WoW Forever Gold Making Guide: Two Low-Level Methods That Work While AFK
Gold is tighter in World of Warcraft: Forever than it was in vanilla Classic — new professions to level, new enchants, new armor kits, and gold-gated mounts all add up fast, especially before level 40. Content creator Frostadamus spent time during the beta testing low-effort gold methods and shared two that stood out: one built around Enchanting, one around Blacksmithing, both usable at low character level with minimal setup.
As with the rest of our beta coverage, treat the exact gold-per-hour figures below as a beta-specific snapshot, not a guarantee — supply, demand, and auction house prices at launch will differ from a lower-population beta realm.
The Two Methods in 30 Seconds
- Enchanting loop: buy cheap cloth, craft it into low-level gear, disenchant that gear for essences and dust, then vendor or resell the results. Reported around 2-3 gold per batch early on.
- Blacksmithing loop: buy copper ore and light leather, craft a cheap low-level mace, then vendor it or disenchant it for essences. Reported scaling up to 5-7 gold per hour once materials were cheap.
- Both are AFK-friendly: once you've bought materials and queued crafts, there's little active input needed — Frostadamus reported doing this while watching Netflix on a second screen.
- A bug to know about: mailing full item stacks between characters reportedly failed to deliver in beta, costing Frostadamus roughly 11 gold in one incident.
Method 1: Enchanting — Craft, Disenchant, Profit
This method works even without a maxed-out Enchanting skill, though the payoff improves as your skill climbs. The loop: buy cloth from the auction house, turn it into bolts, craft a cheap piece of gear from those bolts, then disenchant the finished item instead of selling it.
Below roughly 70 Enchanting skill, disenchanting crafted gear mostly yields Lesser Magic Essence and Strange Dust — enough to roughly break even. Past 70 skill, you start producing Greater Magic Essence instead, which reportedly vendors for around 15 silver each, turning the loop into real profit.
Frostadamus's first test batch — buying linen cloth directly and crafting roughly 60 cheap items — brought in close to 3 gold in about 45 minutes. A later, larger batch using pre-made bolts bought straight off the auction house (skipping the cloth-to-bolt crafting step) produced a lower return per craft, which he attributed to a possible miscalculation rather than the method itself underperforming — worth verifying yourself with an addon like Auctionator, which calculates total craft cost directly from the profession window.
Don't ignore the Strange Dust byproduct: rather than vendoring or auctioning it directly, crafting it into Minor Wizard Oil (using cheap reagents) reportedly nets a few extra silver per dust compared to selling it raw.
Method 2: Blacksmithing — Cheap Maces, Steady Silver
The Blacksmithing version follows the same shape: buy cheap raw materials, craft a low-level item, then vendor or disenchant it. Specifically, a basic level-11 copper mace, crafted from copper bars, light leather, and weak flux, vendors for around 6 silver on its own, or can be disenchanted for Greater Magic Essence if you'd rather feed your Enchanting loop instead.
The profit margin depends entirely on how cheaply you can buy copper bars that session — Frostadamus suggested keeping total materials cost under roughly 17-20 silver per mace to stay solidly profitable. Early testing (at higher material prices) brought in about 5 gold in the first hour; later the same evening, as more players listed cheaper materials on the auction house, the rate reportedly climbed to 5-7 gold per hour.
Running both loops at once on two characters — one on Enchanting, one on Blacksmithing — was how Frostadamus reported reaching roughly 45 gold over a few hours of mostly passive crafting.
A Mailbox Bug Worth Knowing About
Frostadamus reported a beta bug where mailing full item stacks (around 20 per stack) between characters sometimes failed to deliver, despite the mail appearing to send successfully. He lost roughly 11 gold in materials this way and filed a support ticket; it's unclear whether this will still be present at launch, but it's worth mailing smaller stacks or testing with a cheap item first until it's confirmed fixed.
Why This Works Beyond the Gold Itself
Both loops double as a cheap way to level the relevant profession — Frostadamus noted the Enchanting loop alone can carry you to around 150 skill before the materials involved stop granting skill-ups. And since low-level dungeons reportedly drop plenty of green-quality gear, you won't need to keep buying crafting materials indefinitely once you're leveling through content normally.
What We Don't Know Yet
- How these numbers hold up on a full-population live realm versus a beta environment
- Whether the mailbox stack bug will still exist at launch
- Exact gold-per-hour figures beyond what one tester reported — your results will vary with server economy and luck on auction prices
For more on WoW Forever's broader profession and currency systems, see our Merchant's Favor guide. Full credit to Frostadamus for the original testing and footage — you can watch his video here.
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