Here, I want to talk about how you can use the gold you have made to make even more Hardcore Gold.
Introduction
Imagine you have 100 gold in your bags that you don’t need. If you don’t invest that gold, and you keep sitting on that 100 gold, in 2 months, you will still have 100 gold. But, if you put that gold into valuable items, you can simply let inflation do its job and you will get more than 100 gold back.
By investing into the right items, you can also combine aspects, such as inflation with supply and demand metrics, to get crazy returns.
As an example of this, when Season of Mastery came out, I farmed 1000 gold in the first 2 weeks, and I invested all of that into items I knew would go up in price. Over 2 months, that gave me 20,000 gold in return, giving me 20x returns on my investments, or 2000% profit, or basically giving me 19,000 gold for free.
So, I will show you some of the items I am thinking of putting my WoW Classic Hardcore Gold into for the Hardcore Servers. But investing is a pretty risky game and you always have to evaluate the current price of the item, versus the price you think it will reach. And you constantly have to think about supply spikes and demand spikes.
A supply spike could, for example, be during the weekend when more people have time to farm. And a demand spike could, for example, be on Raid Days for items used in crafting consumables that are used for Raiding.
This guide is an introduction to Flipping & Investing in WoW Classic Hardcore, aiming to talk about the topic in general, show you how it works, and give you some concrete examples.
Investments
So, let’s talk about investments.
Hardcore Servers are a little different from most other versions of Classic WoW so far, by them not being progressive. All the content will be available from the start, but we can still make some highly educated guesses on which materials will be popular at which times.
For example, not a lot of people will be doing Naxxramas for at least a couple of months, but a lot of people might be doing Molten Core pretty early. This means you could make quicker profits by flipping items that are relevant for Molten Core, while Naxxramas items might make you higher profit margins overall but will take longer to reach their full price.
Elemental Fire
The first item I will personally be investing into is Elemental Fire.
This one is a very easy one, as it always goes up in price when people start entering into raids. The math behind this is pretty simple:
While leveling, a lot of people will find Elemental Fires somewhat casually, which means the supply is high, but the demand is low because nobody is raiding. When people stop leveling and start raiding, the supply goes down but the demand skyrockets, and so does the price.
As a reference, we can look at Season of Mastery, which was our most recent Fresh Classic WoW Environment. You could buy these for about a gold per piece and sell them for between 10-20 gold when people started raiding Molten Core.
Elemental Fires are used in crafting various items relevant for Fire Resistances and pre-bis items. But most notably, they are used in crafting Greater Fire Protection Potions.
These are always in high demand when raiding both Molten Core & Blackwing Lair. And as you can probably understand: anything that is used for survival-reasons, will be used even more often on Hardcore Servers where you only have one life.
Small Flame Sacs
The next item is also based on the same principle, and that is Small Flame Sacs.
This is used in crafting Dragonbreath Chili (which is often used by certain classes for DPS output), Flame Deflector (which can be used for survival-reasons), and regular Fire Protection Potions (For those who cannot afford Greater Fire Protection Potions).
Once again, referring back to Season of Mastery’s launch, I was able to buy multiple of these for anywhere between 10 silver and 50 silver each, and I sold them for up to 6 gold each during the peak of Molten Core.
This item has a lot of potential as it’s something people will constantly find while leveling in Classic WoW. So, if you can just buy some of these cheap from people that are leveling, you can make some incredibly easy Classic Hardcore Gold.
Both Elemental Fires and Small Flame Sacs are short-term investments, meaning you could buy them right now and aim to sell them off in the next couple of months for a quick profit, and then aim to use that profit to put into other items with higher profit-margins later down the line.
Elemental Earth
You also have Elemental Earth.
This one is pretty much just like Elemental Fire in the terms that it’s used in crafting different items. But I like to focus on Consumables here with a high sell rate and will keep the demand high: Elemental Sharpening Stones & Greater Nature Protection Potions.
Crafting both of these requires Elemental Earth, which will keep the demand for this item incredibly high.
Elemental Water
And I guess while we’re on the topic of Elementals, you also have Elemental Water.
This one has very high potential over time, as almost nobody buys them early on. But when people start doing Naxxramas, these go up in price like crazy.
However, you also have to consider how many people will actually be raiding Naxxramas on a Hardcore Server. So, this one could be a lot more speculative.
With Elementals and Flame Sacs covered, let’s talk about some other stuff.
Felcloth
Felcloth. This is commonly obtained from Level 50 to 60, and could therefore be in quite high demand the first few weeks.
This item becomes in higher and higher demand as more people get to level 60 and start focus on their gear and professions. This is mainly because Felcloth is used within Tailoring and is used in order to skill up Tailoring, and it’s also used in crafting Mooncloth, which is further used in crafting the Bloodvine Set, for example.
Bloodvine Set is a very powerful crafted set for Casters, which this time around will be available straight from the release. This is an item I think could be very cheap once again for the first few weeks, and then skyrocket in price after a month or two when people get to level 60.
This is also because Crafted Sets can give people some pretty strong gear without requiring them to step foot inside raids. And to a lot of people, doing raids on a hardcore server where you only have 1 life can be very scary. But they still might want to gear out their character in terms to do some other content, like farming.
Arcane Crystals
Arcane Crystals, pretty much exactly the same principle here as before, that the demand will start skyrocketing once people get to level 60 and start skilling up their profession as well as look into buying Crafted Gear, or buy materials to craft their own gear.
Arcane Crystals are notably used in the Alchemy Transmute for Arcanite Bars, which is further used in most best-in-slot Blacksmithing Crafts. Because of the amount of Warriors there’s going to be, this could end up being extremely profitable, if you can get them cheap enough.
Conclusion
So, here’s a quick recap of what I would personally do:
- While leveling, try to save as much WoW Classic HC Gold as possible, and make as much gold as possible.
- Put every leftover gold you have into items, more specifically, divide your gold into these items right here: Elemental Fire, Small Flame Sac, Elemental Earth, Felcloth and Arcane Crystals.
- Once those items reach a profit-margin, you are personally happy with, consider selling them off and re-investing into items you think has better profitability later down the line.
