How do I make gold in World of Warcraft?
“Buying a calculator will not teach you calculus.” Sapu, Lead Dev, Trade Skill Master
Players have been downloading TSM, cut n pasting groups, strings, and whole profiles.
It is not possible to download an addon that you click to generate gold.
Do not depend on addons.
Addons change from expansion to expansion and patch to patch.
A good gold maker can make gold in any circumstance, in any expansion, with any addons or lack of them.
In order to make gold in any expansion, reverse engineer a sale, starting with what players need, working backwards until you find the cheapest way to provide it.
Get information
- information on your server wowprogress, realmpop
- information on your buyer official warcraft forums
- information on your item/s the undermine journal, wowuction
- information on your self
You can automate with addons later.
Make Gold
Join a gold making course, mine comes by email and is free.
Look at the professional paid-for guides and see if any pique your interest.
Take stock of where you are and what you can do. Can you PVP, can you do dungeons or solo old raids, do you have professions, are you good with pets, are you clever with savings. What are your skills? What are your personal assets? Out of those skills, are there any that you know better than most people? How could you benefit from that?
Identify your weaknesses, and search for very specific guides, example my garrison guide, pets guide,
Consider whether your habits are making you poor. Do you need a daily routine or a reminder to do certain weekly events?
Hang out on twitch livestreams and read recommended websites and ask questions.
Make sure you have the right proportion of spending, investment, saving, and buying.
Take baby steps towards your goal, expecting to make bigger steps when you get in your stride.
Reward yourself for moving forwards.
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 11 garrisons, 17k+ achievements, 1593 days played, and over 32 million gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
Unlimited [Primal Fire] and Unlimited [Adamantite Frame] Swipe
No Farming
Unlimited amounts
No killing
No flying around/routes
Very cheap (0.94% of market value)
You will be swiping these from Dealer Najeeb in Stormspire, Netherstorm, Outland.
Warning: This blog post is image intensive!
But first, what are the items, why would you want them, and for how much would you sell them?
What are Primals and Engineering mats and what are they used for?
Primals are the Outland and The Burning Crusade expansion elemental crafting materials. They are the equivalent to
- Eternals (WOTLK)
- Volatiles (Cata)
- Spirit of Harmony (MoP)
- Sorcerous elements (WoD)
Primal Might
Primal Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Mana can be combined to create a Primal Might by an alchemist. Primal Shadow and Primal Life are not needed.
(Incidentally, the Primal Might receipe is bought from Arrakoa vendor in Shattrath City Outland, which is a limited supply item and costs 8g, sells in the Auction House for 160g. You can also get this pattern in Silvermoon and Exodar capital cities.)
Primal Might transmute has no cooldown and is profitable.
Primal Might is needed/wanted by many professions, including those making and crafting expensive transmog items including
- the famous Dirge dagger
- Hand of Eternity 1h mace
- Dragonmaw 1h mace
- Khorium Champion 2h sword
It’s used by Leatherworkers, Tailors, and Blacksmiths.
Some of the crafted items are Bind on Pickup but once soulbound, in Legion expansion they should become available through the account-wide transmog wardrobe system.
The Primals
Primal Fire is part of the materials for a Khorium Power Core, in turn part of the mats for a Turbo Flying Machine. Also for one of the Stylin’ leatherwork transmog helms.
Primal Air is used in crafting TBC items but is specifically wanted by Enchanters for the still-selling enchants: Cat’s Swiftness, Greater Agility and Superior Agility
My blog post from 2011 on Primal Air farming
Primal Life again used for TBC crafting, but especially for Enchant Weapon – Major Healing which has a unique glow and may increase in demand with the addition of Weapon Enchant Transmogs to the World of Warcraft Legion Transmog Wardrobe. (See also Illusion: Holy Infusion.) Needed for Stylin’ Adventure Hat (see guide on farming Cobra Scales)
Primal Shadow again used for TBC crafting, especially Deathfrost, Soulfrost and Subtlety enchants.
Primal Water helps to make Soulfrost enchant, a subtle enchant with snowflakes. It’s also easy to farm from Throne of Elements Outland, where there are many water elementals.
Primal Earth is the cheapest of the primals, coming from mining. Its many uses include Mercurial Adamantite (used by jewelcrafters), some nice transmog items like Adamantite Breastplate, Stylin’ Jungle Hat, Shadowprowler’s Chestguard (4,000g) and Glove Reinforcements.
Primal Mana can otherwise be gathered best from Mana Wraiths north of Area 52 in Netherstorm Outland
Outland Engineering Parts from Dealer Najeeb
Handful of Fel Iron Bolts used for 10-20 different TBC Engineering crafts.
Elemental Blasting Powder used for the non-epic Flying Machine mount.
Hardened Adamantite Tube used for BoP goggles, epic Gyro-balanced Khorium Destroyer gun, scopes, guns by Engineers.
Adamantite Frame used for the epic Turbo Flying Machine mount. It’s also needed Crashin’ Thrashin’ Robot a 2-3,000g toy.
Sales Tips
Primals
Before posting primals, check the prices of motes or primals, bearing in mind that 10 motes make a primal.
Post for whichever is going to bring you the most gold, 10 motes or 1 single primal.
Sell in stacks of 1, both primals and motes, unless you have over 20-30 motes, in which case sell half as primals and half as motes in uneven stacks.
Check the undermine journal or your trade skill master mouseover tooltips for the current prices.
Engineering parts
Handful of Fel Iron Bolts Buy 60s, sell 15-20g each in stacks of singles.
Elemental Blasting Powder Buy 20s, sell 5-10g each in stacks of singles or tens.
Hardened Adamantite Tube Buy 12g sell 80-100g each in stacks of one.
Adamantite Frame To keep prices high, do not flood the market, post 1-4 max.
How to Swipe it All !
Addons you will need:
- Server Hop or Cross Realm Assist
- Farmit
- Trade Skill Master (TSM)
- My TSM String https://www.tradeskillmaster.com/group-maker/38z74e2m
You can get all the addons you need from my TGQ Addon Suite at Curse http://www.curse.com/addon-packs/wow/the-gold-queen-gold-making-addon
Before swiping, create your swipe list.
It’s like a snatch list but for purchasing from a vendor.
Instructions to Set Up the Swipe List
Open up TSM with /tsm
Go to Groups
under ‘New Group’ write Dealer Najeeb and click Okay. Make sure you have ticked ‘switch to new group after creation’
Under the new group “Dealer Najeeb” go to the Import/Export tab
Find the Import String area
TSM3 Import String: i:23785,i:22575,i:23784,i:22572,i:22573,i:22574,i:22576,i:22577,i:22578,i:23783,i:23781
Paste the Import String in and hit okay
The group should fill up and look like this

Still under the Dealer Najeeb group, go to the Operations tab and scroll down until you get to Vendoring.

Click on “Create New Operation” under Vendoring

Call the new operation “buy_from_Najeeb and click Okay.

TSM will ask you “Would you like to add this new operation to Dealer Najeeb? Choose yes
Set the Restock Quantity to the number you want to buy. In this case (unlike the picture!) you can set the maximum of items you want to buy from him. You want unlimited, so choose 5000. Deselect any “sources to include in restock” because you don’t want to miss out on buying something because you have some in your alt’s bank somewhere!

Now you’re ready to fly to Dealer Najeeb in Stormspire, Netherstorm, Outland.
He’s up in the Stormspire at the back. If you don’t see him at first, then /target Dealer Najeeb right-click his portrait, and put a big raid indicator over his head SKULL
Once you get to Dealer Najeeb, he should show you some of his rare limited supply items

Choose the TSM_Vendoring tab at the bottom of his window.
Make sure that Dealer Najeeb group is highlighted in yellow.

Click ‘Buy Selected Groups’ at the bottom left.

If your Dealer Najeeb looks like this then he has already been cleaned out of goodies

To bypass the need to click TSM_Vendoring, you can have TSM delegate this as the default tab.
Under Options / Module Options / Vendoring /General click the option “Make Vendoring Default Merchant Tab“. You can change this back to normal later if you want to.

Once you have cleared Dealer Najeeb out of his goodies, it’s time to server hop, swapping to another realm and repeating the process
Realm Hopping for Unlimited Dealer Najeebs
You can use either Cross Realm Assist, or Server Hop addons. Bother are included in my Curse Addon Suite just choose the addon you like the best.
http://www.curse.com/addon-packs/wow/the-gold-queen-gold-making-addon
Here I am using Server Hop by simply clicking ‘Next’ to hop from realm to realm.


Buying Rhythm
You will soon build up a rhythm of hop/buy/hop/buy and start to accumulate items. To keep an eye on them, you can either watch your bags or use the Farmit addon
Farm-it addon
Amongst other things, this gives you a moveable, resizeable (shrink/grow) bar. Once you have one of those items in your bag, drag it to the farmit bar, and farmit will keep a note of how many of these you have in your bags.
This farmit bar displays 51 Elemental Blasting Powder, 20 Adamantite Frame, 10 Mote of Fire, 65 Handful of Fel Iron Bolts, 8 Mote of Earth, 7 Mote of Life, 3 Mote of Mana, 15 Mote of Air, 3 Mote of Shadow
What else can you do in Stormspire?
As you enter (if you take the elevator), on the left hand side is the Consortium repuation vendor.
On the right hand side are two interesting and useful NPC vendors.
Dealer Rashaad sells eight different pets, all of which can sold on the Auction House for a decent profit. Remember to be patient with them, they are no longer as rare as they were in The Burning Crusade, and try not to flood the market with more than one of each pet.
If you find your pets are not selling after a month or so, you can try using them yourself, then leveling them to level 25 using the pets leveling guide, and selling for more gold as a level 25 pet. Once again, be prepared to be flexible with your pricing!
Dealer Sadaqat is ofter overlooked but amongst his useless Major Mana and Healing pots, he also has the chance to sell some Outland herbs for cheap.
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 11 garrisons, 17k+ achievements, 1593 days played, and over 32 million gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
Selling Services- How to Make Gold Without Farming
Selling items is not the only way to make gold
“Services” is one of the four ways to make gold.
Tanking or Healing Services
Method One
Direct: Advertise on trade channel, offering to tank for individuals or parties wanting a tank or healer for heroic/mythic dungeons.
Although you can find a tank with the Looking for Group tool, some players prefer the reliability of choosing their own tank, jumping the queues.
Method Two
With “Call to Arms”, players performing the role get a bonus reward.
The Savage Satchel of Cooperation gives approx 500g, 1-2 augment runes and 3-4 Baleful tokens.
You can get Valor for the first heroic of the day (shown here) but after the first, you will still continue to receive Satchel Rewards for every Call to Arms that you answer.
“Call to Arms” is not always available, and it’s tiring to continually check and refresh.
For this, you can use an addon called Satchel Scanner
Satchel Scanner
Satchel Scanner addon scans Group Finder for you, based on your choice/s of roles, and lets you know when a Call to Arms is available.
This addon scans the LFD Frame for Satchels of Exotic Mysteries, if it finds anything you will be notified
If there is a satchel for from Instance X it will notify you with warning that you can get a Satchel of Exotic Mysteries from Instance X for Class Y
There is also a frame showing what instance giving the satchelWhy?
Well if you are like me, only like doing random heroics to get a satchel and cannot be bothered to spam ‘I’ all the time, this addon does it for you!How do I use the addon?
Type: /ss3 toggle or /satchelscan toggle to show the Frame
Press ‘Start’ to start scanning and ‘Stop’ to stop scanning
Pressing X will hide the frame and you will have to show it again by using /ss3 toggle
Note: It will still scan when hidden!
Commands:
/ss3 toggle
/ss3 config
When your Call to Arms pops, you’ll get a loud noise to alert you and the window will let you know which raid or dungeon offers a Satchel.
Boss Lockouts:
You can also sell boss lockouts. Your buyer here is the mount collector. If you have already collected a rare mount and know how to storm through the raid, then you can clear the trash and bosses before the one that drops the wanted mount.
Your buyer will probably be spamming these raids with every character, and the quicker they can get to the boss that drops their loot, the quicker they farm and repeat the process. So players will buy boss lockouts.
Off the top of my head, I can think of Ulduar for Mimiron’s Head, Ice Crown Citadel for Invincible, Alysrazor in Firelands, Ultraxion or Deathwing in Dragon Soul.
Boosts:
When you sell a boost,
You can sell:
- Run through a low level raid for levellers
- Power Leveling services through dungeons
- Boosts through current raids with the help of your guild
- Challenge mode boosts, either single dungeons, or as a set
- Runs that get particular loot, eg Archimode Heroic for Grove Warden Mount
- Boosts through low level raids for twinks, eg BWL or MC boost for level 60 twinks
- PVP boosts through to pvp rewards
Friendship Moose
Note: if you’re looking to BUY a Archimode Heroic for the Grove Warden Mount, you can save a lot of gold by joining us at Friendship Moose
Follow #friendshipmoose on twitter
Other ways to make gold
Back in March 2015 I listed the four basics of making gold.
Services are only one of the ways!
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 11 garrisons, 17k+ achievements, 1593 days played, and over 32 million gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
Farming Cobra Scales in Shadowmoon Valley
Cobra Scales are a very rare leatherworking material found from cobras and snakes in Shadowmoon Valley in Outland.
They’re highly prized for making Stylin’ leather hats for transmogs.
You can make a few thousand in raw materials farming these, or trade them up with your leatherworking skills and craft expensive transmog items for sale.
You will need:
- A skinner
- Flight form in Outland
- Able to quickly kill level 70 in packs
- Preferably also a miner or herbalist
- Preferably a leatherworker alt
- Preferably know how to jump realms with group finder
Head to Shadowmoon Valley by taking the portal to Hellfire Peninsula from your capital city (SW/Org) and flying south to Shadowmoon Valley in Outland.
Where to Get Cobra Scales
NOTE: Cobra Scales are not a drop!
They must be skinned from cobras and snakes that you have already looted. You need to be a skinner to skin the cobras and serpents.
A skinning knife would be useful here unless you like getting cobra blood all over your claws/paws/hoofs/lovely new gauntlets.
Coilscar Cobras
There are 3 pairs of Coilscar Cobras up at Coilscar Point
Inside Coilscar Cave there are 8 pairs
Outside cave there are another 2 pairs.
Shadow Serpents
These are along the north edge of Shadowmoon Valley.
Remember, in Outland, the edge really is an edge, don’t fall off!
Start North West of Altar of Sha’tar, and continue until you reach the edge of Black Temple.
The Shadow Serpents have a purpley mist around them, which makes them easier to spot. Without the mist, they might blend into the grey-green earth.
What else is nearby?
Herbalists: Nightmire vine and Felweed
Drops: Enraged Spirits of Air, drop motes of Air. Primal Air sells for 150g each.
Ore: Fel iron ore and adamantite ore. Khorium ore if you’re lucky.
Coilscar Chests. Don’t waste your time with these they only drop trash. Throw the keys away.
The Full Cobra Scale Farming Route
Part 1
Into the Coilscar Cave, Do a quick route doing the 8 pairs of cobras within.
Part 2
Along the shelf of Shadowmoon Valley, searching for Shadow Serpents.
Part 3
Jump on a new realm with Group Finder tool or Cross Realm Assist addon. Fly back along the shelf of Shadowmoon, retracing your footsteps.
Go back into Coilscar Cave, and repeat
In 45 minutes I picked up
- 8 Cobra Scales 2481g
- 1 Essence of Air 44g
- Sundered Chestpiece (transmog) 60g
- Ironspine Gloves (transmog) 36g
- Abyssal Plate Sabatons (transmog) 1222g
- Clefthood Hidemantle (transmog) 68g
- 1 Mote of Air 8g
- 1 Shadow Draenite 2g
- 3 Khorium Ore 285g
- 6 Mote of Fire 58g
- 9 Fel Iron Ore 38g
- 134 Knothide Leather 197g
- 81 Mote of Earth 55g
- 11 Eternium Ore 72g
- 74 Adamantite Ore 289g
- 28g worth of greys
total worth of raw mats in 45 minutes 4943g.
Getting your Gold from your Cobra Scales
Crafting Stylin Adventure Hat, Crimson Hat, Stylin Jungle hat and Purple hat.
The true value of the Cobra Scales is in using them wisely
Each Stylin’ leather hat can fetch thousands of gold in profit.
You will need to invest a little gold in acquiring the other materials (dye, thread). Primals can be farmed quickly at the Throne of the Elements in Outland (not Draenor), and knothide leather you will pick up naturally while farming and gathering the Cobra Scales needed.
You will also need to invest some time. As an expensive transmog item, do not expect your new hat(s) to sell quickly. Expect them to take weeks, rather than hours.
2 are Mail headpieces, 2 are Leather headpieces.
I picked up 8 Cobra Scales.
That gave me enough to craft 1 of each hat, making a profit of 20,926g after the cost of other other mats.
Good luck with selling them. Try not to flood your Auction House.
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 11 garrisons, 17k+ achievements, 1593 days played, and over 32 million gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
Jadefire Spirit
Drops from Spirit of Jadefire
In the cave on Timeless Isle in Pandaria
Sells for 20-30,000g each at level 1
2% drop chance from Spirit of Jadefire. Increase your luck by increasing the number of realms you visit.
Addons
- Cross Realm Assist *ESSENTIAL
- Rarity
- NPC_scan
You can pick up my addons collection from Curse
Spawn Point
Spirit of Jadefire can spawn in a few locations inside the Cavern of Lost Spirits
The left hand side, in the first room;
and 3 other places at the path down into the cave:
2 on the right, one on the last left bend in the path.
How to do it
Travel to the Timeless Isle and go into the Cavern of the Lost Spirits.
Once inside, scout around briefly for Spirit of Jadefire.
Jump to a new realm using the Cross Realm Assist addon
Check around the for Spirit of Jadefire
Check the minimap also, a skull shows the location of the rare, it it’s alive.
This spot by the fire gives a good view of all 4 locations
Important
Raid Groups
If you are in a raid group when Spirit of Jadefire spawns, and you kill it, you will not be able to loot it!
To get around this, you must
- tag the mob
- leave the group
- finish killing the mob
- loot it quickly
- before you’re returned to your own realm
While you are there
In the cave:
Farm Rock Moss for the Golden Moss trinket. The trinket still works, and you get a sparkly look to your character.
Farm Foreboding Flames for “Ominous Flame” pet
Zaryhm Altogether, a fun daily minigame, awards timeless coins and an achievement
In Timeless Isle:
See timeless isle farming guide
Other drops:
Mote of Harmony
Timeless Coins
Grey items for vendoring
Once you have the pet
Profit on the Auction House by selling the new pets.
This pet is cageable. Learn it, right click it and select cage to trade or sell.
You can earn more gold if you level your pet to level 25 before you cage it.
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 11 garrisons, 17k+ achievements, 1593 days played, and over 32 million gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
“I Need Dis”
When you have a need for an item, or a service.
Whether for fun, for achievement, for raid, for pvp, for RP for goodness knows what.
When you need something in World of Warcraft, watch how you acquire it.
Step outside yourself, and watch objectively.
What sources do you tap in order to get the item?
Try to make it? Try to buy it? Try to bargain with friends to provide it? Trade for it? Research it and find the easiest quickest way?
Learn from the Need
Learn from this.
Because the way that you search for something, is the way that other players search for it.
Every time I hunt for something on the Auction House I take note of
- The spread of prices
- The number available
- The sellers’ names
- The times of day they are available, and when they are cheapest
- The stack sizes – available as single items or in stacks of 10, 20, 200 ?
- How fast they are selling
Then I also check
- Could this item be got another way?
- Research the crafting methods or the farming methods on the interwebs
- Is someone selling in trade?
Here comes the Tweetable!
[bctt tweet=”Watching prices is best practice”]
Not only so that you minimise your expenditure …
But also so that you know the market when it comes the time to SELL
Making use of Needs when its time to sell
I recently got into pet battling.
In order to quickly defeat Squirt in the Garrison Menagerie quest for extra XP, I needed a Weebomination pet.
I watched how I bought it:
- I wanted it quickly (noted!)
- I went straight to the AH, instead of researching (noted!)
- I checked the level 1 Weebomination pets, and the level 25 Weebomination pets (noted!)
- I saw that there were several at level 1 but only a few at level 25 (noted!)
- I was prepared to pay extra to have a level 25 ready to use immediately (noted)
Today in my menagerie quests I won my own Weebomination.
I’m ready to sell him
So I went back to my mental notes
- Quickly
- In AH
- Could sell as 1 or 25
- Level 25 more expensive
- Players ok to pay more
Summary
Today I will be leveling my Weebomination to level 25 and selling it on the AH for just over 2,000g.
Because I watched what I did when I needed something.
Don’t just watch yourself though. Watch your friends. Watch your guild mates. Watch strangers in trade chat and on the AH.
Watch what is needed.
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 11 garrisons, 17k+ achievements, 1593 days played, and over 32 million gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
p.s. People tend to need raid consumables. Start with those.













































