dalaran Doughnut>, and <Dalaran Brownie> all can be purchased in Dalaran and sold on the auction house for a huge mark up profit. You wouldn't believe the numbers of people that don't have the expansion yet and can't even get there to buy them themselves. Like always, you want to be one of the first to post these as posting earlier will make you more gold. The same Dessert Vendor in Dalaran also sells the <Lovely Cake> which can be cut into the <Lovely Cake Slice> needed for the achievement. Be careful with these because they are expensive. Only buy what you know you can sell. <Tigule and Furor's Strawberry Ice Cream> is used for not only the achievement, but for one of the orphan quests as well, so although it sells for a lot cheaper, it is a quick mover.
Brewfest
Nothing to make a huge profit here because the meats and beers all can be purchased right at the vendors. The hardest achievement to get is the one where you have to fall 65+ yards while completely smashed. So if you have a Paladin, you can Hand of Protection players for tips, which makes it a ton easier for them. Trust me, they will gladly pay you so they only have to try it once. Best place to jump is in Shat City, and jump off the Scryer Elevator edge down to the ground, missing the walkway. Howling Fjord is another good spot to bubble and jump off the elevator there.
Hallow's Eve
If you have a wand costume that a player is looking for you can wand them for a tip. Not much else here as everything is soulbound.
Midsummer
<Potion of Invisibility> sells here as players try to sneak into the opposing faction's major cities to steal the fire for the achievements.
Non Holiday Items
Engineers can make money selling the following craftable pets as people try to collect all the pets to get their little Deer pet from the achievement reward. <Lifelike Toad>, <Mechanical Squirrel>, and <Tranquil Mechanical Yeti> <Lil' Smoky> & <Pet Bombling> Another big way to make money is buy buying the pets and recipes from your faction vendors that are not available to players of the other faction. You then use the neutral auction houses to transfer the pets and recipes to a character on the opposing faction to sell for huge profits on the other faction's auction houses. You must have a friend make the purchases as you cannot sell items to your other characters, if they are of the opposing faction. So this hassle, keeps lots of players from doing it, so the demand and price is high for those wanting to get the rare pet or that Chef title.
This guide should be a big help in getting you started making a ton of gold the easy way. By buying low and selling for higher, you too can become a gold making machine. With a little practice, you will learn the ropes of this market demand selling and then be able to cross over into the auction house sale of materials, recipes, items, and a plethora of other money making strategies. I like this method because it does not take much gold to get started. Any low level character can go farm <Small Eggs> and get rich to get started. It's all about understanding those spikes in market demand.
Again thank you for your interest, good luck, and happy hunting!
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