Phase 3: Profit !

Author’s Note: When I published this article originally, I mistakenly confused vanilla enchants (Fiery vs.Unholy and others). I also confused the required mats for those enchants (Small Radiant Shards vs. Large Brilliant Shards). For the sake of readability, I’ve edited out the mistakes. However, I’m going to leave the excellent comments pointing out my initial mistake. Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to help me correct my incorrect content.

I was recently listening to Rawrcast. (Episode #63 specifically.) Rawrcast is my favorite raid-oriented podcast, and I think Stomp, Haf, and the rest of the crew are great. (Be careful though, they’re explicit.) As I was listening to their podcast I was shocked to hear someone ask Stompalina and Hafrot (the two hosts of the show), “what [they] do to make gold?”*

That question reminded me that there is a need for posts to help people get started. Consequently, I’m going to write this “Starter Cash” post. It may turn into a consistent segment, it may not… I’m not sure yet. However, this post is aimed at the typical level 80 broke character. If you don’t have maxed professions (or don’t know how to use them) or just need that starting few hundred gold to get going or just don’t feel like grinding dailies… this post is for you. This is a surefire way to get a few hundred gold.

ANWAY, let’s start with cause and effect. Do you see this? Enchant Weapon- Unholy Weapon. How about this? Enchant Weapon- Spellpower. Or, even to a lesser extent, these: Enchant Weapon- Crusader and Enchant Weapon- Lifestealing. These are some of the best enchants that you can put on twink gear and, more importantly, BOA gear for leveling. As the BOA gear is iLevel 0, you can only put old-world enchants on it. The scrolls typically sell for 50-100g on any given server, making this a very profitable niche market.

The common theme for these enchants? Large Brilliant Shards. These are an incredible pain to find, because they only drop from disenchanted vanilla gear. Stop and think about that for a sec: the gear that drops these shards doesn’t drop in Hellfire, where everyone goes at level 58. It doesn’t drop in Bloodfurnace, or Terrokar, or anywhere that people are powerleveling. The gear that can be disenchanted into these shards drops only in what was endgame content in vanilla WoW. (Also, because it’s vanilla, you can’t go from a few small brilliant shards to a large brilliant shard or vice-versa; vanilla just didn’t work that way.)

The target of this market? People leveling alts who don’t mind dropping a few hundred gold on an enchant or two that will be effective for 60-80 levels while they get that alt to endgame. However, because this is so profitable, it means that someone on your server probably already controls some or all of this market. If not, goodluck and godbless- go get this market. If so, then again, goodluck trying to take down the person who has the market already, because chances are that you’ll need it. (If they knew enough to go get this market, they’re probably a fairly serious AH player; and remember, this post is aimed at people who need help getting started.)

Here’s the payoff: What does this mean? It means that you can make money supplying the person who controls the this enchant market on your server by farming Large Brilliant Shards. The best place for an 80 to get those shards? Stratholme. Go to Stratholme. At level 80, you can lay waste to everything. Go with empty bags, and bring your argent tournament kid, a mailbox, a mount with a vendor, or a bot, because you’ll get tons of stuff to vendor. If you’re an enchanter this will work best because you can DE everything, even the BOP boss drops. If not, however, make friends with an enchanter. Keep all the greens and BOE blues, and get them disenchanted. When the small shards drop, sell them for as much as the person controlling your Fiery Enchant market will pay (normally 15g-ish each). In fact, you should get in touch with that person and COD those mats directly; it will save you the AH cut.

The bottom line? Go solo Strath. It’s easy at 80, it’s fast (25-30 mins when you get it down), it’s a cool vanilla instance, it drops the other super-rare enchant mat from vanilla, Righteous Orbs, and you might even get a wicked awesome mount. This will get you starter cash.

GL! /bow

*Just as an aside, I don’t really know why anyone would ask Stomp and Haf how to make gold. They’re always saying that they’re broke. Haf was worried about getting the primordial saronite for Shadow’s Edge a while back; many goldbloggers could buy those mats many times over (see: Markco; Gevlon; Tella; etc.) Stomp and Haf are raiders at heart, and don’t seem to care as much about making making money. My point? Ask that question here! I’ll answer it, I swear! I ask for questions every month! Okay, I’m done. /endrant

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