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| © Nev 2003 Something in the Air |
The quickest way for a level 85 character is to portal to Uldum & fly across to the top north-west corner of Silithus as shown on the map. There are 2 main areas, concentrated around either side of the Crystal Vice where the earth elementals (Rumblers) are. The blue line on the map is the approximate path for the Twilight Prophet & her guards. She drops 7-10 Encrypted Twilight Texts which are used for Cenarion Circle reputation so if you already have the rep (or not interested in rep grinds), you can sell them on the auction house for maybe 20g each but obviously, your server prices may be a little different. I have them on my snatch list & buy them up when I see them for 3g or less.
So why am I telling you about this slow farm/low drop rate item? Well, I've been farming there several evenings recently & I have a feeling the drop rate has been improved!
I lent some gold to a guildie & instead of them repaying me in gold, I asked her to farm 8 Essences of Air for me, expecting it to take maybe 2 hours & she would feel like she'd worked for her loan! Instead, she whispered me within about 30 mins to say she had them already & did I want any more?
Two weeks ago, I was at Ahn'Qhiraj with another guildie farming the Battletank mounts & when we hit the 5 instances per hour limit, I took him over to Silithus to show him this corner. It's a nice little gold earner for anyone patient enough to farm & then patient enough to wait for them to sell. We were there for maybe 20 minutes & between us we got 10 Essences of Air.
Another evening this last week, I was kinda restless & didn't want to start any major stuff as it was getting late so I dived down to this corner & did a bit of farming. Within the first 12 minutes I had picked up 9 Essences of Air, not to mention 10 Breath of Wind & 12 Elemental Airs.
Now this is all anecdotal of course but my luck with the RNG is never very good. I decided to test my theory again this morning (Sunday) before writing this post & what happened? Yup, you guessed it - 3 essences of air in 30 mins - back to the old, horrible drop rate!
I had a look at the comments on Wowhead & there seems to be a mixed response as to whether the drop rate has been improved. I'm going to try it again in the late evening, just to see if there's a time based element on this particular RNG as one commenter suggested.
So, has anyone else been farming these lately? How was the drop rate for you? Or would someone like to test this hunch out?
Edited to add: If you have a choice of alts to take farming here, take a miner - lots of thorium nodes & some truesilver ones as well. Also, if your guild is going for the killing critters achievement - there's a fair few snakes around too! Enjoy :-D
I used to farm these over a year ago, little bit of info on the drop rate back then in This post on my blog
ReplyDeletehttp://anaalius.com/2010/01/gold-tip-essence-of-air/
I still see these going up to 100g sometimes. Pretty awesome way to get a bit of starter cash.
I've noticed they are showing up more frequently on the AH...that's what I get for deciding to try to control the market. Some days there are as many as 20 listed at 100g ea. >.<
ReplyDeleteI haven't checked The drop rates, but they also drop from the air elementals uptop elemental plateau in Nagrand. And they, of course drop Motes of Air, which sell for alot.
ReplyDelete@Scottie - awww, have you tried the primal air market? they sell for even more and as Anon, say, the elemental plateau in Nagrand is agreat place for many of the Primals.
ReplyDelete@Anon oooh never seen those elementals drop Essence of Air, only the motes. I checked Wowhead & it says 0.8% so definitely not optimal for these ones :(
@Anaalius thanks for the link, looks like the drop rate was nerfed big time when Cata hit!
@Nev There was some patch way back, couldn't tell you which one, but bliz changed it to where any elemental that drops motes, also has a chance to drop the equivalent Essence. But yeah looks like the drop rate is a lil low.
ReplyDeleteBefore 4.0 I could farm 3 stacks of these in just over an hour, unless the rare spawn was there in which case I could farm 3 stacks in about half an hour.
ReplyDeleteAfter the 4.0 I found a total of 3 in an hour. I farmed there four days that week for an hour each and I had 19.
I farmed it again last weekend while I was checking on things for the CC Rep guide you commented on and I had 8 after two clears of the farming area.
So has it gone up recently? It has from my personal experience. Is it back to where it was before 4.0? Not at all, but it's definitely improved.
in mid wotlk a ranged dps with good gear could get 90-100 per hour : ) These mobs also have an extremely low chance to drop some expensive transmog items like lofty.
ReplyDeleteaverages around 13-14 on hour these days, great spot to farm when rolling a dk on a new realm