Where To Farm Spider's Silk - Testing 3 Areas

One item I always buy from the Auction House when I see it is Spider's Silk. It's always been notoriously difficult to farm but just after Cataclysm launched, it became damn near impossible to find. A bug fix by Blizzard eventually fixed the drop rate but many of the previous mobs that dropped it had either disappeared or changed levels with the overhaul of the Vanilla zones.

I received a query this week from someone who had found my old Lowbie Leatherworking post, asking where should they go to farm for Spider's Silk. So off to Wowhead I went & reading the comments, came up with 3 areas to try - Duskwood, Hillsbrad & Wetlands.

Duskwood

Wowhead shows 3 types of spiders that drop Spider's Silk in the areas marked above. I started at the road and worked my way through the whole area marked in red on the map. These were Black Widow spiders & there were a lot in a small area. Once I reached the riverbank, I followed along to the East & through the Brightwood Grove area, marked in blue on the map. These were the Venom Web Spiders & were much more widely spread out. Next stop was the Tranquil Gardens Cemetary, also marked in blue. These were the Black Widow Hatchlings & I don't know if I just missed them in the hilly terrain but I really didn't find many at all.

So I headed back to the red area & concentrated on the Black Widows. Over about 45 minutes, I killed approximately 150 spiders & only picked up 5 Spider's Silk. I also picked up 4 pieces of green quality armour. Nev's opinion - hmm, not too bad an area.

Hillsbrad Foothills

So my next target area was Hillsbrad Foothills with spiders in level range of 19-22. Wowhead shows 3 or 4 different types of spider here including Forest Creeper, Domesticated Creeper & Domesticated Mine Creeper. Unfortunately the domesticated types are friendly to Horde players so only the Forest Creepers are available for farming. The red area above shows where I found most of the Forest Creepers. The blue area is where the other types are but if you are farming 'at level' on an Alliance character, be aware that there are unfriendly NPC's all around the mine area.

I found a fair few Forest Creepers in the red area, some spread out & some bunched. After 30 minutes & only 60-70 kills, I had 2 Spider's Silk & 3 pieces of green quality armor so I gave up! Nev's opinion - don't bother farming here!

Wetlands 

This has long been a favourite spot of mine for farming Spider's Silk & I'm happy to report, it didn't let me down this time either! There are 2 types of spiders in & around this little cave. Leech Stalkers outside, quite a few in a smallish area & Cave Stalkers inside as well as a chance at a rare spawn Leech Widow. For miners, this cave also has tin deposits which is a nice little side benefit. The Leech Stalkers outside spawn fairly quickly too which is always nice.

In 30 minutes, I picked up 7 Spider's Silk & 2 green quality items. I killed about 120 spiders in that time. Nev's opinion - Farm here! lol

The other side benefit of Wetlands is the Razermaw Hatchling pet you can pick up quite easily in the cave on Raptor Ridge. You can see the cave entrance on the map in the top right hand corner. Not the best selling of the dino hatchlings because it's pretty easy to get but still a quick bit of gold if you're here anyway.

So there we go - Wetlands wins hands down for me. Do you have any other spots you farm Spider's Silk?

I'm thinking of doing a series of these farming spots - what other hard to find items would you like to see a post on? Not pets tho, there are already loads of guides for those. Let me know in the comments or you can email me at the address top right of the side toolbar :)

Where to Farm Large Fangs

Arathi Highlands

As part of my new series on farming for hard to find on Auction House items, I went back to the same old Lowbie Leatherworking post. One of my best lowbie selling items was the Barbaric Bracers & when I can find Large Fangs on the Auction House, they still sell pretty well even now.

As with Spider's Silk, these were always hard to find but since so many zones & beasts levels have changed with the reworking of the Vanilla zones, it looks like there is only one type of beastie that drops these now. Off I went to the Arathi Highlands, just over the bridge from the Wetlands. The Highland Fleshstalkers (level 28/29) are pretty close together but there aren't a huge number of them. I easily cleared the whole lot in about 5 minutes on my level 81 hunter & I was having to wait for respawns. With such a low drop rate, after 30 minutes of killing & waiting, I had only 2 Large Fangs but my bags were almost full with Raptor Hide, Raptor Eggs & Raptor Meat.

The other downside is that my Hunter is not a skinner - I'm sure the medium leather would have been a great gold boost for my 30 minutes farm time & perhaps they would have respawned just a smidge faster too.

Overall, I was fairly disappointed and I certainly wouldn't recommend farming these for any gold making activity. However, if you are questing in this area or leveling your skinning then perhaps concentrating on the Highland Fleshstalkers for a little while will give you a small gold boost in the process.

Having said that, farming Large Fangs to make a set of Barbaric Bracers for your own character is perhaps not as bad a you might have feared. Waiting for them to turn up on the Auction House is going to take a long while & your baby alt will have leveled way past the need for Barbaric Bracers while you get the materials together.

Project Shoofly - End of Week Two

It's almost end of week two of my lowbie horde leveling project & I'm off on some travels for a few days tomorrow so I thought I'd leave you with an update. I finally made it to level 30 somewhere in the wilds of Arathi Highlands. My herbing & skinning are coming along nicely, both up around the 160 skill points without too much extra effort now.

I'm still struggling with being horde - flight paths & safe havens are all in the wrong places! I almost ran into Refuge Point earlier - luckily I woke up fast enough to realise that was not a good idea! I've been sending all my herbs & leather to my little banker as well as anything else that is for the Auction House. Most stuff is selling really well even though everything is very quiet since Diablo 3 went live.

I've picked up a few recipes on my travels but in keeping with the 'think like a novice' idea of this project, I've only bought 1 or 2 of each recipe if I had the gold available. You can see from my list below, herbs at this level like mageroyal & briarthorn are selling almost as fast as I can list them but even peacebloom is selling well & I often find that I am the only one listing it!

So at level 30, I have 807g on my banker with 35g on my leveling alt after buying a few netherweave bags for them both. I'm interested in seeing how far this will go - I remember having about 6000g on my main by about level 60 & I knew very little about the whole auction house thing at that point but I was making a bit of effort in that direction.

I'll resume leveling in June when I return - will be interesting to see how much more gold I can accumulate in this way. I'm guessing a lot of newer players probably play in this way. Sometimes as keen goldmakers, we forget that not everyone plays like we do so when we put stuff up for high prices, we may be seriously limiting our markets to other players who play the Auction House & therefore know our tricks!

Project Shoofly - Mid week 2

I've been barrelling along, leveling my herbalism & skinning as well as questing. I decided to brave the random dungeon finder last night - ugh! Have I ever mentioned how much I hate pugs? Well, I do - a shaman healer decided to roll need on a cloth intellect waist even though he was full on heirlooms & I had only crap quest gear. For once I stood up for myself & queried it but I did pretend to be a bit noobish just in case he got nasty! lol

After the tank spent the next 10 minutes reposting recount scores after each fight, I think the shammy took pity on me because he traded me the belt! Yes, my DPS was that bad! But I did get a pretty new dress after I left the dungeon, I just finished a quest chain so that made a huge difference and it kind of matches her hair too :) Shame about the gloves & boots though.

One thing I have found out is that keeping my herbing & skinning leveled to the zone I'm questing in, is a bit of a pain! I spent about 2 hours questing & dungeon last night but over an hour or more, trying to get my skinning up to a level where I could skin the beasties I was killing! Having said that - skinning on a priest? Seriously, WTF was I thinking??? lol

But on the other hand, I did end up with several full bags of herbs & leather as well as a few green items which mostly all sold overnight. I've just pulled almost 200 gold out of my mailbox this evening, giving me a nice current total of 359 gold. Out of that, I've bought 3 netherweave bags & a couple of items for my priest to wear as well as paid for my riding skill & sent 30 gold to my priest for pocket money. So at a rough reckoning, I think I'm upto about 440 gold overall if I hadn't spent anything.

Now I know that may not seem much but remember, this is my non-goldmaking experiment :) I'm trying to think like a new-ish player - just selling everything I pick up from questing & the odd recipe here & there when I find them.

I'm going to try to get to level 30 tonight & dual spec into Holy - I have an 85 Holy Priest but I never did lowbie dungeons as a healer so I thought I'd give it a try this time through. Wish me luck - I think I'm going to need it!

Project Shoofly - End of Week One

So I've been poodling along on my baby horde priest, just made level 15 last night - woo hoo! I have to admit I am finding it pretty slow going - a priest isn't the quickest class for leveling anyway but not knowing where anything is on Horde-side is also slowing me down. I am also missing my luxuries like heirlooms & my army of alts support system.

My banker Shoofly has been busy though - we're up to 161 gold so far from selling herbs & leather than my priest is picking up as well as meats, cloth & a few low level green items too. Somehow, I've managed to wipe out my MySales data again so this little screenshot is just my overnight sales

Now in my first post, I did say I wasn't going to do any real goldmaking stuff, well I may have to modify that a bit! I'm trying to think more like a novice goldmaker so when I stumbled across the Tradesman upstairs at the inn in Falconwing Square, I had to have a look. He sells the Recipe:Lynx Steak for a whole 40 copper - I've managed to sell 2 so far for 15g & 18g each - now that is the sort of mark up I like!

Many moons ago, my other half started playing this game & he quickly got lost & confused. It took me another 2 months or so to realise that resistance was futile so I signed up too. Around the time that I signed up, hubs purchased Zygor's Leveling Guide. Now I know a lot of people say they'd never pay for a guide etc but this one has saved me so much time. I used it extensively when I first started playing & I get regular updates for no extra charge. So now that I'm lost & all alone on Horde - it's in full use yet again!

Without wanting to sound too enthusiastic, it is a great guide. It always was but since they've updated & improved the whole thing to keep track of XP, the guide will jump steps to keep you on track. So that means that if you do a load of dungeons or battlegrounds & get ahead of the guide, it will jump to an appropriate place for you to restart questing! No more green or grey quests clogging up your quest log!

Regular readers will know that I finally finished my Loremaster achievement around Christmas time - another fantastic part to this guide - once you've been through part of a zone when leveling, it can be tough to find the quests when you come back to complete for your Loremaster. Zygor's Guide has that under control - it lets you choose your zone, it will flip & skip past quests that you've completed & then you just follow the steps until you're done. If you still haven't finished the zone when the guide finishes, there is then a little Loremaster section with all the other quests in the zone that are still available.

So why would there be quests still available? Well the main leveling section of the guide is designed to maximise XP gains & also time so some 'pain in the ass' quests are skipped to improve your leveling speed.

That all sounds super positive doesn't it? So do I have any negatives to talk about? Well, yeah, there are a few silly little bugs dotted here & there - the odd quest may have wrong text or it will skip a step near the end of a zone & leave you lost for a moment or two but that really is nit-picking with a microscope to be honest. Even better, right now they have a 25% discount on the World of Warcraft guide & if by any chance, you are one of the people champing at the bit for Diablo3 next week, they also have a 33% off their Diablo 3 guide if you've already got the WoW guide. How cool is that?

I, unfortunately, won't be able to play Diablo3 - my graphics card is too old & finances are pretty tight right now. I never had much interest either so I didn't sign up for the Annual Pass for my free copy of Diablo3 so that would be even more expense. I'll just have to live it vicariously through all my lovely Twitter friends who are posting vids on Youtube & livestreaming on Twitch.tv.

My Surprise Cataclysm Niche Market - Chocolate Cookies

© Nev 2008 - Chocolate Cookies

If you've not come across this before, Cold posts a Carnival topic & lots of different people do posts & send him the links for one big article link post each month - Colds Gold Factory Carnival has all the details & previous months topics. This months' topic is a little difficult for me as I'm not really a niche market finder or player, I just poodle along doing bits & pieces here, there & everywhere!

What Was A Niche Market That You Were Surprised To Find Or That Did Better Than Expected In During Cataclysm?

So how did I decide what to write about? I went back & re-read every post I'd written since Cataclysm launched in December 2010 & the only 'niche' item that jumped out at me was...Chocolate Cookies of course! What else would the so-called Chocolate Cookie Queen talk about? Coincidentally, I have Cold to thank for that title I think. He called me that after one of my early appearances on Power Word:Gold Podcast Episode #9 :)

Now I wrote about this way back at the beginning of May 2011, just as patch 4.1 introduced several new food & drink achievements. My post 'Cooking For Gold, Patch 4.1 Style' explains most of my method & it was later linked to on WoWInsiders blog too. That was an exciting few days for me - my blog traffic went crazy as you can imagine but I also had my best ever Chocolate Cookie sales week!

As with many niches, it was soon full of competition so I left that market. Now that I'm back playing, I should revisit it & see if there's any life left there!

Now in terms of how much gold was made, I lost all my sales data in July 2011 so I only have the screenshots from my blog posts to go by but between 3rd May and 4th July 2011 I made almost 10,000 gold just by selling Chocolate Cookies. If you consider that the cost of materials was cooking tokens & simple flour from a vendor, that 10,000 gold was almost pure profit. I'm sure that figure would be higher if I had my full sales data. I only used to post the top part of my MySales data so there are some weeks where Chocolate Cookies wouldn't have shown up.

Yes there are niche markets out there that made more gold & I'm not suggesting that anyone would get rich from this one but as an easy sideline, perhaps for lowbie alts in town, doing cooking dailies for XP & a little cash makes for a nice little boost to anyones cash balance.

Project Shoofly - New Server Leveling Project

So I think I've worked out why I'm not playing much WoW right now - I have no direction! Too many alts still need gearing up that I don't know where to start & not sure I have enough time before Mists of Pandaria hits anyway & when I do pick one, guildies sidetrack me or Facebook, or Twitter or any number of other bits I have going on.

So I've started a new little side project away from the madding crowds, on my US account. I know there's always some sort of leveling project going on but for me, this will be a whole new game - no heirlooms, no other high level alts, no professions already leveled - oh and horde-side!

Why Horde? - well, I've never played a horde character beyond level 20 so it should feel almost like a new game & I've often wondered just how much an ordinary non-AH player can easily make whilst leveling so I thought I'd give it a go.

I have just about 2 weeks before I wander off on a trip so here's the rules I have set for myself:-

• 2 horde alts - 1 to level, 1 as banker (seperate from any other gold making activities)
• no help from anyone unless I go through trade but I think most new players wouldn't do that anyway.
• As I don't know where any of the vendors are, I've switched off my Recipe Mate add-on, again, I'm not sure totally new players would have many add-ons
• only Auctionator add-on (no TSM or Auctioneer) for the Auction House
• no playing the Auction House on my banker, she is just there to sell stuff I pick up whilst leveling
• no rushing - I will just play as & when I feel like, with no special emphasis on gold-making
• most advice to newbies is 2 gathering professions so I'm choosing herbing & skinning

In my last post, I told you about my baby Alliance Hunter, well I haven't played her much, did a few battlegrounds but my twinking partner has been kinda busy so she's on hold for now - I didn't want to get too far ahead! But I have still been popping in now & again to the banker on Alliance side. Just a bit of low level herbs flipping, the vendor bought herbs & a few of the cooking recipes later & I have a princely sum of 457 gold already!

I'll probably keep going on her as well - it only takes a few minutes for each visit & if ever we do continue our twinking, at least I will have a bit of cash behind me :)

It will be interesting to see how different it is horde side & I wonder how far I will get before Mists of Pandaria is released? Had a challenge on Squidoo the other day to write a product-based lens so as everyone says 'write what you know', I wrote about Mists of Pandaria! I'm quite enjoying myself over there, I must admit but the whole SEO thing has me baffled. It's keeping me busy, that's for sure & makes a nice change from World of Warcraft end of expansion blues!