Been seeing a lot of people struggling to understand classic vanilla economy so here is a basic understanding of it: Questing will only offer people exactly enough gold to handle trainer payments, bank slots and the first mount. There are no daily quests in vanilla because god forbid #nochanges player listen to anything outside their opinion and with that the only way to collect sizable amounts of gold is to grind it via mob killing.
I know the auction house exists but you really need to be spending 8 hours a day on it to actually make decent amounts of gold because most players are pinching every penny to make ends meet and honestly if you’re gonna be spending 8 hours a day playing stockmarket.exe do it with the real stock market and make actual money.
But for those truly trying to play WoW and not stock exchange on the auction house here is how you save your gold and grind your gold (with relative ease):
-Skip abilities and spells you do not need. Playing a frost mage? You don’t need arcane missiles or flamestrike. Fireball and Fireblast are enough to handle Frost immune mobs and there is no need to waste excess coins on spells not needed in your kit. This extends to all classes like for warriors rend deals the lowest DoT in the game and for its ragecost you might as well just use heroic strike and deal more damage faster. So skip it and spend the gold elsewhere. Can always get these abilities later once your set up better financially.
-You don’t need to use the auction house for gear all the time. Check WoWhead for what items drop from quests in whatever zone. A measily +3 str isn’t gonna make your warrior a powerhouse so there isn’t a need to drop 2g50s for a new set of shoulderpads.
-Speaking of the auction house and quest item rewards. Certain items won’t sell for anything on the AH because the game provides you with a better alternative for free from doing a questline. Instead of losing your deposit by trying to sell it 5 times just vendor it OR find an enchanter to disenchant it and resell the mats. Enchanting mats is that one kinda material that will always sell for good profit, even if not now the mats will hold a lot of value later on when less people are selling stuff for cheap so think of enchanting mats as a long term investment.
-Clear out ALL the quests in a zone. Even underleveled quests can chain into higher level quests to give you exp and usually handsome payments.
-Skip crafting professions until your toon is more developed. They use up WAY too much bagspace and you’re skipping a lot of loot off mobs because your bags are full. Doesn’t seem like much a few copper and silver here and there but it adds up slowly and by 60 you may have lost over 100gold easily just by leaving loot. Besides there are already hundreds of other blacksmiths, tailors and Leatherworkers out there all competing and undercutting one another on the AH. Not much money to be made off the professions anyhow.
-If you don’t have a mage or rogue then make one. Now. Rogues have the sneakiest way of low effort gold grinding. Merely enter the dungeon instances known as Zul’farrak or Blackrock Depths and pickpocket…everything. Fail your pickpocket? Vanish and youtube for 5 minutes and then back to it. Once you pickpocket every mob leave and reset the instance. Lather, rinse and repeat til your wallet is fat. Zero kills, zero effort and zero cares. Walked away with 50g in an hour of doing a whole lot of nothing. Mages can aoe farm better than any other class. Once you have halfway decent gear or a solid level advantage on mobs you can easily pull 7+ at a time and just AoE them down, killing 7+ birds with 1 stone and looting at 7+ times the rate of other classes. The vendor trash alone can make you mountains of gold.
-Previously spoke about enchanting mats being a long term investment and they will be, but other crafting professions will require certain items like elemental earth for sharpening stones and you can sell that for almost 8gold a piece after everyone has leveled their alts and feels too lazy to farm it anymore. Check out the regular vanilla era servers to see on the AH what major items sell and capitalize on a long haul investment.
-Find a sweet spot to farm in. Sometimes there is a spot no one else is using. Not for questing or anything. Each mob drops a little coinage, getting plenty of exp and you’re not wasting time waiting on respawns because other players aren’t there. If you find a sweet spot, stay there for a bit. Usually works out great.
-Finally the biggest gold tip. If you have the questie add-on this is easier. Don’t complete any level 54+ quest until you are level 60. In liu of experience points quests will give you bonus gold based on the total amount of exp the quest was going to give you when max level. Just farm up Blackrock Depths and Lower Blackrock Spire til you hit 60 and go back and do all the quests you skipped. It’ll payout two to three times the gold they were originally going to give you and is an easy way to earn 400g.
Sorry for the extended post. Good luck out there!
