Gold is an incredibly valuable commodity in World of Warcraft, allowing you to purchase gear, mounts, crafting materials, and more. However, brand-new players often find themselves struggling to collect gold in the early stages of the game.
Not to worry! You don’t need to be a seasoned WoW veteran to start building up your gold reserves. Follow these tips to make gold quickly and easily even as a fresh new player:
Choose the Right Professions
Your Profession choices will directly contribute to early gold earnings, so select wisely! Gathering professions like Skinning, Mining, and Herbalism are perfect for new players, providing raw materials you can sell at the auction house for immediate income. Pair these with a crafting profession like blacksmithing or Alchemy to further maximize profits down the road.
Remember you’re not permanently locked into your initial profession selections. You can always drop one profession later and learn new ones if desired. Druids, hunters, and shamans make ideal gathering classes thanks to increased movement speed in their animal forms. Don’t worry about power-leveling a crafting profession early on. Focus solely on efficient gathering first for guaranteed gold revenue.
Complete All Starting Zone Quests
Thoroughly completing all the quests in your starting 1-10 leveling zone rewards good chunks of gold to get you going. Plus you’ll receive lots of vendor trash gear from quest rewards to sell off for even more gold. Make sure to loot all containers, mobs, and resource nodes along the way for valuable early materials and drops.
You can return to your starting zone at any time to mop up any missed quests or unfinished objectives. Make thoroughly completing every single possible quest here a top priority for that sweet early gold payoff.
Sell Absolutely Everything at the Auction House
New WoW players often make the mistake of vendoring everything they don’t need themselves from quests, dungeons and gathering. Vendoring nets you mere coppers – the real wealth lies at the auction house. All gear, materials, recipes, etc. can potentially be sold to other players for way more.
Download Addons like Auctionator or Auctioneer to quickly appraise prices and smoothly post your own auctions. Remember to check both factions’ auctions to maximize your profit margins. Items that may seem mundane or useless to you can fetch unexpectedly higher prices from completionist buyers. Auction is absolutely everything possible in your first few weeks of playing.
Run Early Dungeons For Gear and Rare Drops
Running early dungeons through the group finder nets you lots of vendor trash gear, crafting materials, and some uncommon/rare transmog item drops perfectly suited for the auction house. Make sure to set your loot preferences to “Need Before Greed” so you have first priority on rare drops to sell.
Also, remember to deconstruct any gear pieces you obtain but can’t equip at the scrap-o-mat for more crafting materials to auction off. If you get any really good dungeon gear drops, don’t hastily equip them either. Check auction house listing prices first – they may sell for way more than you’d expect.
Seek Out Hidden Treasure Chests
While questing, keep an eye out for the dozens of hidden treasure chests sprinkled throughout each zone. These chests spawn randomly in set locations and contain valuable loot like gold, crafting materials, cosmetic items, and sometimes extremely rare transmogs. Install the HandyNotes Addon to mark all chests clearly on your main map.
Make opening every treasure chest you come across a priority. Prioritize looting chests found in higher level zones first whenever possible, as those contain the most valuable loot. Treasure hunting is enjoyable and serves as a steady early gold income source. Remember to loot EVERY container you see, even nondescript ones often hold profitable grey items or recipes.
Mine and Herb Constantly While Questing
If you wisely chose the Mining and Herbalism professions, make sure to farm mineral veins, herbs, and fishing nodes on your questing routes. Outland and Northrend zones are particularly rich in highly profitable ores and herbs. These crafting materials nearly always sell extremely well on the auction house, even in lower tiers. Don’t just run right by them – take time to gather everything.
Pro tip: You can force new mining and herbalism nodes to spawn by completely clearing out all current nodes in a zone, then briefly changing to a different zone before returning. When you come back, new nodes will have respawned for additional farming! This works great in dense farming areas like Terokkar Forest.
Sell All Raw Materials First
As a new player, you may be tempted to hold onto your gathering materials to later level up a crafting profession instead. Don’t give in! Selling raw ores, herbs, fish, and other materials is far more profitable in your first few weeks. You’ll have plenty of time to level crafting professions later on. Early on, you need to prioritize generating raw gold income.
Post all your raw cloth, ores, herbs, leather, meat etc. in large stacks on the auction house when starting out. Resist the urge to waste time crafting basic items just to disenchant them for mats either – sell the raw materials instead for now. Building up your initial liquid gold reserves must take priority over professions.
Once you’ve built up your initial gold reserves from gathering and selling raw materials, consider investing some funds into power-leveling a crafting profession like Alchemy or blacksmithing. For tips on efficiently leveling crafting skills for profit, check out this guide on maximizing gold with casual WoW play.
Unlock All Major City Dailies at Level 20
Upon reaching level 20, make sure to visit all the major cities in Azeroth, Outland, and Northrend to unlock their unique daily quest hubs. These repeatable quests offer hefty gold rewards each day for a relatively minimal time investment. Prioritize dailies related to lucrative professions like Cooking, Fishing, and Pet Battling.
At a minimum, try to complete at least one full daily quest circuit per play session for reliable recurring income. Watch for dailies that also provide you with item rewards like clothes, recipes, pets, or crafting materials to sell. If time permits, hit multiple cities in one session to complete as many reward-rich dailies as possible. They are a new player’s best friend.
Flip Easy Items For Profit on The Auction House
Once your initial gold reserves start growing, try your hand at some safe auction house item flipping for profits. Search for easily farmed trade goods and materials that are occasionally posted cheaply by impatient sellers looking for quick sales. Buy them out and then relist the items in bigger stacks at higher prices.
Start conservatively with lower-cost items to limit financial risk. Focus on high-volume materials and goods with guaranteed sale potential. Undercut current market prices by just a few gold to ensure your auctions sell quickly. Farmable consumables and trade materials are perfect beginner flipping targets. Be patient, as big profits come through steady relisting over time as inventory sells out.
Pet Battles Are Surprisingly Lucrative
Pet battling offers an unexpectedly lucrative gold revenue stream perfectly suited for new players. Capture wild battle pets, defeat NPC pet master trainers, and complete achievements to obtain tradable pets. With some effort, you can sell high-demand pets for thousands of gold at the auction house.
Get the Rematch Addon to simplify team setup, queueing, and leveling battle pets. Only level pets to Rare (blue) quality before selling to maximize profitability. Check current auction prices frequently to determine which pets are most in demand. Pet battling is incredibly time-efficient for generating new player earnings.
Monitor World Drops and Events For Spikes
Keep an eye on price trends for rare world drop items that temporarily spike in value due to gameplay events or changes. For example, new Darkmoon Faire card decks being released causes their Ace materials like herbs and ores to trend sharply upward.
The Bottom Line
In summary, brand-new WoW players have numerous options to start building a healthy gold income through the auction house, daily quests, gatherings, dungeons, and more. Avoid vendoring everything, and don’t worry about power-leveling crafting just yet either. Focus on efficiently generating liquid gold through selling raw materials and opportunistic world drops. Diversify your efforts across multiple gathering methods, content types, and the auction house for steady earnings on your journey to wealth.