The cost of leveling

As I've mentioned before, I'm in the process of leveling a mage. Along with the few niche markets I've come across, it's also given me the opportunity to help spell out some of the issues with leveling. A lot of people think that you need a lot of alts to make money since you'll have access to more professions. This is only a convenience, not a necessity. So lets look at the cost of a brand new toon. All professions will be based off of the guides from wow professions.

Some things that I won't be counting are repairs, basic trade goods like threads, personal reagents, colored dye, junk like that. I also won't be accounting for mounts and riding training either since your quest reward gold will pay for all of it by the time you're 80.

First of all, every new alt needs to have first aid.
170 Linen Cloth - 8g
180 Wool Cloth - 270g
150 Silk Cloth - 7g
110 Mageweave Cloth - 25g
80 Runecloth - 20g
115 Netherweave Cloth - 40g
80 Frostweave Cloth - 20g

-First aid cost: 400g

You get a gathering profession, but since There's no way of knowing exactly how much you'll make from it, what you'll use on professions and such, I'll just leave it blank.

Perhaps you bought a handful of greens or blues to make the lower levels go by faster, maybe a few common gems for the quest rewards in the outlands area.
-100g

You'll most likely need to buy some healing and/or mana potions along the way.
-30g

You also decide to level a profession up to at least 440 skill level so you can make anything worthwhile. We'll use tailoring as the example since it's fairly in the middle for prices and I just so happen to be leveling it as well. I will be using my servers prices and under estimating the average cost of them since you likely can get them all at normal or below prices because you won't need them all at once.

160 Linen Cloth - 8g
165 Wool Cloth - 240g
760 Silk Cloth - 40g
396 Mageweave Cloth - 200g
740 Runecloth - 170g
725 Netherweave Cloth - 170g
30 Arcane Dust - 60g
20 Knothide Leather - 60g
2975 Frostweave Cloth - 750
240 Infinite Dust - 240g
96 Eternium Thread - 60g

-Tailoring cost: 2000g

-TOTAL: About 2550 gold

So that's the initial cost of getting a new toon up to level 80. Yes I know, you didn't purchase the mats for your profession, but see the link to Gevlon's post on how farming doesn't make something free. Each node you stop at, every mob you skin all takes time, and it all adds up. If grinding isn't a great G/hour idea at 80, it won't be at level 43 either. Now after all of these costs of leveling, that is how much money you have LOST.

What does all this mean to you? The short version is that if you don't use your new profession to make a few thousand gold, you're at a loss.

Yes you do gain a new toon for it, but you don't NEED an expensive profession, you can go skinning mining if you wish if all you want is a new toon to mess around on.

I have a rogue that's a miner skinner and I only use him for general fooling around. I have tons of fun on him and pull 6k dps. Since I'll never take him into any serious raiding environment, there's no need to drop several thousand on a profession I don't want to try out to make some money and the ease of having it readily available to me.

Time is money, and time is the ONLY thing in life that you can't ever get back. If you lose money, you can work more to make it up. If your farm burns down, you can rebuild. If you lose your house, you can eventually get a new one. If your glass of whiskey runs out, you can always get a refill.


Remember that.