I’ve been running my mining route in Icecrown for a while, and in another post, I mention how I have been getting up to 1000 gold per hour there consistently (mining/herbing route combined, or just mining route).

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.