Starter Cash: Go make some Squirrels!
The previous starter cash posts have required that you have a high-level toon, at least high enough to solo Stratholme or Scarlet Monastery. This strategy does not. This is something you can do from level 10. It is a short and sweet approach that will give you solid returns that will finance your first mount, skills, and all that sort of thing.
This little guy can make you some money: Mechanical Squirrel. This is a pet made by Engineers. It typically sells for at least 10g, depending on the server and the time of day, day of the week, etc.
The schematic is a world drop that drops off of almost anything at an extremely low drop rate. This means that it is a pretty common schematic to find on the AH. If you make it a priority, I’m sure you’ll see it in short order.
Here’s the plan: let’s pretend that you’re a true nub. You’re new to the game, or you’re re-rolling on a new server, or whatever. The first thing you have to do is make it out of the starting zone, meaning, you have to reach level 10. This is, even for a true nub, is not a tall order.
The next step is to go to a trainer to train mining. After that, keep questing and running around, but do so in order to farm Copper. Copper is going to be how you get your starting nut. Gather a stack or so of copper; smelt some into bars, keep some as ore. Then, sell the ore and bars. Sell them in stacks of 5, or 20, or whatever. Copper Ore can sell for as little as 5g/stack or as much as 20g/stack (on those rare, super-demand days). Nobody wants to farm copper, so there’s constant demand for it.
So, get a little gold, keep farming copper, and keep questing until it’s time for the next step of the plan. What is the next step, you ask? Assuming that you’ve already got the schematic for the squirrel, either via the AH or a drop, the next step is leveling Engineering on this toon! (If you don’t have the schematic, then get it, then level Engineering.)
You don’t need to level Engineering very far at all. In fact, you only need to get to level 75, which is doable at level 10. If you’re a gnome, this is even easier, as gnomes get the ridiculously overpowered racial buff that gives +15 to Engineering.*
(*In fact, if you’re thinking of creating a toon solely for this strategy, make that toon a gnome. Seriously. A gnome rogue engineer/miner will make this very, very easy.)
Training engineering to level 75 is pretty easy. Leveling to 75 requires about 90 copper ore/bars, 25 weak flux, and 40 rough stone. This is peanuts. You can do that in an hour or less, even on a level-appropriate toon (ie: this new toon we’re talking about). Again, if you’re a gnome, it will be even faster and cheaper.
After that, you’re basically set. Malachite can be a little pricey on the AH, but you can also get it cheaply; I’ve noticed wild fluctuations in price. Learn the spec for the squirrel, do a circuit to mine copper, make a few squirrels, put them on the AH, and watch the money roll in. It is as simple as that. Demand stays constant because it is a cheap, accessible pet for new pet collectors… and there are always new pet collectors.
Potential drawbacks? Very few, but one is that engineering is tough to level after Journeyman status. It’s very ore-intensive, and so if you want to go any further than the squirrel it can be a hassle. (It’s not as bad as Blacksmithing, but still…) Another drawback is that, at least in theory, you might be able to make more money with two gathering professions, especially if you’re going all the way to 80. Finally, the last drawback that I can think of is that, while demand is constant, supply can fluctuate. What does that mean? Well, it means that because this is such an easy pet to make, AH undercut battles around this item are common. So if you post too many, or if someone on your server is trying to corner this market, it could be a hassle.
With all that said, this is an easy, reliable way to make money. You probably won’t get gold capped this way, but you will at least make a reliable income. So if you want to make some money, go make some squirrels!
GL! /bow
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Tags: mechanical, Pet, squirrel, starter cash
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May 5th, 2010 at 2:24 am
Hey, it’s one of my secret all-time-Favorited receipt. It sold at 10-30g in my server depends on competition.
On a side note, people leveling Jewel Crafting always had left over Malachite (From prospect) (And drops as well), which keep the Malachite cheap enough. Their supply are kind of random though, so keep your scanner on.
May 5th, 2010 at 3:12 am
Considering how many easy repeatable ways there are to make small cash on the auction house once you have 20-30g in hand, making mechanical squirrels seems an odd idea. Can you really sell more than a couple of these a day at a significant profit over the mats?
I find with low level mats like copper and malachite, you can often do quite well with market manipulation, buying out the cheap stuff when it’s below 10g a stack and reselling for 10-15g a stack. This is commonly safe to do at around 100g bankroll (if you have 90 copper bars to blow leveling engineering, you are almost 1/2 way there) and occasionally you get spots where you can safely turn a profit even with a 20-30g bankroll (only a few low priced stacks on the ah and a big jump available after you buy them).
Another very reliable early money-maker is low level disenchanting. Noobs in the starter zones are constantly putting greens on the ah for much less than de value.
I normally make my first 10g by mining, or getting a loan (I pop in trade saying “new to realm, will repay 10g loan double in a week” and usually get a response within a few minutes).
The next 50-100g is made off buying up low greens (generally 25s or less) and disenchanting 80-90% of them and selling the mats, and reselling the other 10-20% for a big profit (eagle cloth, monkey leather, bear mail, any cloth with spellpower, any weapon below level 10) This also conveniently levels my enchanting to around 60-70 without spending anything on mats.
Once I have around 100g, I start speculating on copper tin and bronze. An often profitable move is the copper + tin –> 2*bronze smelting arbitrage. It’s pretty common for tin and bronze to each go for 15-20g a stack while copper goes for 5-10g a stack. If you have a level 65 miner, you can basically turn your copper into bronze while leveling your mining.
At around this level, you can think about doing eternal–>crystallized fire arb which is evergreen, as well as 1000stack–>100stack of high end bullets and arrows. This last is ethically suspect, as much of the business comes from people who misread the stack size, but it is also evergreen and the high profit margin means there is very little risk.
May 6th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
And you can get to 105 easily from crafting these alone. At 105 skill you can make some Deadly Blunderbuss for profits a well.