Most of the site is now back, and looking nice and shiny (we think) Click the links below. Levelling guides up in the next 72 hours 

The Warcraft Primer – A great beginners guide to Warcraft

The Gold Primer – A simple gold making guide, to get you started

1-80 Alliance Levelling guide – Yup, it’s back. All factions – all races

1-80 Horde Levelling guide – Well you can’t have one without the other

The Warcraft Advanced Gold Guide – Serialized

1-450 Professions Guide – PDF and on site

Warcraft Race Guide Updated – Worgen and Goblin added WITH VIDEO

Scritty

Death Knight

Death  Knight’s – despite being a melee class, are more or less self healing. The Blood Talent tree has several skills that either use runic powers to heal the Knight, or take stamina directly from the foe. You should be a VERY light user of potions and bandages.  Starting at level 55 is also a huge bonus. Meaning you can immediately set about 2 gathering professions with a real purpose. It’s possible to level Leatherwork and either mining or herbalism side by side up to level 300 in about 5 hours with a Death Knight. That’s a serious ability.

Druid

Effective damage coupled with good healing skills makes this a solid choice for low maintenance in terms of gold .However, it is one of the most complex classes to play given the very different roles a Druid can perform, and the importance of knowing what form to adopt – and when. Different forms also give a speed boost  – always a bonus for leveling and gathering.

Hunter

The long range attacks of the hunter, coupled (in most cases) with a pet to “tank” for them, makes this another low maintenance class if played well. However – they lack healing skills ( In real life every  hunter we know is about the best first aider we know as well – but Blizzard don’t see it that way) If played badly – or if mobs get in too close, a hunter can be overwhelmed pretty quickly. Our advice – play this class well, or not at all.

Mage

Paper thin melee defenses and attacks means this is another class that needs to play “at range” However, some specific perks can be brilliant time and money savers. “Portals” are the fastest way to travel to major centres, and can even bring in money if you ask for a fee to make them. We also love the Mage’s AoE skills – seeing 5 or 6 mobs drop in one go will make you the envy of other players..once you have the skills to do it.

Paladin

The ability to summon your own mount. Well this sounds great,  but given the falling cost of mounts to other players, this perk is losing its comparative value.Still it is worth it. The moderate healing and resurrection skills are also gold savers for you (and other party members) However, if you are thinking of sacrificing yourself (which Paladin’s can do) make sure you get something in return.

Priest

Priests are the main healers. If correctly specced they can out-heal any class. However, they come with very weak melee skills and melee defenses.  Leveling with a “Shadow” heavy spec, then swapping to a “Holy” spec for end game would be wise. The “Discipline” talent tree should be mixed in as appropriate. However, once you are end-game, your’ well honed healing skills will be very welcome . How often do you see the call” Healing required for HC”…all the time, that’s how often.

Rogue

Rogue’s are all bout speed and avoidance, If played well this should reduce the amount of healing and downtime required. If played badly you can get in serious trouble. “Lockpick” is a skill that is often in demand, and can make and save you gold. The ability to escape conflict is also useful, if not the most noble thing to be seen doing.

Shaman

As usual, healing is a very handy ability.  However 2 specific talents are worth mentioning. “Water Walking” can be very handy to get to hard to reach areas for gathering professions, and becoming a “Ghost Wolf” makes travel  40% quicker. (less time wasted – more time making gold)

Warlock

It’s difficult to quantify a Walock’s talents  in terms of Gold making. Warlocks are a pet class, with some healing skills (Healthstones) able to summon party members (handy for groups in end game) and have abilities to drain health from opponents. All useful. If you add all these skills up it becomes a very neat package – Making gold with a bit of everything when the opportunity arises is the way to earn as a Warlock

Racial Perks

Dwarf

Starting with a very obvious perk. Dwarfs can set the mini map focus to “Find Treasure”. Enabling them to see
where loot is. Very handy particularly early game.

Draenei

Gemcutting – Jewelcrafting was introduced in “The Burning Crusade” armor, weans and some other objects are socketed to accept gems. In the later game these slots are vital to keeping your characters main stats as high as possible. A +5 skill in this area will allow you make higher level items than you would otherwise be trained for. Very useful in the endgame ! Another perk is “Gift of the Naaru” a moderate heal that may save your character some gold on potions or bandages over the course of the game

Blood Elves

“Arcane Affinity” increases your enchanting skill by 10 points. Enchants are very valuable end game. Glowing weapons are also very sale-able enchants all the way through. To give a value to this – getting from 440 to 450 enchanting with bought material may well cost you 800 gold. SO that’s how valuable this perk is towards the end of the normal game

Orcs

Orcs do not have an obvious gold making perk. However, they are hardy, and, if played well, will probably use less bandages and potions over time with the “Hardiness” perk. It is also worth considering becoming a “pet” class as these benefit from the pet dealing 5% more damage with the “Command” perk. Leveling more quickly as a result is an indirect way of making gold.

Gnomes

“Engineering Specialization” is not the most obvious gold maker. But this is a substantial perk. 15 points to engineering. Although againg it is not a profession full of items that other people want, there are a few, and a big 15% bonus is enough to make this a race worth considering.

Tauren

Taurens have a big gathering bonus. “Cultivation” raises their herbalism by 15%. Useful through out the game, as in general the higher the herb level – the more it will fetch.

Humans

Despite having a good range of perks, none seem specifically tuned to gold making. However “Diplomacy”  will save you a fair amount of gold when grinding reputation – say for a cross faction mount.

Trolls

Despite not having an obvious gold making perk, “Regeneration” is actually one of the most useful you will find. The extra 10% health regeneration – includes combat time. This will save you a LOT of deaths and bandages and general downtime. Gold saved is gold earned.

Night Elves

“Shadowmeld” is very good for sneaking past foes to get to “hard to get” areas – very useful if you are gathering in an area slightly higher than you should be (also very useful extra for “Rogue” class players.
“Wisp Spirit” gets you back into action quicker after a death. More time in the game should be more gold earned.

Undead

“Cannibalize” regenerates 35% of your total health over 10 seconds, and with a 2 minute cooldown can be used about every second or third fight. Very useful savings on potions and bandages. “Underwater Breathing” can be used to farm gathering nodes from hard to get to areas.

First consider your turnover,

How much money did you decide was your working capital.
Lets assume 100 gold as it makes the sums nice and easy.

If you keep this cash separate (perhaps you put it into your Alliance and Horde guild banks and do not touch it so you can keep tabs on the amount.

Every  week, check your cash. If at the end of week one you have 180 cash then your return on investment is 80% per week. Simple
However, you then need to factor that in the second week your working capital is 180 gold, so to achieve the 80% growth again you need to finish week two with 324 gold.

At first this will just be a case of buying “more” of each item from your existing portfolio. However, soon you will be restricted by the market. You will run out of stock to buy, and your own actions will start to affect the price of the stock – causing it to rise as you increase demand.

After a few weeks you will need to drop some items from your portfolio and take some higher value items to replace them. But to keep the 80% R.O.I you need to make sure these items are as profitable as the original items, and you can “turn them over” as often

Eventually you will “peak” and be buying and selling the top level items. This may well take some time – but it will happen.

So your R.O.I will be based purely on your ability to spot individual bargains. This is where the data you have collected and populated your “material master” with is invaluable. With this you will be able to read the market.
You will then be constrained by something other than your cash….Your storage space.

If you followed our tips you have an Alliance guild,  Horde Guild, decent bags, and all ten toon’s active with bag space available. But if you are going to make tens of thousands of gold, you will still need to use this effectively.

Towards the end of our record attempt, storage space was the one constraint we had. We had two guilds all with maximum guild tabs available.
Between all the members over 160 normal bank “accounts” (16 members with all ten ‘toons each active)
And we still only just had enough.

Measuring inventory costs

We started to measure our turnover in terms of bank slots. So here’s some more maths
Say we have 100 slots (you will have far more – but again 100 is easier)
Single market strategy means holding stock , waiting for the market to rise. However, every day that the stock is held is costing us profit potential. It is preventing us from buying other stock as we would have no-where to store it.

Suppose we spend 10,000g to fill these slots  -  an average of 100g per slot – assuming we decide we want 80% R.O.I per week.

Altogether we have 100,000g (but have no room to put anything else we might want to buy)

To get 80% ROI on our total working capital not just our invested capital per week we need to turn each storage slot over 8 times a week at 100% profit per time. OR accept that we simply cannot invest all our gold.

Each slot needs to generate 800g this week. Almost impossible.

So, every time you buy and store items,  run this calculation through.
What fraction of a week will I need to store this item, and what profit will it offer at the end ?

You are looking for 100g in 1/8th of a week. You are very unlikely to achieve this, but the closer you get (to whatever your desired R.O.I is the better.

This is where you need to be very careful what you buy. Good long term investments have to be very good.

Lower percentage short term investments will bring you more profit – but require a lot of work on your part rushing to and from the auction houses across and possibly across the factions.
A cross market approach will remove most of the storage bottleneck problem, the items will be in transit for minutes, mostly in a characters backpacks. Don’t do cross market trading unless you can make a profit straight away.  Cross market trading is profitable when it is straight to market.

A quick note : Rarely during our record attempt  did we run out of profitable “stock” to buy.

On a full server with literally thousands of level 80 characters it is unlikely to happen. But if it does get tight don’t buy rubbish just to “keep it moving” Impatience will cost you money.