What to Farm

Everybody knows that the auction house is the key to making quick cash. But what items do you put up, and where do you get them? I'll be covering Northrend exclusively in this post, but if you know of an Outland or old Azeroth item that goes for a lot on the 'house, leave a comment.


Cooking
Skilling up cooking is fun for many players. Not only do I advise taking it, but gather more meats than you actually need. Many people are too impatient to go out and get their own meat, so they'll happily buy it off the auction house. That's where you come in.

These four meats make up the Great Feast, which serves a whole party.
Rhino - Some in Storm Peaks and others in Borean. For you non-AoE grinders, there are some spread out around Sholozar.
Chilled - I wouldn't eat this raw, but it drops off of every single beast type mob. You'll get quite a few while farming the other types of meat. It's also the most common meat, so it doesn't sell for a whole lot on the auction house.
Shoveltusk - On the other side of the world as mammoths and rhinos are the shoveltusks. Their flanks sell nicely, even though they're really easy to take down. They travel in herds, but are neutral (similar to rhino and mammoth), with a few aggressive types spread out here and there.
Mammoth - Big, mean, and scrumptiously delicious. Grab a chunk o' this beast from Borean for you AoEers, and for single-targeting try the higher level ones in Storm Peaks.

The Fish Feast is higher level than its 'great' counterpart, but you have to have a high fishing skill to make farming these more profitable. Wowhead has excellent info for each fish on their page, so take a click if you find yourself desiring to cast a pole.
Musselback Sculpin
Glacial Salmon
Nettlefish

Other high-demand meats to keep an eye on include Worm Meat.

Skinning
...is a fairly straight-forward profession. One that I can't really touch upon because it's so direct. It combines well with cooking, as just about all the beasts you kill can be skinned. If you know any skinning friends and you're going AoE farming on mammoths, invite them! Not only will they be greatful to you, they may even but you a portion of their skins if you kill things fast enough. Hope for those Arctic Furs!

Ore
Three types of minerals exist in Northrend soil, each one more rare than the last.
Cobalt Ore - Okay, I lied. Cobalt sometimes goes for more than Saronite because there are fewer nodes, as well that everyone needs Cobalt ore to skill up their blacksmithing and jewelcrafting to Saronite levels. Cobalt is best mined while leveling up, but if you have a flying mount, apparently Zul'Drak and Howling Fjord have the most deposits.
Saronite Ore - The most common end-game ore. Icecrown and Sholozar are the way to go.
Titanium Ore - Un-prospectable, but used for many recipes. Very, very hard to find, but plenty will show up while on your Saronite route because it only spawns in saronite/cobalt nodes.

Herbs
For the most parts, herbs are easier to find than ore. Farming for these is less competitive, but there are still a few things you should know.

• Borean and the Fjord have mostly Goldclover.
• Avoid Dragonblight, as it's all frozen herbs, which can be 1-3 of just about any low level herb - even ones you're not after.
• Frost Lotus (a hot seller) can be found equally from all Northrend herbs, so if you're seeking those, pick a zone with a lot of nodes. Icecrown, lower Zul'Drak, and Sholozar come to mind.
• Talandra's Rose is just about only found in Zul'Drak. If you dislike that zone, then stock up a lot at once.

Alchemy
If you are an alchemist, I suggest seeing what potions and elixers you can make after a long flower-picking session. You might be able to sell the potions for more than you could the combined flowers. But sometimes, it'll just be more profitable to sell the raw flowers.



What do you sell?

Rules of the auction house

This is a list of very important rules you should follow while dealing with the auction house. Scan the bold, and if you're curious about a topic, read the summary. If you're even more curious, leave a comment and I'll address the matter in a later post.


Don't post on your main
- Always use a bank alt. See my long list of reasons.

Buy raw materials
- A netherweave bag goes on the auction house for 9-15g on my server. The mats - 1 stack of netherweave and a rune thread - fluctuate in cost between 3 and 8 gold. That's a bargain for your bags.

Don't impulse purchase
- By not buying things right away, you can save a bundle. As the market becomes further saturated with a particular item, prices drop.
- Two examples I've watched closely are Frostweave Cloth and Titansteel Bars. When Wrath of the Lich King was brand new, I sold cloth on the auction house for 50g per stack. Now I see stacks for as low as 9g per, even lower sometimes. Titansteel was the same - once upon a time, I was able to sell them for 200g each. Now they go for less than 75.

BottomScanner SearchUI is your friend
- Although I'm not a big fan of the bloated Auctioneer Suite, BottomScanner SearchUI is a proven method for finding under-priced items that you can quickly buyout and re-post. It's also an excellent excuse to stretch your legs and refill your coffee. (SearchUI is included with the Auctioneer addon.)
- Please note that due to the size and scope of Auctioneer, I advise against running it at all on a laptop If you have to, only run it on one character.

Pennies matter
- A player will buy the cheapest item presented to them in the auction house - even if that item is only one copper cheaper than the alternatives. Undercutting a 6g cost with your own priced at 5g 99s 99c, you're equally as likely to find a buyer as if you had posted yours for 5g 80s.

Overprice enchanting materials
- Dust, essence, and shards have no cost to auction them. Even if your dream dust only goes for 1g normally, you're welcome to price it at 5, or even 10 gold if no others are up. If no one buys it, no problem, you can just re-list it later for a (slightly) more reasonable price. And fi they do buy it... then you're rich!

List auctions for 48 hours
- Always post your auctions using the longest time period possible. Over the course of one day, the market might not fluctuate much and someone could undercut you, negating any of your profits. But two days is a long time for the auction house, and once the other auctions have expired or been bought out, yours will be left standing, the only option for potential buyers.

Network!

Believe it or not, you can save (and even make) gold just by getting to know people.

Nine times out of ten, someone is only a jerk to you because they don't know who you are. Maybe you're in a pug or you've accidentally (or purposefully) tagged their quest mob. While situations like these are tough to avoid and it's impossible to please everybody, it doesn't hurt to get to know some people. Through a guild or instancing and questing together, or even just talking when you're both up late night and no one else is on to keep you entertained, getting to know people can make you money. Let me tell you about a scenario that has kept money in my pocket for well over four months now.

I have a good friend who's a jewelcrafter. Many 80s can tell you right off the bat that JCing is a very good profession to have at level 80. This particular JC I've known since vanilla. She's a good friend and although we generally walk different paths, we've remained good friends (or gone in and out, depending on who you ask). Because I hit 80 before any of my guildies, I was looking for people to run instances with. My lazy and casual friends were taking their time, but this JC of mine moved up pretty fast. Her guild is a bit more towards the hardcore end, and a lot of their members wanted to gear up in epics as fast as possible. I was more than happy to run with them, and at a time when there were very few heroic groups moving and H-AN was just about impossible, I always had a place in their party, even as a "replaceable" dps.

There were only two things I did that kept me in that group. The first... was to always try my hardest. I top damage meters and I make it a goal to keep up with my past dps records and contribute as much as possible. Beating a previous sustained-dps record for a particular instance is fun for me! Now, no one expects dps to be any good, but the fact that I was very good was just a perk. The real reason they kept me around was because I was nice. That's it: I was polite, always said my pleases and thank yous, always checked if anyone needed some refreshments, kept everyone buffed, and made quirky jokes (the only kind of humor I'm good at). Over all, I made everyone's life easier by taking care of myself and helping to take care of the rest of them.

Now how did this earn me gold? I can list a number of ways right off the top of my head. First of all, I got emblems which helped me to get new gear without buying Bind-on-Equip items from the auction house. That right there saved me 100-700g for each equipment slot. Also, I got money and vendorable loot from the corpses in the instances. I also rolled on the frozen orbs and received dream shards when I didn't get any loot.

Ah, an enchanter in the group. This brings me back to the mention of professions. With both an enchanter and a jewelcrafter on my good list, I had life made. Now, I could acquire the raw gems and I had someone to cut them. The JC was able to achieve exalted reputations with the instance factions and learn the rare-gem recipes quickly because I had helped her through the heroics. Ah, runed scarlet rubies reflected in my eyes! At 5g a tip and a slot in my helm, necklace, shoulder, cloak, two in my chest, bracers, gloves, a belt slot, and then two in my pants and one in my boots, I saved 60g right there. In the end, I'll save much more as I replace my old gear and need more gems.

And now that I was on the good side of an enchanter, I had someone who would accept my greens (mailed to her 12 at a time) and disenchant them, taking a very, very modest cut for herself each time. Anyone will tell you that you make much more money off of auction-housing enchanting dusts and essences than vendoring greens.

Every now and then, when I proc an alchemy mastery, I'll send either of them the bonus. I have friends to talk to whenever I need, and they've made me more money than they've cost me. Keeping them happy is not only a small part of the business, but something I would do even if their professions didn't work out in my favor.

It pays to network.

Learn first aid

While it can be expensive to learn first aid at the higher levels and skill-up by purchasing cloth from the auction house, first aid is still a very vital profession for all classes to have.

At level 42, my rogue has first aid up to craft mageweave bandages. They can restore 800 life over 8 seconds. That's 100 life every second! The food I can use is level 35 and restores 1392 life over 30 seconds. That's 46.4 life every second.

Using a bandaid instead of eating food will more than HALVE the time you spend restoring life between battles.

Bandages also have the bonus of being able to be used in combat, and they don't consume mana. This is especially nice on a healing class such as a shaman, because then you can use your precious mana to deal more damage instead of running out trying to keep your life bar at full.

As if that's not enough, using a bandaid can be handy when grouped in an instance during an emergency situation. The healer will probably be too busy keeping the tank alive to spare any thought for the DPS. Commonly, DPS players will be expected to step back and bandage themselves before jumping back into the fray.

The only reason you might not want to bandage in a group is if you're the tank. A stingy healer could interpret the tank bandaging himself as a sign that he doesn't trust the healer to keep him up. I would like to send a message to all those healers: A tank may bandage even if you're a GREAT healer! Bandaging is a reflexive skill to an experience player. Do not discourage your tank from doing so, it may save your life someday!