Rex's Goldmaking Guide: Part 3 - Tailoring, Blacksmithing and Alchemy

Ah professions, the meat and potatoes part of making gold. Using the trends we pointed out in the Part 2, we'll have a look at three of the professions Blacksmithing, Tailoring and Alchemy in this part of the guide. What we won't cover are the gathering professions such as Skinning, Mining and Herbalism as these require farming.

I don't have any experience on Inscription so I can't really comment. My gut feeling though is that as a profession, there's little ongoing demand or repeat business. Once players get their set of glyphs, they are done and there are no real incentives to change glyphs.

The making of Darkmoon cards is interesting although random. The Nobles Deck seems like the deck of choice and people are willing to pay big bucks for it, I've seen prices advertised for about 14k gold for a deck and the Ace for about 5k. Until competition drives the prices down, in the short term at least, Inscribers lucky enough to proc a Nobles Card will hit the jackpot.

I don't know about Vellums, perhaps they can provide a nice income stream as enchanters use these more and more to list enchants on the AH.

Tailoring

Its all about bags! However its not about the Frostweave Bag... yet. Currently, it costs 90 pieces of frostweave cloth (about 22g a stack) and 12 infinite dusts (~36g) and 2 eternium threads. On Dreadmaul, bags are selling for about 100g each, so you're making a loss if you're buying mats to sell. In the short term, it will continue to be expensive, however once the 3.0.8 patch comes in, Frostweave Bags should become cheaper to make as the bag will need less frostweave cloth.

In the meantime though, the 16 slot Netherweave Bag is still popular due to the hideously expensive price of frostweave bags and the mats for the 18 slot version being tricky to get. In fact, the demand for the Netherweave Bags has more than tripled the price, and I have made a nice amount selling bags in the 15-25g range (up from the BC price of about 4g). Not bad when you consider that the bag is made from a single stack of netherweave cloth (and a rune thread).

Whats driving demand for Netherweave Bags? Well the bags are still an upgrade from the 12 slot versions DK's start out with as well as an economical choice for fitting out any alts or bank alts that players have.

Making bags still has falling demands over time though since you don't replace bags very often at all. Typically you get you invest in a good set of bags at the start that will last.

Alchemy

I've often heard that Alchemy isn't profitable, and that the real money made is actually in Herbalism. Through BC, I took up alchemy and herbalism on my shaman to make buffs for raiding. I hardly made money out of alchemy alone. As pot spec, I could only sell extra pots I procced which is really nickle and dime stuff really, a couple gold here and there. I came across a few transmute spec Alchemists, and they all complained saying it was the worst decision they made. The long cooldown to make metagems meant it was hardly worth it.

In Wrath however, its a different story. Transmute spec alchemists aren't restricted to a daily cooldown anymore! This alone made me dump pot spec and take up transmute spec. I then bought up a stack of Eternal Airs and Eternal Fires, took some scrub gems from my jewelcrafter and proceeded to produce a stack of skyflare and earthsiege diamonds.

Now the procs here are awesome! From a stack of about 20 transmutes, I usually pick up about 3-5 extra diamonds. if you want you can sell them uncut for about 40-50g each (already in profit) plus the bonus profit on the extra procced gems. Alternatively, you can take them along to your local JC and with the right cut, turn it into a gem worth about 70-100g!

Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing is in a really nice place now with all of its gear being BoE and the introduction of the Eternal Belt Buckle. For long term profit, I love the belt buckle! Everyone level 70 and up needs (not wants) one. I make heaps of these (about 20 at a time), and they sell like hot cakes on the AH.

I've stayed away from making epic BoE gear. I'm just not comfortable putting a lot of gold into a single item hoping it will sell. This is especially the case when the BS epic designs are all trainer taught and as such don't have any barrier to entry. This I believe leaves you wide open to undercutting and a high risk of having to sell the crafted items at a loss. I'm a bit more conservative in that way but that's just personal preference.

In terms of making items to DE, I stumbled across the plans for Reinforced Cobalt Shoulders which dropped off the Onslaught Mason in Dragonblight while I was levelling. With the mats to make it being four cobalt bars, this is an awesome, as you can make five level 73 greens from one stack of cobalt! Whats weird is that the DE table is a bit off. Install of DEing into lesser cosmic essences or 1-2 infinite dust, it DEs into greater cosmics and a number of infinite dusts. There are other world drop recipes for the other pieces of the 'Reinforced Cobalt' set, but you only need one pattern as they all use only four cobalt bars.

For dream shards, if you have both enchanting and blacksmithing skilled up. Armoursmiths can make Legplates of Conquest for the cost of 3 saronite bars and a fifth of an Eternal Earth. Hopefully these should be worth a bit after the 3.0.8 patch. The legplates are bop though so you can't make these on your blacksmith and send them to another toon to DE.

So that's Tailoring, Blacksmithing and Alchemy coming, in part four, I'll have a look at Enchanting and the demands at present and in 3.0.8, and then finally the big daddy of moneymakers... jewelcrafting. :D

Cheers!

Rex