Welcome to IdTankThat.com

If you have a 70, farming items for income is quite easy and quite boring. Doing the 25 dailies a day will result in about 250g a day. On our realm, Primal Airs and Primal Fires sell for quite a bit, so, they are heavily farmed. But, you will always find players that will need items from the gathering skills because they have two trade skills. In the end game, you’ll see a lot of PVPers with Engineering, Spellcasters with Tailoring and perhaps Jewelcrafting or Enchanting — each having requirements for materials for their profession that they must buy. Finding those items and selling them on the Auction House can be profitable if you know how.

But, when you start a toon on a new realm, you’re at a disadvantage because you don’t have that higher level toon to finance your alt. When creating my shaman twink on Cho’gall, I used up all 9 toon slots and realized that I really didn’t have a lot of combat experience with my shaman. So, I took a Tauren Shaman I created on another realm and leveled him to 29 so I could run a few battlegrounds as a non-twink, but, could get the feel of the game, set up my bar and learn the basics of combat. While he’s not a twink, it does allow me to learn how a Shaman plays when somewhat undergeared which makes survival alongside twinks a bit difficult at times.

But, at level 29, on a realm where I have no toon financing me, I earned over 150 gold in the 51 hours of playtime that it took for me to level and start playing battlegrounds. The first thing you want to do when you get to any new realm is load a module called Auctioneer and another called LootFilter. I prefer the Auctioneer Classic interface and for Lootfilter, I prefer version 1.93 over the newer one. My 29 has 6 Netherweave bags, 150 gold with minimal effort. You’ll also want something like Cartographer or Gatherer or a module that keeps track of mining/herbing nodes.

Its tough getting started out, but, once you have those two modules, you’re on your way. For Lootfilter, you want to set up the Quality screen so that Grey items are deleted. Set up Loot Caching and tell it that you want 2 slots free. The way LootFilter works is that when your bag is almost full, and you loot something, it’ll get rid of the grey items that are worth the least money — keeping as many of the grey items that can be vendored when you talk with a merchant. When you talk with a vendor NPC, loot filter will automatically open and present you with all of the items in your bags that should be sold and will tell you the value at the bottom. You click Sell Now, Confirm it, and it will automatically empty your bags of the grey items. Granted, at this level, grey items are not worth a lot, but, it saves you time while questing because you don’t have to decide what to get rid of.

Once you hit level 8 or so on your toon, head to a major city and go to the Auction House. By this time, you probably have enough money to buy a silk pack or two. You also can pick trade or gathering skills at level 5, but, until you get to the auction house you probably will want to wait. From the few realms I’ve been on, Mining is by far the easiest and most profitable gathering skill at low levels. You could also get Herbalism, but, it seems like most of the lower level herbs don’t sell as easily or as profitably as bars do. With Mining, Copper Bars, Tin Bars and Bronze Bars sell quite quickly to a number of different professions. Jewelcrafters, Blacksmiths and Engineers all need these as they level their skills. If you are on a realm where people have mains, they will often buy the mats for their alts to level them up — allowing you to make money. As a secondary skill, pick up skinning. Leather sells reasonably well and you’re not going to have to switch your minimap tracking from Find Minerals to Find Herbs while running around. Until you start hitting the 40s on your toon, Herbalism just doesn’t seem to pack the punch for profits. Fadeleaf used to be quite expensive until Rogues didn’t require it as a reagent and you could collect that fairly easily in your low 30s. There will always be a need for Liferoot, Wild Steelbloom and Goldthorn which require you to be in areas where you need to be in the low 30s to survive, but, I still think Mining packs the early punch in terms of easy money.

The reason you want to pick a major city early, is that the Auctioneer Addon can scan the Auction house and gather pricing so that when you mouse over an item, you can see how well it will sell in the tooltip. It’ll tell you how many times it was seen at auction, average pricing, etc. If you skip the scan, you’ll have to do some guesswork at what is worth keeping. While you are there, look for silk packs. On most realms these 10 slot bags are incredibly cheap since tailors have to make a lot of them while they are leveling Tailoring. Remember supply and demand? High supply, low demand means better prices for you. Don’t forget to check the bag vendors in your major city. Sometimes they are actually cheaper than the auction house depending on the day.

So, once you’ve picked mining (or herbalism) and skinning, get that skinning knife and mining pick and make sure that pack is empty. While you quest, you’ll inevitably run across mining or herb nodes that you should take the time to gather. Until you hit level 18 or so, you’re not going to make any actual loops, but, will just gather things as you run across them in your normal questing. You’ve got your bags, you’ve got loot filter configured, so, get questing.

Once you hit level 18 or so, you can more easily defend yourself against the mobs that will likely be around the nodes you’re trying to collect. A loop around your questing area near the mountains will almost always give you 40 or so copper ore, some tin, and if you’re lucky some silver. Make bars and head for the Auction House. For herbalism, your real money maker is [item]2452[/item] at this point. Briarthorn and Swiftthistle are used to make Swiftness Potions and Thistle Tea (for Rogues) which are used quite a bit. Swiftthistle isn’t quite the easiest thing to farm as it doesn’t drop every time you gather Briarthorn or Mageroyal, so, to get a stack of 20, it’ll take a little time.

So, once you have your first full stack of bars or herbs, head to the Auction House. When you talk with the Auctioneer, you’ll be presented with a slightly different interface. Click the ‘Post Auctions’ tab, put your 20 bars in there and hit the UI Refresh Button. UI Refresh will rescan just the items that match what you put in there to find the right price. While its price isn’t always reasonable, you can use it as a guideline and see what the current listings are for that item. Copper and Tin are usually bought in stacks of 20. Silver bars you will want to list individually. Check your pricing, but, Bronze Bars usually sell for a little more than Copper and Tin, but, they don’t seem to sell as quickly. When you post items is as important as the price you choose. Since more people play on weekends, posting an auction on Friday is more likely to get a quicker sale, but, there’s going to be more competition. For me, I usually list Copper and Tin bars at 2g 75s bid, 3g buyout. Tin, depending on your realm, might be able to be priced at 4g 75s bid, 5g buyout. Let Auctioneer do some of that work for you. When pricing an item, it will price it 5% under the average price which means when someone scans the auction house to buy an item, your item will show up first. For now, you want to sell those items and look for the Netherweave Bag. On most realms, you’ll see prices between 6g and 8g for the Netherweave Bag. As soon as you can afford one or two, get them. You’ll save a lot of time without having to head to the bank to drop off items. If you can’t really afford them, create a bank alt to park in a major city next to an auction house and mailbox and just mail the items to the alt. The more time you spend questing and gathering, the more gold you’ll make. The Netherweave bag is the cheapest bag you can get in terms of price per slots. Runecloth, Mageweave and Mooncloth bags are nice since they don’t bind on pickup, you really want as much bag space as possible. I’ve done a few mining loops and come back with over 180 bars, ores, gems and a green or two from a mob that I had to kill to get to the node and it just makes it easier than having to vendor items frequently. Don’t forget that the stone that you get from mining is also valuable to Engineers and Jewelcrafters. While I vendor Rough Stone, I do auction off the rest of the gathered stone. Rough Stone just doesn’t sell well on the realms I’m on.

Now, as you quest and kill mobs, you’ll get some white items. With the addons, as you mouse over them, it’ll tell you what those items are used for. Some of the items are somewhat worthless, but, you need to figure out what sells and what doesn’t. If you quest in Stonetalon mountains, you get a lot of spider ichor, spider legs, spider meat with the occasional [item]3182[/item]. If you are not going to level cooking (and you should as it provides cheap buff food from drops you get), then you’ll want to open up LootFilter by typing /lf in the chat screen, and open up your backpacks. (A mod called onebag makes your backpack a little easier to manage) Click the Name tab, click in the box under ‘Items to Delete’ and doubleclick the item in your backpack that you want to get rid of. Remember, LootFilter will now automatically get rid of these (with confirmation) when you talk with a vendor. Keeping them until then makes a little extra money. When you hit 70, grey drops can easily surpass 20g when doing the dailies and it just makes sense to not have to deal with it. Tradeskill item drops like pearls, spider silk, gems, etc will all get auctioned.

While you are running around questing, you’ll run across green items that are Bind on Equip. This is when you need a good eye to figure out what items are valuable enough to price perfectly. Items for twinks are always in high demand and while you might not easily be able to figure out what those items are, there are some guidelines.

The closer the item is to a battleground’s top level bracket, the more likely it is a BoE item that will fit the need for a twink while they find the right item. In the lower battleground brackets, cloth gear ‘of the Eagle’, mail armor ‘of the bear’ or ‘of power’ or ‘of strength’ will be popular. Paladins will prefer mail ‘of the Eagle’ gear as well. Rogues will prefer leather ‘of the Monkey’ or ‘of Agility’ while other classes might prefer the other items. Its not always that simple, but, you will be able to figure it out quickly as long as one of those other items is on the auction house. You might want to run the Auctioneer scan multiple times during the first week just to make sure it sees enough items to get a general idea. If you run across an item and you aren’t sure, check wowhead.com and read the comments to see what they suggest. If the item is usable by a level 22, and its ‘of the Eagle’, its probably not as valuable as something like the “Elder’s Pants of the Eagle” which require level 29. All is not lost if you didn’t get that twink green item — they will always sell for more than the vendor price on the Auction House as lower level Enchanters need to Disenchant a bunch of items to get the mats to level up.

If you are getting started out, consider First aid. It seems like a somewhat worthless skill at the beginning, but, humanoid mobs drop the mats, and you can raise your first aid while you’re questing and you’ll need a bandage once in a while rather than eating food. If you’re low on health and a mob is running away, using a bandage rather than a potion can sometimes save a corpse walk. Once you’ve leveled First Aid past Wool, Wool sells quite well on the auction house. When you quest, the mobs that drop Wool are in a narrow bracket and you start getting silk when you hit the 20s. Wool sells well because it is rare. If you’re not going to level First Aid, here’s some added cash. During questing, I probably ended up with 4 stacks of wool to vendor prior to 29 even with leveling first aid past silk.

Fishing isn’t really that profitable until you hit the higher levels, but, it is a skill that you should consider. Its incredibly cheap to fish, and, you can raise cooking at the same time. With cooking, some of the mobs drop meat that can be made into buff foods. That buff food can give you an additional +4 or +6 stamina at the low levels, which can keep you alive just a tiny bit longer — making questing a little easier. If you’re Horde, fishing [item]6522[/item] is a decent money maker. While the Cooking recipe is a little rare, the fish still sell fairly well for a stack to the people that can cook them.

As for Leather, Ruined Scraps should be vendored. Unless you know a leatherworker, I’ve not found these to sell very well. Leather on a few of the realms I’ve been on I usually put as 80s bid, 1g buyout and it sells most of the time. Medium Leather is a reagent for Engineering and a few Tailoring recipes and you can usually get 2g out of a stack. Once you start getting Heavy Leather, you start getting into much more profitable Leather. Don’t be put off by the low price of leather — while questing, you will get a lot of it.

Don’t be afraid to have two gathering skills and drop one later on. With the amount of money you can make while leveling up, you can always buy the materials from someone else to level up your tradeskill. Or, pick a complementary skill later on. Mining and Jewelcrafting are good, though, Jewelcrafting is very expensive to level. If you want to solo the lower instances after you hit 70, Enchanting is a pretty good skill. A run of Sunken Temple or Uldaman results in a number of Small Brilliant Shards from the BoP drops. Farming Scarlet Monastery results in a number of twink drops. The other nice thing about enchanting is that listing the mats from Disenchanting costs nothing. So, you list the items, if they don’t sell, it didn’t cost you anything. Most of the time, the DE items sell for more than the green or blue item, so, when you get into the 40s, you might consider taking up Enchanting if you’re going to solo farm instances.

Another feature from Auctioneer is BottomScanner. While I don’t use it much, it allows you to look for items that are priced below where they should be and gives you the option to buy it and then you would relist it at the better price, allowing you to profit on the resale. If you decide to become an Enchanter, you can set it up to look for items that have a good chance to drop Radiant Shards (provided you run Enchantrix along with it) and it’ll search the auction house for the items most likely to buy them that are inexpensive. With Enchantrix, you can easily buy mats at the Auction House, disenchant them, and list the DE mats and make a profit without ever having to leave the city. Now you know why all those people stand around the mailbox Disenchanting items. Even if you don’t farm the rare recipes, being able to DE items and sell those mats is good. When you instance, if noone wants a particular BoP item, you can disenchant it on the spot and they can roll for the results.

If you’re Horde, and you take up mining, you’ll want to do loops of the Barrens. If you picked up Herbalism, the southern part of Silverpine Forest south of the river looping around to Dalaran and almost over to Hillsbrad Foothills, and back around to Shadowfang Keep up past Sepulcher and around again will net you Briarthorn, Mageroyal and Swiftthistle.

For Alliance, Darkshore’s mountains on the edges are where you’ll find the mining. A loop around the outside should give you plenty of copper and tin. For Swiftthistle, Darkshore or Stonetalon Mountains are your best bets. In Stonetalon, you’ll also have the ability for Wild Steelbloom which is quite profitable.

Once you get into the mid 20s, with mining you’ll want to head to Thousand Needles where you will find more Iron, some Gold and the occasional Mithril. Iron on most servers sells for 7-8g a stack and it doesn’t take too long to get a stack or two.

By doing the above, you should be able to easily afford your mount at 30. Even just doing quests, most of my toons were able to buy their mount at 40 and their flying mount at 70 without auctioning off items, and, having had enough money to buy bags, bank slots and the occasional piece of armor along the way.

Don’t buy armor at the auction house every chance you can. While the quest gear isn’t great, the time you spend at any level is not worth spending the cash. My recently leveled hunter had the [item]11859[/item] at level 70 and I had no problem with mobs or farming. That toon got to 70 so quickly that buying anything but ammo and a quiver along the way would have been a waste. In the early 20s, about the only things you can really buy that you don’t get from a drop or quest are a head piece and shoulder pieces. You might try to justify purchasing that blue item for yourself, but, if you’re intent on leveling, that gear might be replaced by quest gear within a few levels.

I’ve seen people talk about buying ‘sets’ for the set bonus. Except for twinking, WoW is all about the end game and everything prior to that is just to get you involved with learning your character, interacting with groups in instances, raids and battlegrounds. I’ve seen so many toons spend time at the Auction House buying the best armor they can get and spending every bit of gold they have only to get a replacement item 3 levels later. Save your money for your mount so you can farm more quickly, quest more quickly, and get to level 70.