The First Day, In More Ways Than One

20 Days of Gold Making - Day One

First, I would like to thank Nev of The Auction House Addict for creating this gold blogging meme and inspiring me to get started with my first blog ever.  I have also decided to enter my post as part of  Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival and will most likely continue to participate every month!


Over the course of the next few weeks you will get to know a little about my background as a gold maker through my 20 Days of Gold Making posts. It will most likely take longer than just a few weeks to tackle all 20 posts, but I'd like to stay optimistic on the idea of gold blogging.

The First Day - When did you start gold making & what triggered it?

My first in-game sale wasn't exactly an event that triggered my interest in gold making. However, it did teach me some fundamental rules that I now follow when it comes to making gold. Here's the story:

I had just started playing WoW on a trial account right around the time of The Burning Crusade pre-release event.  I started as a Night Elf Hunter and quickly found myself immersed in this new world called Teldrassil.  At this time I had no knowledge of WoW at all. I actually believed that Teldrassil was the only place in the game.  I read all of my quest info and all of the tooltips on my character abilities before taking a step away from my very first silver question mark.  As I leveled and looted my coppers, I vendored items that I didn't need and equipped any gear that I could that seemed like a good upgrade.  I was sure enjoying seeing my wallet fill with coppers and, after a while, silvers! I quickly came across someone who would teach me Alchemy and one who would teach me Herbalism.  I soon learned these professions and began to level them, not knowing what I had just gotten myself into.  After mindlessly chasing the yellow dots on my mini map, acquiring the herbs needed to level my alchemy, I really felt like I was getting somewhere in the game (boy, was my perspective extremely skewed!).  

Someone posted in general chat about wanting some minor mana potions.  I quickly looked at my list of items that I could craft with alchemy and found that I could make some for this guy.  Being the helpful person that I am, and wanting to make friends in this strange new world, I quickly responded in general chat "I can make those for you".  After some conversation, we met up, I crafted the potions and he opened trade with me.  Upon trying to confirm the trade, I got an error message.  I soon learned that I needed to have a paid account in order to trade with people.  He was offering me 30 silver for these potions that I had made with ease!  I felt that I just HAD to make this sale, so off I went to set up a paid account (he was nice enough to walk me through it).  After a few minutes, I paid my first monthly subscription fee to Blizzard and quickly logged back in to make my first sale!  I was so excited to see that incredible amount of silver sitting in my wallet!

I think the first thing that triggered my gold making was my love for PvP and the need for my first mount which, back then, was 40 gold at level 40.  I had heard about twinking from a friend and decided that I would make my Hunter a level 49 twink.  I made friends with a PvPing Warlock named Nedflanders who also happened to be an enchanter.  I may not have had the best of gear or enchants as a so-called twink, but it was fun.  At that time I only had one way of making gold without leveling. I didn't have any alts except for my level 1 bank toon.  I needed to kill things and sell their drops for gold.  I started with farming in a cave in Arathi Highlands where the mobs were respawning as fast as I could kill them.  I sold off the mageweave cloth and vendored the gray trash drops.  I gave the greens to my warlock friend to disenchant and also sold off the occasional blue world drop that mostly came from the chests that would spawn in that cave.  Gold making was slow until I discovered my first niche market, the Cold Basilisk Eye trinket.  This was back in the day of having to actually post in general or trade chat to find a group to do dungeons with. On a very low pop server it was almost impossible to ever get into a group to do any lower level dungeons.  This trinket was one of the very few available at that level. It's quite possibly the worst trinket in the game, yet I was able to sell them for 5 gold each due player's needs to fill their empty trinket slots.  Two days after this accidental discovery, I had farmed and sold enough of them to finally buy my mount training and my first mount at level 49.

After moving and taking a couple of weeks off from WoW I got back into the game, tired of PvP and ready to level.  I really don't remember how I made the gold for my epic riding mount and the training but it happened at level 60, if I recall correctly.  I ventured into Outlands for my first experience in The Burning Crusade around the time that The Black Temple patch was released.  At that point I had a new goal in the game, kill Illidan.  In the time that I had been away, my guild had merged with another one that just so happened to be a hardcore raiding guild.  I soon leveled my way to 70 and began gearing up and doing my dailies for gold, trying to save up for a flying mount and training and then the epic flying after that.  While the guild raided, I farmed for them, and I farmed too much.  I made flasks and food for the guild to show my support and dedication and sold excess on the auction house. The gold was building up slowly, but I would eventually get there.  I did end up making my debut into the raiding scene, but I never did get to kill Illidan during that expansion. But that's okay, I found my new reason for playing the game, making gold!