Day 2/3: It starts to get interesting

Due to a particularly busy weekend (the beer wasn't going to drink itself) I was only able to play for around an hour over the two days. But even with that minimal playtime things are starting to take shape nicely.

With such limited opportunity my main objective was to try out one of the strategies offered by another blogger in JMTC's most recent blogging carnival: How do you make gold with low Capital? Given my time constraints I opted for one that once set up would only take a minute to execute when necessary.

What I chose:

Given this criterion I went with a nice little strategy by Flux over at the excellent Power Word: Gold blog which involved selling vendor cooking recipes found in Stormwind to the horde via the neutral Auction House. I won't detail exactly how the strategy works as Flux says it perfectly so if you're interested check it out here: Making Gold Selling Alliance Cooking Recipes to the Horde.

So with my tactics outlined perfectly I ran my auction alt to the recipe vendor and bought the recipes in question and then sent them to another new alt who had drawn the short straw for the trek from the human starting zone to Booty Bay. Needless to say this trip was very painful as a lvl 1 toon with no mount, but 27 minutes (!!!) and 2 deaths later I was sitting safely on the dock in BB next to the neutral auctioneer. Having safely arrived I listed each of the recipes for 20g apiece, logged off and promptly forgot all about them.

A good 24 hours later when I logged back in to check mail and presumably re-list the unsuccessful auctions (I'm cynical at the best of times) I was greeted with the very welcome site on the left. Over half of the recipes had sold and I couldn't have been happier.

All in all the sales netted me about 120g profit thereby quadrupling my total gold in an instant. The best part about this strategy is the fact that once the initial outlay of time getting to Booty Bay has been spent, this is an activity that will take 2 minutes max to rinse and repeat as necessary as the auctions either sell or expire. Having it confirmed so quickly that the recipes will definitely sell is a nice weight off of my mind also.

Oh and I almost forgot the best part: All of the recipes together cost less than 1g to buy!

So far this is a perfect example of exactly what I am looking for in this challenge: cheap, effective, and quick gold making techniques that can be used by a player completely new to wow. Good on you Flux!

So with the first few days of my challenge behind me this is how my finances look so far:

So far I couldn't be happier with how I am progressing. With minimal playtime and no boosts of any kind (help from others, heirlooms etc) I already have over 150g and a quick and easy moneymaker locked away for continuing profits. I can only hope that each new trick I try is as good as this one.

The empire continues to grow!

Day 1: A New Beginning

Well after a very little bit of research I decided my new home for this challenge would be the Aman'thul server - Alliance side. Why those? Aman'thul because it seems to have a decent population and alliance because the Stormwind auction houses look the most 'commercy' (yep, that was the basis of my faction choice). I like the idea of building an empire from a big stone bank instead of from a wooden shack, it'll go way better with my tuxedo, monocle and top hat.

So with my server choice made I stepped out into the world as a fresh human rogue (humans start right next to SW so this was a no brainer, plus the extra rep will save me money if i decide to buy mounts in the future).

Unfortunately due to RL commitments I could only spend about 40 minutes playing today so I didn't get quite as much done as I'd hoped. Having said that I did manage to train skinning and mining and grab a few nodes/pelts which I then threw onto the AH. This part was fairly dicey as I'd completely forgotten about posting costs but luckily I only had a few things to sell so I posted them all with a whopping 61c to spare.



 As of writing this post I have made 3 sales bringing my grand total up to around 13.5g! It's a tiny sum in the scheme of things but given I started with nothing, over 10g in just over half an hour makes me very happy.

The first brick has been placed and now the empire will grow around it!

Noob Challenge!

I have been inspired by this month's blogging carnival over at JMTC: How do you make gold with low Capital? to put my own startup skills to the test and see if I can build a tidy fortune from scratch.

The Challenge:
Start fresh on a new server with no heirlooms, no gold, no friends to boost me... nothing!
The only help I will use will be addons as anyone can get them whenever (sure genuine first time players might not know about them, but really with all the information and detailed guides out there it's not hard to work them out).

I will be updating my progress here whenever I play.

I would like to stay on an oceanic server to minimise lag so if anyone has a suggestion for my new home (Nagrand is my current home), or even a faction/race/class suggestion post it in the comments and I'll be happy to oblige.