This site provides a lot of free tips on making gold in World of Warcraft.

But for some people this isn’t enough information.  I work a full-time job, and play WoW in my spare time…and I focus most of my WoW playing on learning gold-making techniques.

But honestly there are some folks out there who do this for a living, and they create some really fantastic guides.  They spend WAY more time on it than I do.  (I like to think of it as the fact that I have a life!) 

Anyway, for a while I’ve provided links to most of the major gold guides out there.  Some are better than others, but they all provide mostly the same information in the gold-guide itself.  (Several include other bonuses, like leveling guides, etc.)

But there’s one that members of MakeWoWGold (folks that subscribe to the newsletter) actually provide feedback to me about.  It’s the one by Luke Brown, “Gold Secrets“.

I’m not sure why they seem to like that one more than the rest, but Luke does seem to add a bunch of bonuses that no one else has, including a forum with folks sharing tips with each other.  And his product is guaranteed, which is really cool.

So, if you want to learn a ton about making gold, keep browsing this website.  If you want a separate guide with all kinds of printouts and bonuses, check out the Gold Secrets Guide.   Like I said, it’s the only one that I have heard great things about (even though it’s not mine!).

The location is 77,63 in Storm Peaks, and it’s called Fjorn’s Anvil.

I should have known better, but I decided to give it a good, honest try.

It seems that the location has been nerfed in several ways.  The drop rate is somewhat nerfed.  Mainly the respawn rate is nerfed.  Not to mention all the elite level 80 mobs walking around among the Revenants (which is what you’re trying to farm).

Now, the elites drop over 1g each, but they have 50K hp.  If you can cruise through those with ease, this might be a good spot for you.  As a mage, I can kill them, but I have to burn cooldowns, which means I can’t just melt through them.

So, once again a gold-farming ‘hot spot’ turns into a myth.  I firmly believe that Blizzard is constantly monitoring areas like that.  They are striving to keep the game balanced…the minute a ‘hot spot’ appears, they find out about it and make the change.

UPDATE: This post = teh FAIL! So…I never completed the quest chain here…I had moved on to Icecrown. Thanks to the folks who submitted the comments letting me know that the elites go away once the quest chain is done.

So I spent two hours completing the quest chain to get it clear. Here’s what I discovered:

1. the respawn rate is, indeed, insanely high. You can chain pull non-stop. Very nice.

2. they do, indeed, drop a decent amount of Crystallized Fire and Relics of Ulduar. Nice.

3. they are not immune to fire. Nice.

I’ll go back and do an actual test (30 minutes speed killing, total up the loot drop), when I get a chance. For now, I retract the ‘Nerf’ cry…it seems like a decent place for people who can kill fast and don’t have gathering professions.

UPDATE #2: 30-minute test.

I did straight killin’ for 30 minutes. I’m a mage, so I can kill fast and furious. A few times I had some down-time due to having killed everything and no respawns. For the most part, though, the respawns were so quick that it kept me killing non-stop. There was one other player there…a hunter. We pretty much just left each other alone. He kept to the path leading to the anvil, and I worked the anvil and surrounding area. That just adds realism to the test, I think.

After 30 minutes I had 29 Crystallized Fire, 26 Relics of Ulduar, 22g in gray vendor trash, and about 30g in DE-able greens. (The DE value of the greens is about 30g total.) Prices will vary according to your server. On my server, that’s about 100g in Crystallized Fire and 30g in Relics. So…160g-ish in 30 minutes, or 320 gold per hour.

It seems reliable, consistent, and that was, as I said, WITH someone else there. A couple of other people dropped by and left. I’ve seen 3 people farm it…the respawns seem to speed up.

It’s not as good as gathering professions, but if you can kill fast and don’t want to give up your other professions, you might take a look. Just be sure to do the quest chain (starting at K3 – check WoWHead) to clear out the elites.

The advantage of daily quests is three-fold:

1) completing them earns faction reputation, which usually provides high-level rewards,

2) they are a consistent way of earning a known amount of gold (and the gold earned is usually at a higher rate for the time invested in it),  and

3) they are repeatable (obviously), so you can master the techniques needed to complete the quest quickly, and earn good gold (and rep rewards) over and over.

Technically there is a fourth advantage:  many of the quests can be lumped together and done at the same time.  This REALLY ups your gold-per-hour rate.

There is a new Daily Quest addon that tells you exactly how to complete each quest.  It provides map waypoints to point you in the right direction, and it teaches you how to group the quests so you can run them concurrently.

If you find yourself either needing to farm up some reputation for a reward you’re after, or you just need good, consistent gold at level 80, you need this addon.

It literally puts a waypoint arrow on your screen when you select the dailies for a given zone (or for a given faction), and you simply follow the on-screen instructions.  It is as close to automatic gold as you can get without using a bot (and getting kicked out of wow!).

Here’s the Daily Quest Guide/Addon download link.

When you mine a deposit, you’ll get all of your ores and any crystallized elements in a single hit.  ‘Normal’ deposits seem to provide a minimum of 2 ores and a maximum of 4.  As the notes say, overall ore from a single point should be about the same as previously.  (It can be assumed that ‘Rich’ deposits will provide 5-8 ores.)

In my experience Mining was slightly ahead of Herbalism in terms of gold per hour due to the presence of blue gems. But one of the thing that Herbalism had in its favor was that you only had to ‘pick’ the herbs one time (and would get multiple herbs)…Mining required you to swing 2 – 8 times per node and get one ore per swing.

In theory this should speed up Mining, pushing its advantage over Herbalism slightly higher.

I’ve been looking around for the best place to farm those, and I’ve found it. You will find “Flame Revenant” and “Raging Flame” at 83.71 in Wintergrasp.

To the bad part, you will only be able to farm this when your faction controls Wintergrasp. I’m not really sure if it’s a bad part though. When you farm there, you are sure that noone from the opposite faction are going to interrupt your farming by killing your mobs. Because the Flame Revenants, which has 100% chance to drop 1-3 crystallized fires (motes), can only be seen by the faction who controls Wintergrasp.

Okay, to some quick facts about this place :

Raging flame
*Has an approx. droprate of 25% on the crystallizers, 1-2 each drop.
*No special abilities
*Hits me as a cloth mage for 550~ firedamage per hit.
*Immune to fire spell damage, extra vulnerable to frost damage.
*12600 health, easy kills. Alot of them around the area.

Flame Revenant
*100% droprate on the crystallizers, 1-3 each drop
*4 spawns, 5 minute timer on the spawns. Giving around half an eternal each 5 minutes.
*Same as for Raging Flame, no special abilities.
*Actually not immune to fire spell damage.
*25200 health, average in difficulty. Melees could use bandages while farming these, since they hit fairly hard, dealing 1200 critical hits on me as cloth.

I farmed for one hour, while beeing alone there, to test how many eternals per hour you can get.

The result :

First 15 minutes – 2.1 Eternals
The next 15 minutes – 2.3 Eternals
~~ – 2.8 Eternals
~~ – 2.1 Eternals

With this said, I had 9.3 eternals within one hour as a Frost mage with green/blue level 80 gear.

A couple of observations from the short time I have been able to test:

1.  It’s definitely true that you cannot see the Revenants if your faction doesn’t control Wintergrasp.  You can still farm the other little guys, though.

2.  They drop some pretty nice gray items: 3g for gray weapons, and they all drop gray crystals that stack to over 3g very quickly.

3.  Remember: it is a PVP zone.  You’re flagged while you’re there.  If you’re not used to pee vee pee, be alert to opposing faction members coming to bother you, which could ruin your farming there.

UPDATE:  After some brief tests, I can definitely conclude that it is NOT worth farming if your faction doesn’t control the zone.  The little elementals don’t drop enough to make it worth it.  I’m still testing whether or not farming there will be worthwhile once we control it.

A couple of points:  I made about 2-300g per hour farming just the small elementals, between Crystallized and Eternal Fire, and the grays they drop.  So, if you can’t find a way to farm gold faster than that (like you have terrible crafting professions and don’t ‘play’ the Auction House), you can try it.  It seems kinda ‘meh’ to me.  The other problem is that: 1) you have to have the place to yourself…it’s a very small area, and hard to get alone there, and 2) if you ARE alone and a member of another faction comes, it interrupts your farming and makes your gold per hour rate go way down.

UPDATE #2:  With my faction in control of Wintergrasp, I decided to farm some Crystallized Fire.  After about 30 minutes of uninterrupted farming, I had about 200g worth of stuff (between grays and Crystallized Fire).  Sadly, though, about 50g of that was from mining the nodes that were right there.  So if you don’t have mining, it would be a little less.  My conclusion is that this is NOT a good spot for farming gold.  Especially with the chance of being interrupted to do a little PVP while trying to farm.  (The spot is so small, it is really rare to have it yourself.)

Some people might say, “well, at least I can farm the Eternal Fires I need and save me some gold!”  They should read the ‘Myths’ section on this site.  If you can find a faster way to make gold than 400g per hour, do that, and BUY the Eternal Fires you need.

But something piqued my curiosity today, and I can’t wait to get home from work and try it out!

I was back in Sholazar Basin to help out a guildie the other night, and noticed how frequently I was coming across mining nodes, and of course, herbs.  Now, normally, I assume that the highest-level zone produces the most amount of gold.  But it sure seemed like Sholazar had a disproportionate number of nodes to harvest.

So, a little digging on Wowhead turned up something interesting.  I searched Titanium Node, and Icecrown had 342, Sholazar had 308, and Storm Peaks had 198.  That surprised me…that Sholazar had so many more than Storm Peaks (also a high-level zone)…and almost as many as Icecrown.  So I searched Rich Saronite and Saronite nodes and discovered a similar pattern.

I’m making an assumption that the conclusion is that Sholazar would be a better place to farm.  Lower level mobs mean easier killing when you have to kill to get to a node.  Also, Icecrown has some nodes that are a real pain to get to due to the Elites that are present, or that stupid area that puts you into combat the second you touch down, even if no mobs are around (making it difficult to remount to continue flying the route).

On the down side, the herbs in Sholazar are not the highest-end herbs.  Depending on the herb market on your server, you might want to check the prices of Adder’s Tongue vs. Icethorn and Lichbloom.  According to WoWEcon.com, for my server Lichbloom is 3.75, Icethorn is 2.61, and Adder’s Tongue is 1.90 (g.s).  Oh, and Talandra’s Rose is 3g. But, the herb nodes are a lot more packed in Sholazar, so the quantity of Adder’s Tongueand Talandra’s Rose might actually make up for the lower prices of the Icecrown herbs.

I will test-run some routes of Sholazar, both mining only and mining/herbing and post the results here.  Unfortunately my schedule is pretty busy for the next day or so.  If someone else gets to run some tests, feel free to post a comment.  Essentially, create a mining-only route for both Icecrown and for Sholazar.  Using a clock, fly a route for at least 30 minutes…preferably a full hour.  Quantify the ore and gems retrieved in that time slot for each of the zones, and use the AH prices (preferably from your Auctioneer addon) to determine how much you made in the time.  Repeat for the other zone and compare.  Then repeat the whole process with routes including both herbs and mining.

Once I run a few tests, I’ll post the results here.

UPDATE #1:  I did a quick mining-only run through Sholazar today compared to a mining/herb route in Icecrown.  Exactly 30 minutes for each route.  If you had seen the 1000 Gold Per Hour post,  I thought that after a few weeks the prices on everything would steadily decline, and that it wouldn’t truly be 1000 gph any more.   I did exactly a 30-minute route around Icecrown, starting with empty bags, and went straight to the AH afterwards.  I refreshed all of my AH data so that I would be undercutting everyone…and posted 638 GOLD worth of auctions!!!  That is over 1200 gold per hour!  So this process still works.  The mining route around Sholazar only netted me about 415 gold in 30 minutes, or just over 800 gold per hour.  I’m sticking with Icecrown, tyvm!  I’ll probably do one more test in Sholazar with mining/herb to be fair…but the value of the herbs in Sholazar don’t compare to the ones in Icecrown.

I’m guessing that just because the number of nodes is similar doesn’t mean that the number of available spawnpoints is the same.  It could be programmed to have, out of the potential 300 nodes, 50 spawned in one zone, and 30 spawned in another.  There’s no way to know that.  The other factor is competition.  Sholazar is a smaller zone, and I had lots of competition.  I hardly see anyone in Icecrown.

You can find the details about the addons here on the site, but here’s exactly what I do:

• I have installed Routes addon from Curse.com.
• I have installed Gatherer and Gathermate and Cartographer Mining and Herbalism addons.
• (UPDATE: use Gathermate_data addon as well to add the spawnpoints to your mods)
• I am level 80 and have an epic flyer.  (You can do it with a non-epic flyer, but might be a tad slower, obviously.)
• I have Mining and Herbalism maxed out.
• I go to Icecrown and use the Routes addon to create a route in Icecrown.  I add all the herbalism and mining waypoints from all of the addons that it can use (Gatherer, Gathermate, Cartographer).
• I ‘cluster’ the waypoints with the default setting of 60 yards.  That creates fewer waypoints for the route.  It will fly close enough to a mineral or herb spawn point without making me travel exactly from point to point.
• I use the Extra Optimization option from the Routes addon.  This makes the route as short as possible.
• I then simply fly around the route.  I’ll skip nodes that are in really dangerous spots, like the one next to the Elites or the cluster of evil paladins…it’s too much work to kill them just for some ore.
• Note:  I have both Herbalism and Mining.  So I use a simple ‘castsequence’ macro that’s bound to my Z key that toggles Find Minerals and Find Herbs back and forth.
• Note 2: I have a route that includes both herbs and ore which is long, and I can toggle back and forth.  I also have a route that is only for ore, and I stick with mining only for that one.  BOTH have produced 1000g per hour.

To calculate how much I’m making, I use the Auctioneer addon, with all the details in the tooltips added.  I use Appraiser when I’m at the auction house (that’s a tab available when you have Auctioneer installed).  I have customized my minimum settings so that I will almost always undercut the competition.  I don’t care.  I’m all about volume.  I’m not trying to squeeze every last copper out of each transaction.  That’s too much like work.  I’m in, I post my auctions, I’m out.  Movin’ on.  Yah…I’m sure some folks hate me for undercutting them all the time.  They’ll deal.  The market goes up and down, and somebody is happy because they were able to buy cheap goods.  I’m the WalMart of the Auction House…small business hate me, but the customers love me.  (And if crafters were smart they would contact me and work a deal where I provide for them.)

Anyway, when I’m at the Auction House, I open Appraiser, and just hit ‘Refresh’ on each item I’m about to post so it scans just that item.   No more long Auction House full-scans.  Just one item name at a time.  I use the Histograph as the calculation for the price, and the ‘Beat Competition’ box (or whatever it’s called) checked.  That makes me, almost always, the lowest priced items out there.

EVEN WITH UNDERCUTTING EVERYONE I AM MAKING 1000G PER HOUR.

It seems that, regardless of whether I’m just getting Ore, or both Herbs and Ore, the value of what I pull is pretty consistent.  I’ve noticed that no matter how many times I repeat the circuit, no matter what time of day, etc., I am getting a consistent average of Titanium ore, blue uncut gems, Frost Lotus, Crystallized Life and Fire, etc.

The exact way I calculate it is to empty my bags, go to Icecrown and trigger a self-buff that lasts 30 minutes.  Then I fly the route until the buff expires.  Then I mouse over each stack or item that I’ve gathered and look at the Undercut price in the tooltip, and add it up.  It’s always been a little over 500g after 30 minutes.  And it’s repeatable…I’ve done so many times to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.

If I wanted to make it even faster, I’d take advantage of the ‘Taboo’ feature of Routes, which blocks off certain areas.  This would be nice to avoid those sections where the Elites make it too tough to get to the nodes.  But I’m too lazy and am making too much gold just flying around as it is.

I usually just log on and chat with guildies while flying around waiting for an opening in a dungeon run or battleground.  There’s not much left for me to buy in the game, so I don’t farm ‘hard’…mostly I just do it for fun to see how much I can make, and to be able to splurge if I want to power-level a different profession on one of my other toons.

I hope this helps!

UPDATE:  I thought that after a few weeks the prices on everything would steadily decline, and that it wouldn’t truly be 1000 gph any more.  Well, I just finished a test run in Icecrown again, to compare to Sholazar Basin Mining.  I did exactly a 30-minute route around Icecrown, starting with empty bags, and went straight to the AH afterwards.  I refreshed all of my AH data so that I would be undercutting everyone…and posted 638 GOLD worth of auctions!!!  That is over 1200 gold per hour!  So this process still works.  (By the way, my mining route around Sholazar only netted me about 415 gold in 30 minutes, or just over 800 gold per hour.  I’m sticking with Icecrown, tyvm!)

In the beginning, as soon as the patch is out, many folks will be power-leveling their professions to the new max.  Some are already trying to acquire recipes and mats that will take their profession to the cap.

GATHER, GATHER, GATHER!!  In particular, mining and herbalism will be huge in the beginning.  Demand for ore and herbs will skyrocket and you’ll be able to set and command a high price.  If you are strictly interested in making gold, I recommend those two gathering professions…at least until the economy stabilizes.

After things settle, and your server gets a healthy population of level 80s, the end-game view of professions will be to have the more rare recipes on your servers.  These will be obtained by doing the daily quests for those professions, collecting the tokens and using them to get the unique recipes.

Having said that, there is still a risk with that.  Unless you can start collecting tokens from Day One, other crafters will be ahead of you in what recipes they can obtain.   So if you only have one level 80 toon, and you aren’t doing a crafting profession’s daily quests from the very beginning, other crafters will snag the good recipes.  In addition, even if you are the first to get the rare recipes, there will always be others who catch up to you (or have more time to grind than you do), who will eventually undercut you.  So, if you’re banking on being the only one on a server with a recipe, you’re rolling the dice.

There will always, ALWAYS be a need for gathered items.  Gold-makers know this, and collect like crazy, and other than manipulating the Auction House, it’s the most secure way of making gold repeatedly.

If you have read through this entire site, you know this advice already, but:  get on thottbot.com (the beta side), and find out what mats will be used, and in what quantities, to level up the crafting professions.  Stock up on those mats, because in the first few days, you won’t be able to keep them on the AH, regardless of how much you price gouge!

However, in combination with the Routes, GatherMate and GatherMate_Data, Herb/Mining becomes more viable.

Aside from the super-nice routing feature (see the other post on that!), it also displays spawn points on your mini-map. You can filter which spawn points you want to see, and you can scale how big they appear on the mini-map. The way it works is that when they are outside of the range that you could detect it, the mini-map displays an icon that represents the specific herb/ore. Once it’s in range, it turns into an empty circle, IF you are detecting that type of spawn…in other words if you have Find Herbs on, ore spawn points will always display the ore pictures, but herb pictures will turn into empty circles when you’re in range to detect the yellow dot. If you see empty circles, and they stay empty for a split second, then you know that nothing is there and you can move on.

So here’s what I do now (now that I dropped Tailoring and re-leveled Herbalism to go with my mining)…

I have a macro:

/castsequence Find Herbs, Find Minerals

I have that bound to a key. Clicking that key will toggle tracking herbs and ore every time I click it. (There is a global cooldown of 1 second, but that’s ok.)

Next, I setup my route to track the most-valuable herb and the most-valuable ore in a given zone. For example, in Shadowmoon Valley, I make a route for Nightmare Vine and Adamantite Ore. This path will cover most of the map. If I miss a few spawnpoints of Felweed or Fel Iron Ore, I’ll live. The route will go near enough to many of them anyway for me to track them.

As I’m flying around following the route, I look on my minimap to see what kind of spawn points are around. Then I hit my macro key to switch the tracking back and forth between ore and herbs. But because of Cartographer I know WHICH one I should be tracking. For example, if there’s a stretch of route that has herbs and no ore, I can tell because of what is being displayed in the minimap, and I don’t need to switch. If I’m coming to a cluster of spawn points that has both, I’ll keep one on (Herbs, for example), and when I enter that cluster, the herbs turn to circles…THEN I’ll click the macro and switch to Ore, and check those empty circles.

It’s tough to describe, but if you have either Herbalism or Mining and use Routes you’ll see what I mean.

If you need help getting your Herbalism or Mining profession up to speed quickly, probably the best guide I’ve seen for speed leveling is Penn’s.

Here’s a video tutorial I created to show how to setup Routes: