Classic Shaman Goldmaking Guide: The Best Ways to Make Gold

Earning gold is an incredibly important part of Classic WoW and will be very important for many things. There are large purchases that you will want to make, such as getting your epic mount or getting better gear from the auction house. You will also have lots of reoccurring purchases, such as consumables for raiding and PvP. The bottom line is that gold is important, both for quality of life and getting important items to help your gameplay. One of the most important things to do once you hit Level 60 for the first time, or even before that, is to work to establish a gold-making source.

In Classic, there are no passive combat bonuses for choosing specific professions. This means that you are free to choose whatever you would like. Despite this, professions can be incredibly important for lots of things, and it is important to consider the possible benefits before choosing. Some professions are great for making gold, while some are more suited to helping you in actual gameplay.

Especially at the start, materials will be expensive. This is especially true for minerals, herbs, and skins that come from higher level zones and enemies. Mining, Herbalism, Skinning, and Fishing are all great choices for gold making, and should be learned early during the leveling phase, so that you never have to return to low-level areas to increase your skill. Keep in mind that keeping your Mining and Herbalism skill relevant as you level, will require you to spend more time in an area than what would be ideal for speed leveling. Gathering materials before hitting the level cap will also help you level crafting professions that use those materials.

Tailoring, Leatherworking, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, and Alchemy can all be quite profitable, as long as you level them early and search for rare recipes. Tailoring, Blacksmithing, and Leatherworking can craft good gear, some of it best in slot. Meanwhile, Enchanting and Alchemy can make consumables, which are especially relevant when raiding and in PvP. Due to the short duration nature of Alchemy's potions, this is an especially relevant profession for gold making. Engineering can also make some interesting gear and relevant consumables, but those are generally only usable by engineers, which limits its usefulness in gold making.

One of the best ways to make some gold with little to no effort is by crafting rare items that are bound by cooldowns on how often they can be crafted.

This is the case with Refined Deeprock Salt for Leatherworking, Mooncloth for Tailoring and Arcanite Bar for Alchemy.

While the cooldowns ensure that you cannot get a huge amount of gold this way unless you have multiple characters, it also ensures that the crafted items will sell at a premium relative to their material components.

Certain vendors, such as Ghok'kah, sell very valuable recipes, or even raw materials, on a limited stock, which slowly replenishes over time. Being aware of this and reselling the recipe or materials to other players can generate high profits, although it is difficult to buy these items consistently.

Shaman Healers are not good world farmers in WoW Classic: their outgoing damage is very low, and self-healing reduces your Mana pool, which you will need to use to kill enemies. Where they shine, however, is inside dungeons and similar zones where enemies hit very hard, and a healer is all but necessary. As healers can be hard to find, you can try and sell your services in trade chat, either by asking people looking for a healer if they would pay you to heal for their groups or by straight up announcing that you are available to heal in trade chat, stating a price. It is also viable to team up with a strong DPS, such as a Warrior or Warlock, for both to farm more easily.

DPS Shamans can dish out extreme amounts of burst damage, both single-target and area of effect. However, their sustainability and capacity to continually pull is weak, as their Mana does not last for long. Teaming up with another DPS class, such as a Mage, could help both farm even faster!

While describing every single possible farm spot in the game is out of the scope of this guide, you will generally be searching for spots with many enemies, ensuring that you can pull continuously without needing to wait for respawns. Also, these enemies should be able to drop valuable items for your time investment in killing them.

Naturally, the requirements of a perfect grinding spot are best met inside dungeons, where no outside interference is possible, and ensuring you get full respawns instantly, each time you reset the dungeon. The only limitation is that you can only run 5 individual dungeon lockouts per hour before the game will not allow you to create new instances of the dungeon anymore, so plan accordingly.

Dire Maul East is, by far, the best gold per hour farming spot for Shamans in WoW Classic, but it does require you (or your partner, if splitting the loot) to have Mining, and preferably Herbalism as well.

Dire Maul East is one of the top places for Shamans to farm in WoW Classic, especially if have Herbalism or Mining, as you will be able to loot multiple Dreamfoil, Gromsblood and Rich Thorium veins every run, on top of the loot from kills and the multiple librams in the area.

There are two ways to go about this: solo or with another player.

1. If you are doing it solo, you will want to play as Elemental and focus on getting to the Rich Thorium Veins at the end for the valuable Arcane Crystals and Blue Sapphires contained inside. Proceed as shown by Cloudes in order to kill Zevrim Thornhoof and open the cave at the end, which should take around 17 minutes total, allowing for 5 runs per hour.
2. If you wish to do it in a group, you will want to have at least one DPS player with you, preferably a Warrior. This will most likely imply splitting the profits, lowering your gold per hour, but also increasing the odds of successfully doing the run, and also allowing you to kill most bosses for their loot. Check out this run, by Holypalaswe for the details on how to pull it off.

Maraudon is a great place to farm all kinds of valuable materials, but one of the easiest (and most profitable) farms is to enter from the Orange entrance and run all the way to the Purple entrance of Maraudon, picking up a ton of Ghost Mushroom, Blindweed and Mithril Ore along the way!

This method requires no killing of enemies whatsoever, only running / positioning to avoid pulling aggro through the dungeon. You can see it being masterfully done by Timira in this video. While it will be harder to dodge some of the enemies as a Shaman, you can still kill them easily, if needed.

Blackrock Depths is a great dungeon to farm, because it drops a lot of the most wanted pre-bis items in the game for most classes, such as Hand of Justice and Ban'thok Sash, making it a very popular dungeon to run on the way to 60.

What is lesser known, is that you can easily solo farm these important items, or sell them to other players at level 60 by soloing the bosses / events involved!

This involves the use of a ledge in the East Garrison area, which will confuse NPC pathing and allow you to slowly take them down without taking damge, as shown / explained here, by Ebbnflow.

Once you outlevel them, you can boost dungeons for lower level players for gold. While this tends to be a lower gold per hour method than most, it is something to keep in mind.

One of the fastest ways to level / boost others as a H Horde player is by picking up the quest Commander Gor'shak. This quest's follow up, What Is Going On?, will instantly spawn 7 elites to attack you inside the dungeon, which you can kill quickly with a good party or high level characters. You can then abandon the quest and start it again at the NPC as many times as you want for an infinite number of elites to kill.

While it is recommended that you bring as many area of effect classes as possible for this farm, you can still clear it with a normal group, if required.

Check out an example of this farm being done in practice here, by Asher.

Farming in the world is usually considerably harder than doing it inside instances due to the possibility of competition, but is still something to consider.

Elemental Fire is a super useful item, used to create Greater Fire Protection Potions. It can also easily be farmed while leveling and at level 60 in Searing Gorge.

Small Flame Sac is also a very useful item, used to create the weaker (and thus cheaper) Fire Protection Potions. It can also easily be farmed while leveling, as many of the dragon enemies that drop them are low level. Killing Sprite Dragons in Feralas is also a great way to farm these.

Eastern Plaguelands is one of the best places to farm, and we will go into more detail on some of its best farming spots below, as an example:

Plaguebats are scattered around most of the zone (yellow areas) and are easy to kill for Shamans, since their main ability is a fear effect you can promptly remove with Tremor Totem or straight up interrupt with Earth Shock. They often drop valuable grey items, which leads to slow, but steady gold farming.

Tyr's Hand is a Scarlet Crusade fortified area, where a lot of elite enemies are present (red area), and which can be a very profitable farming spot. The enemies at Tyr's Hand drop a lot of currency, Runecloth, Major Healing Potion, high level greens, and other profitable items.

Besides Eastern Plaguelands, you can also farm:

• Elementals in Arathi Highlands for Elemental Fire, Elemental Earth, and Elemental Water, which are used to make Fire, Nature, and Frost Protection potions.
• Winterfall Furbolgs for Winterfall Firewater, Runecloth, and Major Healing Potion, as well as materials for Juju Power.
• Satyrs in Azshara and Felwood for Felcloth, Runecloth, Major Healing Potion and, especially, Demonic Runes which are great for raiding.
• Notably, Scarlet Spellbinders (found around this area) can drop Formula: Enchant Weapon - Crusader, a rare formula which you can sell to enchanters for a large sum of gold, or if you are one, sell the enchant itself to other players.

These are all valuable materials you can sell to other players, but beware of other people attempting to do the same, as the number of enemies available can become rather limited when there are more than a handful of farmers in the same spot.