Today’s gold making tip is a response to an email I received a couple days ago. Dave has three questions, so they will be answered over the next few days. His first question is:

Hey! I really like this site and I must admit that I have a 375/375 tailorer, 375/375 Enchanter, and a 375/375 Leatherworker that were put to no use, until now. Your site has opened my eyes! I finally see how much I can profit from these three professions. Well anyways, I would like to know if you use all of the professions or some (if so which ones?) everyday to make a large sum of money.

Leatherworking:
- Do you craft all of the armor kits and post them each up at the same time? It seems to me that Jormungar Leg Armor and Nerubian Leg Armor is the most profitable. However, will a majority of these crafted leg armors sell on the first day I post them (say… at least 5)? Which leg armor kit was the one that made you the most profit? I would like to know because I have bought stacks of Borean Leather waiting to be converted to Heavy Borean Leather, but do not know which armor kit to craft with it.

Every server is different. With Armor kits, I recommend start with 1 a day (or 2 day auction if you prefer to spend less time listing auctions). If that sells, add another. I gradually worked my way up to what works for my server.  I list abotu 10 borean kits on a 2 day auction, 10 heavy, and 3 of the other ones I list.  If you get up to 3 and you start to notice 1-2 not being sold regularly, just reduce the amount you list at a time.

One other thing to consider is the day of the week. Weekend sales are about twice as much as weekday. So I tend to list twice as much. I also refrain from listing any auctions Sunday/Monday for two reasons. One, if you list them late on sunday, and pay for a 2 day auctions, you may “lose” a day if server maintainence is long. Second, I like to have a day where I dont have auctions listed. It lets the market even out a bit.  For example, you and another guy pricewar by copper, which may turn in to gold undercutting. If you dont list on a day, when he goes to relist, typically they will list them higher and back where you started. I try to use this day on a day where sales are already slow (Monday).

Today’s tip of the day is for Leatherworkers.

I touched on crafting armor kits for the Auction House in the Gold Guide. But today, I am going to go in greater detail on how to make this profitable.

The biggest sellers right now are Borean Armor Kits, Heavy Borean Armor Kits, Nerubian Leg Armor, Jormungar Leg Armor, Frosthide Leg Armor, and Icescale Leg Armor.  To help know which ones to make profit off of, you need to become familiar with the prices of the mats and the kits themselves. If you do not have a skinner, you can still make profit off buying the leather on the AH, crafting the kit and reselling it.

The first thing you need to do is look up the price of the mats of the kit you are looking to resell, and the price the kit is selling for. If the mats are less than the sell price (my margin is about 5-10g profit min. depending on how much I need to invest), craft 1 of it and list it for sale. Once you become familiar on how quickly it sells you can craft more and list them as well.

When you start to sell them continuously, stock up when you find a good deal on mats. This will help reduce the cost of crafting in the future. However, don’t craft that many in advance. If the kits lose value, it may become more profitable to just resell the mats you purchased.

Below is a list of the 5 best selling kits right now and their mats for a quick reference:

Today’s gold making tip is a response to an email I received a couple days ago. The person wrote:

Hello !

I’m planning to level a second character on the other faction of my server, using a death knight as a banking alt.

And I was thinking, since that death knight can be leveled to 60 without blinking, and Grand Master <Profession> requires lvl 60, I could perhaps use it as a profession mule too.

What would you recommend as the best four-profession combo ? The main I would be leveling from 1-80 would be a rogue.

Thanks in advance,

Aeltyr

This is a very good question. First I will cover the Death Knight aspect. If you have a DK “bank alt” that you can get to level 60 that you do not plan on playing, there is one way you can make fairly good amount of gold. I would recommend Tailoring + enchanting. You are probably thinking WTFBBQ are you talking about?!?! There are 6 main reasons why I say this.

1. Tailoring and Enchanting go very well together. You can level Tailoring at no net loss if you sell the DE mats, or use those mats to level your enchanting.

2. There are also many ways to make gold off crafting tailoring items and DE’ing them for profit. (I DE Brown Linen Robes, Azure Silk Cloaks, White Bandit Masks, and Low level Netherweave items for a 50% profit margin)

3. Tailors can make gold crafting Netherweave Bags, I sell about 100 a week. This also gives you a cheap source to obtain bags for other alts/banks etc. (I will have a article on the numbers of this tomorrow)

4. You can Purchase items off the AH and DE them for profit if you don’t want to craft things.

5. You can take the cloth that you receive from leveling and turn it into something more valuable (enchant mats) and that have no listing fees.

6. You can DE all the greens you get and sell the enchant mats, again enchant mats have no listing fees while greens do.

However if you do not want tailoring as a profession on your alt, you can try inscription. This is a nice way to make gold (through Northrend Darkmoon Faire Cards, crafting glyphs etc).

For leveling, I always recommend Skinning + (Mining or Herbalism). I know some people say to do Mining and Herbalism, but I find it rather annoying to use macros to switch tracking etc. Skinning is easy money that you can get just for killing the mobs you need to xp and you don’t need to go out of your way.

If you want to be a leatherworker at 80, save the leather you skin. This will allow you to not have any upfront costs of leveling the profession. You can do this by having a bank alt with a bunch of bags, or use the mail system to send mails to your alt that you never open. (if in 30 days you haven’t cleared it out, it will be sent back to your main, but make sure you do something with it then or it will disappear when the mail expires)

Choosing between Herbalism and Mining depends on what you want to do when your 80 .

Do you want to be an Alchemist or Inscriptionists? Choose Herbalism. Herbalism also works great if you choose Inscription on your DK and Alchemy later on your main.

Do you want to be a Jewelcrafter, Engineer or Blacksmith? Choose Mining. However, do NOT smelt the ore, I repeat do NOT smelt it!!! Even if you’re going to choose Engineer or Blacksmith. Lower level ore sells for more than bars since it can be used for more professions (all three + someone leveling mining with smelting). Bigger market to sell too also means a quicker sale. If you choose to go Mining or Engineering, I recommend dropping skinning first to pick it up so you have your smelting ability still available to help speed up the process of leveling.

If you want to pick professions based on money making abilities I would choose Jewelcrafting and Leatherworking (assuming you already have tailoring and enchanting). There are several Leatherworking items you can DE, along with selling armor kits. Jewelcrafting is also a goldmine as well. However, with the increasing numbers of Jewelcrafters, you would need to be smart with the market. Save gems for big rush times (ie new seasons, new instances that provide lots of new gear)

If you have any questions your self, feel free to email me at webmaster@wowconomics.com and I will try my best to answer your questions.

Below is a general guide on how to level it. The results on how much you spend (or even gain) leveling will depend on your server prices. The trick is to pay attention more to the process on what I select than the actual item it’s self. If the item in the guide says to make it to say 135 but it’s still green and will make you a profit on your server to DE/sell, keep making them until gray, these are “free” levels when you look at the net cost to you.

I also tend to lean towards DE’ing items than selling them. You will usually recoup more of your cost of leveling the profession to tip a friend to DE all your items than to list the items for sale. The reasoning behind this is Enchant mats have no listing fee. You can re list the item till it sells with no cost to you if it doesn’t and many craftables have a steep listing fee, which cuts into recouping your gold from leveling. Enchant mats also tend to sell quicker. Someone power leveling enchanting will buy about 4-5 stacks of a dust in 1 day, while someone leveling will most likely buy only one item.

General rules when leveling crafting professions:

1. Spending more mats on something that is more desirable or gives a higher DE value will give you a smaller net loss.

2. If you have to sell items, don’t list them all on the same day. List 1-2 items at a time

3. Have an enchanter handy. Either one of your other characters (strongly recommended even if it’s an alt you rarely use) or a friend that you can trust, and just give a tip to DE the items.

4. Look for the smallest net lost, not the cheapest to make. Sometimes it’s the same item, sometimes it’s not.

5. Profits will vary by server. If you have a lot of people DE’ing for profit you won’t make as much back. If you don’t, you will make quite a bit of gold.

6. You may be making things that don’t get you a skill point every level however, you are not “losing” gold if you evaluate the cost, AH value and DE value properly.

The column with mats is the amount of mats needed for one level.

I use curing hides as a method of leveling, if there are no hides available, I give an alternative to that level range.

And now for the Leatherworking guide.

Another method of this leather transmuting is turning Knothide and Borean leather into heavy Knothide and heavy Borean leather. When people need to buy he mats to craft something, they go to the AH and just buy what they need. Most people don’t want to spend the time to find out what is needed to make that heavy Borean leather. This is all depended on your ah and timing.

Armor kits
Armor Kits are an easy way to make gold. You can sell up to 10+ kits a day and all it takes is a little bit of queue time which you can set up to do when your not at your computer. Right now Borean Armor Kits sell for 10g each and only cost around 3g to make if you buy the mats off the ah. Heavy Borean Armor Kits sell for 30g each and cost around 15g to make I sell about 10-20 of each a day.
Other Kits you can sell are

• Nerubian Leg Armor
• Jormungar Leg Armor
• Frosthide Leg Armor
• Icescale Leg Armor

Check you ah for the cost to make these items and their sell price and compare. You don’t need to farm these mats when all of them are sitting in the AH for a price that you can still craft for profit.

Bags
The Mammoth Mining Bag can make some decent profit if you’re honored with the Sons of Hodir. These bags cost 48 Borean leather and sell for a decent amount more than the leather costs on the AH. The Trapper”s Traveling Pack could sell for profit, but probably won’t sell as quickly as the mining bag due to more people farm ore for profit than skin for profit.
Ammo and Quiver bags are another profit making crafted items. If your Honored with The Kalu’ak you can make the Dragonscale Ammo Pouch (20 Icy Dragonscales and 12 Borean leather) and if your Honored with Ebon Blade you can make the Nerubian Reinforced Quiver ( 20 Nerubian Chitins and 12 Borean Leather). These sell for a decent amount over what they cost to make if you purchase the mats on the AH.

Craftables for DE

There are several items you can craft for DE profit. In order to determine what will work on your server you would need to compare the total cost of the item to craft and see if it falls in your acceptable DE value (for more information look at Enchanting)

The main items I use for DE purposes:

• Rugged Leather Pants
• Hillman”s Shoulders
• Nightscape Headband
• Wicked Leather Headband
• Thick Draenic Gloves
• Iceborne Gloves
• Frostscale Belt
• Nerubian Legguards

Leatherworking Excel File – Contains formulas to calculate armor kits and DE values

Patch 3.0.3