Hello everyone!
I always love reading these, so I decided to now make my own.
Who are you?
I'm a raider in a top 100 guild on a medium population EU realm.
As for how I learned to make gold: Most of my economic understanding I learned from trading in Eve Online. I got my feet wet there and went bonkers completely when I failed economics at university and subsequently had more free time than I could handle. I specialized in trading faction/deadspace items when they still had to be traded on contracts. For those who don't know wtf I'm talking about, it was like trading dozens of heroic and mythic raid BoEs at a time. A lot of ISK (ingame currency) was involved, and unlike market trading you had to lock up half of your capital in buy contracts ("WTB orders"). That was until 2012 or so, when they were finally moved on the open market. While before I didn't have to compete with bots, I now had to, and at that point I decided to call it quits.
I learned a lot there, but most importantly I learned to mess with people.
My trading principles
First off: I enjoy making gold. I know g/h is highest when working IRL. But there is no joy in buying gold.
Recognizing the value of things (and a bit on opportunity cost)Every looted item has value. This is especially true for items that can't be sold, like Bloods. On this subreddit we can often read about goblins having idiots unwitting people craft items for them using blood, but not being paid for the blood. The same goes for raid BoEs. If you're just giving them to friends, you might as well give them the 200k gold they are worth (which nobody does). Of course for me that is once progression is over.
No risk. No fun.I don't take risks. Let's have a word on TSM here -- this might offend some people: It's worthless to me. Regional values compared to my server are at best inaccurate and at worst wrong.
I don't dabble in weekly reset trading, neither do I bother with full resets. I see them going wrong all the time. But that might be because I'm the one to crash them for fun and profit.
Low auction count/high value itemsThis is where my medium pop realm comes into play. Prices are higher overall but sale rate slower in return. That being said, I'd rather end myself than trade on a high pop realm.
If the profit for an auction isn't at least 4 digits, I don't bother. I despise reposting dozens of stacks, even once a day. This doesn't happen on other realms, because margins are lower, but it's my thing here. On average I have less than 10 active auctions.
Simple thingsThis isn't much about economy, but I'll mention it. In the time I play, I try to make gold where possible, no matter what I do. That means my main characters have enchanting and I always try to do WQs that reward gold, OR or epics. I always loot for blood bags and BoEs, which gives vendor trash as a side. Looting adds up.
The good stuff
Sorry for the lack graphs, I'm writing mostly from memory.
Items that made bank
- Bloods. Both types.
- Obliterum
- Order halls
- Raid BoEs
- Professions
The details:
- Bloods.
Those are probably the largest source of gold I had in legion. 7.1 introduced the BoS vendor. While everyone scrambled to convert their useless bloods into gold, nobody realized for a while that there was a blood shoulder enchant. It took weeks for people to realize that the blood enchant was the go-to moneymaker and the gold made from that was ridiculous. Foxflowers and Fjarnskaggl sold for 80-120g on my server, meaning an average blood bag drop was 2500 gold. Mythic world tours for legendary farming also had a nice side of bloods.
BoS being a good source of gold held true even throughout Tomb of Sargeras. Farming portals on the Broken Shore for lengendaries came with a 50 epics a day + the random bloods from DEing.
When a lot of people on this sub fueled their alts with blood missions, I fueled my wallet with blood missions. Each mission was worth ~4000 gold for months. But the WQ burnout got real and now I also use them to fuel my alts (170g per blood is just pretty bad).
For the uninitiated: Right now, crafted legendaries are the absolute bestest, #1 blood dump. The crafting cost for these, depending on the item, is ~10k gold. Selling the legendaries at 80-100k, we're talking about 1300g/BoS in may 2018. Always build the nether disruptor and stockpile the commissions, even if you're not going to craft them. You can craft multiple legendaries in a single reset through M+ whenever you feel like it.
Moving on, Primal Sargerite. Primals have also been a steady source of gold for me. Turns out, Primals have a near 1:1 conversion to Obliterum.. The crafting materials are next to worthless, but you get 2.2 Obliterum per shoulder. - Obliterum.
I have to confess. I was completely oblivious regarding to Obliterum. I only started trading them in the summer of last year. There was nothing secret about them. But for some reason, on my server, nobody dusted enchants. So all over the summer and into the winter I bought enchants, dusted them and resold them as Oblits. Soon I also left out the middle man and crafted and dusted myself (mostly the shards from DEing epics while playing).
Selling only in stacks of 10, I kept prices high and never aggressively undercut. Each sale was anywhere from 4000-10000 gold pure profit. But that's maybe 3 sales a day on average.
Obliterum still goes for ~1000 on my server, Primal Oblits flip flop between 1400-1800. Keeping in mind the recipe I mentioned earlier, I'm essentially selling a Primal for 700-900, all while Empyrium is at 120g/Primal. - Order halls
Not a lot to say here. I was lazy with them. I only had 2 running for the first half of Legion, adding a third this January, two more in february and two more are almost complete now, putting me at 7 order halls. My two mains ran the nethershard missions every now and then, plus most blood missions, and I do every primal sargerite and reputation mission on my 3 horde characters.
Another honorary mention is the Nathrezimfoliant der Manipulation, which sadly has been nerfed long ago. It meant that two reputation token missions yielded a bonus emissary chest on your sub 110 alt, which 100% contains 600-1000 gold and resources. This item shall be a reminder to always keep an eye out for optimizing gold gains. - Raid BoEs
First off, looting them. It's just pure luck, honestly. When Nighthold opened, I looted a +15 ilvl (so mythic quality) cloth belt, which was best in slot for mages. Sold that for 500k. Every few weeks you'll loot one of these on heroic or mythic, translating to 150-400k gold.
Second, relisting. I remember, a week before ToS release I decided to relist most of my realm's BoE market, because the prices were all over. After I bought all the stuff, it hit me: The next tier wasn't going to be +15 Ilvl, it was going to be +30 ilvl. So there I sat with 2 million worth of end of tier heroic BoEs, soon to become LFR equivalents. Luckily, ToS got postponed, netting me decent results for a few weeks of posting.
Third: 101s. Just like Obliterum, these eluded me for a very long time (until I looted one of them), and I came to a market controlled by basically one person. Over time, I managed to snipe good deals here and there, but didn't really dare to touch leech items. Nobody does twinking on my realm. The market "controller" sat on these items for like a year now, he still has them now and probably just realized that TSM values are meaningless on our server.
As a final note. Try to make out which BoEs are good and which are bad. Mail in general is awful, both in price and sale rate. Certain stats can mean an item is BiS (like cloth gloves for shadow in ToS), so these can catch a good penny and sell fast. - Professions
Not a lot more to add here, since I already mentioned Obliterum dusting and legendaries. Gathering has been decent gold when flying was introduced. Crafting potions wasn't too bad. Enchanting is still the best profession. Well, disenchanting it should be called.
The numbers for JC never really added up for me. Like I said before, I hate posting lots of items.
Right now, crowns are pretty good RoI. I also am like one of two people on this realm with the Seat priest glyph, which I've been selling once or twice a week for 30k gold without competition.
Conclusion
Sorry I can't give hard numbers for everything. But that's about 20 million gold made in one and a half years. Excluded is gold from selling raids in the past 9 months that I've been in my guild (we have an exceptional team who manage this), which would add another ~6 million.It allows me to not only pay for my sub and my other blizzard purchases (including occasional gifts to friends), but also for stupidly expensive things like battle pets.
And of course the
Zügel des mächtigen Karawanenbrutosaurus.
I hope this whole post can be of insight for at least some people trying to make a living. No clue what kind of questions one could have, but I'm happy to answer questions.
TL;DR: Get gold. Duplicate.
