A fun and easy way to make gold
This is related to my previous article about why it's not a great a idea to go to Northrend at level 68.
If you follow my advice, you'll not skip the rest of my Outland guide, you'll go to Northrend at level 70 or 71, and you'll hit level 80 somewhere in Zul'Drak or Scholazar Basin. That's if you play without rested bonus.
For normal players, who get rested bonus and also do some instances, they will probably hit level 80 in Zul'Drak.
That means Scholazar Basin, Storm Peaks and Icecrown will be untouched when they reach level 80.
And that's when the good part comes, if getting a lot of gold while doing fun quests is your thing :P
The average XP reward from quests in Scholazar Basin, Storm Peaks and Icecrown is 22,000 XP.
That's the average, and it's already 13 gold extra, which IS kind of a big deal :P
Now let's look at the more XP juicy quests:
And there are many quests like that in the last zones of Northrend.
So there you have it, another arguement for not going to Northrend at level 68.
If you follow my advice, you'll not skip the rest of my Outland guide, you'll go to Northrend at level 70 or 71, and you'll hit level 80 somewhere in Zul'Drak or Scholazar Basin. That's if you play without rested bonus.
For normal players, who get rested bonus and also do some instances, they will probably hit level 80 in Zul'Drak.
That means Scholazar Basin, Storm Peaks and Icecrown will be untouched when they reach level 80.
And that's when the good part comes, if getting a lot of gold while doing fun quests is your thing :P
The average XP reward from quests in Scholazar Basin, Storm Peaks and Icecrown is 22,000 XP.
That's the average, and it's already 13 gold extra, which IS kind of a big deal :P
Now let's look at the more XP juicy quests:
And there are many quests like that in the last zones of Northrend.
So there you have it, another arguement for not going to Northrend at level 68.
Posts
Great! I wanted to know this, and it's simply a great thing. It's a lot of gold because each area has got about 150 quests - I think, I'm not sure - , I think that completeing all quests in the remaining 3 zones will make an "easy" 6k gold. Which is an enormous amount of gold. If you consider doing dungeons and related quests while leveling, I think that the average player will ding halfway through Zul'Drak guide.
I remember one of your posts saying that you will write guides for each area of Northrend, then it will be fairly fun to gather those golds. Thanks Jame :)
That's just the experience I've had. I got to 80 in Zul'drak after having done the quests in the argent stand when I turned in the quest to kill Drakuru. I now have the rest of the zone as well as Sholazar, Storm Peaks, and Icecrown to complete and get gold from, but since I'm a healer my guild doesn't seem to give me any time to quest anymore with requests to heal heroics and instances all the time :P
ahh, you also forget that with careful quest reward choices, you can be getting 4-12g extra from selling that. :) and so many of them have silly greens that are worse than your 70 epic gear! of course, there are also some very sweet greens... ;) I hit 80 after clearing 3 zones, but that's as a holy priest, so included a few instances, and was rested from 70-72, just finished my 4th zone, and that gold is helping me level my profs :)
There will be plenty of things to do once you reach level 80 to attain gold. Daily quests, gathering professions, grinding mobs that drop valuable items, etc.
If you go to northrend at L68 as I did with my shaman you get nice upgrades very early. I almost doubled my attack power in three levels. I admit that I was slightly under geared for my level but that is the gear I got from questing in outlands at that level.
If money is your primary goal, then Jame might be right but if you are like me and want to have fun and experience the new stuff then go to Northrend asap. :)
I wonder, will 13 gold be alot at lvl 80? I remember back in pre-TBC 100 gold was like "Oh my god, lots of money!", but when TBC came it was like "Pfhhh" amount of money.
I've been following Jame's guides since I started my Death Knight. I had done all of Outlands, except for the last half of Shadowmoon Valley before going to Northrend. By that time I was over half way into 72. At this point, I'm about 30% into 77 and I've only completed the Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra and just starting Dragonblight.
I've hardly deviated from the guides, and on top of that I've only run the first two Northrend dungeons a couple times for shiny blues.
At this rate I'll probably hit 80 in Grizzly Hills, so that leaves me... three or four areas to quest for pure profit?
So, I'd have to agree with Jame and say that finishing Outlands before Northrend is your best bet to have fun making gold at 80, on top of making leveling easier.
I'm going to have to give a big thanks to him for making these in the first place. :D
Personally, I'm not doing them as your guides suggest, I'm going to the places where I get #$@!ed off least by quest objectives.
ive heard a lot of people talk about the gear improvements you get from going to northrend at 68. what many of them forget is that the gear that drops in northrend is [i]tuned[/i] for the mobs in northrend. so while you may be seeing huge dps increases, its worth remembering that relative to the mobs youre fighting, things havent changed all that much!
once i hit 68 i took a quick trip to borean to have a peek at the new content. i did a quest, got a green 2h sword and headed back to terrokar. i plan on finishing outland before i head back, i enjoy questing a lot more when the mobs (especially elites) are green and easily soloable. the gold and all that is just icing on the cake.
Daemun brings a very good point here as well.
And yes it's true that at level 80 there are many ways to make gold, Dailies, Gathering professions. But they are much more boring and repetitive ways than to actually complete zones with unique quests.
Also, when following my guides you'll be finishing those quests very fast, so you'll get gold faster than if you were doing dailies, that's for sure.
Hey Jame ... Sorry for asking this =.= ... but do you get any gold compensation once you hit lvl 80 by questing in Outland =X ?
Honestly this is just bad bad bad advise. Here's the honest truth...you should go to a new zone the second you are of level for it in wrath. Period.
Doing quests at the min level you can get them is trivial, there's no point in doing lower level quests because they are "easier" because they are not, they just reward less xp.
Cash rewards from quests are irrelevant at 80. There are *so* many dailies that you will do for rep and items that "saving" quests to do at 80 is just stupid.
If you ding 76 and do not immediately leave wherever you are to go to Sholazar you're crazy.
If you ding 77 and do not immediately leave Sholazar (or wherever you are) and go to Storm Peaks or Icecrown, you are crazy.
I took Icecrown from 77.0 to 80 with no rest state. Yes it really is that big, and that's not even counting all the dailies there. Every single 80 will want/need to do large portions of both Icecrown and Storm Peaks for the various rep's there. Sons of Hodir have to be unlocked and can only be raised through dailies. Ebon Blade has to be quested to unlock the quartermaster.
Seriously currently at 80 I am doing:
5 Hodir dailies
3 Frenzyheart
3 Walrus
2 daily normal/heroic
thats without even trying to farm dailies...there are wintergrasp dailies as well as dailies in a slew of other places.
Why on earth would you SLOW your leveling staying in lower xp zones to save cash? It is just flat out bad advise.
What's flat out bad advice is to actually make such bold statements without bringing any sort of facts to back them up, and to also spread false information.
You say that "Doing quests at the min level you can get them is trivial, there's no point in doing lower level quests because they are "easier" because they are not, they just reward less xp."
That's just plain wrong. A green quest gives EXACTLY the same amount of XP as a yellow, orange or even a red quest.
So please tell me how "going to a new zone as soon as you're high level enough to go" is gonna make you level any faster?
Mobs will die slower than if you were 2 or 3 levels above. Yet the XP reward from the quest will be the same.
That's an undeniable fact.
Sure, you can do dailies at level 80 to make gold. Did I say otherwise anywhere? No.
Now let's see, if you want the new flying mount, it's gonna be at least 16K gold. If you also want the dalaran teleport ring, it's gonna be another 7K gold.
23K gold total.
Have fun doing the same dailies over and over to finance all of that.
Why not follow my advice and already make 3-5k gold while doing fun, unique, non repetitive quests?
What about achievements? Do you want to go back to all those zones you skipped and do all those quests when they are grey to you and give no compensation?
I appreciate you posting your opinion here, but please, you are the one giving the bad advice and spreading innacurate information :/
@Jsen - Nope, they won't. Which is why I advise to do as many as you can before they turn grey.
It seems the xp to gold conversion is bugged atm. I'm not getting any more gold for quest completion than I was when it also gave me xp. Example: completing quest A gives me 22k xp plus 13gold at level 80. Completing quest B at level 80 gives me 13 gold. Several guildies have noted the same thing.
The only thing about this is that if you (as you noted elsewhere) go to a lowbie area at quest at 80 - like Howling Fjord - then your gold reward is much reduced.
As far as ways to make gold, true, gathering is serious cash. My DK has two crafting profs, so dailies are a big part of my income. I complete 30 - yes 30 - dailies in about 2 hours yesterday. It's not huge money, but it works. I won't do it as a primary source of income, but for now where I'm still getting rep for most of them it's worth it. I made more money in 90 minutes of heroics (ran three) where I got two boe blue drops that then sold for 480g total.
There's still a lot of money in crafting too IF you're on the bleeding edge. I have three realm first profession guildies who've made tons of gold on recipes few if anyone has yet.
Also, farming eternals - especially in wintergrasp - can be very profitable.
I hope they fix this really quick. That's pretty lame.
I see o_o .. well at least I ran through all of your Outland guide and reached level 71 before going to Northrend ... :) never regretted it ...
I am excited to make Gold. I am just about 76 (4 bubbles away). I have followed the guide to Howling Fjord and I still have 9 quests left for the achievement in Borean Tundra.
At this rate I will hit 80 somewhere in Grizzly Hills.
Now if my guild doesn't distract me with repair bills I will be rolling in the gold.
Quest gold + XP--->Gold Conversion + Vendoring Quest rewards = ~2000g per higher level zone at 80. And that doesn't include normal vendor trash, mats, and BOEs you get anyway.
I should be 80 by the time I'm done with Grizzly Hills (I instance alot)
Based on your above comments, it looks like the exchange rate is 6c per EXP point. Is that pretty consistent? I've never had a max-level character, as WotLK came out shortly before I reached level 70.
I started Outland about two bars shy of level 62, and followed your Outland guide almost to the letter. Since I'd run several instances and a few days of Quel'Danas quests, I hit level 73 during your last Outland quest circuit. I figure that's 3-5M EXP (1,800-3,000 gold, based on the above rate) more than if I'd headed to Northrend at 70, at a cost of ten to twelve /hours. (I'd roughly estimate that I also earned 500-700g in quest rewards and drops between 70 and 73, but I wasn't tracking it.)
However, I might suggest completing the initial Valiance Keep and Farshire quests at 68-70, then taking the Northrend gear back into Outland and plowing through the remaining quests.
Oh, and if anybody doubts that green quests are worth the same EXP as yellow quests, you might want to check the official US and European sites.
There is one minor caveat, however; the EXP dropoff starts once you're eight levels above the quest, but it won't go gray for another level or two. However, the main point remains unchanged; a level 70 quest rewards the same EXP to a level 68 character as it would to a level 70 or 75 character, but 68's will have a much harder time completing the quest.
A quote from the official world of warcraft site...
"You get full experience for everything but gray quests. Gray means that you'll get less experience for every level that the quest has been gray."
Regarding the XP to gold conversion,a blue made the following post on the official forums at the end of this thread...
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13593920337&sid=1
"You get either the gold reward from the quest or the gold from experience to cash, whichever is greater. You do not get both. "
That's new to me, and that's not what I've witnessed in-game.
Guess I'll have to check that again.
From what I read, this is new for this expansion. Previously, you'd get the gold + extra gold based on the XP the quest rewards. Now, you get one or the other, whichever is greater.
I hope it's a bug, but I suspect that it's deliberate to prevent gold sellers from instance grinding to 80, then running quests for gold. Or at least make it not as profitable.
I love your guides, Jame. I would love to see a guide done by you that has optimised daily quest routes that minimises the time to do the dailies.
Dailies always seem to take too long to me, and are boring, so anything that can help that would be great. Thanks!
After reading this yesterday, I decided to give it a shot.
I took my 72 DK back to Outlands. He'd finished just Borean Tundra.
I hadn't yet touched Blade's Edge, so I started there fresh. All the quests were green, and my hunch is that they were green enough that the XP gain was partially reduced, though I can't be sure.
Results:
XP rate: After 4 hours, approximately 250k/hour, or just over 1mill xp for the whole run. Completed 2/3 of the zone. I was really pushing for fast gains in order to maintain this pace.
Gold gain: Almost exactly 100 gold/hour, not including one lucky BoE blue that AH's on Feathermoon for around 65g.
Pro's:
1) Don't even have to glance at the loot..just sold everything, including quest rewards (optimized picks for gold value). Brainless.
2) SUPER fast killing. I was grabbing everything I could on each pull, often 3-4 at a time. Was very fun, fast, and made me feel godlike :)
3) Agro radius of mobs was small, granting greater control over what to pull and what not to pull.
4) Adds are not a problem at all..they were welcome, in fact.
5) Can easily solo 2-3 man elite quests, though I tried a 5-man for kicks and could only get the Gronn down about 20% (unsurprisingly). Probably could be two-manned with a healer.
6) Dinged 73 about halfway through, overall probably got a little over half a level in progress.
7) "Added" half a level's worth of quest "xp-to-gold conversion" for quests in Northrend, per Jame's suggestion.
Con's:
1) XP gain is notably slower than Northrend.
2) Feels a little cheap. Yeah, I know!
Overall - Though it isn't the fastest route to 80, I'm going to do Netherstorm and SMV and see where I stand when I'm done. My hunch is it's worth doing in the long run, and it meets my #1 goal in playing WoW - it's fun!
Nice post will put it to the test thanks
Jame - could you explain (pretty please) how the XP is converted to gold, or why you get more XP at a higher level for a quest that should be easier because you're higher level - or point me to somewhere where it is explained?
Thank you kindly
I am waiting for the guide you were saying about for each area of Northrend. I will keep following this. Thanks :)