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World of Warcraft: Making Money the Mining way
MMORPG.com World of Warcraft Correspondent Robert Duckworth writes this article giving players tips on Mining in the blockbuster MMO.
Even when WoW was in its early days Gold Ore and bars were never worth much. Somehow an entire bar of gold was made to be worth less than a single gold coin. The Silver Ore was actually worth more because it was used in crafting recipes. Those were the old days though. Now players only need to worry about Saronite and Titanium, the two end game ores of WotLK... so far. Any possible future ore will most likely only drop inside raid instances.
Saronite, the strange ore that supposedly drives those who mine it crazy... If you believe some of the story lines in Howling Fjord, Borean Tundra, and Zul'Drak. A green clunky looking substance, it is found in player usable form only near the end of Zul'Drak. Previous forms of Saronite in the game are all related to quests. Supposedly the entire Wrath Gate, that giant metal wall blocking off the path between Northern Dragonblight and Icecrown, is crafted out of the stuff. Maybe it turns black once its forged, or maybe he painted it.
Saronite is only found in four of the zones in Northrend: Icecrown, Sholazar Basin, The Storm Peaks, and Wintergrasp. If you don't have an epic mount already, trying to mine up the gold for one is going to be painful, just because of all the players with epic fliers that will be stealing your nodes. Sholazar Basin is the go to spot for Saronite. While it doesn't have the highest number of node spawns, they are concentrated enough that a player will never find themselves in dead space. In other words, in Sholazar Basin pretty much wherever a player flies there is a node spawn. In Icecrown or Storm Peaks there are gaps of area that are empty to nodes which a player must fly across in order to reach a new section of them, since all the nodes where they were are currently respawning.
Icecrown and The Storm Peaks are also decent places to farm Saronite. As just mentioned, there are gaps between banks of nodes, and so farming anywhere but Sholazar Basin can feel as if you spend more time traveling from each bank of spawns than you do actually mining anything. Sholazar has two other major benefits over the other two zones for farming as well. Because it is a low level zone, a level 80 can mine and never get stuck in combat with a mob while someone comes and steals their node. Also, there are no Saronite spawns inside of caves in Sholazar, while in Icecrown and The Storm Peaks there are, which induces a lot of unnecessary downtime. The best thing to be said about Icecrown and The Storm Peaks for Saronite farming is that there will not be as many players there, and so hopefully you will come across a lot of nodes.
Rich Saronite works the same way that Rich Adamantite did in TBC; you get more bang for your buck off of a single node. It's a rare spawn off of the normal Saronite nodes, and so you can't really farm them. The other end game ore, Titanium, is also a rare spawn off of Saronite nodes. Titanium cannot be prospected, it is a material purely meant for crafting. It's still worth more a stack than Saronite just because of its rarity though, and as a miner you can easily craft a new Titansteel Bar whenever the cool down is up for a nice little profit.
There's only really one thing to do with Saronite. Prospect it. Selling the ore to a jewelcrafter in order for them to prospect is throwing money away. While the best option is to be a jewelcrafter yourself, or have a character that is one, a friend who doesn't mind prospecting for you will suffice. The ore itself is incredibly cheap, because of Sholazar Basin really, since it's so easy to farm. While most of the other prices have gone up since TBC the price on ore has actually dropped. Even if you have a friend prospect you might not make top dollar. Since the raw gems generally sell for a good bit less than the cut ones. If you're a blacksmith you can sell crafted pieces, Eternal Belt Buckles are a cash cow depending on your server, but prospecting is still the better way to go. Overall, unless coupled with jewelcrafting, mining is no longer the best option for making money.
Flying in Circles
The best way to mine ore is to fly circuits. Because ore nodes spawn in banks, it's very rare to find multiple nodes clustered together. Sholazar Basin has the easiest circuits of them all. Since the entire area is basically just a hole in the ground, and the zone is circular in nature. The most popular route to take is to just fly along the outside of the zone, near where the cliffs are. There are a large number of node spawns that appear on these cliffs. The only place you don't follow the walls of the basic is where it turns to snow in the North-east section called The Avalanche. You should instead skirt the edge of the snow, as it holds a few spots for ore, while the snowed area itself has few node spawns and a whole lot of mobs, some elite, which you cannot solo since they are part of a quest. The second route to follow in Sholazar is an inner circle. There are five pillars in the zone that make up a rough circle, and by following the outside path around all five of the pillars is another good way to get ore. Other routes can be made up, such as ones that crisscross the entire zone, but the nodes are concentrated along the outside and around the pillars, so those are the two best options.
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The next best place to mine the end game ores is Icecrown. Icecrown is a much larger zone than Sholazar Basin. Putting together a proper route can be a scattered affair as the banks of ore are rather spread out. Another problem is that a good portion of the zone is flat ground that is teeming with hundreds of mobs that respawn rather fast. For some reason there are nodes there, perhaps to trick wary travelers into attempting to mine them and then the scourge kills them. The towering metal structures don't help much either, or the mountains, since you're either flying too high, or too low, and rather than covering real ground it's a lot of vertical movement just to get around. The best route for this zone is a horseshoe shape. With Ymirheim as the center of the horseshoe, and Ice Crown Citadel as the gap between the two ends. Flying first along the outside of the horseshoe, and then when coming back flying on the inside. Another option is to allow a vertical split down the center of the map and to just fly circles either on the east side or the west side. Any combination of routes can be used really, and in some places you may want to double back in order to sweep along two areas that are right next to each other. Flying to the other side of the mountains trying to look for nodes is not a good idea, and you should always stay more towards the center edge of the mountains then going up into them.
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You really don't ever want to mine seriously in The Storm Peaks. The ore banks are very spread out, the zone is huge, and many of the nodes when you do find them will be inside a cave or surrounded by mobs. The only good reason to look for ore here is because you feel the other two spots are way over worked, or because you are mainly looking for the Time Lost Proto-Drake rare mount, and you need something to do while you spam trying to target it. There is no good path to take, except one that doubles back on itself a good amount.
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There's some decent informatoin in here about routes and strategy for mining Saronite or Titanium. But beyond that, the article is mostly bogus. It implies that only Saronite and Titanium are worth anything, and even states that the only thing Saronite is good for is to prospect it yourself. Come on. Does the game not exist below level 77-80?
The simple truth is that mining and herbalism are both terrific money makers throughout your character's entire career. Granted, you make less per stack at lower levels, but the economy itself is also a lot less expensive at those levels and so your money goes a lot farther. The amount that you can make these days from a single stack of copper used to take several levels to earn early in WoW's life. I remember how it was very, very hard to save enough money for a mount by level 40. Now if you play it smart a miner/herbalist can have that much gold by the time you've hit 20.
Gold is also far from worthless. Once smelting it turns green in my Smelting book, I never smelt another bar of the stuff. Due to the fact that this is one of the very last ores that you can get any mining skill from smelting, it is in hot demand from other miners who want a quick way to get a few more points. The alternative for them is to roam around for a good hour or so hoping that the nodes they're mining will yield skill It's a dry spot in mining's leveling that smelting gold fills very nicely, and the ore is made all the more rare by the fact that the nodes are an uncommon spawn while most players do smelt the bars out of habit -- even when they no longer need to for skill. On my server, 6 gold per ore is not uncommon, compared to about 50 silver for a bar.
My strategy for leveling is very simple:
This strategy works great. Who cares if wool sells for 1 gold a stack when you can sell a single stack of Saronite for 30 gold? I'd much rather sell the wool as I get it from mob drops, when that gold piece is meaningful to me. At max level, it's chump change. By using this technique I am able to afford anything I need while I'm leveling.
Some people argue with me that they want to use the crafted items that they make, so they'd rather have a crafting skill from the start. Frankly, this is a mistake. The vast majority of what you craft will never be used by you. In fact, much of it will never be used by anybody. It's just junk that you make -- using valuable resources! -- so that you can get enough skill points to craft the next item you'll want to use. And most of the time, by the time you actually have the skill to use a crafted item you're already wearing better stuff from random drops or quest rewards. Crafting is a money sink. It makes much more sense to buy that set of gloves for a couple gold on the Auction House than to use up four or five times that much in materials getting enough skill to make the item.
Hopefully this mini-guide will help out some people. Once again, I'd like to say that Robert's article is great as far as it goes but by focusing exclusively on end-game the meat of the article really fails to live up to the title.
gold is great for smelt skillups but you will get smelt skillups from later ore too
Blizzard revised the smelting skillups in one of the patches, so its much easier to get skillups from smelting that it used to be
from 175-200ish can smelt mithril for skillups
from 230-245, can smelt Truesilver for skillups
from 250-270ish, can smelt Thorium for skillups (beyond 270 its uncommon tho)
from 300-315, can smelt Fel Iron for skillups
also worth wearing +5 to mining enchants on gloves, if you can get access to it (wont help smelting tho)
to show how powerful smelting can be,
I had one level 10 alt that had mining skill of 190
- and had *never* mined any ore, just smelted ore I sent from other alts
I made more than 2500 gold from mining before I ever reached level 40. This author has no clue what they are talking about.
This is a classic example of somebody listening to others versus playing for themselves. You can make a killing off mining low level ores and selling them. I do it on every character I make. I make a LOT of money.
Utter rubbish.
I agree with the comments here... I recently switched my gathering profession to mining for the enchanter I'm leveling (I just wanted an extra source of income), and though it is very time-consuming to go back and level it up, I was amazed by how much money I made just from leveling it... it's probably a lot higher for people who level it up while leveling, since I skipped nodes that were gray to me.
I understand the point of the article (how to mine at higher levels), but it's wrong to suggest that ore earlier on doesn't sell... because it does. It easily paid for my regular and epic ground mounts, as well as the spare materials I needed for leveling enchanting.
There most likely will never be (and should never be) an ore that is only able to be gathered in raid instances for skill-up.
Maybe there could be some added ore that raiders can get for other reasons, but having it as a requirement to skill-up would not be logical for a gathering profession.
It seems rather contradictory of this article to be called "Making Money the Mining Way", but to state partway through the first section that unless you're also a jewelcrafter, "mining is no longer the best option for making money".
I agree completely.
I frequently mine low level ore when I'm waiting for groups to start and/or peak hours make high ore nearly impossible to gather.
Even regular copper ore commonly sells for 15g a stack on the weekends when people are buying it up on the AH.
That is killer money for a lowbie and high character alike.
As usual we get a very narrow view of a MMO topic. Perhaps the problem again is poor selection of your writers.
Too bad you did not ask Aurick to write it, he seems to have a far better understanding of the subject than the original writer.
I agree with you.
If I remember correctly, when WoW launched the only place to find Dark Iron Ore was within Blackrock. It was something like 9 month to a year later that Blizzard expanded the nodes to make them fairly common in areas immediately outside the mountain. At the very least, only a few nodes existed outside the mountain, with the number being dramatically expanded later.
So for Blizzard to make any ore instance-only at this point would be a complete reversal of their previous reversal.
I am sooooo Glad I finnally quit WoW!!! I remember all the times I found myself logging on only to fly around on my epic flyer just circling and farming ore to save up gold I would probably never need due to the fact I was a raider and got all I needed from raid drops.It was a complete waste of time and boring as hell.Lich King Ruined it for me and I have now found a deep,rich,and immersive game in EQ2.Lich King made everything too easy,blizzard is now catering to the casuel gamers,there is not much left for hardcore players,or players that are casuel and want a challenge.WoW was fun tho for the time I spent up until Lich King.You all have fun circling the skies for ore,I will be questing away and having a good time in EQ2.I think I will gibve Lord of the rings a shot when I finish up alot of the EQ2 content:P
I am sooooo Glad I finnally quit WoW!!! I remember all the times I found myself logging on only to fly around on my epic flyer just circling and farming ore to save up gold I would probably never need due to the fact I was a raider and got all I needed from raid drops.It was a complete waste of time and boring as hell.Lich King Ruined it for me and I have now found a deep,rich,and immersive game in EQ2.Lich King made everything too easy,blizzard is now catering to the casuel gamers,there is not much left for hardcore players,or players that are casuel and want a challenge.WoW was fun tho for the time I spent up until Lich King.You all have fun circling the skies for ore,I will be questing away and having a good time in EQ2.I think I will gibve Lord of the rings a shot when I finish up alot of the EQ2 content:P
Wait, that's just trolling, right?