How to get free gold in WoW Forever without buying it

This guide is built for the road to 60, not for a gold-per-hour leaderboard. Everything below is based on beta information; prices do not exist yet, so we explain how to decide instead of promising numbers. We’ll update it after the November 4 launch, once real auction house prices appear.

The one rule: gold follows your route

Leaving your quests to farm a camp for an hour is almost never worth it before level 30. What works is turning the things you already kill and pass by into money:

• Loot every corpse. Coins, cloth and grey items add up faster than you expect.
• Sell grey items on every trip to town. They have no other use, and empty bags mean you never skip loot.
• Keep cloth, leather, ore and herbs. Do not vendor them before checking the auction house.
• Buy only what saves time. Training your new ranks, repairs and enough food or water. Skip low-level gear from the auction house; quest rewards replace it quickly.

What to focus on by level

Levels	Focus	Why
1–10	Quests, loot, one gathering profession	Coins come mostly from quests. Start gathering now so your skill keeps up with the zones.
10–20	Cloth from humanoids, gathering on the move	Waylaid Crates start at level 10 and create demand for basic materials.
20–30	Sell materials in batches, test the auction house	Expert crates open at level 20; compare raw materials with crafted versions.
30–60	Higher-tier materials and selected crafts	Better materials and recipes appear. Wait for live prices before crafting in bulk.

Which professions make gold

If gold is your goal, two gathering professions are the safest start: you sell what you collect and spend almost nothing.

• Skinning + Herbalism: the best fit for questing. Many early quests are “kill X beasts”, so leather comes for free, and herbs sit along the paths.
• Mining + Herbalism: two markets, but you can only track one resource at a time. Switch tracking when you change zones.
• Mining + Skinning: good for melee classes who fight lots of beasts and walk through hills and caves.

Crafting professions (Alchemy, Tailoring, Leatherworking…) make sense if you want your own gear or consumables. Treat levelling them as an investment, not as income. You can always swap a gathering profession for a crafting one later.

Forever changes that matter

• Skinning: according to the level 30 beta notes, a creature can once again be skinned only one time before the corpse disappears. If another player kills a beast and does not skin it, the corpse is yours to check.
• Skinning skill: under Classic rules, beasts up to level 10 need skill 1, beasts from 11 to 20 need (level − 10) × 10 and beasts above 20 need level × 5. A level 17 beast needs 70; a level 30 one needs 150.
• Mining: the same notes reduced Poor Copper Vein nodes in starter areas. Do not wait on one node; keep tracking active and move on.
• Thresholds to remember: Tin needs Mining 65. Earthroot needs Herbalism 15, Mageroyal 50 and Briarthorn 70. Train the next rank before you hit the cap, or skill-ups stop.

Waylaid Crates: sell, fill or keep?

Waylaid Crates are Forever’s supply orders. They drop in the open world and can also be bought on the auction house. Each crate lists several bundles and you only need one of them to fill it (for example, enough Linen Cloth or enough Light Leather).

• Requirements: Apprentice and Journeyman crates need level 10, Expert level 20 and Artisan level 35.
• Turn-in: Horde turn crates in at the Durotar Supply and Logistics camp outside the west gate of the Crossroads. Alliance use the Azeroth Commerce Authority camp at Three Corners, on the western edge of Redridge Mountains.
• Rewards: Merchant’s Favor plus a little silver. Merchant’s Favor is not gold: it buys recipes and cosmetics from those camps. Some recipes also need reputation.
• Your first crate: the first fill starts a camp quest that, according to beta reports, gives 2,000 reputation and 50 Merchant’s Favor. Keep your first crate for yourself.

After that first one, you have three options for every crate:

Option	When it makes sense
Sell the empty crate	Crates sell well and you do not need recipes right now.
Sell the materials crates ask for	Linen Cloth, Light Leather or Copper Ore are in demand because of other players’ crates.
Fill it and turn it in	You want a specific recipe or are working toward reputation.

Legacy perks for gold

The Legacy system unlocks with your first Legacy Point. Blizzard says most players get it when their first character reaches level 25. You can also get it by reaching 150 in a non-gathering profession or exploring the whole map. At launch, you can spend up to 16 points per character.

• Bountiful Harvest gives more Scarce materials from Mining, Herbalism and Skinning. It does not increase ordinary materials.
• Bartering lowers the gold price of vendor purchases. It saves money; it does not raise your sale prices.
• Reagent Economy removes vendor reagent costs from class abilities and the materials for tier 1 camping features. It is a small but constant saving.

Selling without losing gold

1. Check the vendor price first. That is your guaranteed floor.
2. Compare price per unit on the auction house, not per stack.
3. Remember the fees. In Classic, the faction auction house keeps 5% of each sale and asks for a deposit that you lose if the item does not sell. The neutral goblin auction houses take more.
4. Post small and watch. If a few stacks sell, post more. If they expire, lower the price or sell to the vendor.
5. Process only when it pays. Smelting ore into bars or turning scraps into leather is worth it only if the finished item sells for more.

Don’t buy gold

Buying gold or Merchant’s Favor services breaks Blizzard’s rules. Blizzard closed more than 2,100 beta accounts for buying gold alone, and stolen accounts are a common risk with sellers. Read what Blizzard is doing about gold buying. Everything in this guide works with zero starting gold.

What we’ll add after launch

• Real auction house trends for early materials on each ruleset.
• Which crates and recipes are worth the effort.
• Farming routes checked in the live game, not copied from Classic.

Want a starting point? See the Skinning, Herbalism and Mining guides, or plan your trip in the leveling guide.