Hayden Hawke’s Secret Gold Guide

Solid Fundamentals For The Beginning Gold Digger

Hayden Hawke’s Secret Gold Guide is a good way to get an understanding of the basics of making gold in Warcraft. While it doesn’t have the in-depth exploration of Auctioneer that Maylee’s Auction House Mastery does or the occasional surprising tidbit that you’ll find in Dugi’s guide, what you WILL find is a way to understand the fundamentals of the different ways of making gold in Warcraft.

The guide starts with an introduction which has some good basic advice. Chapter 1 is about the Auction House and covers the basics as well as some more advanced techniques and strategies. His treatment on Auctioneer is very brief, but he does go into detail on how to take advantage of another add-on which I’ve never read about in other guides. This additional add-on isn’t earth-shattering in its helpfulness, but it does make a couple of things very easy to do and has become a core part of my add-ons.

The next three chapters are devoted to the various professions in the game: Gathering professions, crafting professions, and secondary professions. Hayden outlines ways to make money for every profession in the game, supplying maps, routes, suggested sale items, and even price recommendations. Some of the sale and price suggestions have become dated since the release of the guide, but they still provide a nice place to start for beginners who are looking to get the general idea of what things are valuable for sale.

He then three chapters which address farming tactics specifically, including regular farming, instance farming, and dailies. Again, Hayden provides solid maps, routes, and recommendations. I like that he provides lists of BoEs to look for from instance farming which I thought was a nice touch. He also has some interesting recommendations of doing dungeon runs for lower-level players, which are a nice alternative to the usual grind.

The final chapters are on making money before level 80 and more “alternative” ways of making gold. The pre-80 money-making advice is good — if you’re looking for a gold guide and you haven’t made it to 80 yet, you’ll definitely find this helpful. The alternative gold-making methods are generally good advice, although he does give a how-to on begging for gold (and the last thing Azeroth needs is more beggars, in my humble opinion).

At the end of the day, this guide is great for beginners or people who are looking for a good, general introduction to how to make gold in Warcraft. Hayden touches on pretty much every method, is straightforward, well-organized, and offers a lot of solid, basic advice. If you’re looking for advanced tactics, I’d suggest looking at a more specialized guide like Maylee‘s, but if you’re just getting started or are new to level 80 (and only concentrated on power leveling in order to get there), this is a great way to get a good foundation.

UPDATE

Hayden Hawke gets the award for “First to Update for Patch 3.3″. Of all currently-reviewed guides, Hayden posted his updated guide for patch 3.3 first. The updates for patch 3.3 aren’t totally life-changing, but they’re definitely good, including suggestions for 3.3 items to craft, additional plugins, etc.

Bookmark It