The original release of WoW to many is called vanilla WoW, where the level cap was 60 and we all ran around Azeroth farming materials.   Some of those vanilla materials offer a far greater return for your farming time, if you don’t mind kicking it old school, you can make yourself a tidy profit pretty quickly.

The reason these materials still find is a demand can be categorized as (a) yes, people are still just starting to play the game  (b) creating new alts or (c) changing professions.  The latter is pretty common, right now I’m torn on dropping tailoring on my main (separate story on that later) and perhaps grabbing inscriptions.  After the break, we’ll talk about some materials that provide some pretty surprising returns for you farming time or might be good spec buys during the week for that AH Day Trader.

I’m going to quote some amounts that are related to my server,  mileage can vary so check your local realm but crafting professions seem to suffer from a price choke point in the 250 – 300 range and key items below that.   Think back to the last profession you leveled from zero after TBC, didn’t you go AH and cringe when you saw the price of something you could farm but just didn’t feel like going all the way over there so you paid what you thought was an outrageous price?  Well what made you cringe is also your opportunity, take a look at just a short list below.

Thorium Bar / Thorium Ore – Requirements in Blacksmithing, Jewlcrafting & Engineering, a few loops around Winterspring, Silithus or the Plaguelands during the week can tuck up to 1000 gold each weekend.  During the weekend these peek in price at 90G per stack on my server.

Mithril Bar / Mithril Bar – If you’re traveling around for some Thorium, you’re bound to grab some Mithril,  consistently seeing highs of 50G to 60G a stack depending on availability.

Mageweave Cloth – You’d expect Runecloth to be the bottleneck item but the fact is most people will run through a Strat or Scholo and quickly grab all the stacks they need to level a profession.  Step it down a notch to Mageweave as seems to have a higher demand since fewer people bother to farm the 40-50 level instances like BRD, Uldaman, Zul Farrack or Sunken Temple.

Illusion Dust – The demand for illusion dust has been constant, a constant home run if you don’t mind farming some old content.   Try hitting up Dire Maul or a Combination Strat Live/Undead, you are sure to walk out with a pretty descent pile materials and Illusion Dust seems to pull down 50G to 60G a stack regularly for me.

Greater Eternal Essence – If you don’t end up with Illusion dust from farming efforts listed above,  the alternative are Eternal Essences.  Greaters go for 10G to 15G and the demand is pretty much constant.

Huge Emeralds – According to one of my favorite leveling guiles and I’m sure a favorite of many is wow-professions.com and you’ll note there is a requirement for a whopping 24 of these according to this site to get your JC to 300.   There is always someone who decided the grass is greener and I’ve seen these going for as much as 40G to 50G each.

Golden Rods - I’m continued to be amazed that I can craft a half dozen of these each Friday and watch them disappear for a solid 50G each.   So yes there’s even something a Blacksmith can do to turn a tidy profit in the Auction House in our Vanilla WoW hot list.

Briarthorn –  This is very much a low level mat used in Inscription and Alchemy,  It continues to amaze me at seeing these priced out at 60G per stack but it proves the point that scattered around Vanilla WoW,  we’ve got some great ROI for time spent farming.

CONCLUSION: The point is it never hurts to go back and check markets on materials in your profession.   Vanilla farming is a change of pace,  a good fallback if you no longer making the returns you want for your current gold making venture and it’s also something to do besides just standing around and adding to the Dalalag problem.

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After the break,  we’ll talk about that last leg of leveling the Jewlcrafting profession.   Right now it’s a pricey little journey if but you’ve got one cost effective option already and we’ll discuss how another option becomes quite economical with patch 3.3.

Jewlcrafting options become limited at 430 with Meta Gems and Emerald Choker or Dream Signet type items which usually require a Titanium Bar. Prices have been historically high since the release of Patch 3.2.  With release of Icecrown and Patch 3.3 getting the last legs knocked out will bring some relief to those looking to complete the last leg.  The removal on the cool down for Transmute: Titanium will put immediate downward pressure on Titanum Bars and provide some price relief on Titansteel Bars as well.

The other way to level that last leg provides even more cost savings is by making sure you proc your Icy Prism everyday.  This will take you all the way to 450 if you have the patience.   It’s currently how I’m getting my alt JC’ing up (@439).   Each day I make sure I log in and proc my Icy Prism and also get the JC daily done.  When you hit 450,  you’ll have a bunch of rare gems in your bank and you’ll be able to pick up 5 epic recipes and it cost you very little in gold to do so.  If you combine this with some meta gems here and there the only possible AH material you’ll need is some Frozen Orbs.  Luckily I had a stack in the bank I was saving for a rainy day and I’ve been sticking to the Icy Prism method.

With the patch 3.3 change expect to see the Alchemist quickly take over the Titanium Bar market.  Saronite Bars will surely increase in price.  Miners will start to prospecting their Titanium Ore using an Alt or JC friend looking for a better return on epic gems and Titanium Powder.  Jewlcrafters will see more powder available via AH making it more affordable for those in the profession seeking to acquire recipes.

Personally I feel like someone at Blizzard didn’t anticipate the inflation that would occur in Titanium in patch 3.2 and if this was the answer to bring some equilibrium back to this market segment,  I say well done Blizzard,  well done.

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