Here is an epic story by someone who went against the odds and got their epic flyer in a week with a little bit of help from a special someone in their life.

The hunt for 5,200 gold is a long and tedious grind. Why so much? Well an epic flying mount for Outland costs exactly that. It’s an excellent game mechanic if you look at it from a financial perspective. Moving around the game faster allows you to complete objectives faster which in turn helps you get through the content at an accelerated pace. Getting through content slowly is what keeps you playing. So why not take the time you’d save, add some to it, and create a grind of epic proportions to obtain something that has relatively no utility except within Outland where you generally have nowhere to go except daily questing.

Most players spend months farming that much gold up. It’d take 26 days at 200 gold a day (from running daily quests) to reach that goal and if you add in repairs, arrows, food/water, reagents, and other costs like enchants/gems/consumables that’ll easily double the time needed. Most everyone constantly splurges too, so it just adds on and on. That 26 days also includes doing every daily for the Shattered Sun Offensive which takes anywhere between 2 to 3 hours a day. Most players don’t have that much time to just farm gold. Instead they spend an hour doing just the isle which in turn would take you 52 days since you only earn about 100 gold for the Isle of Quel’danas quests only (within the island itself).

I felt that this was too much time. I felt that there was no way that the epic flying mount was worth this much time. Many other players agree with me and a few of them turn to the gold farmers to help them obtain their mount. Gold farmers charge about $100 USD for 5,000 gold. This option is invalid. Not only can you get banned (especially when you turn up with 5,000 gold out of nowhere on your account) but you’re helping the secondary market exploit the game even more. Why do that and take the fun out of the game?

So. What did I do? Well, I came to a conclusion. You earn about 200 gold a day from daily quests. However, if you had 2 characters doing it then you’d earn 400 gold a day. With 3 characters doing it then you’d easily have 600 gold. Most of us only have one level 70 and doing daily quests on three characters would easily take over 9 hours out of your day depending on the classes and your luck.

What if you could do daily quests with two characters at once? Most quests are shared except for mana cells, mana remnants, darkspine chest keys, and the razorthorn roots. Even these go faster with two people. However, how do you even get another person or nay another account willing to hand you over their booty? Well, lucky for me my girlfriend no longer plays and has just that. Two 70s. A Priest and a Mage. That’s a possible additional income of 400 gold in just one day. All she had to do was log on and follow me around and maybe help play here and there.

However, with two accounts… how do you maximize your income? Farming for additional remnants and the darkspine keys takes additional time. Who would play it for you if the account owner no longer plays? How would you manage it? Well I answered all of these myself. I’d run two copies of WoW. Using separate computers that are within arm’s reach of me. I’d switch characters depending on who needed to loot. A set of macros would easily allow me to control both.

So I began. I marched around with two characters doing daily quests. On day one my girlfriend insisted on helping so things went smoothly. Day two and three she helped too (but only looting things and playing when she could). Day four and five was me alone with all three characters (two played at once and a third played solo).

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Total income for the week.

It worked down to day one, two, and three the total income was 400 from daily quests. Day four and five was the full 600 since I ran the third character through dailies (it was the weekend and I had a lot of spare time). Some simple math equals out to about 2,400 gold. I already had 1,400 gold so together that came to 3800. A bit short of the 5200, yes?

Well, here is the other secret I used. You know how questing in World of Warcraft is nothing but an excuse for you to go out and grind various enemies? It’s not about the quest xp. That’s just a bonus compared to how much xp you get from killing enemies. Daily quests work almost on the same principle if you allow it. Most of the enemies you kill drop valuable items to sell. Signets/Marks for reputation sell for about a gold a piece, various green items sell for a ton just to the vendor, reputation goody bags are loaded with more reputation items, and fire motes, mining/herbalism nodes, and even skinnable mobs pepper the areas you do daily quests with.

So if you go out of your way just a little you can bring in a few hundred extra gold a day. A stack of adamantite sells for about 40 gold, Arcane Tomes/Fel Armaments sell for about 20, greens come to about 10-20 gold, a stack of fire motes goes for about 40 gold too. Your luck may vary but there is a ton of ways to milk more cash out of dailies as you move around the island and Outland.

So, over the course of five days I made 3,796 gold exactly. No loans, no gold buying, and nothing else. Just farming daily quests with two characters (and sometimes three), hunting ore, and doing a few normal quest lines in my spare time. Overall I spent 4 hours a day until the weekend when I spent about 6-7. The grind wasn’t that bad at all and in no time I was cruising through the skies at speeds I never dreamed of.

All of us aren’t that lucky though. Having multiple 70s and having them spread over multiple accounts is tough enough. If you look at it though the additional 70 only contributed about 200 gold a day (to 400) since it was dead weight and only turned in quests (didn’t loot items/hunt resources/etc.). In total that is about 7 extra days of playing since neither of the two gathered. So in reality with dedication and 2-3 hours of free time a day you can easily have that mount or anything else within two weeks.

It all boils down to your willpower. During the time I was actively farming gold I spent money on nothing. I bought my hunter arrows, repairs, and pet food of course. I didn’t splurge on tradeskills, consumables, or reputation items. I had one item to buy and that was it. I maximized my use of the auction house to the full extent.

In reality had I not had the extra accounts it’d taken me roughly 12 days of playing 3 hours a day (if not less) and doing a little extra here and there to make sure I was making enough. Mining where I could, avoiding any extra expenses, and doing everything within my power to make sure that I was gaining as much cash as possible.

So the next time you think about buying gold to skip the grind think about this story. Think that with a little bit of elbow grease and a lot of fun (especially if you can quest with others, even if they don’t give you the gold) you too can get that epic flying mount or pretty much anything else you need. You just need will power and determination both of which you just need in small quantities.

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