Just starting your journey to riches in Azeroth? Then you’ve come to the right place!

In this guide, we’ll walk you through all the aspects of making World of Warcraft gold and help you choose the best methods and tools to easily build your in-game wealth.

Without further ado, let us begin!

What Is Gold and Why Is It Important?

Gold is the primary currency in World of Warcraft. You’ll use it for just about everything, from repairing your gear and leveling professions to buying mounts, consumables, and other items. As you reach higher levels and start doing the endgame content, your gold expenses will only go up, so it’s very important to always have a steady and reliable income.

Which brings us to the next big question: How do you actually make gold in WoW?

Making Gold in World of Warcraft

When it comes to gold-making, almost every method falls into one of four main categories: crafting, farming, questing, or playing the Auction House.

In this section, we’ll take a closer look at what exactly each approach involves, so you can pick the ones that suit you best.

Crafting

Crafting is one of the most reliable ways to earn gold in World of Warcraft. The process is pretty simple: you take raw materials and reagents, use a recipe to turn them into new items, and then sell those items for profit.

To get started, you’ll need to pick up a crafting profession. Every profession allows you to create different types of items:

  • Alchemy – flasks, potions, elixirs, and other consumables
  • Blacksmithing – weapons, plate armor, sharpening stones
  • Leatherworking – leather and mail armor, armor kits
  • Tailoring – cloth gear, bags
  • Enchanting – item enchants that improve gear stats
  • Engineering – gadgets, explosives, and fun utility items
  • Inscription – tomes, missives, and Contracts
  • Jewelcrafting – gems, rings, and necklaces
  • Cooking – food buffs

The more you level up your skill, the more recipes you’ll unlock. Some professions are more universally profitable (like Alchemy and Enchanting), while others can be more niche, but all in all, nearly every profession can be monetized if you know what you’re doing. So don’t feel pressured to chase the “meta” profs and rather pick the ones that suit your playstyle and interests. You can always create an alt and try out new professions at any time!

Farming

Farming is a much easier and more laid-back way to make gold. It requires no upfront investment, and it’s very beginner-friendly. All you need to do is just collect items and sell them on the Auction House.

Gathering professions allow you to get raw materials from the environment or mobs:

  • As a Herbalist, you can gather herbs from plant nodes
  • Mining lets you extract ores and stones from mining nodes
  • Skinning allows you to get leather and hides from beasts
  • With Fishing, you can catch fish in the pools or open waters

You can also make a lot of gold without professions by just killing and looting mobs, both in instances and in the open world. There are plenty of things to collect off of them, like crafting mats and reagents, transmogs, BoEs, recipes, patterns, pets, and sometimes even mounts.

Keep in mind, though, that raids and dungeons do have loot lockouts: in dungeons, you can enter and loot up to 10 instances per hour, and raids are lootable only once per week on each difficulty. Open-world farming does not have any limits whatsoever, so you can kill mobs for as long as you want. Some creatures, like Rare Elites, often have set spawn times and locations, and many players usually leave their alts to camp at these spots, logging in from time to time to try their luck on a rare drop.

Some farms are also better done in a group, so you can team up with others (Group Finder is of great help here if you don’t have friends of guildies to play with) to make things faster, smoother, and more gold-efficient.

Speaking of efficiency, your farming sessions can go a lot better if you use special equipment and consumables. Profession tools, for instance, will give you nice skill boosts, and things like Darkmoon Firewater or Weaver’s Prodigy buff will help gather a lot faster.

Quest Rewards

Completing quests is one of the most straightforward ways to earn gold. You can do story quests, dailies, weeklies, or World Quests to earn raw gold and valuable items that can be sold on the Auction House.

Item Flipping

Flipping means buying items from the Auction House at a low price and reselling them for a profit. This could be crafting materials, transmogs, consumables, battle pets, mounts, and pretty much anything as long as it’s listed below its market value.

The most crucial thing in flipping is understanding the game’s economy: what sells well, what’s underpriced, and when players are most likely to buy. A lot of this comes with experience, but tools like TradeSkillMaster (TSM) and Auctionator (more on them later) are incredibly useful for tracking price trends and managing your listings.

It may not be the fastest and definitely not the easiest way to make gold as a beginner, but if you’re patient and analytical—and already have some gold to spend—flipping can be extremely profitable, bringing in thousands of gold without you even leaving the city.

Other Important Things That’ll Help You Make Gold

Addons

Addons are absolutely essential for gold-making, as they help you improve and streamline tons of time-consuming tasks.

The first thing you’ll want to get is an Auction House addon. The two most popular choices—which we’ve already mentioned—are TradeSkillMaster (TSM) and Auctionator. TSM is an incredibly powerful (though somewhat complex) addon that helps you manage auctions, track prices, undercut competitors, and even automate your entire posting and canceling routine. Auctionator is a much easier option, perfect for beginners while still offering all the necessary features like price scanning and bulk posting. Other helpful addons include CraftSim (calculates potential crafting profits), LootAppraiser (shows real-time loot prices as you farm), No Mats No Make (improves working on Patron Orders), and more.

Bank Alt

A bank alt (or “banker”) is a low-level character that you park in a capital city near the Auction House to store all the items you want to sell and handle all your Auction operations. This helps keep your main’s bags clean and organized, and you’ll save a lot of time by mailing everything to your banker rather than flying back and forth yourself.

Reputation

Reputation with various factions can be a surprisingly strong gold-making tool. Building rep with a faction gives you access to exclusive gear, recipes, and cosmetics. Many of these can be sold or used to craft highly valuable goods that’ll bring you solid profits.

Profession Specs

Dragonflight introduced specialization trees for every crafting and gathering profession, allowing you to invest your Knowledge Points to improve specific aspects of your profession.

Each tree has multiple branches that give you various perks like faster crafting/gathering, access to higher-quality items, or the ability to gather while mounted. These bonuses do make a huge difference in gold-making, so if you really want to maximize your profits, pick the specs that benefit you most and focus on them.

The system is pretty deep, and we won’t go into all the details here. Luckily, there are plenty of guides online, and we highly recommend you take some time to study them and plan your build carefully to make the most out of your professions (and earn more of those shiny coins!).