So you’re just starting World of Warcraft, you’ve picked your race and class (gnome rogues ftw!), and you’re at the point where you get to pick two professions. You might say to yourself oooh I’m a rogue so Ill get leatherworking so I can make my own armor! or I’m a warrior so Ill get blacksmithing so I can make my own weapons! OK just stop right there n00b! Lemme tell you a little secret about all those cool crafting professions
So instead, pick two gathering professions. The cool thing about gathering professions is that you start making money right away walk up to a mineral vein or a plant or a dead animal and grab those mats! Its 100% profit! And since you are going to be spending a LOT of time running around doing quests and killing animals it only makes sense to take advantage of gathering professions. Mining and Herbalism are the biggest moneymakers, but since they share the minimap, I usually will pick mining or herbalism and then pick up Skinning.
Also, items with grey text are vendor trash, meaning you sell them to a vendor. ALWAYS pick up the vendor trash at your level every little bit counts. If its WHITE text, that means its used in a profession somehow. Hold onto it and see what its worth on the Auction House. If you can sell it to the vendor for 25s but sell it on the AH for 50syouve just doubled your profit! Don’t laugh at 50s profit either do that 1000 times (which you will do this 1000s of times in this game) that’s 500g!
You should be making more than enough money to pay for new skills, updated armor and weapons, gryphon flights, stupid noncombat pets (hey I love em too!) etc. But keep in mind you are working towards two things when you hit lvl 40:
1. Buying your mount, which is going to cost you 90g
2. Preparing for your first crafting profession, which will take money to level and buy schematics/patterns/recipes/etc.
You cannot enter Phase Two until you have purchased your mount and have like 100g in savings. Trust me on this one 😀
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT PHASE ONE:
Q: Gen, you are a god among gnomes, and handsome to boot. But if you tell everyone to take up gathering, who will buy the materials were gathering?! If there’s no money in crafting, nobody will buy our materials!
A: It actually makes a perfect circle lowbies gather the mats, while highbies buy the mats and make crafted items (well discuss highbie strategy in a bit). These highbies in turn sell their items (for a profit) to other highbies and lowbies who NOW have money to spend (because they’re not wasting all their money trying to level up crafting professions!) It works really well like this.
Q: Gen, you are kind, intelligent, and have abs you could wash clothes on. My character is lvl XX, and I’m a lvl YY Crafting Profession and a lvl ZZ Gathering Profession. And I’m BROKE! Should I drop my crafting profession and take up a second gathering profession?
A: It depends on several things. If you are already close to lvl 40, you might as well keep the crafting profession UNLESS its really low level (like <125 or something) then ya drop it like a bad habit. If you are relatively low level but have a mid-level crafting professions, I would still drop it and take up a second gathering profession. You’ll end up making much more money by the time you’re 40, which is the real goal of this guide.
Q: My materials aren’t selling! The market is flooded with them and I keep getting them returned in the mailbox!
A: Ya that’s going to happen from time to time. Some days you can sell a stack of something for 1g, the next day the entire AH is flooded with stacks selling for 20s. Its what I call the Retard Factor. The best thing you is get a general idea of how much stuff is selling for at that time, price your materials a little bit less that that, and hope for the best. Don’t throw your hands up in despair when someone undercuts you its gonna happen. Just take your unsold mats and put them back on the AH someone will buy them, trust me!
