by Ryan Ambrose

Created on: September 11, 2008

Brew Your Way to Gold in WoW

I had a problem with my mage once.

I wanted to buy him an epic flying mount, which wasn't such a small goal. For those of you who've considered it, you know the training cost for riding an epic flying mount is a bit stiff. At the time my mage, Figment, attempted it, it was 5,000 gold worth of stiff, and I couldn't earn money at any real rate. But fortunately, he was an Herbalist and an Alchemist, and that's where my solution began.

Many of the professions in the World of Warcraft can make you money, but if you want to rake in the big gold, be an alchemist. The reason for this is that the brews you create for others to use are consumables, and not just any consumables either. They're buffs-in-a-bottle consumables that aren't just raw materials limited to a profession or two. Anyone meeting a level requirement can use the ones they need, and when they do, they're gone. That's where the Alchemist will be happy to provide more for a competitive rate.

So, how do you use this method to get 5,000 gold? It's not going to happen overnight, but the process is really simple. First, you have to find out which alchemical brews sell and for how much. Flasks in particular tend to sell for good chunks of change, but you have to know how to make them. Furthermore, if you can't farm your own lotus, you'll lose a lot of the profit buying it from the auction house, so if you want to go the Alchemist route, you should absolutely, positively take Herbalism too.

Once you realize what sells, farm the herbs for it. It's not as much of a pain as you think if you already have a flying mount. You fly low until you see an herb, then you drop down, fight off any monsters that happened to get too close, pick the herb, and fly away. Hopefully, the herb will also drop the lotus you need to make the flasks, which happens randomly on occasion.

Once you're done farming, make what you can and save the rest of what you picked for later. Sooner or later, what you've saved will accumulate enough to make potions without farming. When Figment did this, he was making up to 200 gold a day if he could find the lotus he needed for flasks, because most of it was profit. That's because farming with herbalism left only expenses like the posting fees at the auction house, its percentage of his sale, and the cost of the vials he needed. If you have to buy the herbs because you don't have Herbalism, your profits will drop significantly.

When posting on the auction house, first compare pricing with what's already there. You won't be selling much if your competition costs less, because there are no quality considerations in WoW. A potion is a potion, and that's the end of it. Plus, you should include buyouts with all of your auction house postings that reflect or be just slightly lower than those listings around them. People who can afford to buy them in bulk will want them now, and they don't want to wait or risk having their bid pulled out from under them because you didn't put a buyout on your listing.

If you want to rake in the big stacks of gold coins with a profession, stick with consumables. With Alchemy, Herbalism, and some daily repetition, you can brew plenty of such in-demand consumables that, at the higher levels, can help you buy your new gear, your new mount, or anything else you want.

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