Darkmoon Decks: Making gold and gaining reputation outside the Faire

The first part of the darkmoon series deals with Darkmoon Card Death
and the second with Insane in the Membrane Achieve

Now that the darkmoon faire has ended, you might think that your hopes in working with the Darkmoon Faction is over. But fear not, thanks to inscription, there are still other ways to curry favor or trade for gold with the darkmoon people.

With the advent of 3.0 and inscription, low level scribes have been able to create new low level version of darkmoon decks that instead of giving card trinkets, give out BoE equipment for different slots at different level brackets.

The most important thing to take note about these darkmoon deck series is that they are
1) Bind on Equip
2) Can be turned in at any time and anywhere

You can buy one of these decks today, fly to a desolate location like desolace or tanaris, and still summon a darkmoon quest-giver and turn in those low level decks. Each deck also gives comparative reputation, generally 25 rep(the major decks are worth 350 rep), as well as experience points, which you can also use to level up your alts. (they work out to be about 1 normal quest at their respective levels)

The decks are:
Rogues Deck lvl 10
Swords Deck lvl 20
Mages Deck lvl 30
Demons Deck lvl 40

All of these decks drops items that are very good (in general) for both leveling classes and twinks, especially since they can be equipped the instant you turn into that level bracket and are comparable to blues within their range. Except for rogues and swords which give you items with random attributes, you can choose the exact reward for your decks, depending on which is more profitable on your server.

If you're starting off, I recommend you buy swords deck to try your hand at this market. I generally can purchase Swords deck for 5-10 gold, and sell the resulting item for a few times that price like 40-65 gold sometimes. Occasionally however I get a badly itemized shoulder slot and I would simply give it away or vendor it. Since the initial startup cost is quite low, and you can be almost any level to use this, its a pretty good way to go about making gold if you're new to wow too.

If you yourself are a scribe, then you might have some of this hanging around. Using ink of the sea conversions and using up your idle rare pigments, you can make the mages and demons deck for a rather low price and sell your extras. You can then sell the quest turn in item on the AH for usually twice to thrice your cost price.

3.1 Patch Preparation, Twink Item: Barbaric Bracers

You can find the level 80 version of PVP bracers here

Welcome to another feature on making gold at low levels, be it in profession level or character level. If you're reading this before patch maintenance, you might want to take a peek at the AH for good bids on the mats provided later in this post. For those who are reading this during patch maintenance, well, there's always tomorrow's AH market!

Well, my first article on this theme was with the spidersilk boots over on warcraftecon.net
It's a pair of tailoring boots that gets stealthbuffed into the best twink boots in the 10-19 bracket once 3.1 hits live.

Today, I'll however be covering Barbaric Bracers, so that Leatherworkers won't feel as if they are left out of the action.

Before: Barbaric Bracers
After: Barbaric Bracers

Basically, the bracers keep their 4 Agi and 6 Stam
But the totally useless 6 spirit gets converted into a sizzling 8 AP.
Yep, once again, another blue item has been stealth-buffed into the ultimate twink leather bracers.

The materials for this one is slightly tougher to come by however, so you might want to start looking on the AH.
8 Heavy leather
2 Cured Heavy Hide
4 Small lustrous pearl
1 Raptor Hide
4 Large Fang

Yep, that's quite a grocery list. While the reagents are cheap, it might take a while to build a sizable stockpile of all these in time for patch 3.1

If you start early however, I think you can probably make each bracers for about 1-2 gold, and sell them for 35-60 gold once patch hits. They used to sell for 25 gold before the patch, and with the current buffs making them Best In Slots, I'm pretty sure the twink buyers can be persuaded to part with that much more gold! This beats all other competition for the best bracer in the lvl 20-29 bracket.

You can even slap a +9 stamina enchant on it for good measure, and sell it for a slightly greater premium. Ah well, to all those lvl 20-40 leatherworkers out there, all the best in sizing this opportunity to work towards your epic mounts!

There are a few other items being stealth-buffed that holds pretty good potential, so stay tuned as I attempt to cover them all!

Summation Mondays

It's been 12 days since this blog started, and i've gotten a few emails and a few days of spikes in page views, which has been more than i expected!

I'll take this time to address the e-mails that have piled up, and the search questions that sends people to this blog:

I'll start with this search result, what is the disenchanting skill level required for ilvl 213 items and up. I've had a few related searches and an email on this. Well, my answer is...
I'm not too sure myself! Since I'm the guild disenchanter, my enchanting level has sat at a comfortable 450. The old formulas to calculate minimum disenchanting level also do not work. I would venture a guess that it is between 375-400. I'm afraid I can't help much with this D:

Do send me an email or leave a comment if you can provide an answer!

The other topic I'm getting lots of hits and a few emails from are that of low level ways to make gold. It seems really popular, and quite a bit of people love the prairie dog whistle. Stay tuned, for I'll be adding more low level ways to make more gold!

Once again, do let me know if there's any particular level range or theme which you want coverage about!

Last, but not least, here's an excerpt of what one reader sent
Hi Sherry, I've really enjoyed reading a new blog that brings a refreshing change from the other blogs out there that helps people make gold with minimal time spent, and I've recommended it to my guildies, keep up the good work and update more. Would you like to consider putting pictures up on the blog though? Just to add a little spice

Well, I'm really not sure how to get an image host up and running actually. Could anyone help? And thanks for recommending it to your friends, I hope this blog can continue to grow like a gigantic feast! Please help to spread the word!

3.1 low level crafting item feature: Silk Headband

Ah well, Now that April's Fool is over, move along move along :D
That was pretty sharp there, Anon.





As promised, here is another update on twink level crafted items that will come into vogue when Ulduar hits live:

For the previous item feature at warcraftecon, hit here

Today, we'll be taking a look at the silk headband, a white item on live servers.

Silk headband 3.0x
34 Armor
Required level:27
Normal (white) quality

Silk Headband 3.1+
34 Armor
+2 int
+8 Spi
+ 4 crit rating
Required level:27
Uncommon (green) quality

Crafting Materials:
3 bolts of silk cloth
1 fine thread (purchased with a few copper from the tailoring supply vendor)

The difference pre-patch and post-patch are huge!
By adding 8 spirit and 4 crit, it just became the only helm in the 20-29 bracket to give crit rating. There are only two caps better than it an both are blue, one of which is bop and requires farming of gnomeregan, and the other a rare drop that fetches over 50 gold.

In contrast you only require 3 bolts of silk cloth to craft one silk headband, on most servers, this would probably cost 50-60 silver. You could likely resell this back to the twink market at a modest 3-5 g markup. While its nothing spectacular for lvl 80s, it'll help lower level fellows work towards their epic mount with a few minutes work a day listing it up on the AH.

And if worse comes to worse, when everyone is squeezing in the same niche as you, well, you can always mail it for disenchanting, now that its an uncommon quality item!


Check back next time for more lowbie nuggets!
As for the lvl 70s and 80s out there, my next post will cover a gold making opportunity that would be for higher levelled characters

Guest post on warcraftecon.net!

Wow, the guest post I wrote here sure brought in a bucketload of traffic. Here's a big hello to all of you who came from over there!

If you have came all the way here, I take it you have like the post on the opportunity in low skill crafting professions, so as not to disappoint, I'll be writing another article on some of the changes made to crafting items in a short while.

In the meantime, enjoy your visit here!

Low level mischief, whistles and hatchlings

Here's a tip that is pretty well known, but which effectiveness would vary from server to server.
It has to do with listing vendor sold pets on the AH for profit.

The first is the prairie dog whistle, which you can obtain from thunderbluff. If you park your bank in thunderbluff like I do (since it is much less laggy than crowded orgrimmar) its a vendor pet that is extremely easy to obtain, costs 50 silver, and would sell for 5 - 10 gold on the auction house. It sells because the extra few gold premium that buyers pay for it is equivalent to the opportunity cost of them making their way to thunderbluff all the way from undercity or orgrimmar.

Another good place is Eversong Woods, where you can buy the different dragonhawk hatchlings. This particular trick will take a bit more work, since you must run quite a bit from silvermoon city (another good place to park an alt) to fairbreeze village, and then back again to relist in on the AH. Alternatively, you could simply roll a new blood elf and run it to the village, and simply mail it to your bank alt. The dragonhawks costs the same, but can sell for slightly more, sometimes even for 15 gold.

What you can also do in addition to these, is to bring those two pets to the neutral auction house in booty bay. Since these are horde specific, alliance players will also pay extra for access to these pets. Combined together, the effective marketing and selling of the pets is a good way to make gold at both low and high levels.

Making Gold at very low levels

As I was levelling my lvl 38 twink/alt through stranglethorn vale, I would mail some items off for my bank alt to sell, and some to sell in the Auction House so as to make some gold on the side.

After a few days of about 15 minutes each, I realise that there is a very good opportunity in this untapped market. Here are 2 things to watch out for when you are in the area!

1)Elemental Water:
There's a tiny little island towards the northwest of Stranglethorn Vale which is full of water elementals, they have the best drop of elemental water that I have ever seen so far. Elemental Water is used for many recipes and goes surprising well on the medivh Auction House, from 15-25 gold. Do take care to post only when there are no other competing Elemental Waters on the auction house however, so as to maximise your profit. Trade volumes for this item are low however, so there should be plenty of opportunities to make some gold of this!

2) The green hills of stranglethorn:
Everyone knows this papers drop all over the place in this area, but it doesn't occur to many that there is a Neutral Auction House right in Booty Bay where they can immediately trade and sell these quest items! Alliance and Horde on medivh will both be looking for this items to turn in for quick experience, and you could be the one to sell them each piece for 1 gold to 5 gold.

Once again, make sure there are no competitors before you post your goods!

Update: Shacknews did an interesting article over what kaplan(tigole) said about the Green Hills quest, I intend to post about it soon.
Here's to your low level hero making some gold at 40!