Not too long ago, WoW Classic Anniversary realms moved forward into The Burning Crusade, giving players another chance to dive back into one of the most iconic expansions in the game’s history. Outland is open once again, and with all of its new content comes a whole new list of expenses. Gems, enchants, professions, crafted gear, consumables, flying mounts—all of this will cost you a pretty hefty amount of WoW Classic gold, so you’ll need to find some good ways to keep your pockets full.
In this guide, we’ll break down some of the easiest and most effective gold-making methods in TBC Classic to help you keep that gold flowing and stay on top of your game without too much grind.
Questing
Probably the most basic source of gold in the game is simply doing quests as you level up and progress through the content. You could even call it passive income, since you’re getting gold from activities you’d be doing anyway for XP and reputation.
Here’s an interesting detail: while leveling (up to level 70), you’ll earn roughly 2,000 gold from quests. But if you complete those same quests at max level, you can make closer to 5,000 gold, and that’s not even counting the quest reward items, which you can either disenchant or vendor for extra profit. So if you want to squeeze the most out of questing and don’t mind doing group content, it might be better to dungeon spam your way to level 70 and then come back to complete quests for higher gold rewards.
Fishing
Fishing is a secondary gathering profession that a lot of players tend to overlook when it comes to gold-making. Well, they really shouldn’t, because fishing is actually a very low-stress and low-competition method with steady profits.
In Outland, you’ll mainly be fishing for Golden Darter and Furious Crawdad in Terokkar Forest, as well as Spotted Feltail and Zangarian Sporefish in Zangarmarsh. These fish are the main ingredients for powerful food buffs, so you’ll have no trouble finding buyers on the Auction House. You can pair Fishing with Cooking to boost your profits, but even on its own, Fishing performs really well. You just chill by the water, cast your line, and then drop everything off at the Auction House for easy gold.
Primal Farming
Primals are elemental materials that are essential for lots of high-end crafting recipes, which makes them one of the most consistent and reliable farms in TBC.
There are several types of Primals in the game. Pure Primals themselves drop quite rarely, so most of the time you’ll be farming Motes instead. Combining ten Motes of a specific type creates one Primal of that same type.
Here are the main farms with mobs and locations:
- Primal Fire: Incandescent Fel Sparks in Throne of Kil’jaeden in Hellfire Peninsula; Searing Elementals in Blade’s Edge Mountains; Raging Fire-Souls at the Elemental Plateau in Nagrand; Enraged Fire Spirits in central Shadowmoon Valley
- Primal Mana: Phase Hunters, Nether Rays, Mana Seekers, and Mageslayers in Netherstorm
- Primal Air: Storming Wind-Rippers at the Elemental Plateau; Dust Howlers in eastern Nagrand, Living Cyclones in the west, Storm Ragers in central Nagrand; Enraged Air Spirits in Shadowmoon Valley
- Primal Water: Enraged Water Spirits at Coilskar Point in Shadowmoon Valley; Bloodthirsty Marshfangs and Lagoon Eels in Zangarmarsh; Shimmerscale Eels and Skettis Surgers in Terokkar Forest; Lake Spirits, Muck Spawns, and Lake Surgers in Nagrand (Elixir of Water Breathing helps a lot with farming underwater)
- Primal Shadow: Collapsing Voidwalkers and Vacillating Voidcallers at Void Ridge near the Dark Portal, Rogue and Uncontrolled Voidwalkers in the Warp Fields of Hellfire Peninsula; Voidspawns around Oshu’gun in Nagrand
- Primal Life: Withered Giants and Withered Bog Lord in The Dead Mire, Fungal Giants and Bog Lords in Quagg Ridge, and Starving Fungal Giants and Starving Bog Lords in The Spawning Glen in Zangarmarsh; Infested Root-Walkers and Rotting Forest-Ragers around Auchindoun in Terokkar Forest
- Primal Earth: Tortured Earth Spirits, Enraged Crushers, and Shattered Rumblers in Nagrand; Enraged Earth Spirits in central Shadowmoon Valley
On top of open-world mob farming, you can also get Motes with the Engineering profession using the Zapthrottle Mote Extractor. It’s a special tool that lets you literally pull Motes out of the air, extracting them from gas clouds scattered all over Outland.
One more way to farm Primals is through gathering professions. For example, Motes of Fire can drop while mining Fel Iron Deposits or Khorium Veins, and Motes of Life have a chance to come from herb nodes like Ancient Lichen, Dreaming Glory, or Felweed. In general, Mining + Herbalism is a very strong gold-making combo with steady income and a constant supply of materials that crafters are always happy to buy.
Flipping Vendor Items
This is one of the laziest gold-making methods out there. It requires no grinding, no setup, barely any effort, and you won’t even need to press that many buttons. All you really need is an Auction House addon and a bit of starting gold.
Any addon that can scan the Auction House will do. Auctionator is a solid, beginner-friendly option; TradeSkillMaster is more advanced and takes some time to learn and set up, but if you’re planning to get serious about gold-making and item flipping in particular, it’ll be absolutely worth your while. As for start-up gold, it’ll be spent on buying items from vendors, so the more you have, the better, but in general, anywhere around 100-300 gold will be enough.
Having a level 1 alt parked in a capital city, with your main staying in Outland, saves you a lot of time on traveling. You scan the Auction House on your alt, then log onto your main in Shattrath and start hunting down the most profitable vendor items based on your scan results. When buying a recipe or item, always consider the markup you can make, how useful the item is, and how hard it is to obtain. As a rule of thumb, it’s best to go for items with at least a 50% profit margin.
Here are some vendors worth checking out:
- Gidge Spellweaver
- Eiin
- Nasmara Moonsong.
- Viggz Shinesparked
- Madame Ruby
- Supply Officer Mills
- Innkeeper Biribi
- Leeli Longhaggle
- Rungor
- Johan Barnes
- Tatiana
- Burko
- Juno Dufrain
- Loolruna
- Muheru the Weaver
- Doba
- Seer Janidi
- Mycah
- Uriku
These, of course, are not all the vendors you can buy things from in Outland— the list would be way too long if we tried to cover them all—so whenever you are in a city, just take a look around, talk to NPCs, and see what they have in stock. And once you’ve got your goods, head back to the Auction House, list everything, and wait for the sales to roll in.
A full vendor route in Outland usually takes around an hour, maybe more, depending on how many stops you include. On average, you can expect to make two to three times what you invested. The only downside is that this method isn’t exactly rinse-and-repeat, because your inventory space is limited, and you’ll need to sell your items before going out for another run.
