I am obsessed with making gold. There, I said it. When TBC hit, I had almost 8000g saved up, more than enough for my epic flying mount when I hit 80. That was alot back then! When WotLK hit, I had over 60,000g saved up. So now, who knows how much I could have by next expansion?

Sadly though, I am more or less starting from the ground up, because here was my spending spree:

Paladin leveled 1-80 in March 2009:
500g Epic Mount
6000g Epic Flying
1000g Cold Weather Flying
8000g Kirin Tor Ring and Upgrade
1000g Ice Mammoth from SoH
4200g Nobles Deck
1000g Dual spec
~2000g Gear upgrades/Profession leveling @80
Total: 22,800g

Rogue leveled 70-80 on WotLK release:
600g Bear Mount in Dalaran
20,000g Traveler’s Mammoth
1000g Cold Weather Flying
~4000g Gear upgrades (they were alot more expensive at release than now)
1000g dual spec
8000g Kirin Tor Ring and Upgrade
Total: 34,600g

Total gold spent: 57,400g

WHUGH!

Now, I have caught back up and my total as of today is…let’s just say I am a little more than a 1/3 of the way caught back up. More than adequate padding, but at the inflation rate I am sure we will see, I still have a ways to go.

So how does this ret pally make gold? Well, actually most of my gold is made on my AH toons. I have 3…the Rogue is in the bank DE’ing for profit, the mage is a tailor/DE’er an is providing the Shadowsong Realm with baggage, and my little lvl 7 AH toon is buying and re-selling like there was no tomorrow. On a good day I can bring in about 500g per day across all three, but more often than not it’s only about 100-200g per day.

Here is where my pally makes up the difference. I have 3 main ways of making money on this toon.

1) I am NOT a gatherer for gold on this toon. I mine and blacksmith. I mine everything I see, but I end up crafting gear and DE’ing it for enchanting mats. Example: Horned Cobalt Helm requires 8 cobalt bars and DE’s into 2-5 dust. More gold made on the enchanting mats than the bars. The saronite I use to make gear (usually the level 76 rares) and DE into shards, which have recently jumped in price due to Ulduar bringing a slew of new gear to enchant. So the shards end up bringing in more gold than the saronite (don’t forget no deposit on enchanting mats, wheres ores and bars have hefty deposits).

2) Dailies are actually my main source of income. I hit the Argent Dawn Tournament first, and the KotEB second. All told that’s about 170g in about 45 minutes of dailies. Then I hit the SoH, the fishing and cooking dailies, and a few others that net easy gold, and I can easily pull in 350g/day if I do all the dailies. (13g per daily x 25 + 40g Argent Dawn Tourny loot bags = 365g) All told I can get my 25 dailies done in less than 2 hours if I set myself to getting it done.

3) Finally, running old dungeons is a fantastic way for gold. Right now I am hooked on running Shadow Labs when I can. About 40g in coin droppage from mobs, 30g in vendortrash/boss loot trash, 20g or so from DE’d greens, and 20-30g on Aldor rep items. Total, for about a 30 minute clear I can bring in almsot 120g. That’s about 240g per hour. It’s not ground breaking, but it does provide a nice change of scenery.

Also, soloing old raid bosses like Onyxia (~50g), Hakkar (~30g), and other ZG bosses (~20g/per) is a good, fun way to play old content and make a few coin too!

Of course, I am never on long enough to do everything in a day, and I am only on the game for extended periods of time maybe 3-4 days a week, mostly at night (and half of that is raids). But even without any one super form of gold making, it is trickling in, and I am hoping to keep myself comfortable for some time to come.

Khor