60,000 gold for my B weapon, 20,000 for my B enchant—we’ve got to get to the bottom of this. Just like I suspected, the Gnomes have all these secret gold-making methods they’ve been hoarding. We’ve got to take advantage. Don’t worry, I got away with all their secret methods. We’re going to be rich. Gold by design in Cataclysm allows you to get a huge edge over everybody else. I’m sure you’ve been eyeing some gorgeous 359 item level near BIS pieces, or maybe you’ve been eyeing that powerful Toren the Landslide enchant that increases your DPS by hundreds instantly.

The True End Game of Gold

See, Gold is really the true end game of Cataclysm, but with two to three nights of Halis progression, we really haven’t had nearly enough time to farm it. The savvy Gold makers, though, they know about the four major pillars of AFK Gold making that are going to print you money even when you’re not playing the game.

AFK Gold Making Strategies

First, there are those hyper-profitable Auction House flips that you can do even when you’re half asleep. And since the hard raids are kicking our asses, there’s suddenly huge profit to be made from AFK cooking that nobody’s talking about. Then we have the slept-on methods to maximize rewards from all the new in-game systems, even turning your in-game currencies into huge stacks of cash every single week.

Quick Gold with Minimal Effort

And if you want low stress Gold really fast, I’ll teach you how to run your own trash farm to generate thousands of Gold worth of epics every single hour. But first, let’s talk about those super AFK Auction House flips you can do while you’re drinking your cup of coffee. I’ve made over 100,000 Gold from enchanting Vellum, while other players have made their fortunes from transmutes, EB, and steel belt crafts, selling cogwheels from engineering, cutting profitable gems—you name it.

Unlocking the Secrets of the Trade

The problem is that while everybody talks about these methods being awesome Gold makers, they never really explain how to actually pick which items to craft, which enchants to make, what gems to cut, and what actually even sells on the Auction House. The secret that savvy Gold makers have, though, is this cheat code on their side. It’s something you’re likely not even using: the trade skill Master desktop app. You can get it completely for free, so you’re going to have to make an account, which takes about 10 seconds to do.

Optimizing Gold Making in Cataclysm

You’ll need to set your realm to the one you are using in Cataclysm; for me, that’s Fair Lina. Once it’s set up, it has all this auction house scan data that you can use to figure out key pieces of information. For example, you can see how fast specific items are selling on your server. Take a look at the region sale data—the higher numbers are always better. If a number is above 6, that means the item sells nearly instantly. For instance, let’s say you’re picking an AFK Gold making jewel crafting cut to unlock.

Advanced Search and Jewel Crafting

I’m going to use the advanced search and set the item level to 85 or above, and the quality to rare. Then, I am able to see that the Reckless Ember Topaz sells really fast and also makes 30 Gold per cut. I’m going to unlock that recipe next. The same idea can apply to any of the profession tabs, so enchanting is a really good example of this.

Enchanting Profits

When you pull up the enchanting tab, you can instantly see which of the recipes you have are profitable. Next to that, you can even see the sale rate, so you can see that this enchant really isn’t worth making because nobody ever buys it. Using the Trade Skill Master, I can see all sorts of enchants that I never would have considered. For instance, Mongoose sells just as fast as the major Cata enchants and makes you two Gold a pop. You could just be making those automatically.

Cooking for Gold

But let’s talk about cooking, which is even more AFK and even more profitable. The only way to make the new foods is to unlock the cooking recipes at the vendor near the trainer in any major city. You’ve got to have 500 cooking to make the most profitable new recipes like the skewed eel. That means you need a 450 recipe, a 475 recipe, and then finally your most profitable 500 recipes. That barrier to entry makes cooking super profitable since very few people want to do all those cooking dailies. On my journey to 500, I did a TSM advanced search for level 80 or higher foods and could immediately check the sale rate and the profit.

Maximizing Profits with AFK Strategies

Every single night, I’m able to print a few thousand Gold completely AFK by making those fish, and as I unlock more recipes, my profits are only going to increase. There is a tip, though, to unlock recipes even faster, which is that there is a chance one of the dailies in the city will be a two-token quest. So, you can go to all the different cities until you find a two-token quest. Theoretically, you could get recipes unlocked a lot faster than if you just sat in Orgrimmar all day and took whatever they gave you.

Utilizing New Systems for Gold Generation

In between the flips and the AFK cooking, I’m also taking advantage of all the new systems in Cataclysm that just print money. The first thing I love to take advantage of is Call to Arms. Depending on how active the tank and the healer queues are for RDF, at certain times you can get a free satchel that could contain something like a free flask worth over 100 Gold, maybe even an epic mount.

Optimizing Resource Use

To make sure I don’t miss those Call to Arms, I use an add-on called C Arms that works in Cata, even though it was designed for Dragonflight. While you’re blasting through all those dungeons, you’re also going to be generating Justice Points, which don’t really have much use once you have all your BIS gear. That’s where the NPC Togar in Orgrimmar comes in. For every 4,000 Justice Points, I have, I’m able to buy 20 Elementium ore. It’s only about 100 Gold, but it’s still free money. The same thing applies to honor, so you can convert honor into Gold at the same ratio at the honor trades good NPC.

Turning Points into High-Value Items

If that’s a little bit underwhelming for you, though, you can also take your soon-to-be-worthless Valor Points and convert those into a pair of boots worth well over 10,000 Gold. I’d recommend checking the sale rate of all the different items first. In my case, the Woebreeder’s Boots, they sell way faster than the other two options. Another AFK Gold maker related to the new Cataclysm systems historically allowed you to disenchant Conquest gear. Now, of course, I want to run an elite RBG team that wins every single game.

Effective Gold Making Strategies for Limited Time

But if you’re really cash-strapped on some alternate character, this is a good, viable short-term strategy. It takes less than an hour of RBGs to unlock a cape, for example, that would be a short-term way of making over 3,000 Gold per hour. That being said, if this method does work, you do not want to AFK the RBGs as you could get banned. I would just recommend just ‘yoloing’ them instead and having some fun.

Bastion of Twilight Farming

Ideally, your guild would move things around so you don’t just bot the very first day. Hopefully, you can just get a night or two to yourself to power farm some epics. So, you need a tank, two healers, around eight players total, and then you can generate about two epics per hour. I would recommend just doing the first handful of packs and skipping the sides and just resetting over and over. You have the option of group looting the items out or you can auction them off GK-P style to keep your morale good.

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