What sells in the first week of a fresh economy

Bags before anything else

Every character starts with one bag and four empty slots, and space is the first thing a leveler runs out of. Tailors make bags from cloth with no gathering profession needed, which is why the cheapest bags appear within hours and why they hold value longer than any other early craft: demand outlasts the leveling rush because every alt needs four. Browse every container and the Tailoring recipes that make them.

Cloth, leather, ore, and herbs

The raw materials of the four gathering paths are the deepest markets of week one. Cloth drops from humanoids for everyone, so it is the first commodity with real volume; leather, ore, and herbs need a gathering profession, so their supply lags demand for a few days while people level the skills. That lag is the week one story for a gatherer: the material a crafter needs at skill 50 is worth the most on the day the most crafters reach skill 50.

Watch the trade goods class, and the three gathering pages: Herbalism, Mining, and Skinning.

Consumables for the first dungeons

The first dungeons open the first real demand for potions and food, a few days in, once groups are forming. Alchemy needs herbs and vials, cooking needs meat and a fire, and both are consumed on use, so they restock every run. Early on the margin is in being the one who has them listed when a group forms, not in the recipe itself. See every consumable and the Alchemy recipes.

Green gear and the twenty-something gap

Bind on equip greens drop everywhere and most are worth the vendor price. The exception in a fresh economy is the slot and level range where quest rewards are thin and dungeons are not yet farmed, roughly the low twenties, where a well-statted weapon sells to a leveler who has nothing else. This is a trade of scarcity, not crafting, and it closes as the population moves up. The catalog ranks new Forever gear by item level within each slot; the weapon and armor hubs are the place to look.

Recipes that drop

A recipe that a trainer teaches is worth nothing on the house; a recipe that only drops or only comes from one vendor in one zone is worth what a crafter will pay to have it a week before everyone else. In week one the buyer for these is the crafter who is racing to be first with a sought after craft. The profession pages mark where each recipe is learned; filter the recipe class for the ones that drop.

What Forever adds

On top of all that, Forever adds items that Classic Era never had, and for those there is no memory to price from. Everything new in Forever is listed by class and profession, with the highest item level gear at the top. New recipes in particular are worth reading before launch: a new craft with a reagent nobody has stockpiled is the purest week one opportunity there is.

The catalog is read from the beta client and changes with each build. Check the build changes page in the week before launch; an item that was removed or renamed is not one you want a plan built on.

What to do before the fourth

• Install the addon and sync, and create your account and key. The first scans on each market will be the only price history anyone has.
• Build a watchlist of the twenty items above that fit your professions, so they are priced on one page from the first scan.
• Read the crafting profit guide so the margins mean something when they appear.