Free WoW Gold

This post isn't a secret way of making thousands of free WoW gold. Sorry. But it is some advice on exactly what you need to do to end your WoW poverty.

I was wandering around Nagrand the other day with my level 70 Warlock, picking up a few herbs, killing and skinning the odd mob that got in my way. As I picked each herb, and skinned each mob, I noticed the selling prices of the herbs and hides. The Auctioneer add-on has a great feature that tells me the average selling price in the Auction House of any item. You just hover over the item for up-to-date AH pricing info. Many of the herbs had a selling price over 2 gold. Thick Clefthoof Leather sells for 3 gold a piece. I was literally picking up gold pieces from the ground. Free WoW gold.

So, what's my point?

My point is that the fastest way to make gold is to be a high level. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you do it in the higher level zones. Gather some herbs. Mine. Skin. Kill elementals for motes. You may be struggling as a level 40 looking for 100 gold to get a mount. My advice? Don't sweat it. Go out and level and the gold will come easily. Get to 60+ and it's easy.

Trouble leveling?

No problem, three very excellent guides will get you there in record time. Download Joana's Guide for Horde, Zygor for Alliance and Horde (in-game) or iDemise Leveling Guide (Alliance and Horde) and level to 80 in a few days and have all the gold you need.

Patch 2.4 Release Date

Official release to the live realms of patch 2.4 looks to be Tuesday, March 25th.

The patch file is 251 Mbytes, so if you are on a slow connection, be prepared for a long download.

Blizzard haven't announced this officially but I suspect the only announcement will be when we log in on that day.

Buy WoW Gold?

If you have a higher level character, over 60 say, it's easy to do a spot of grinding, or to use one of the gathering professions to make a decent amount of Warcraft gold.

But what happens if you only have a level 40 character or lower? Yes, you can work the AH for some gold and can easily make 30 or 40 gold for an hour of effort, once you know your way around. If this is enough for your needs, great, but what if you need 1,000 WoW gold to create a BG twink?

Some of the gold sellers are now offering 1,000 WoW gold for less than $50. This means you are effectively working for $1.50 an hour or less.

Would you take a job for $1.50 an hour? Even the crappiest job will pay far more than this.

If you would, or you enjoy the gold making process, then carry on. I don't personally buy gold because I enjoy the process of making my own WoW gold, so the time spent doesn't really matter to me.

If the whole gold-grind thing is boring to you, then you may want to consider buying WoW gold. This is against Blizzard's TOS and could get your account banned. I've never heard of this happening, but there's always a first time. To date, they've just gone after the gold sellers.

The trouble is there are a lot of dodgy sellers out there that will take your money and never deliver the gold. Try chasing some guy in China for your $50. You have to be really careful who you buy from, both from the point of them delivering anything, and in their professionalism in delivering the gold without a GM noticing. A friend, who does buy WoW gold (and has a full set of purple gear on every character), told me that Guy4Game deliver the goods. They have 24 hour English-speaking support and a toll-free US phone number.

Don't tell anybody I told you, ok?

Darkmoon Faire Gold

The Darkmoon Faire is in town and here's a great way to make 40 gold quickly and easily at any level.

Lhara sells Fel Lotus for 4 gold. She only has two at any one time but these will easily sell for 25 gold in the AH. I'm not sure of the reset time on these, so I just check every hour. You can usually buy around 8 a day, giving an easy profit of 160 gold a day.

For even more gold, she will also have Thick Clefthoof Leather and Black Lotus, both of which will sell in the AH for a big profit.

For the best collection of WoW gold making tips for all levels, see Valkors Gold Guide.

Running Shadowfang Keep for Gold

This is a great way for a level 45 and higher levels to make about 150 gold an hour by running a lower level instance.

The Assassin's Blade sells for 500 gold or more on most servers. It's in high demand for twinking level 19 rogues. This dagger can drop off any mob in Shadowfang Keep, but I've had most success with Archmage Arugal, the main boss in Shadowfang Keep. This instance is really intended for a group in their mid 20's. The mobs are 19 to 26 elite.

A level 45 should be able to run this entire instance in 30 to 45 minutes, depending on level, and will come away with packs full of blue and green items on every run. Since the items that drop are intended for high-teen characters, even the greens are in high demand as level 19 twink items. I've seen even average greens looted here sell for 15 or 20 gold.

If you can disenchant, you can DE enchanting materials from the BoP blues. If you have skinning, almost every mob is skinnable for an even higher return.

Rouge or Druid? Sneak in and just kill the boss.

WoW Gold Tricks

First off, let me say that I'm not suggesting that you do this. It's unethical but, in the interests of completeness, I'm describing how some are making their WoW gold.

There are two slightly different ways to do this.

The first is that players are putting items in the Auction House (often enchanting or tradeskill items in high demand such as silk cloth) with a very low bid, maybe a copper of two, and a very high buyout price in the hope that potential buyers will see a bargain and click on the buyout button by mistake. Rather than bidding a copper for a stack of Linen Cloth, they end up paying 99 gold. For example, yesterday I saw Small Radiant Shards, which normally sell for about 7 gold, on bid for 20 silver and on buyout for 99 gold. If a purchaser clicked on the buyout button by mistake they lose 99 gold. If you bid the 20 silver, and nobody else bids, you will find that the auction mysteriously gets canceled a few minutes before the end.

The second slant to this method is to go for the very high demand items that people need in large quantities for profession skilling. Put 3 stacks on for, say 99 silver, and one stack on for 99 gold. The hope is that somebody isn't paying attention and, thinking they need 4 stacks, start to click the buyout buttons. They are doing fine for the first 3 stacks, but then their brain stops checking and - whoops - they just bought a stack of Linen Cloth for 99 gold. This is very easy to do when you need a large quantity - you only check the first couple of items and click away.

As I said, I do not do this and think it unethical, but it's your call.

For the best collection of WoW gold making tips for all levels, see Valkors Gold Guide.

WoW Gold from Enchanting Materials

I spoke recently about making a good amount of gold from Small Radiant Shards, simply buying and selling these in the AH, no enchanting skills needed.

I'm also having a lot of success with two other materials - Greater Eternal Essence and Greater Planar Essence.

Greater Planar Essence sells for about 5 gold on my server but sometimes there's a glut and it can be purchased for 3 gold or less. Other times there's a shortage and it will sell for 7 gold or more. I'd like to point to certain days of the week to buy and sell but there isn't any pattern I can discern.

Greater Eternal Essence sells for an average of 11 gold but, as with the Planar Essence, it can vary from 8 gold to 15 gold.

My technique is simple. I buy the Eternal Essence at less than 9 gold and immediately re-list it at 12 gold. There's no deposit on enchanting materials, so I don't care whether it sells or not! If it doesn't sell, I simply re-list it back in the AH at the same price - 12 gold. Sooner or later (usually sooner) it will sell netting me 3 gold each time. I can typically sell 30 of each a week. An easy 90 gold.

For the Planar Essence, I buy at less than 4 gold and sell at 6 gold. Another easy 60 gold a week.

You will need to some leg-work for this on your server. Check prices for these materials over the course of a week to watch for variations to determine your purchase and sale prices. If you've been using Auctioneer as I recommended, this will have been done for you.

Higher levels can always make money from WoW gold farming, but this method can be done at any level, Horde or Alliance.

For the best collection of WoW gold making tips for all levels, see Valkors Gold Guide.

Easy WoW Gold for Horde

I regularly make 20 or 30 gold a day with a level four Horde priest that I have on one server.

I'd like to share this with you as a way for low-levels to make a few hundred gold to help with equipment purchases and enchants. WoW gold farming isn't an option at low levels, so we have to be a little more creative.

I buy the following items in the Orgrimmar Auction House, and from vendors in the city:

Schematic: Red Firework from Sovik near the engineering trainer. Cost is 18 silver a piece and I buy 2 for each day. This is limited availability, so if he doesn't have one, check back later.

Recipe: Savory Deviate Delight costs 15 gold or so in the AH. Supplies of this (and prices) vary quite a bit. Some days there are a dozen, some days, none. I buy this whenever I can.

Savory Deviate Delight from the AH, This price of this is around 3 gold a stack of 20. I buy 2 stacks for each day. You can also sell the Deviate Fish.

I then take these to the neutral AH in Booty Bay. You can get there via the boat from Rachet. You can either make the journey once a day (it's a long way) or just park an alt there. I then put the items I purchased up for sale in the Booty Bay AH. This is a neutral AH and both Alliance and Horde can use it for buying and selling. You are placing these items for Alliance to buy.

Schematic: Red Firework - sells for 5 gold. I often price mine at 4 gold for a quick sale. After all, it only cost me 18 silver.

Recipe: Savory Deviate Delight sell for 25 to 30 gold.

Savory Deviate Delight sells for 6 gold a stack.

Obviously the amount you sell each day will vary. Weekends are better and I'll sometimes save slow-selling items for listing on Friday evening. You can do this day after day, week after week. An easy 20 gold a day, at level one if you like, without leaving the city.

I've played on a number of different servers, both normal and PvP and I've noticed big differences in the use of the neutral AH. On some servers the neutral AH hardly gets used, on others it's fairly busy. Check the position on your server before you invest any gold in this technique. Watch prices for a couple of days to check that the profit is available on your server. My experience is that the neutral AH is busier, and hence more profitable to use, on PvP servers.

If you have the luxury of having two accounts (private server anybody?), you can transfer items between your Horde and Alliance characters and list them directly in the Alliance AH for quicker sales and more profit.

Farming Cobra Scales

Here's a nice WoW money maker for those in their late 60's or 70 who have skinning as a profession.

Cobra Scales are in high demand at the moment and sell for around 25 gold each. These drop only from Colskar Cobras, a level 68 mob in Shadowmoon Valley.

There are two groups that I farm at 45,30 and 51,27.

The group at 45, 30 are surrounded by other Colskars, but if you go to 43,30, you can jump down almost on top of them. With care they can be pulled singly. Respawn time is about 5 minutes, so you can farm this continuously. I leveled my 66 hunter there for a while and I was collecting about eight an hour which gave me 200 gold an hour. A level 70 should be able to gather at least 12 an hour.

The Colskar Cobras at 51,27 are easier to get to, close to the road, but tend to bring a friend when pulled so make sure you can handle two.

Level 40 WoW Gold

You've just dinged 40 and it's time for your first mount. Then you realize you've only got 3 gold and 5 silver to your name. Getting your new mount is going to cost you up to 100 gold.

Sound familiar?

No problem! Making 100 gold and more in a day isn’t hard at level 40 if you know where to hunt and what to look for.

The Big Iron Fishing Pole is treasured by fisherman who want to go to advanced fishing zones since it gives +20 to fishing. This sells for between 20 and 50 gold. More in the Alliance Auction House, especially on PvP servers where I've seen it at 100g plus. There’s jus one place it can be found - the shellfish traps just off the coast near Shadowprey Village in Desolace. When you open these shellfish traps, you will find either a Big Iron Fishing Pole, some shellfish or spawn a level 34 mob. The drop rate sucks, but you can still find 3 or 4 for a couple of hours work. Horde should keep all the shellfish and then turn five of them in to Jinar’Zillen on the pier in Shadowprey Village for 55 silver. Alliance should obviously keep away from the village unless they want a free trip to the nearest GY. This search is entirely underwater, so take a few breathing potions unless you are a druid or warlock (or a fish).

I hate grinding at the best of times, but if you fancy a spot of mindless killing while you watch TV with the other eye, head for the Elementals camp in the south part of Badlands. These elementals drop Elemental Earth which sells for around two gold each on most servers. A few hours here should net you some experience and enough gold for your mount.

Got Fishing? Head over to the Barrens and fish for Deviate Fish. If you are Alliance on a PvP server, head straight into Wailing Caverns and go into the instance to fish without being ganked. Each Deviate Fish will sell for around 40 silver in the Horde AH and 80 silver in the Alliance AH. You catch a lot of these is a short time so it adds up quickly. If you have cooking skills (and the recipe), you can turn them into Savory Deviate Delight for some extra profits.

How about soloing one of the lower level instances. Remember how much loot dropped in the Stockades? Masses of cloth, silver and a few greens. At level 20 you were sharing these amongst the group, at level 40 it is all yours. You can solo most any of these lower level instances. Deadmines has masses of ore and is a great instance if you can mine as well.

For the best collection of WoW gold making tips for all levels, see Valkors Gold Guide.

WoW Auctioneer Settings - Vendor

These are some of the setting I use with the excellent Auctioneer addon for Warcraft. These are for bottom scanning for items that you can buy in the AH and sell to the nearest vendor for a profit.

These settings will allow you to buyout any item which will make you at least 50 silver profit. You can obviously set this lower - it depends how you value your time running from AH to mailbox to vendor.

If you also wish to bid on items allowing an easy profit, uncheck the box 'Never bid on items'. If you do this, you will need to add a time filter, otherwise you will find yourself tying up a lot of gold for items that are purchased by another player before the auction ends.

This shows a 2 hour setting:

Now click on the bottom scanner play button:

and then the auction scan button:

Auctioneer will now popup a window whenever it finds an item worth buying:

A lot of people don't bother checking the vendor prices of green (or blue) items before they stick them in the AH. Often, certain items are unpopular (like items with spirit or held in the off-hand) and will only sell in the AH for a gold or two. Meanwhile, the nearest vendor opposite the AH will happily buy any quantity for five or six gold. Their loss and our gain.

If any of this isn't clear, leave a comment and I'll record a video of the whole process.

WoW Gold from Auctioneer

Using the free Auctioneer addon properly has made me more World of Warcraft Gold than any other method. You can make literally hundreds of gold per day without ever leaving the city. In spite of this being the best Warcraft money maker, very people seem to be using it. The instructions on the author's site cover the basics of installation and operation but instructions on turning it into a WoW money maker don't seem to be available. There are a few different ways of making WoW money using this free addon so I'm going to cover these in depth in a number of posts over the next few days.

For now, download the addon and install it and I'll start working on the next few posts to show you how to turn this into your own Warcraft money machine.

WoW Gold from Small Radiant Shards

The Small Radiant Shard if required for the very popular Fiery Enchant to weapons. This is still in high demand since it's the only original old-world weapon enchant that isn't nerfed for players over level 60. The shard can be obtained from disenchanting level 36 to 40 items and, even when disenchanting these, it is still a rare drop. On average, you will only get one shard for every 20 disenchants.

Couple a rare item with a high demand and you get high prices and, in this case, a widely fluctuating price. Some days you can buy them for 4 gold each, other days people are offering 10 or 12 gold in the trade channel when the AH runs out.

I buy these when they drop below 6 gold and immediately re-list them for 8 gold or more. Most days these will sell, but even if they don't there's no deposit on enchanting materials, so there's nothing lost. Check the prices on your server over a few days to see the range.

Since the Fiery Enchant needs 4 Small Radiant Shards, list these in the AH in stacks of 4. These will often be purchased, even if there are singles at a lower price, by impatient rich players.

It's an easy 15 or 20 gold or so per day with almost zero work.

Captured Firefly Farming

This is another one of those odd vanity pets that doesn't do much of anything apart from make an irritating buzzing noise. Being rare(ish) the Captured Firefly also sells for a lot of gold. Typically anywhere between 500 and 1500 gold. It's a favorite of the Chinese gold farmers who can be found working this 24 hours a day.

It drops from the level 62 Bogflare Needler in Northern Zangarmarsh along the north side of Serpent Lake. There's a group of four that spawn fairly quickly around 52,33. Easy to round-up if you have AoE.

This mob also drops Unidentified Plant Parts which are used for boosting Cenarion Expedition reputation. These plant parts sell well in the AH in large quantities for around 40 silver each. Although the plant parts drop often, the Captured Firefly will be a rare drop (probably 1 in 500) I'm suggesting that you only farm this if it gives you some experience.

Orb of Deception

If you have a decently equipped level 70, or a slightly lower level who can kite, you might just be able to make 500 gold for a few minutes work.


One of the most sought after items in the game is a trinket The Orb of Deception. This makes you appear to other players as a member of the opposing faction. NPC's see through this so you can't go wandering through Stormwind as a Horde, but it can be fun confusing PC's.

The Orb is a very rare world drop, meaning it could drop anywhere, but it is a consistent drop from just two mobs. One is Skarr the Unbreakable and the other is Mushgog. These level 58 to 60 elites spawn every few hours in the Dire Maul Arena. Since the arena is free-for-all PvP it used to be that you would spend all your time fighting others in the arena making this item very difficult to farm. Since the release of Burning Crusade however, this instance is almost always deserted. But still these elite mobs spawn. The arena is in the center of the commons, not inside the instances. Coords around 43,70. The low 50's mobs all round will leave you alone as long as you don't tread on their toes.

Don't under estimate these elites - they hit hard. They are immune to stun and fear. Bring a friend if you aren't sure.

The Orb will drop about once every 6 or 7 times, not often, but it sells for 500 to 700 gold. Even if the Orb does not drop, both of these mobs drop nice blue items worth 100 gold or so.

Disgusting Oozeling

The Disgusting Oozeling is a very odd-looking pet that actually lowers your defenses when he's around. In spite of this, or maybe because of it, this strange creature is in high demand. In fact, I've seen this sell for 500g on more than one server.

The pet can be found inside an Oozing Bag which drops from a number of different Oozes near Bloodvenom Falls in Felwood amongst other places. The drop rate of the bag isn't high, maybe 1 on 20 Oozes. Even when the bag drops, the pet will only be found in 1 in 50 bags. That's a lot of Oozes. They don't drop much of anything else. A little silver and some grey vendor items.

For these reasons I'm going to suggest you only consider farming this for gold if you have a character in the 50's who would benefit from a bit of grinding experience. They spawn fairly quickly - if you run a circle around the lake at the bottom of the falls, you will have a continuous supply.

If you fancy a change of grinding scenery, this bag also drops from the Living Decay and other Oozes in Eastern and Western Plaguelands. These are slightly higher level (mid-50's) so you can grind these right up to your late 50's.

Apart from the pet, the bags will contain some sort of useful item, often a mana or health potion, or a minor green item with some value.

There used to be a useful bug with this bag in that it would reset the contents whenever it was mailed. All you had to do was mail the bag between alts a few times to get the contents you wanted. Unfortunately this was fixed a few months ago. Around this time the pet went from a selling price of 100 gold to 500 gold.

Limited Availability Recipes

A similar idea to buying manuals from vendors and selling them for a profit in the AH, there are a number of recipes that can make you even more money.

I regularly make a few gold a day from the manuals (see post below) but, sooner or later, somebody else get the same idea and the inevitable competition drives prices down. It can go for days without a single competitor then there will suddenly be three or four. A week passes and they all get bored with the idea and the market is mine alone for a while. Buying and selling recipes is a little harder to implement so generally has less competition.

These recipes can be vendor purchased but only in strictly limited quantities. vendors will usually have only one or maybe two of a particular recipe.

Here are some examples:

Pattern: Enchanter's Cowl You can buy this for 10 silver and sell it for 1 to 1.5 gold in the Auction House. It's sold by either of the tailoring suppliers in Booty Bay. It seem to have a reset time of around 30 minutes which means that once you have purchased the single recipe available, that vendor won't have any for sale for 30 minutes. All of the limited availability items work like this but the reset time varies depending on recipe and vendor.

There are many more recipes and patterns but not all of them are popular and can be hard to sell. Here are some of them that make me a regular profit.

Pattern: Icy Cloak

Recipe: Superior Mana Potion

Plans: Mithril Scale Bracers

Pattern: Gem-Studded Leather Belt

Pattern: Icy Cloak

Gnomish Cloaking Device

Mithril Dragonling

Deadly Scope

All of these can be purchased for a few silver, or a gold or two at most. Check the Thottbot links above for exact locations and prices.

Since these patterns are all limited availability it can be real work traveling from vendor to vendor just to see if they have the recipe, so here’s a much easier technique. Start 3 alts, or login to those you never play anymore, and run them to these vendors. I just ran an alt to Winterspring at level 2, yes, level two, so don't whine that these vendors are in mid-level zones and it's hard. Let me know in a comment if you want a post about getting low-levels to high-level zones.

Every hour or so, log into these alts, already sitting right by the vendor, and grab the recipes. Don’t forget to give the alts some gold for the initial purchases. Some of these vendors are near mailboxes for easy mailing back to your main or mule, or just wait until you have a bunch and use your hearthstone to get back to the city.

There are also a number of Burning Crusade limited-availability recipes that can be sold in the same way. I'll cover these in a separate post later.

Gathering Warcraft Gold

One of the fastest and easiest way of making gold at very low levels is to take up one of the gathering professions - herbalism, skinning or mining.


Mining will make you the most gold by a long way. With this skill you gather ores from nodes in rocky or mountainous areas, and smelt the ores into metal bars. These are in great demand for tradeskills and sell easily in the AH. Even the lowest level ore, copper, will smelt into copper bars which sell for two gold a stack of 20. Since you can get up to 5 ore per node, this is very fast to gather.

Skinning isn't going to make a lot per piece of leather, but there are plenty of killed animals to skin as you level up. Light leather which can be gathered at very low levels and sells for around one gold per stack of 20 on most servers. Not as much as mining, but it's free gold when you really need it.

Herbalism at high skill levels can be well paid, but it's much less rewarding at low levels. The two early herbs, Peacebloom and Silverleaf, sell for almost nothing, if indeed they sell at all. Herbalism is fine if you want to take it to 200+, when it really starts to bring in the gold.

Copper, Tin and Iron sell for a lot more than leather or herbs, but you will need to travel further afield to gather the ore and there is more competition for the nodes. For mining, you can smelt the ores into metal bars and sell them in the AH. Check the prices in the Auction House before you smelt ore to bars, as sometimes the ore can sell for more than the bars. This is because the prospecting skill (which comes with jewelcraft) can be used to prospect valuable gems from the ore. I'm going to cover how to make WoW gold from prospecting in a later post. Once you get to higher levels, you will be gathering Mithril, Thorium and Truesilver which will sell for 20 gold a stack or more.

Personally I usually take up skinning and mining with a new character then move onto other professions at around level 40 once I have my first mount. There's no reason you can't keep gathering until level 70, but I will usually have gathered more gold than I can spend by this level!