The release of World of Warcraft’s The War Within is drawing near, and there’s more to preparing for it than just exploring the beta servers, leveling up alternate characters, or following the usual advice. Here are some additional activities you can do right now to get ready:
1. Clean Out Your Bags and Bank
In addition to “active” preparations, you can also engage in passive ones, like organizing your bags and bank. If you use multiple alternate characters for trading, some of them might have accumulated excess materials.
This could be “junk” you’ve offloaded from your main character, investments for the future that haven’t yet come to fruition, or items purchased for resale.
If you utilize your guild’s bank, it might also be overflowing. For example, at one point in Dragonflight, Shadowlands legendary blanks became suitable for transmogrification, and some players started mass-crafting them for sale. Unsold or forgotten items could easily be stuck in the bank or bags of one of your alts.
If you bought a massive batch of herbs a while back but never got around to milling them, now is the time to process them or sell them directly to a vendor and cut your losses.
Maybe you’ve been sending locked boxes to your rogue with all your characters but haven’t opened them yet. Or perhaps you have “green” items from those boxes that you haven’t decided what to do with – sell as cosmetics, disenchant, or vendor. There’s no point in storing personal items; sell them to a vendor without regret. Some materials might be worth converting into something more useful.
2. Accumulate as Much “Clean” Gold as Possible
This point directly follows the previous one. By the start of the expansion, you should aim to level up your professions as quickly as possible and acquire some rare recipes. This will be quite costly in the early days of the expansion. For example, in the early days of Dragonflight, the Luminous Titan Sphere cost several thousand gold, while now you can buy it for 40-50 gold.
One of the gold mines in Dragonflight was the “Arcana of the Elements” recipe. Even traders who bought it for one and a half million gold could still turn a profit over time – the demand for it was so high. Something similar might happen in The War Within, and you’ll need all the available cash to purchase one of the recipes that will make you rich, returning all your investments.
Also, in the early stages of the expansion, people don’t fully understand the market and how new items will work, and they might not fully grasp the true value of certain items.
For example, in the early days after Dragonflight’s release, you could buy single Awakening elements, combine them into Awakened ones, and sell them for a profit. For instance, Awakening Fire might cost 5 gold each, while Awakened Fire could be sold for 100 gold each.
This also applies to “direct” resales. As mentioned, players don’t always understand the true value of certain items, and if you closely monitor price dynamics and know the real selling price of a particular material, you can earn money by buying these goods below their “real” price. Of course, you need gold for all of this, as even if your lot is bought within a couple of minutes, you’ll only receive the money an hour later.
There’s also this consideration: Your efficiency as a trader depends to some extent on the profit/cost ratio. For example, if a crafted bag brings you 50 gold but costs 300 gold to make, you’ll need to create 100 bags to make a profit of 5,000 gold, costing you 30,000. This is a hypothetical example, but the point should be clear – some niches can be quite profitable but have a relatively high entry threshold. Therefore, the larger your gold cushion, the more niches you can explore.
The specific numbers will, of course, vary from player to player. Some might aim for 100,000 gold in cash, while others might not have enough with a million. Assess your needs and take inventory of all your potentially sellable items to estimate how much gold you can get for them.
3. Get Rid of Dragonflight Goods
This point summarizes the first two. Players might currently have many everyday and not-so-everyday items whose value will plummet with the release of The War Within. For example, this applies to flasks and potions. If you have a stockpile of consumables, it might be wise to sell them while they’re still worth something.
This also applies if you’ve decided to take a break from the current version of the game and switch to Remix: Mists of Pandaria or Cataclysm Classic. Return to Dragonflight and sell all potential goods from this expansion if you don’t plan on using them anymore.
You might also have stockpiled materials that haven’t found a use, perhaps items you bought for resale that haven’t reached the desired price point. If you don’t sell them soon, your losses will increase by the time The War Within comes out.
4. Complete All “Boring” and Routine Tasks
This point relates not only to earning gold but also to Dragonflight content in general. Now is the best time to tackle unfinished business – complete started quest chains, obtain transmog sets you’re halfway to getting, or acquire mounts or pets that require repetitive daily activities.
Speaking of earning gold, there’s a situation opposite to the one described in the previous point. Some things remain relevant even after the expansion ends, and prices for some items might even increase. For example, this applies to bags. Even though Burning Crusade was released many years ago, Netherweave Bags from that expansion are still bought by players who, out of habit, get them for their new characters initially. Therefore, it’s reasonable to expect that Dragonflight bags can be sold even after this expansion ends.
This largely applies to Dragonflight toys, mounts, and pets, which will become collectible items. Players who didn’t manage to get them during the current expansion might want to catch up and buy some items. Therefore, if some recipes are still unavailable to you because they require reputation, work on it and increase your renown with the corresponding factions.
Precious dragonlings deserve special mention; these are pets crafted by jewelcrafters, like the Onyx Dragonling. Firstly, the recipes for these dragonlings aren’t easy to obtain; they’re found in gem clusters. Secondly, you need the clusters themselves to craft them, which have a small chance of dropping from chests and Disturbed Dirt piles on the Dragon Isles. It’s unlikely that anyone will put in serious effort after Dragonflight ends to get the dragonling recipes and farm materials for their creation. Therefore, it’s expected that the price of dragonlings will increase with the release of The War Within.
