Do you want to get that Level 40 mount by the time you actually hit level 40 or get that Epic Mount at level 60? If you do, you must have enough WOW Classic Hardcore Gold. Here is a guide to help you obtain raw gold, specifically while leveling.

Intro

I’m doing this mostly from a Solo Self Found perspective. Because I believe that even if trading is allowed, some players will play on a Solo Self Found basis. And for raw gold, most of it comes from vendoring items anyway, so you can do it completely without having to rely on other people to buy whatever you are selling.

Having access to raw gold early will also be incredibly valuable as the purchasing power of each individual gold is at its absolute peak early in a server’s lifespan. And the purchasing power will go down every single day as more and more people get access to raw gold.

What I mean by purchasing power is that 100 gold will get you more stuff in Week 1 than 100 gold will in Week 2, due to how inflation works. This is important because of, for example, investments or if you just want to stack up on some materials, you might want later and get them while they’re cheap.

Get Skinning

Advice number one is to grab Skinning.

Skinning is an insane profession to have while leveling. Because it simply benefits everyone in terms of increasing the amount of gold you get while leveling up.

Skinning also allows you to skin beasts for additional materials. And although they do not give the most amount of additional to begin with, this scales incredibly well with your level.

By level 10, you might have gained a couple extra silvers. But, by level 40, you will most likely have obtained anywhere between 10 and 40 extra gold, depending on how you level.

Some of the locations where you can farm for the most raw gold per hour, you actually end up killing beasts. In that case, having Skinning will further increase your gold per hour from those locations, pushing you closer to that 40 gold extra by level 40, which is basically half of your level 40 mount.

And especially on Hardcore Servers, many people will choose professions that benefit their profession in terms of survival. Two big professions here are Alchemy & Engineering.

Alchemy is mainly supported by Herbalism, and Engineering is mainly supported by Mining. This means the most popular professions on these servers will be Alchemy, Engineering, Herbalism and Mining.

This is important. Because that means while everyone is leveling up, there will be a lot of skinnable mobs just laying on the ground giving you free skill-ups & free Hardcore Gold. And there are many locations you will find during your Hardcore Journey where you can just sit in one location and skin other people’s mobs, like, for example, the Yeti Cave in Dun’Morogh.

So seriously, if raw gold is something you’re looking for, I always recommend Skinning. Even if you want to have Herbalism & Mining eventually, I would use Skinning while leveling up to 60, then swap professions & farm herbs and mining veins with that level 60 mount. This is also because Herbalism & Mining nodes will be incredibly competitive at launch and will slow down your leveling process, while Skinning you can pretty much always keep up with your level.

Now, when farming raw gold, there are mainly 2 different farms you want to think about: Humanoid Farms & Beast Farms.

Humanoid Farms will give you raw gold by itself through looted silver values, and it will give you Cloth, which you can either sell for vendor loot, or turn into Bandages for even more gold before selling it.

The bonus of Humanoid Farms is that they also have a bigger drop rate on Grey, White & Green items, specifically grey items like Weapons, which can vendor for about a gold per piece (plus / minus). This means in some cases, Humanoid Farms can be better in terms of gold per hour, but they also rely more on RNG because a lot of gold comes from those Grey weapon drops.

From Beast Farms, you will get a very steady amount of gold per hour due to your gold value being derived from what the mob actually drops on a regular basis. Whiskers from Cats, Mane’s from Wolves, Crocodile Pelt and so on, even Gorillas drop a lot of good vendor value items.

For Beast Farms, you can also obviously increase that gold amount by having Skinning, like we just talked about earlier.

Also Read: WOW Classic Hardcore: How To Make Gold From Level 30-40?

Raw Gold Farming Locations

So with this being said, let me show you some of my favourite locations for where to farm for raw gold in Classic WoW.

First off, let’s cover 4 different farming locations I personally use in order to farm enough gold for my level 40 mount, all of which are beast farms and you want to have Skinning.

You have the Tigers in Swamp of Sorrows. Now, I say Tigers here because they will usually give you the most valuable items, but the tigers are also found throughout the entire zone, where you will also find crocodiles & spiders, which are definitely worth killing.

You also have the Gorillas in Stranglethorn Vale. And here, I will show you 2 different farms that are pretty close to each other, giving you 2 different places to farm.

These Gorillas have a pretty lucrative loot-table and will give you the best raw gold you can get at this level, especially if combined with Skinning.

And the farm I personally do the most: Tigers in Badlands.

This one is incredibly slept on and I don’t see many people farming here, which is why I personally really like it here. Because there’s almost never any competition, and they can drop really good vendor-value items, like Long Soft Tails, Bristly Whiskers, and Wicked Claw.

You also have some farms past level 40. For example, my personal favourite is this one killing Steeljaw Snappers in Tanaris.

This one is very known from farming Turtle Meat and as a pretty decent experience farm. But these turtles also drop pretty good vendor loot, even better if combined with Skinning.

How To Maximize Your Raw Gold?

With farming covered, there are a couple more steps you can take to maximize how much raw gold you make and how to make sure you can afford your level 40 mount and get closer to that level 60 mount.

First off, you can save a lot of gold by not training all of your class abilities. Let’s be real, in Classic WoW you get way more abilities than you actually need, at least while leveling. And many of your abilities are only useful in very niché situations, in which case I rather not learn them until I have to and save my gold instead.

Exactly what you should and should not train depends on each individual class. But personally, I only train spells I use on a regular basis, plus any class-buffs I get access to and any defensive abilities I get.

As a Warlock, for example, I can opt not to train Soulstone, I can also choose one or two demons and therefore only train abilities for the demons I actually use. I can also save gold by not training every single curse I get access to. Because personally, I don’t use all of them until very high levels, anyway.

Plus, some classes get a free level 40 mount, like Warlocks & Paladins. But, pick and choose which spells to actually train and upgrade, and you can save a lot of gold while leveling.

When questing, if the quest doesn’t offer an upgrade, pick the item with the highest vendor value. This sounds obvious. But some leveling addons have auto-complete enabled where they automatically pick items in slot 1 or slot 2 or anything your class can use, or maybe you personally also always choose whatever Cloth Item you get from the quest if you play a Cloth Class. Then, check if it’s an upgrade atferwards.

So my advice here is, check if the quest offers an upgrade before accepting a quest reward. And if there are no upgrades, choose whatever has the highest vendor value.

Of course, if you want to involve trading and using the Auction House, you can also make a lot more gold.