The 5 Most Enjoyable Ways We Made Gold In Cataclysm

Each player has their own special ways of making gold in World of Warcraft. No two players are the same. No two servers are the same. This means that each of us walks our unique own gold-making path.

Since Mists of Pandaria is coming out in 5 days we thought it would be good to take some time to reflect back over our own gold-making journey through Cataclysm and pick out the top 5 most enjoyable techniques we used to make gold in World of Warcraft.

Head past the jump for our Top 5 most enjoyable gold-making techniques from World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

Motivation

We make gold in World of Warcraft mainly for the enjoyment we get from figuring out the complex systems and puzzles that an ever-changing virtual economy provides. No two days in gold-making are ever exactly the same. The market you experience this week isn't the same as it was last week and won't be the same market you find next week.

That change, that uncertainty is what keeps gold-making fresh for us. No matter what we're doing in gold-making there is always another market to explore, another technique to master, another theory to test. It's the learning process that we enjoy so much.

With that in mind I present our top 5 most enjoyable gold-making techniques of Cataclysm.

It should be noted that this list may not contain the exact markets and/or techniques that made us the most gold (although if we enjoyed a market we likely stayed in it which means it made us good amounts of gold) but rather the markets we had the most fun playing in.

Without further ado, the list.

#5 - Engineering

We've loved Engineering since Vanilla. You can take our Arclight Spanner from us when you pry it from our cold, dead, Dwarven hands. That said, Engineering isn't known in the community as a particularly robust way to make gold. The challenge of making gold from an uncommon profession or tactic it just the type of challenge we enjoy.

We've loved trying to find ways to make gold with engineering. We even dropped mining to pick up enchanting just to try to eek out a bit more gold making Maelstrom Crystals with Engineering.

The big engineering winners for us were Flintlock Woodchuckers, Electrified Ether and Handful of Obsidium Bolts.

If there are items, like the Woodchuckers, that have their patterns locked behind reputations and/or dailies in Mists of Pandaria I'll be the first one in line to learn them.

Further reading: Engineering on Power Word: Gold.

#4 - Pre-Patch Speculation

While I like to say that I'm not a huge speculator gold-wise (I'm really not), I very much enjoy the actual act of speculating on how upcoming changes will effect the in-game economy. Reading patch notes and data mined information from PTR clients, etc. is really tons of fun.

Whether that speculation turns out to be actually useful (as was the recent case with Vicious Items and Theramore's Fall) or end up being a flop (like our stockpile of Inks for Patch 5.0.4) the enjoyment for us is in the thinking. The working things out in our brains.

Taking past experience and applying it to (often very) limited information is some of the most fun I have in gold-making.

While I work hard to never lead our readers down a path that will ultimately blow up in their faces part of speculating about future changes and/or patches involves risk. If it didn't involve risk than it likely wouldn't involve much reward.

The various patches of Mists of Pandaria will likely provide ample opportunities to make gold as the designers tweak markets, fix bugs and patch things. We need to keep our eyes open an strike while the iron is hot.

Further reading: Speculation on Power Word: Gold.

#3 - Transmogrification

Since we first mentioned Transmogrification as a possible gold-making market over a year ago on (August 19, 2011) it has exploded into a cottage industry and one of the only wholly new gold-making markets to come along in years.

From early pioneers to individuals who do little else, transmogrification has certainly left its mark on the gold-making community as a whole and us as an individual. It has been fun to watch transmogrification blossom over the last year.

For us, personally, we tried very very hard to get transmogrification to work on our server. We spent nearly 5 months juggling an inventory numbering over 1000 items. While we had some limited success, we finally had to admit in the end that perhaps our server just wasn't ready.

What we did gain from our time selling transmogrification items was a very efficient system for buying and selling large quantities of items which would come in very handy in our transition to the 77-80 flipping market.

What will transmogrification be like in Mists of Pandaria? There's a good chance the leather transmog market will finally come into its own as Monks enter the game.

Further reading: Mogging on Power Word: Gold.

#2 -  Obsidium Shuffle

The Obsidium Shuffle was our "golden goose" early on in Cataclysm. Back when uncommon gems vendored for 9g each we were happy as a pig in slop to shuffle day and night.

The raw uncommon gems sold so well we didn't even need to process them further. In fact you were likely to lose money if you did as rare gems vendored for less than uncommon.

That all came to a slow halt as Blizzard nerfed the vendor prices. Even with the nerfs we found ways to continue to make gold after the shuffle.

What is really telling is that even today players are still able to make decent gold doing the shuffle. Whether they stop at gems, or take the shuffle all the way to enchanting mats/scrolls, players can't seem to get enough of shuffling.

It will be interesting to see how the ore shuffles turn out in Mists of Pandaria.

Further reading: Shuffling on Power Word: Gold.

#1 - 77-80 Cataclysm Items

First introduced to us by Gimp from Gimps Gold, the 77-80 Cataclysm Item market was one that I had dabbled in after I first heard about it. I had searches and TradeSkillMaster groups set up for it but wasn't really doing much with it.

It wasn't until Blizzard announced the new instant level 80 rewards for Scroll of Resurrection that it clicked in my brain that these items were about to be much more in demand. From that day on I dropped transmog and used my efforts to sell 77-80 Cataclysm items.

It's hard to imagine that I first wrote about selling 77-80 Cataclysm gear to Scroll of Resurrection players back in March of this 2012. Time flies.

I was able to take all the skills and knowledge I had gained trying to sell Transmogrification gear and utilize it to efficiently acquire and sell 77-80 Cataclysm items. Sales took off right away and haven't really slowed down.

Since then I've continued to refine my 77-80 Cataclysm item selling tactics. Whether it is developing ways to efficiently search for items, knowing what items to avoid or experimenting to find just the right price this is by far my favorite market of Cataclysm.

It doesn't hurt that this is also, by far, the market that I've made the most gold with in all of Cataclysm. The fact that I was able to reach over 1.5 million gold before the launch of Mists of Pandaria was only achievable because of my work in the 77-80 Cataclysm market.

I love this market. It has been so good to me. I also look forward to it's Mists of Pandaria counter part: The 83-85 Mists of Pandaria item flipping market.

Further reading: 77-80 on Power Word: Gold.

 Conclusion

With Cataclysm coming to a close I'd have to say that I've thoroughly enjoyed my time making gold in this expansion. Things (almost) never got boring on the gold-making front. Even if I did feel like I was getting into a rut there was always a new gold-making idea to try out. A new technique to experiment with. A new market to explore.

Often on my livestream I'll have people ask me if I raid or PVP. My answer is always the same: Not really. I like to level characters. I like to do 5-man dungeons and I like to make gold. That's how I WoW.

The brilliant thing about World of Warcraft (and by far one of it biggest strengths in my opinion) is that there are lots of different ways to play the game. Some raid. Some PVP. Some level. Some make-gold. The great thing is that all of these are completely valid ways to play World of Warcraft.

In the calm before the Mists of Pandaria storm it's been nice to look back and realize how lucky I was to be able to gain so much enjoyment, so much satisfaction and so much fun from game.

Here's to making gold (and lots of it) in the next expansion. I look forward to sitting at this keyboard in a few years and writing about the most enjoyable ways I made gold in Mists of Pandaria.

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