How I'm Making Gold in Cataclysm

This post is for the JustMyTwoCopper.org Blogging Carnival

Right now, I have three main sources of gold: cut gems, prospecting, and disenchanting. Other sources worth noting are smelting, glyphs, and daily transmutes.



Cut Gems
As it was in Wrath, this is easily one of the best sources of gold. +Agi gems sell almost as fast as I can post them, and the +Int/Crit and +Spirit metas tend to sell steadily throughout the day. I can usually post 3 of each, forget about them, and by the end of the day they'll all have sold. I also just picked up the +Mastery/+Hit green gem, and I've had decent sales with that too. And I still have 7 tokens left that I'm on the fence about. I realize that they're doing nothing except costing me gold (opportunity cost) just sitting there, but decisions are hard! I can't decide between another meta (the +mastery one is the most expensive right now, but I have no idea how popular it is) and another rare cut, or two rare cuts. And even then, I'm not sure which rare cuts! Time to check out wowpopular, I guess.

Prospecting
Right now, this is the backbone of my gold making. The uncut greens I can turn into Shadowspirit Diamonds with my Alchemist, or into uncut rares, though that's usually not a good idea given how cheap most uncut rares are on the AH right now. I also have been quite successful turning Jasper into Jasper Rings and Carnelian into Carnelian Spikes, and disenchanting those. And then there's simply prospecting and reselling the uncut greens. There seem to still be a lot of people leveling Jewelcrafting, so the uncut gems sell fairly well and fairly quickly. As long as you can sell the gems for more than you spend on the ore (I recommend Obsidium), this is one of the easiest ways to make gold quickly.

Disenchanting
I already touched on this a bit, but here it is again a bit more in depth. JC/Enchanters have a steady and reliable source of dusts and essences through crafting and disenchanting. Jasper Rings cost 1 Jasper and 1 setting to make and give 1-3 dusts or 1-3 essences (in my experience you usually average 2 dusts) and when crafting them you have a chance to proc a rare version that DEs into a Small Heavenly Shard. Carnelian Spikes cost 3 Carnelian and 3 settings and average 2 Greater Celestial Essences. I would say they are currently the best source of GCE. If you don't have access to a JC, you can still make gold disenchanting by buying cheap greens on the AH or in trade. This is something I haven't done too much of, but I do see a lot of people advertising to buy / sell Cata greens in trade chat so I'd assume it's a good way to get your dusts and essences. As always, higher level items disenchant into better stuff, so make sure you know what you're buying before you buy it.

Other Gold-Makers
As I mentioned in an earlier post, smelting is a very quick and easy way to get some extra gold. Just a caveat though, it can be hit or miss. Because of how simple it is to do - it just takes a few seconds to compare the price of 2 ore to 1 bar - the market for bars can become over saturated and undercut to the point where it's no longer profitable. On the other hand, because of how simple and quick it is to smelt the ore, there's no reason not to keep an eye on this market and post a stack or two whenever it's profitable.

Glyphs were generating a decent amount of gold for me. However, given that I am lazy and how complicated it can be to mill all those herbs, create all that ink, and craft all those glyphs, this is a market I haven't bothered with lately. But if inscription is your main profession, don't forget about glyphs. They still have plenty of potential.

Transmute cooldowns are another reliable source of gold. Generally, xmuting Volatile Life into Volatile Air is going to be your best bet. Air is usually at least four times as much as Life, so that's pure profit with little effort. You just need a way to get to Uldum and back, of course. My Alchemist is 83, so I ran through the starting quests to open the portal. I just port there, and hearth back. If your alchemist isn't 83, doing this will be a bit more complicated. If flying to Uldum is too much of a hassle, consider something else to xmute those Life into (Hyjal is really close, and Volatile Fire sells well too), or do Truegold. Right now, mats cost ~600-700g and I see Truegold on the AH usually for 1k-1.5k. I've only sold one or two because I'm saving them for the Alchemist Drake, so it's not an area I'm really familiar with.

Markets I Want to Get In To.
Flasks and Potions/Elixirs are things I'd like to start messing around with, but right now that's just a lot of extra work I'm not willing to do. Until APM or a similar add-on gets updated with Cata items, I'm probably going to keep my hands out of these markets. I like making gold, but I don't like doing the math on four different materials for one item. Maybe I'll make a spreadsheet one day to do that math for me. But for anyone not as lazy as I am, I imagine that flasks are selling quite well right now, especially if you're on a server big on raiding. Scrolls are another area I enjoyed in Wrath, but right now they're so messed up it's hard to keep track. So many people are dumping the scrolls they made while leveling that making them for profit is near impossible. Of course, now is a good time to snatch up those cheap scrolls to sell back in a month or so. For now, I'm taking the easy route and disenchanting for profit.