On an x3 rates realm a character reaches eighty fast, and the wallet does not speed up along with it. And that is where the unpleasant part shows up: almost every piece of gold advice boils down to "farm mobs for longer". Below are seven sources that work without hours of grinding, and each one comes with an honest note on how much time it eats and how sick of it you will get.
First decide what you need the gold for
Saving up in the abstract is pointless: with no goal you simply stop counting. At 80 the goals usually look like this:
- The bag of Mythic+ keystones from the Stormcaller NPC — 2500 gold. One purchase, permanent, and it is within reach in a few evenings.
- Bringing a fresh eighty up to fighting shape: gems in every socket and enchants in every slot run to one or two thousand.
- Flying: Cold Weather Flying is a thousand, epic flight speed is five thousand.
- Materials for crafted mounts, and the consumables you burn every evening — flask, food, potions, repairs after wipes.
After that the math is easier: 2500 for the bag is a finite task with a clear finish line, not "let me farm a bit more".
The seven methods
- Daily quests. A daily in Northrend pays around 13 gold. A tight circuit of fifteen to twenty quests — Sons of Hodir, the Argent Tournament in Icecrown, the Sholazar Basin factions, the cooking and fishing dailies — comes to two or three hundred gold in a single pass. The bonus is that reputation for your shoulder enchants ticks up in parallel, so you are paying yourself twice.
- Gathering on a route. Not "flying around wherever", but a circuit: Sholazar Basin for Adder's Tongue and Tiger Lily, the Storm Peaks for Lichbloom, Icethorn and Titanium Ore, Icecrown for Saronite. One lap on a flying mount is eight to twelve minutes. The main rule: do not get distracted by mobs, out here they only cost you time.
- Reselling on the auction house. Buying up underpriced stacks and relisting them at a normal price: enchanting dust and essences, gems, cloth. Plus processing arbitrage — sometimes ore is cheaper than the gems prospected out of it, sometimes the other way round, and you have to check both directions. What this needs is not an hour of playtime but starting capital and an eye on prices.
- Crafting services. People pay you not for materials but for access to the recipe: leg armor, Eternal Belt Buckles, gem cuts, enchants. The standard rate is the customer's materials plus a flat fee. Enchants are the most convenient of all: they go onto vellum and sell through the auction house, so you do not have to wait around for a client.
- Clearing old content. Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Zul'Gurub, Ahn'Qiraj — solo or with one other person. Out of there come vendor trash, cloth, blues for disenchanting and old recipes that barely exist on the market. The income is uneven: nothing for a while, then a rare find worth several thousand.
- Selling consumables. Flasks, potions, buff food, scrolls, cut gems, glyphs. The key detail is when you list: demand lives on raid and key nights, not on Tuesday morning. Put your auctions up an hour before those evenings.
- Daily dungeons. A random heroic through the finder: gold off mobs, Frozen Orbs, greens and blues to disenchant, emblems. And on top of that heroic bosses drop Mythic+ keystones, so an evening in dungeons feeds both your wallet and your access to content with loot up to item level 284.
The honest summary
| Source | Time | How predictable the income is | Tedium |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dailies | 40-60 minutes | High, the reward is fixed | Medium |
| Gathering on a route | From ten minutes, splits into chunks | Medium, depends on prices | High |
| Auction house | 15 minutes a day | Low at the start, grows with experience | Low or unbearable, depending on your temperament |
| Crafting services | Minutes | Medium, depends on orders | Low |
| Old content | 30-60 minutes per run | Uneven | Medium, the first runs are interesting |
| Consumables | 10-20 minutes per batch | High on raid days | Low |
| Dungeons | 25-40 minutes | The income is a side effect | Low, this is playing rather than farming |
Combine two entries from different rows — dailies plus gathering along the way between them, for instance — and the evening pays double. Stacking two equally boring activities makes no sense: you will just burn out faster.
Four mistakes that keep gold from sticking around
- Farming out of habit. A route that paid well a month ago may have lost its value. Check against prices at least once a week.
- Listing everything in stacks of twenty. Someone needs one, someone else needs five — break your lots up.
- Selling raw materials without checking the processed version. And the other way round. The difference can be twofold.
- Not counting your own time. Forty lots posted by hand and the auction house cut are an expense too, they just do not show up in your wallet.
