So the other day I was listening to Episode 5 of the Auction House Junkies podcast with Wes of Capped by Cata and Cold of Cold's Gold Factory. In this episode, the hosts answered a listener mail about why they would farm materials or purchase the materials from the auction house. They had some great points about why farming is still a good strategy for making gold, but for them farming is more of a supplement or leisure game time activity than it is a viable long term gold making activity. I decided to look at why I farm in this game...
Like any aspiring goblin, I too believe that Time equals Money. When I have a low level toon on another server, I do not have a lot of money, but I do have the time to gather as I level. I invest a few extra seconds to gather that mining node or skin that animal to have materials I can sell on the auction house. This provides the starter cash to help me begin to make investments in the server's economy. The extra experience gained from mining and gathering herbs is just a bonus now for me. In essence, once I develop enough money from my time, I can then begin to use my money to make more money and utilize less of my time on gold making.
There can be times in which I return to farming, even after having plenty of money to invest in the market. For example, at the beginning of the Cataclysm expansion I used my gathering toon to gather both mines and herbs. The gold people would pay early in an expansion to help level their professions was borderline ridiculous. So, I set a plan to spend 1 to 2 hours per day gathering Cataclysm materials if I was not leveling my main toon. I listed everything that I gathered from those few hours of gathering the first two weeks after launch. Looking back, I wish that I had spent more time farming and less time leveling my main toon. My main toon did not need to be ready to raid as soon as possible and the money made in the first 2 weeks was incredible. I made over 100,000 gold just from the raw materials I gathered in probably about 10-12 hours of total time spent on farming. After 2 weeks, there was an abundance of gathering materials on the auction house and the prices were beginning to come down.
At this time, I buy many of the materials I need form the auction house rather than farm them directly. There are times that the prices of trade goods go higher than I am willing to pay for. If I also have the time, I will put on some good music or a podcast and fly around picking up the materials that I need at the time. Also, I tend to fish occasionally to help our guild towards catching 10,000 fish for the achievement, That's A Lot of Bait. For the most part, I enjoy doing something which would be more fun to me, such as raiding or pvp or leveling another toon.
Thank you for checking in today.
Time to go help my guild get more purples...
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