WoW: Forever Gold Making Guide: What Works Right Now

A good chunk of the Classic gold playbook does not work in WoW: Forever. Level 60 quests do not turn into a pile of gold, AoE farming was nerfed on purpose, and six days after launch Blizzard had already cut what vendors pay for crafted gear. There is also no WoW Token to set a price for gold. What follows sticks to what Blizzard's posts and Warcraft Wiki's Forever pages say about this version. It does not port numbers over from Classic Era or retail, and it gives no gold-per-hour figures, because an economy nine days old has no stable prices to base them on. For which two professions to pick, see our professions guide. This guide is about turning time into gold.

A Riverglades village, from Blizzard's WoW: Forever press screenshots.

What Forever changes about gold

The AoE nerf is worth reading in Blizzard's own words. In its Mage and Shaman deep dive, Blizzard says Cone of Cold's shorter duration is part of a general fix to reduce how well gold farmers and boosters can kite large numbers of monsters. It says Improved Blizzard's slow was cut because Frost Mages' AoE farming of instances was "widely used by gold farmers and boosters." It also cut the proc chance of free-effect talents such as Arcane Concentration when you cast spells of a much lower rank, and says other classes have similar penalties. The classic trick of spamming rank 1 spells to fish for free procs is weaker here.

Quest gold is the baseline from level 48

On November 10, Blizzard made most quests level 48 and higher also reward gold. Its developer note explains why. The original game added an XP-to-gold conversion for level 60 quests just before The Burning Crusade, and Forever does not have it. Blizzard did not want players holding quests back until 60 for a payout. Three kinds of quest were left out: ones that already reward valuable items, repeatable quests, and quick or trivial ones.

What that means in practice:

• Turn quests in as you go. At 60 there is no conversion, so a held quest pays its normal reward and nothing more.
• Late-game zones pay you to level. From 48 to 60, most quests now give gold as well as XP. Blizzard gives no amounts, so check the reward panel before you accept.
• Vendor your quest-reward greens only if you have no use for them. Blizzard's starter guide says gray items "have no further use and can be safely sold." Anything better than gray is a judgment call.

One thing to be careful about: on November 11, Blizzard disabled the Item Restoration service "while we investigate and address a critical bug." Until it comes back, an item you sell or delete by mistake is gone, so check the Buyback tab before you leave the vendor. Our November 10-11 hotfix breakdown has the rest of that update.

Gathering: sell to the crafters

Warcraft Wiki's Forever pages call all three gathering professions a gold maker on its own. The Mining and Herbalism pages name the professions that use their materials, and the Skinning page pairs it with Leatherworking:

Two Forever-only details tilt the numbers further toward gathering. In the Legacy Professions tree, Blizzard's Bountiful Harvest perk "helps you find additional Scarce resources when mining, herbing, or skinning." And the Tauren racial Cultivation duplicates a nearby herb node in Forever, per Warcraft Wiki. Blizzard's Legacy post counts only non-gathering primary professions toward its tradeskill challenges, though, and both primary slots are a trade-off. Our professions guide covers that choice in full, so this guide does not repeat it.

Here is the honest catch with gathering for gold: we can tell you who uses the materials, but not what they sell for. Blizzard does not publish prices, and nothing in this version has had time to settle. Check what your own auction house pays before you farm a stack.

A Riverglades shore at sunset, from Blizzard's Forever press screenshots.

Crafting after the vendor price cuts

Blizzard has already cut into crafting for vendor gold in Forever. Its November 10 hotfixes reduced what vendors pay for some crafted Leatherworking, Tailoring and Blacksmithing armor. Its note says those were all bind-on-pickup items "a player was intended to craft only once for themselves." The same list cut two more vendor values:

Warcraft Wiki lists the Iron Grenade's sell price as 5 silver, which matches the "was" figure, so this is what a vendor pays you for one, not what a vendor charges.

Crafting still makes gold when you sell to other players, but the market decides what works, not this guide. Two changes are worth watching:

• Bags. On November 11 Blizzard made five Tailoring bags bigger and costlier to make. The Red Mageweave Bag is now 14 slots and the Green Woolen Bag 10. Blizzard's starter guide warns that bag space fills quickly.
• Engineering ammunition. Swiftstrike Shot and Swiftfeather Arrow are no longer bind-on-pickup. Blizzard says they are not available until raids unlock, which it has set for December 9. After that, engineers can sell them to Hunters who are not engineers.

The Alcaz Prison Document Box

Inside Alcaz Prison, from Blizzard's Forever press screenshots.

This is a one-off. Per Warcraft Wiki, Alcaz Prison is a new level 48-53 dungeon on Alcaz Island in Dustwallow Marsh, and it hides a secret quest chain:

1. Skip the first boss, The Questioner, and go to the end of the dungeon. Mason Connery there offers The Man in the Iron Chains.
2. Go back and kill The Questioner for the Ornate Shackle Key, then free Mason. He gives you More Valuable Than Gold (requires level 48) and Mason's Note.
3. Go to Westfall at 43.4, 67.8, the upstairs of the Moonbrook inn. Loose floorboards hide Connery's Trunk, which holds a Document Box.

Warcraft Wiki's item data lists the Document Box's sell price as 25 gold. The wiki's advice is not to sell it. Take it to Renzik "The Shiv" in the SI:7 building in Stormwind's Old Town (Alliance) or to Rix Xizzix in Booty Bay (Horde) for the quest State Secrets, which trades it for a Fractured Insignia. Six insignias combine into the Alcaz Operative Insignia toy, a 10-minute Defias disguise. The Document Box and the Fractured Insignia are both tradable and can be sold on the auction house, per the wiki.

So you have a choice. Take the 25 gold, or sell the box or insignia to someone collecting the toy, who needs six insignias in total. We cannot tell you what they sell for.

Selling on the auction house before and after November 17

At launch every auction house listing cost at least 1 silver. That matters most for cheap low-level materials, where the deposit can be larger than what the item sells for. Blizzard's November 10 hotfix list added a cut to a 1 copper minimum deposit. Forum threads then reported the deposit had not changed, and Blizzard removed the entry. On November 11 (Pacific time), Blizzard's community manager Kaivax explained on the forums that the auction house changes had been pulled from the list "as they will go live with scheduled weekly maintenance on November 17," and will reappear in the hotfix notes after that.

Until then:

• List cheap items in stacks, not singles. The minimum deposit applies to each listing, so a stack of cheap items pays it once and five singles pay it five times.
• Consider holding items worth less than the deposit. The minimum is scheduled to drop to 1 copper on November 17, so cheap materials can wait a few days.
• Check the hotfix page after the maintenance. Blizzard says the auction house changes will reappear in the hotfix notes after November 17, so that is where to confirm what actually shipped.

Who shares your auction house is not spelled out in the Blizzard posts we read. Blizzard's ruleset article says players can group, run dungeons and raid only with others on the same ruleset, and that Horde and Alliance still cannot group. It does not describe auction house scope.

Spending less: Legacy perks and gold sinks

Gold you don't spend counts the same as gold you earn. Blizzard's Legacy System post lists several perks that cut costs:

Each character can spend up to 16 Legacy Points at launch, so these compete with leveling perks.

The known gold sinks: Dual Specialization costs 50 gold from your class trainer at level 40, per Warcraft Wiki. Each spec has its own talent respec fee, which the wiki says decreases over time until it reaches 1 gold. Plan respecs, don't make them on impulse.

What can freeze your gold

• Temporary Economy Holds. Blizzard announced these on its Forever forums on October 13. If your account is suspected of RMT (buying or selling gold for real money), you get restricted use of trade, mail, guild banks and the auction house while Blizzard investigates. Blizzard says the hold lifts automatically if the suspicion proves false and leaves no permanent strike, and that there may be false positives while it tunes the system.
• No GDKP. Blizzard's Josh Greenfield confirmed in a September developer Q&A that GDKP raids will not be allowed in Forever. Auctioning raid loot for a shared gold pot is out.
• Pay carries directly. In an October 27 post on Blizzard's main WoW forums (not specific to Forever), Kaivax warned that gold passed through an intermediate player is very likely RMT gold. Blizzard says carry payments should go directly from the buyer to the player providing the carry.
• No Token, so no legal cash-to-gold route. Clayton Stone, an associate production director at Blizzard, told an interviewer in September that there are "no plans" for a WoW Token or a boost in Forever. Buying gold is RMT, and RMT is what the holds exist to catch.

What this guide does not cover

• Gold-per-hour rankings and price lists. Launch-week prices are not stable and Blizzard publishes none. Any number would be a guess.
• A Black Market Auction House. Third-party guides describe one in Powderfuse Port in the Riverglades. Blizzard has not documented it in anything we read, and Warcraft Wiki's Powderfuse Port page does not list it, so we are leaving it out until a primary source confirms it.
• A level 60 weekly gold quest. Players have reported one in Booty Bay. We could not find it in Blizzard's posts or on Warcraft Wiki yet.
• Merchant's Favor. It is a currency for recipes, mounts and titles from the supply factions, not gold. Our professions guide explains it.
• Hardcore. It has not launched, and Blizzard has not said how its economy will work.

For what you'll be saving up for at 60, see our raids and endgame guide.