Blacksmithing

I've been leveling Mal's blacksmithing at a breakneck pace, without buying off the AH. I started yesterday and bought a few stacks of mithril. Since then, I have gone through Thorium, Fel Iron and Adamantite. I have the Cobalt and I need only 399 more saronite to hit 445.

Anyways, its a difficult profession to get started in because of the immense amount of materials you need for some of the earlier recipes. Additionally, early recipes often involve 'foreign materials' like cloth, leather or gems, that your everyday BS can't get.

I've been using wow-professions guide to help me through it (thats how I know what I need). They give you the 'cheapest' route. That means, the least number of materials. They do not assume that you are leveling mining along side so they consider the AH prices. This is nice because with multiple profession at or near max, well, its just nice.

Anyways, it said I needed 441 saronite bars to get to 445. So I went out and gathered 459 ore (I grabbed some extra on my way to dal). Then I realized that I need 2 ore per bar. So, you know what I'm doing tonight. Gotta mine em all...

On Thorium

I needed to get Thorium for Malkhelms BS. So I went to that pit place like Sholazar Basin (bad memory here guys). Anyways, I went via Caverns of Time, which is a nice place from the outside.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Compilation Guide!

So I'm pretty much done with Greedy Gronko for now. In the future, expect to see my economy posts under this header.

Anyways, without further ado, the list of Greedy Gronko posts for your perusal:

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: The Basics

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Begging

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Mob Killin

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Dungeoning

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Questing

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Alchemy

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Blacksmithing

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Enchanting

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Engineering

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Inscription

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Jewelcrafting

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Leatherworking

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Tailoring

And there you have all of my GGGGGs.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Tailoring

If I remember correctly this is the last of the non-gathering, non-secondary professions.

So- as a Tailor, you, again, have few options as most of what you can make is BoP, one time purchase.

However, you do have an advantage of BS and LW in that anyone can wear what you sell so the RPers will be more likely to buy from you. Tailors by far make the best RP wear. Especially their capes and shirts.

Then there is the 'Craft to DE method". WoW.com recently posted this article, covering the subject matter- look there if you're interested in that.

Finally, tailors can make bags. Bags, bags, bags.

Everyone loves bags. Most people who have a toon above 60 can afford to outfit their alts with four netherweave bags, made from twenty netherweave and sell for about 10g.

You can make frostweave bags, 60 frostweave plus 12 infinite dust and sell those for 40-60g.

Finally there are the glacial bags which are monstrously difficult to find the mats and can sell for 400-600g.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Leatherworking

Yet another profession of which I have not maxed. I promise you, after the tailoring guide, I'll go back to writing random stuff that none of you will ever read. But sometimes random stuff is good.

Right- so today we are gonna cover leatherworking.

Leatherworking is fairly limited, like blacksmithing and tailoring because it creates wearable items- and once you get one of an item, you don't need another.

So, of course, you can create entry level epics and twink items and sell them for a profit.

Also, for twinks, the lower level armor kits can be slid onto their armor making them even more annoying.

At 80, you have a few routes- of course you can create leg patches, which I thank you for as I don't have any LW to make some for me.

The other primary option- released in 3.3.2 is drums. The drums you can make at 450 are wonderful profit makers. Even buying mats off the AH you can spend 50g (approx) to make 100g per drum. Since drums are used very often, you should generate some decent cash.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Jewelcrafting

Today is a happy day. Jewelcrafting is actually one of two professions that I have at max skill, so I would like to consider that I know something about it.

However, there isn't much that I can say about the profession. Similar to inscription, jewelcrafting has one purpose. Crafting jewels. If you're not doing that, you're doing it wrong- or you are below skill 300.

At lower levels JC's can make some fairly nice items for twinks and pseudo-twinks. Once you finally get past 300, the real money starts pouring in.

For a while you can make a load of green gems fairly cheaply and sell them- but not for much profit. You begin to profit when you hit the current tier of gems- so (as of this writing) the Northrend gems.

As a note- for the rest of this piece, unless otherwise noted, the gem color denotes the rarity, not the color.

You can easily but a stack of green gems for abou 15-20g, cut all of them and sell them for about 1-3g each, depending on the cut. Stamina gems are more likely to sell, and for higher prices, as are spell power and hit gems.

Blue gems follow the same pattern, but cost 10-30g each but can be sold for 20-70g depending on the cut and the color of the gem. Red gems usually are the most expensive because of their apparent rarity.

When you get to epic gems, you can make a lot more money for each cut, but it is riskier as the initial investment is several times greater. Uncut epics cost at least 100g and sometime go as far up as 200g.

Your first goal should be to learn the best epic and rare cuts for yourself. For PvE those would be the Stamina, Spell Power, Int, Haste, Strength and ArP. Other stats, such as Hit and Defense are very important, but most people in full t9 don't need any additional Hit or Def, as their gear already gives it to them.

For PvP look for Stamina, Resilience and perhaps Spell Pen.

After you have gemmed yourself you can begin to look into buying large numbers of lower quality gems, cutting them and selling them.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Inscription

Again, like most professions, I don't have a high level inscriptionist, so I don't know all of the possible options.

You do however, have a few ways of making the Gs come pouring in.

The most obvious is making Glyphs. I don't even know why I said that. If you're not making glyphs, you're doing something wrong. Look up the most profitable mats::sell value glyph. Make a half dozen. Then pick a new glyph.

Another method is milling. Many inscriptionists are too lazy to get the rare pigments they need and would often rather buy them.

The last option (that I know of) is cards. People still need/want Darkmoon Faire cards of Greatness because it is still an amazing and 'easy to get' trinket. Also, if you know someone stupid enough to be trying to get "Insane in the Membrane" (like me) they are going to need somewhere on the order of a few thousand rogue's decks. Yeah- that is a lot. And if they don't have an inscriptionist, they will need to buy them. All of them.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Engineering

Engineering is by far one of the most fun professions to have. They can create all sorts of fun little tools that can be useful, but more commonly, are just fun.

But this article isn't focused on how much cooler engineering is than the other professions. I feel that I have to have a max level engineer before I can rant on that.

Engineering is limited on the production front. While many of what it can make is BoE or unbinding, most of it requires engineering skill, so you can only sell it to people who can make it.

Engineers can make a few pets, and those can sell for anywhere between 10g and 100g.

The other profitable thing engineers can manage is ammo crafting. Ammo is cheap to make and can often be sold for significant prices on the AH.

Greedy Gronko says that if you want gold- don't take engineering. If you want explosives and toys and explosive toys- take engineering.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Enchanting

More recently, enchanting has become less lucrative. Pre 3.3 and the LFD system, enchanters were able to control whether or not greens that dropped in instances were DE'd. Generally, most non-enchanters Greeded and vendored the items. Now, many pick the DE option on the need/greed scale and sell the mats to the poor enchanters.

Of course, it is still possible to get large amounts of mats by running older instances and the like and DEing the items found there.

With inscriptions Vellum's enchanters can now lay their enchants on paper and vendor them for often significant amounts of gold.

Other than the new AH option and DEing for mats, enchanters can hawk their business in an attempt to find twinks or other people who are interested in lower level enchants.

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing is one of my favorite professions to request.

But, putting that BS behind us, lets get to the real meat of this profession.

The one problem with being a BS is that most of what you can do is a one time deal, per customer. Even if every player on the server wanted a specific item, you would create it once for each of them. An alchemist will be in constant demand because everyone will continually want more flasks. The only item people go back to a BS for is the belt buckle.

The belt buckle is one of BS's most prominent money-makers. Other options include cheap greens that can be DE'd for the mats.

But don't discount BSers. They are very valuable in creating gear for new max-level alts (or mains) and they can continue to create gear upgrades, albeit learning at a slower rate. In fact, my tanking bracers are off a max skill BS who had a very specific pattern.

As a BS, make sets of about a dozen belt buckles or create greens to AH or DE. The final option, which can generate large amounts of gold if successful is to create BoE epics and AH them.

Cake!

I'm eating cake right now. Isn't that spectacular? It is.

But cake is not the only thing I'm going to talk about today. I'm going to talk about food, fishing and cooking too.

Food:

Food is a very important part of any leveling toon's inventory. Without food, they sit around waiting for their mp5 and natural health regen to bring them back up to full. Now a big question in WoW is whether or not it is worth it to level your cooking while leveling to be able to get all the food you need.

I feel that you needn't level it until endgame- if at all. While you are leveling you will be able to gather food from killing mobs and it should be enough to cover you. Paladins, Shamans, Druids, Priests, Warlocks, Mages and Death Knights don't need to worry about those extra's while leveling. The first four have heals, Warlocks have life draining, as do DKs. Mages can summon their own food. This leaves rogues, warriors and hunters. Hunters can have their pet tank and warriors are not supposed to take damage. Rogues can afford to buy merchant food because of their double looting pickpocket/kill method.

Fishing:

Should never be leveled. The only reason you should ever go fishing is for achievements. And if you have a really laggy day and can't do anything else. Then don't fish in Dalaran. Fish in Redridge, or Westfall. Maybe ghostlands.

Cooking:

You don't need to have more than 1 max level cooking toon. They can pass off the rest of the food to your other toons and for feasts they can join the raid, drop it and log out before being saved.

So I've been thinking...

...what do they think?

And by they I mean my characters. I mean, what do they do after I log out? I know that technically they disappear from the world, but I feel that they can do more than that.

Alenena for example, I feel would go around window shopping. If she saw something she liked she'd call her investment manager (Dugerlok) and have him send over some funds. If there weren't any funds available she'd beat the crap out of mobs until she got some. She might also play with her numerous pets and exercise her dozens of mounts.

Vitos would probably just go out and nuke a target. He is the kinda of a sequestered geek, focused on just getting more power.

Malkhelm would hunt for ore and blacksmithing abilities and wail at his low skill.

Erthu would just run around, like a hyperactive bunny, looking for little things to pounce on. Although he spends most of his time as a bear or boomkin, he is a kitty at heart.

What do your toons do?

Greedy Gronko's Grand Gold Gathering Guide: Professions- Alchemy

I don't have a high level Alchemist, but there are a few fairly simple ways to get yourself covered in gold if you rolled a Alchemist.

One of the most profitable methods is flask making. The flasks are practically required to raid and any raiding guild demands that everyone has flasks up all the time. They last for an hour and so a guild that raids a 'mere' three nights a week for a 'mere' four hours each night will require 12 flasks per raider.

That mats aren't too difficult to find floating around Northrend and you can make a tidy profit off those. If you specialize in flasks you also have a 10-25% chance of creating an additional 1-4 flasks each time you make one.

There is the option to make health and mana potions, but those don't generally sell as well, considering that they drop off mobs and are much more situational.

The other way to turn your skills into gold is transmutation. There is a one day transmutation and I'm not sure if it carries over for all types, but there are transmutations for bars, eternals, and gems. You can also specialize in this and get the same chance to create more. Epic gems still cost a few hundred gold uncut and you can create them from just a few rare gems that will probably run you under fifty gold.

If you get the full proc you can generate up to five epic gems for under 50g. That will result in about a profit of 700g for a couple minutes work.

Yeah- those sites that say you can make over 600g per hour- they ain't got nothin on me.