Reply With QuoteYou can farm linen right outside Orgrimmar. Can't remember if that's the case with Ironforge (don't believe it is).
Only getting into WoW this month, I managed to remember a few of the tips about the AH and whatnot through old threads, but I don't remember this ever being specifically addressed: What's up with the wild differences in Horde and Alliance economies?
I imagine it could be totally different on every server, maybe there's no real rational other than the varied choices of the players populating it, but on Eonar, I started with a Horde character and have gotten decent, if not amazing, at slowly milking the AH for money. Starting with Linen Cloth, and experimenting and moving up now to Heavy Leather as my main good, I just bid low, and pick the sweet spot on the buyout to resell it so I'm generally making about 50-75% profit. I've dabbled in a few other things, Silk Cloth is unreliable, Iron Bars are hot-hot-hot, but hard to buy because of that, etc, and any advice for profitable fast-moving goods to trade in is welcome, but my issue is my Alliance character.
My friends play Alliance, so I'm trying to get a character caught up to them and figured I'd make some money in the Iron Forge AH the same way I've been doing in Ogrimmar, but it ain't happening. The prices are wildly different to begin with. When I started in Og' AH, I could get Linen for anywhere between 5-15s, then resell at 15s bids/20s buyouts, and always get the buyout price. In IF, most linen listed is somewhere around 25s/60s. The leather situation is reversed, people can't seem to give it away, and no one wants to buy it. On goods in general though, no one seems to be buying anything in IF. Is it just because there are so many more Alliance players? Am I just dealing in the wrong goods and haven't stumbled upon my steady income for the Alliance side yet?
At this rate, I'm just going to keep my Horde guy making the money so I can send it to my Alliance character, the "starting capital" I already sent over to my Alliance character to work the IF AH has already been mostly wasted while my horde guy has already earned back the money he sent over and then some.
You can farm linen right outside Orgrimmar. Can't remember if that's the case with Ironforge (don't believe it is).
Yes, you can farm linen right outside of IF: Either in the Wendigo caves, or in the Quarry. If you're a skinner, the Wendigo caves are fantastic for farming light leather. If you're a miner or herber, the Quarry is the best, as it gives you Rough Stone, Copper Bars, and Earthroot.
For speculative reselling in IF, I typically stick to Copper Bars and Wool Cloth. Both have default opening bids that people can sometimes overlook, and which are low enough to make a good 200-300% profit when you catch it at the right time. If you're lucky with bid timing: Moss Agate, Black/Blue Pearls, Aquamarine, and Oily Blackmouths can be phenomenal markets. Wildvine is a good one as well, but the demand is high, so bidding can be fierce.
Just last night, I turned a 6s/unit purchase of Wildvine into a 50s/unit sale in a matter of 5 minutes.
My guess would be that it's easier/harder to farm different resources on each side, but that's just a hypothesis.
My latest character is total gathering --mining and skinning. I figured that I could make a ton of cash and just buy anything I would have crafted. Or better, even. The top end crafted stuff may be hard to come by and really expensive when I do, but I thought I'd make it easy on myself in the earlier levels. There are always potions galore for sale in the AH so it's not too much trouble to stock up every trip.
While we're on the topic, though, does anyone else think it's really dumb that there aren't auction houses in the other major cities, like Stormwind, Darnassus, Thunder Bluff, or Undercity? New players choosing races with homes there seem to be at a big disadvantage. Especially Night Elves.
They're supposedly adding AHs to all the capitals, at least.
Can you really mail stuff from your Horde character to your Alliance character? I'm amazed that they left something like that in.
last time I tried you can't mail between horde/alliance.
In the beta there were auction houses in every capital and it was fab. The auctioneer in UC was next to the bank. I hope they put this back in soon so I don't have to go to freaking org to buy or sell stuff.
Nope, you can't. You can, however, transfer cash beetween Allaince and Horde pretty readily through the Gadgetzan Auction House.Can you really mail stuff from your Horde character to your Alliance character? I'm amazed that they left something like that in.
To do this, have your "target" character put up something trivial in that AH for an outlandish buyout. Then, your "source" character goes to Gadgetzan and buys it. Now, your "target" character gets the cash.
what a good idea!
Huh. I've never tried that, but I thought I read somewhere that you can't buy/bid an item that was created by another character on the same account. Presumably to keep people from running bids up, just like in real-life auctions.Originally Posted by mystery
Ah, good point. I believe the members of my guild do it through cooperation with members of our Horde sister-guild.Huh. I've never tried that, but I thought I read somewhere that you can't buy/bid an item that was created by another character on the same account. Presumably to keep people from running bids up, just like in real-life auctions.
So, what's the secret?Huh. I've never tried that, but I thought I read somewhere that you can't buy/bid an item that was created by another character on the same account. Presumably to keep people from running bids up, just like in real-life auctions.
Wholly says above, that his Horde guy farms for his All. guy. How?
He's probably either got 2 accounts or uses a middleman to transfer the cash through the Gadgetzan AH.So, what's the secret?
Wholly says above, that his Horde guy farms for his All. guy. How?
Not sure. Wholly said he's "going to" do this, though, so maybe he's only planning on it and hasn't tried. Thus he hasn't run into the ugly reality that he can't do it without intermediaries.
I'm willing to believe that part of the reason is that the Alliance side has more players, is a better fleshed out "market," and therefore has lost the market immaturity and fluctuations that comes with having a smaller base of buyers. In other words, the market is more mature, and meets supply and demand better than the more patchy Horde side.
Not to sound like HRose, but this is somewhat akin to what I predicted should happen (though I was boggled as to why it wasn't happening faster). It simply did not make sense that people were paying tons of money for basic easily gathered commodities.
Just a theory.
I've tried to send money from Alliance to Horde characters, and I've tried to bid on auctions with another character on my account. Neither is permitted. I've been thinking about playing a Horde priest, and I'm bummed I can't shoot him some gold to get started.
I did this with my main, and it has worked pretty well. He's 33rd level now, and I've trained every ability available, bought some nice weapons and gear in the AH, sent about 10g to my daughters' characters, and still have nearly 50g sitting around.
I wish there were more AHs around. The only place the game lags for me is in the damned Commons of IF, since the design of the world drives the entire Alliance server population there. My main character is a Night Elf, and that first run to the AH was ridiculous - from the starting area to Darnassus, then boat to Auberdine, boat to Menethil, then run through the Wetlands, through the pass to Loch Modan, then through Dun Morogh to Iron Forge. I probably got killed twenty times trying to get through at a low level, and I still try to help out low-level Night Elves passing through the area.
I did that same 20-deaths run with my NE when I hit 10. All my friends were playing Humans & Dwarves, so I had to make the trip. :) If it's any consolation, it's a lot easier now. There are tons of 20's keeping the monster population of Wetlands under control. My girlfriend and I ran our NE alts (well, my alt, her main) over at level 17, and we didn't get attacked once.
If you die, can you run as a ghost into another zone and get a rez from the spirit healer at your final destination?
Oh, yeah, the "Gadgetzan Shuffle." You guys pretty much figured it, out, the character that needs the cash goes there and puts up a crazy auction like Stringy Wolf Meat for 15 gold. Then I switch to my alt with all the money, find someone else I trust (guildmates or someone you know in real life are good, though in my case I actually risked it with a stranger and they held up their end of the bargain), give them the money from my alt and they buy the auction, because as you pointed out, different characters on the same account can't bid/buyout their own auctions regardless of side. You lose a chunk of change to the high Gadgetzan cut, but that's the price you pay for being an undercover economic traitor to your country, or whatever. I think when I did it the first time, the buyout price I set up was 10g and the cash I got was something like 8.50g. Still, it works.
Thanks for the other tips on goods to watch for, I'll definitely check it out!
No, ghosts can't change zones. I tried that while doing a lot of sightseeing the first couple weeks.
On a lark I ran a level 1 night elf to Ironforge; died about 5 times. It's amusing seeing the crocolisks and raptors in the Wetlands aggro on you from long range and hunt you down.
I wanted to show up in the Northshire newbie zone with a level one night elf but just the xp bonuses for finding new zones pushed me to level 2.
I play on a fairly low population server, and there are shortages of certain low-level commodities. I think people don't bother gathering certain ones as they move up in level, and not enough new characters are around to support the demand. Copper Ore is the worst, with usually only a few incomplete stacks up for sale. I can manipulate the price higher, and that brings out about ten or twelve stacks at high prices (buyouts at 1g or more, but sales in the 75s range at most). One can make a couple gold by running over to Loch Modan for Copper Ore, but I've gradually quit doing that as I've been able to take on larger monsters with better drops.
There are great differences between the economies of the Horde and the Alliance. For example, silver bar in IF sells for 25s a bar, while it sells for only 7s in Orgrimmar.
The only constant I can find is that coarse stone sells well on all servers and factions.
Does copper ore sell better than copper bars? The latter is the mainstay of my money making. I usually smelt the ore because bars stack in 20 and thus take up half the inventory space. And in the beginning it rapidly increased my mining skill, but obviously not forever. For some reason I never even considered selling just the ore.
Wildvine on the alliance side of my server sells for 1g each. :-)
You can really only price-fix on objects that have low vendor resale prices. Otherwise, you risk losing vast sums of money to the money-sink that is the AH deposit fee.
Why go so far? The Quarry right outside of IF has a ton of pops, and if you're relatively alone, you'll have a hard time mining them all down to nothing (i.e. one of them is _always_ up).One can make a couple gold by running over to Loch Modan for Copper Ore
I've got a level 35 druid (travel form for herbing, biyatch) and I can bank all my crap and run through Dun Morogh with my backpack and 4 runecloth bags -- and by the time I'm tired of the clicking and running, I've got a full inventory of lowbie herbs, rough stone, and copper ore. If I wanted to completely flood the market and drive down prices, I could. In fact, I did it for a while on the Llane server as I was trying to drive out some annoying competition out of the peacebloom/silverleaf markets.
I spend lots of time at the AH buying and selling. My Level 38 Priest has 245 Gold as a result. Here's the way it breaks down:
When you're poor, focus on the cheap goods. Linen Cloth is great, Coarse Stone, Heavy Stone, Moss Agate, Copper Ore, Wool Cloth, Bronze Bar, Tin Bar is pretty good, Jade, Iridescent Pearl, Spider's Silk, Silver Bar. Silver Bar is a GREAT relatively unknown steal.
All of these are nice profit makers. The bigger profit makers have the most bid action, so are the hardest to get at a low price.
The Leather goods have lower margin but can still be bid on. I don't waste the time, though.
At a more intermediate money supply, move into Black Pearl, Dream Dust, Iron Bar, Mithril Bar, Thorium Bar, Truesilver Bar, Heart of Fire, Large Opal, Blue Sapphire, Felcloth, Rugged Armor Kit, Wildvine, Greater Healing Potion and higher, Greater Mana Potion and higher, Swiftness Potion, Elixir of Greater Defense/Intellect/Agility, and 10-14 slot bags.
If you're knowledgeable, you can work the Recipes market. I haven't had much success there... the market is less stable on those goods.
At large money supplies, try Azerothian Diamond, Arcanite Bar, Arcane Crystal, 16 slot bags, and Rare Weapons and Armor. Those can be sorted by Rare and Epic only to make it easy to find the deals. You can find some *GREAT* deals on underpriced Rare Equipment from time to time.
At very large money supplies (which I haven't ever achieved), you can buy and sell Epic Weapons and Armor.
If all you care about is the money and don't enjoy the process of buying and selling, you're better off getting yourself to Level 60 ASAP and farming for Rare and Epic goods and selling those... in the long run its a better money-maker.
I quit smelting because copper bars were consistently bringing lower prices than copper ore. No idea why, but it was running about 25s for 20 bars, but 50s+ for 10 ore.
I go to Loch Modan because I can take the griffon there and it is a shorter run to the mine. The Quarry would also let me do some skinning, so maybe I'll switch to that. I usually just show up at the mine and put my bear on aggressive. He runs around and kills everything while I mine.
Because someone can buy your ore and smelt it themselves to get extra mining skill. All the raw goods sell for more than the finished products in WoW. Unlike the real world, a crafstman's time is valueless (because there are so many craftsmen and so few crafts); it's the possibility to skill up that people will really pay for--even though ultimately high crafting skill doesn't get you anything (because you could buy the crafted stuff on the AH for less than it costs to learn to craft it yourself).
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