WoW Crafting Materials - Verified Prices (Page 24)

Understanding WoW Crafting Materials

Crafting materials are the foundation of World of Warcraft's economy. Every recipe, from a simple healing potion to mythic raid gear, needs components you either gather yourself or buy from other players. Understanding how materials work, where they come from, and how their prices shift will save you thousands of gold and help you make smarter decisions about which materials to farm and which to purchase.

What Are Crafting Materials?

Crafting materials are items that professions consume to make something else. A blacksmith smelts ore into bars. A leatherworker uses leather and thread to craft armor. An alchemist combines herbs into potions. Every profession recipe has specific materials it needs, and the auction house tracks pricing for every one of them.

Materials fall into two broad categories: gathered materials and crafted materials. A gathered material comes directly from the world through mining, herbalism, skinning, or fishing. A crafted material is produced by one profession and consumed by another. Distilled Algari Freshwater is crafted by alchemists from gathered herbs. Cosmic Ink is an inscription material made from herbs. When you look at a material's page, the auction house price reflects what players are willing to pay for it right now, whether they gathered it themselves or bought it from someone else.

The site lists thousands of priced materials from the US auction house. Each one shows its current stock, cheapest listing, and links to recipes that use it. If you want to know which materials are worth farming, which are selling for unusual prices, or which recipes are profitable to craft, the material pages are your source.

Gathering Professions and Material Sources

Every major material type comes from a gathering profession. Understanding which profession yields which materials helps you decide what to farm or what to buy.

Herbalism produces herbs used by alchemists, inscription, and some crafted materials. Common examples include flowers blooming in zones throughout the world. Herbalists harvest these from the ground and sell them on the auction house. Herbs are typically the first materials new players gather, partly because herbalism is easy to level and herb deposits are abundant.

Mining yields ore and stone. Ore is smelted by blacksmiths into bars for crafting, but many recipes also use raw ore or stone directly. Common materials like Dracothyst serve both purposes depending on the recipe. Stone materials like Dense Stone craft items beyond just metals.

Skinning produces leather and scales from slain beasts. Tanners then process these into finished leather. Scales are also used in armor crafting. The quantity and type of leather you get from skinning varies by the beasts you kill. Materials like Auric Fleece represent processed leather used across multiple professions.

Fishing supplies food materials and occasionally other reagents. Cooked meat from hunters and butchers also creates cooking materials. Materials like Basically Beef and fish appear in thousands of recipes, from raid potions to cauldrons.

Enchanting disenchants gear to produce shards, dusts, and essences. These materials are essential for enhancing gear and crafting certain items. Enchanting materials often spike in value after new content releases, when players rapidly replace old gear.

Crafted materials multiply the supply chain. Alchemists create flasks and potions from herbs. Jewelcrafters cut gems and make items from them. Leatherworkers finish hides into leather. Each profession layer adds another set of materials to the auction house, and each creates opportunities for profit or loss depending on market prices.

Retail Versus Classic Auction Houses

Retail uses a region-wide auction house. In North America, all players on any US realm can post materials and purchase from the same pool. This means that materials settle to a single price per region. The supply is enormous because millions of players contribute, and prices tend to be relatively stable. When everyone is buying the same materials, competition drives prices down. Material prices on retail reflect true region-wide supply and demand.

Classic Era, TBC, and Wrath realms each have per-realm auction houses. If you play on one realm, you only buy and sell with players on that realm. This creates a much smaller market. Materials that are abundant on one realm can be scarce and expensive on another. A miner on a high-population realm might sell ore for half the price of the same ore on a low-population realm because there is far more supply. This also means there are more opportunities for arbitrage: if you find an underpriced material on one realm, you cannot transfer it to a different realm to sell for profit, but you can buy it in bulk and resell it to crafters on the same realm.

Materials will vary by realm population and player activity.

This difference matters enormously for your strategy. On retail, you have no reason to farm if the material price is lower than your farming rate. On Classic, the smaller market means individual players can influence prices more, and stockpiling materials between patch cycles can be profitable. Understanding which auction house you are using tells you whether to farm, buy, or hold materials.

Why Material Prices Change

Material prices move constantly. Understanding the reasons helps you predict when to sell and when to buy.

Patches and balance changes are the biggest drivers. When a new patch releases raid gear, recipes become relevant suddenly. Materials used by in-demand crafted items spike in demand, and their prices rise. After a patch settles and players have geared up, demand drops and prices fall. Check hotfixes and news for upcoming balance changes that affect crafting demand. If you farm materials used in recipes that just became meta, you can sell at high prices. If you wait too long, you will be selling into declining demand.

Raid resets and tier progression cause weekly waves. Raiders farm materials or buy them to make potions and flasks before raid night. If your realm raids on Tuesdays, material prices typically spike slightly the day before and drop back down afterward. If you have a regular raid schedule, you can anticipate this cycle and stockpile materials to sell before raid day.

Expansion cycles drive long-term price trends. Early in an expansion, new materials are scarce and expensive. As players level gathering professions and farm more, supply increases and prices decline. Later in an expansion when the content feels old, material prices are typically lowest. When a new expansion announces, certain materials become useless and crash in value while new ones are introduced. Veterans plan around these cycles.

Weekends and playtime spikes change supply hour to hour. More players online means more farming happening, which increases material supply. Materials tend to drop slightly on weekends when casual players are farming. Weekday mornings after a busy weekend often see materials rebound slightly as supply dries up.

Seasonal events like holidays boost demand for materials used in holiday recipes. Prices for cooking and other materials spike during those windows.

Realm economy swings with activity. A realm where many players just hit max level and started crafting will see different prices than a mature realm where everyone is geared. New player friendly realms have lower material prices because of abundant supply. PvP realms often have different farming patterns and price trends than PvE realms.

Auction house speculation plays a role too. Investors buy up materials betting prices will rise, reducing supply on the auction house. If they are right, prices spike. If they are wrong, they lose gold. This volatility creates trading opportunities if you can spot genuine supply and demand shifts versus speculative bubbles.

The Economics of Farming Versus Buying

The choice to farm a material or buy it depends on your gold rate, the material's price, and your time.

Know your farming rate. If you establish a baseline farming rate for ore, any material selling below that rate is not worth your time to farm if you can earn more doing something more efficient. Time is always the limiting factor. If you farm herbs at a strong rate but materials sell for much more per unit than your hourly rate, you should farm those materials. If materials sell for much less than your rate, you lose money and your time by farming instead of doing higher-return activities.

Buy materials when prices drop below your farming rate. If ore sells for much less per unit than your farming rate, buy ore instead of farming it. You will make more gold by farming something else and buying the ore than by farming ore yourself.

Consider the grind. Farming gets repetitive. If you are bored after an hour of gathering, your efficiency drops. Buying materials from the auction house lets you focus on the activities you enjoy. If you craft with those materials or resell them, that might be more profitable than farming anyway.

Seasonal opportunities exist. At the start of a new expansion, materials are expensive and farming is lucrative. By the end of the expansion, farming the same materials might earn you half as much because prices have crashed. Leveling new professions when an expansion just dropped is often more valuable than farming old expansion materials.

Stockpiling matters on Classic. On per-realm auction houses, material prices swing much more than on retail. Buying low and selling high can earn serious gold if you spot a market dip.

Material Categories and Their Uses

Different material types serve different purposes. Understanding which materials are always in demand and which fluctuate helps you decide what to farm or trade.

Enchanting materials like shards, dusts, and essences stay in steady demand because gearing is endless. Every player that upgrades gear needs enchants. Enchanting materials rarely crash completely in price. After patches when gear turnover is high, demand spikes.

Cooking materials like meat and fish are consumed every raid night. Cauldrons produce thousands of potions from stacked materials. Cooking demand is reliable and spikes predictably around raid time.

Inscription materials fluctuate based on the expansion. Early in patches, ink and pigment prices are high. Late-expansion, they drop. Inscription is tied heavily to current content.

Gems and jewelcrafting materials follow item level increases. When new gear tiers release, old gems lose value and new ones are introduced. This creates sharp transitions in price rather than smooth curves.

Cloth and leather are steady. Armor crafting and transmog are constant. These materials are less volatile than others because demand is more predictable.

Herbs and ore are the base of the supply chain. Their prices influence everything downstream. When herbalism and mining material prices spike, potion and flask prices follow.

Niche materials like those from rare encounters or specific vendors can become bottlenecks. If a crafted item needs a material that only drops from a hard boss, that material stays valuable as long as the item is useful.

Reading Material Prices on TheWoWDB

The site shows three key pieces of information for every material: the cheapest current listing, how many units are for sale, and which recipes use the material.

Cheapest min buyout is the price of the single cheapest listing right now. If you want to buy quickly, you pay this price. If you want to sell, you typically undercut it by a small amount to get your sale first.

Stock shows how many units are posted at any price on the auction house. High stock means sellers are desperate and prices might drop further. Low stock means the market is tight and prices could rise if anyone needs more.

Recipes consuming this material link to cost-to-craft calculations. If a material has a base price and the recipe needs multiple units, that adds up to a significant material cost plus the cost of any other components. If the crafted item sells for less than the total material cost, the recipe loses money.

Browse materials by category to find trends. If you see that all enchanting materials are cheap this week, enchanting might not be profitable. If herbs are expensive but ore is cheap, potions might be pricier to craft while alchemy might be unprofitable relative to transmog.

The most valuable materials listed are good farming targets if you want to maximize gold per hour. The highest stock materials are the easiest to sell in bulk. The cheapest materials might have low demand and be hard to convert to gold, even though the per-unit price is low.

Market Dynamics: Supply and Demand in Action

Material prices are the result of two forces: supply (what people are selling) and demand (what people are buying). Watching these forces play out teaches you how to time your sales and purchases.

Oversupply happens when many players farm the same material at the same time. This is common right after a patch when everyone levels new gear at the same rate and crafts the same recipes. Price crashes result. If you are holding materials, this is when you want to sell before prices drop further. If you want to buy, wait for the crash to finish before accumulating.

Undersupply happens when demand outpaces farming. New players need materials faster than gatherers can supply them. Returning players level quickly and buy up stock. During these windows, prices are high and materials are good farming targets. Prices can spike dramatically in a week if demand is strong enough.

Equilibrium settles when supply and demand balance. Players farm just enough to meet buyer needs, prices are stable, and the market feels fair. This is the long-tail state that lasts most of an expansion.

Speculation distorts normal economics. Investors buy up inventory betting prices will rise, removing supply from the market and temporarily spiking prices. If they are wrong, they dump inventory at losses, crashing prices. Knowing the difference between real demand spikes and speculative runs takes experience but saves gold in the long run.

Realm economics differ. A PvP realm with intense competition might have cheaper materials because of higher farming activity. A newer realm with fewer crafters might have expensive materials despite normal farming rates because demand is concentrated.

Auction House Mechanics and Strategy

The auction house is a game within the game. Understanding how it works helps you get better prices when buying and earn more gold when selling.

Undercutting is how you compete. When materials reach a price point, you post yours slightly lower to sell first. Everyone undercuts until prices reach a minimum. On busy markets, prices drop to just above material cost. On quiet markets, prices stay higher because fewer sellers create less competition.

Posting fees eat profits. Every listing costs gold to post. The fee is a percentage of the listing price. Small posting fees can add up to significant losses if you post many units that do not sell. This is why small profit margins are bad. You need enough gold per unit to cover fees plus make profit.

Timing your posts matters. Posting right before raid night or dungeon progression hours means more people are buying. Posting when everyone is sleeping means fewer buyers. The difference in sell speed is dramatic. Sell-through rate (percentage of listings that sell before expiration) is highest when players are online.

Stack sizes affect sales. Buyers prefer stacks they can use. If a recipe needs 5 ore, a stack of 5 sells faster than a stack of 50 even if the per-unit price is identical. Small stacks also let buyers buy only what they need without waste.

Flipping is buying low and selling high. Monitor prices for a few days to find patterns. When a material dips, buy a stack. When it recovers, sell. On retail, price cycles are gentler because of the huge supply. On Classic, price swings are wider and flipping profits can be huge.

The Material Pipeline: From Ore to Gear

Understanding the journey from raw material to finished item helps you see where profit opportunities exist.

A blacksmith needs ore. A miner gathers ore and sells it on the auction house. The blacksmith buys ore, smelts it into bars, and uses bars to craft gear. Another blacksmith could sell bars instead of gear. An enchanter could buy gear the first blacksmith sells and disenchant it for materials, which the enchanter sells to another crafter. Each step involves an auction house transaction and an opportunity to make or lose gold.

Following this pipeline from start to finish reveals choke points. If ore is expensive, everything downstream becomes expensive because the base cost is high. If bars are expensive, the intermediate step is overcharging and disk space should be spent on crafting ore into bars and selling those instead. If finished gear is cheap relative to material cost, nobody should craft it right now.

Savvy players pick one step in the pipeline and excel there. Some players always farm ore and sell it raw. Others buy ore, smelt bars, and sell those. Others buy bars, craft gear, and resell. Each player finds their niche based on how much time they have and what they enjoy.

Material Farming Efficiency and Location

Good farming requires knowing where materials spawn and how to harvest them efficiently. Check the zone database to find materials in your intended farming location.

Zone selection matters. Zones with high material density and few competitors are ideal. Remote zones or older content zones often have abundant materials and fewer farmers. Leveling zones might have lower-level materials but less competition from other players.

Gathering in groups costs gold. When multiple miners farm the same zone, each miner gets less ore per hour because they compete for spawns. They also undercut each other's prices by flooding the market. Spreading out to different zones or farming off-hours when fewer players are active increases your personal rate.

Efficiency matters more than intensity. Farming for two hours steadily beats farming for one hour while distracted. A steady route you can complete half-asleep on autopilot beats a confusing route you need to navigate carefully.

Gathering at max level versus during leveling differs. Materials gathered during profession leveling are trash-tier and nearly worthless. Once your profession is maxed, you gather current-tier materials that are valuable. This is why gathering professions feel unrewarding early and rewarding later.

Farming peaks at the start of expansion patches. New materials are introduced and are expensive. Farming is lucrative. By the time the expansion is winding down, farming the same materials earns half as much. Your farming strategy should account for where an expansion stands in its lifecycle.

New Player and Endgame Perspectives

Materials matter differently depending on what you are doing.

New players with gathering professions should farm the materials for their level range and sell everything on the auction house. Gathering professions level alongside your character and are cash cows early on. By the time you hit max level, your profession is max level too and you are already earning from it. Do not hold materials hoping prices rise. Sell them immediately and invest the gold in leveling your crafting profession or buying gear.

Endgame crafters use materials strategically. They farm high-value materials or buy low-value ones and craft profitable recipes. They monitor material costs relative to crafted item prices to find profitable windows. They stockpile materials between patches and sell after patches when demand spikes.

Transmog farmers collect old expansion materials to craft transmog gear they sell to cosmetic hunters. These materials are often cheap because they do not support current content, but steady transmog demand keeps them valuable. It is a long-term play.

Hardcore economists treat the auction house like a stock market. They predict material shortages from upcoming patches, buy early, and sell into demand. They spread supply across different materials to diversify risk.

Casual players usually buy materials when they need them and do not worry about optimization. Their motivation is convenience, not profit. They are the buyers that make farming viable for everyone else.

How to Predict Material Prices

Predicting price movement teaches you when to sell and when to buy. You will not be right every time, but patterns emerge if you pay attention.

Track historical data. Check a material's price each day for a week. If it trends upward, demand probably exceeds supply. If it trends downward, the opposite is true. A material rising steadily is a sell signal before it peaks. A material that dropped suddenly might rebound if the drop was speculative panic rather than real supply flooding.

Watch content calendars. New patches introduce new recipes and new demand. If a patch notes say a popular craft got a redesign, materials used by that craft will rise in demand and price before the patch hits. Smart players buy those materials the week before the patch launches and sell the week after.

Follow raid schedules. If your realm raids Wednesday nights, watch materials used in potions and flasks. They spike on Tuesdays and fall on Thursdays. This cycle repeats weekly.

Monitor news about balance changes. If a class gets buffed and its crafted weapons become meta, materials used to craft those weapons will be bought up. Players plan their crafting around patch notes, sometimes days in advance.

Look for outlier prices. If ore costs significantly less on your realm than on another realm, that is a sign one realm has oversupply and one has undersupply. On retail where the market is unified, outliers are rare. On Classic realms, outliers tell you the realm's economic situation.

Trust supply and demand basics. More players online farming = more supply = lower prices. Holiday weekends = more players online = more farming = lower prices. New expansion content = new recipes released = higher demand = higher prices. These rules hold true almost always.

Crafted Materials Versus Raw Materials

Not all materials are gathered. Many are crafted by one profession and sold for use by another. This creates interesting dynamics.

Crafted materials have two margins built in. First, the crafter paid for raw materials. Second, the crafter sells the processed material for profit. If raw ore costs a baseline amount and smelting into bars adds a processing markup, bars cost more per unit than raw ore plus the time to smelt it. This can be worth it if the alternative is farming ore themselves.

Crafted materials can become overpriced. If bars are selling for more than raw ore plus processing costs, buyers should just buy ore and smelt it themselves. But many players do not, so crafted materials stay overpriced relative to their raw ingredients. Knowing this lets you profit by buying raw materials and selling the crafted version.

Crafted materials can crash when raw materials spike. If ore prices double, smiths have a choice: raise bar prices or accept lower profits. If they raise prices too much, buyers switch to raw ore. This creates an equilibrium where bar prices rise less than ore prices. Smiths get squeezed when raw material costs spike.

Some crafted materials are mandatory steps. Leather cannot be farmed raw; hides must be processed into leather. These materials are bottlenecks. Their prices are controlled by leatherworkers and cannot drop below their raw material cost plus a minimum profit margin. Buyers cannot work around leatherworkers, so leatherworkers have more pricing power.

Speculation happens with crafted materials too. Smart players buy up bars or leather before patches that introduce recipes using them, then sell when demand spikes. Crafters can sell processed materials at higher prices if they bought low.

Regional and Realm-Specific Trends

Prices vary dramatically by region and realm. Understanding these differences changes your strategy.

US auction house is unified region-wide on retail. All US realms share one market. This means prices are standardized and stable. You will never see ore priced dramatically differently across realms. The difference is minimal and based on listing timing, not realm differences.

Classic realms have separate auction houses. Each realm is its own market. A low-population realm might have ore at significantly higher prices while a high-population realm has ore at much lower prices. High population equals more farming equals lower prices. Low population equals scarcity and higher prices. Realm choice indirectly determines material prices you will face.

New realms have inflated material prices. When realms launch, experienced players flood in and farm heavily, but supply has not caught up yet. Materials are expensive and farming is lucrative. By the time a realm is six months old, experienced farmers have cycled through and moved on. Supply normalizes and prices fall.

Dead realms have dying material markets. As realms lose population, fewer players farm and fewer crafters buy. Materials become hard to sell even at low prices. Your only option is to sell in bulk at huge discounts or hold materials hoping the realm improves. Most dead realms never recover and simply fade.

PvP realms and RP realms sometimes have different supply patterns. PvP realms attract more hardcore players who farm more efficiently and play longer. RP realms attract casual players. The farming pressure differs and so do prices.

Seasonal player spikes create temporary markets. During expansions and holidays, returning players flood realms. They level professions and buy materials at any price. This is a temporary farming gold rush. When they leave, demand crashes.

Mining and Herb Nodes: Spawn Patterns

Understanding where and how materials spawn helps you farm efficiently.

Each zone has a maximum number of nodes. Once all nodes in a zone are spawned, no more will spawn until harvested. This creates a finite pool of materials per zone and per time period. If five players are farming the same zone, they compete for the same finite pool.

Node respawn on timers. A harvested node respawns after a delay, usually ten to twenty minutes. Nodes do not spawn at fixed locations every time; they randomize within zones. This randomization keeps farming from being fully automatable and keeps routes unpredictable.

Phasing affects node locations. Some areas have phased versions visible only to certain players. Nodes in phased zones are invisible to other players and do not conflict with non-phased node respawns. Phasing creates hidden farming pockets where competition is lower.

Time of day affects competition. Off-peak hours have fewer farmers and more materials available. Peak hours are crowded and materials are harder to find. Farming in the middle of the night when few players are awake often yields better returns than farming during prime time.

Zone population varies by expansion. Old expansion zones have fewer players leveling there, so fewer farmers but also fewer gatherers. New expansion zones have tons of players and intense competition. Farming old zones is quieter but pays less. Farming new zones is crowded but pays more gold per unit.

Quality Assurance: How TheWoWDB Gets Material Prices

Material prices on TheWoWDB come directly from the auction house data. The site crawls auction house listings across realms and shows you real market prices, not guesses or averages.

Prices update regularly. The data is not stale. When you see a material listed at a price, that is what it actually costs right now to buy it from the cheapest listing.

Prices reflect current supply. If a material is expensive, something unusual is happening: demand is high, supply is low, or both. If a material is cheap, supply is abundant or demand is weak.

The data is unfiltered. You see real prices that real players are paying. There are no artificial minimums or maximums. This means the prices account for speculation, market crashes, and real shortages.

Per-realm markets appear separately on Classic. If you play on Classic realms, you can see Classic prices. If you play retail, you see retail prices. The data respects the separation because the markets are actually separate.

Links to recipes show cost to craft. When you find a material, the site shows you which recipes use it and how much the crafted items cost to make. This is the data you need to decide if crafting is profitable right now.

Should I farm materials or buy them from the auction house?

Buy materials when the auction house price is lower than what you could earn farming something else. If ore sells for much less than your farming rate, buy ore instead and farm something more profitable. If ore sells for significantly more than your farming rate, farm ore. Your time is always the limiting resource.

Why do material prices spike right before raids?

Raiders buy potions and flasks before raid nights. Potions and flasks need materials. Prices spike in the hours before raid because everyone is buying at once. If you have materials to sell, raid days are prime selling windows. If you need materials, shop earlier in the week when prices are lower.

What materials are always worth farming?

Enchanting materials, cooking materials, and potions are always in demand because every player needs them. These materials stay relatively valuable throughout an expansion. Materials tied to outdated content like leveling zones lose value as players progress.

Why is this material so cheap compared to its recipe output?

Some recipes are unprofitable because the crafted item is not in demand or the sale price is low. Buyers can craft the item themselves for less gold than reselling it costs, so no one buys it. You would lose gold crafting it. The material is cheap because no one wants to craft with it.

How do I know if a material will rise in price?

Watch for incoming changes. New patch notes that add recipes using the material, upcoming seasonal events, or expansion announcements all suggest price rises. Buy before the change is live, sell after. If other players have the same idea, you both buy early and prices rise already. Time your bets carefully.

Can I make gold just buying and selling materials?

Yes, if you buy low and sell high consistently. Watch prices for patterns. Some materials have weekly cycles. Some follow expansion timelines. If you spot a material selling well below its average, buy and resell when prices recover. This requires capital to stockpile and patience to wait for prices to move.

What is the difference between current-tier and old-tier materials?

Current-tier materials are used in current expansion recipes and are valuable. Old-tier materials are outdated and mostly worthless unless transmog crafters want them. Current-tier materials support active players. Old-tier materials support cosmetics and a few niche builds. If the market is old, material prices are low. If the market is fresh, prices are high.

Why should I care about my realm's population?

Realm population determines supply and competition. High-population realms have more farmers and lower material prices. Low-population realms have less farming and higher material prices. If you want low material prices as a buyer, roll on a high-population realm. If you want high farming profits, roll on a low-population realm.

How do I read auction house listings to find deals?

Check the cheapest listing price. If it is much lower than average, that is a deal. Check the stock. If stock is high, prices might drop further and you should wait. If stock is low, prices might rise soon and you should buy. Compare against a few days of historical data to know if the price is abnormal or normal for the week.

Is there a best profession to pair with gathering?

Pairing a gathering profession with a crafting profession that uses its output is efficient. A miner paired with blacksmithing, a herbalist with alchemy, a skinner with leatherworking. You gather raw materials and process them yourself, cutting out the auction house middleman. This increases your profit per unit because you skip both the buyer and seller margins.

Do crafted materials ever crash below their raw material cost?

Yes, when crafters are desperate to dump inventory. If bars cost significantly more than raw ore, rational smiths should stop crafting bars and sell ore instead. But if smiths have huge bar stockpiles and need to sell fast, they undercut sharply to get sales. Eventually they stabilize above raw material cost once supply is cleared, but temporary crashes below cost happen.

How do expansion launches affect material prices?

New expansion launches introduce new materials and new recipes. Old materials crash in value because no one is leveling with them anymore. New materials are expensive and in high demand. Farming is temporarily lucrative. Within a few weeks, farming settles and prices normalize. Smart players stock new materials early and sell into peak demand.

Playing WoW Forever? Forever is Blizzard's Classic-based version and it is still in beta, so this guide does not make claims about how this system will work there. What the beta client actually contains is tracked on the WoW Forever hub, and anything you read about Forever before launch can change. Until it ships, the Classic Era notes in this guide are the closest reference for how a Classic ruleset treats this topic.