A Simple Strategy For Gold-Making In WOTLK Phase IV (Patreon)

I've had several requests for a gold-farming guide for phase IV. This is quite an in-depth subject so to avoid writing a book the following guide is a greatly simplified and generalized approach.

The key to understanding gold farming in WOTLK is contained in a little known fact.

There is a 5 instance lockout in classic-that is you can complete dungeons 5 times only in an hour.

However, unique instances may be completed more times than this. So you can for example run Hellfire Ramparts 5 times and then Halls Of Lightning an additional time in the same hour/lockout.

This is not exactly a secret but you will never see this mentioned in most or possibly all gold-making guides on youtube or online. For most players running more than 5 dungeons in an hour will make them more gold than anything else.

This means that dungeon hubs ie locations with more than one dungeon are, all things being equal, more profitable than dungeons which have no immediate neighbours. For fresh characters with unimpressive gear this means the Hellfire Citadel instances in Outland-for players with excellent gear you should focus on the many dungeons in Auchindoun-this has the highest concentration of dungeons in wow.

The most basic approach is to run the best instance 5 times hitting instance lockout, then do one run of each remaining dungeon till your hour is up.  A slightly more advanced strategy is to focus on trash packs nearer to the entrance which tend to be more profitable than latter parts of dungeons.

I have found it best to run Hellfire Ramparts in Hellfire Peninsula and Auchenai Crypts to instance lockout. Depending on your gear, class abilities and skill sets you may prefer others.

The Auchindoun instances have a considerable bonus for miners-as there is a possibility for a lucrative khorium node to spawn.

Note that very sophisticated players have found ways to achieve high returns from Northrend instances-while in theory these can be very profitable there is a very high cost for any kind of error trying this which significantly cuts down on the practical profitability. Be aware that youtubers get to show you an edited run of a dungeon with no mistakes and this is often not representative of practical gold-farming.