20 Days of Gold Making - Day 10 Farming

The next burning question on my 20 Days of Gold Making is "Do you farm materials? Why? Why not? & Which ones? Where?" Oh I phrased this one really well, didn't I? lol

Ok, so my short answer is 'not normally' which doesn't really tell you anything so let me explain. I tend to buy most of my materials off the Auction House over time - I have a list of items I buy when I see them below their normal price & I save them up until I have enough - things like Spider's Silk, Large Fangs & Essence of Air which can be a real pain to farm myself.

I do farm some things though - Embersilk Cloth farming at the Fractured Front is always a fairly efficient way  to farm, especially if you use a Potion of Treasure Finding at the same time. I used to fish the Darkmoon Faire Shipwreck Debris pools occasionally for Embersilk too. These allow a fisherman to catch a Sealed Crate with lots of goodies inside - if you have upgraded to Mists of Pandaria, these crates now contain Mists level craftables such as Windwool Cloth & Trillium Ores as well as food & other stuff. If you haven't upgraded to Mists then they are still viable for Cataclysm goodies such as Embersilk Cloth & various Volatiles.

I also farm to 'test' areas for posts - there's a tab up top there with all my farming related posts if you are looking for good farming spots. I've not done much farming at all since Mists of Pandaria as I've been leveling & generally mucking about with all the new Mists related activities but I have no doubt I'll be farming things again later in the expansion, once I need  new post ideas or get frustrated with a lack of something on the Auction House!

These days of course there's also the Tillers farming - now this I do - I only have one full size farm so far which is producing either Motes of Harmony or various herbs (mainly for Golden Lotus supply) but I also have all my other alts with farms started so they can produce vegetables. I've eased off with the baby farms for now as I'm trying to be more focused with my time - those dailies definitely take up a chunk of my play time & I'm only doing one faction at a time!

I know farming materials isn't the best gold making method & certainly isn't very time-efficient but sometimes, you just need to turn up your music & go kill stuff - picking a good farming spot & letting rip with the AoE is very soothing after a frustrating day!

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Darkmoon Faire - Fishing Junkboxes

Gone Fishing - pre-Cata, Stormwind harbour

As you may know if you've been reading a while, I haven't been playing WoW all that much since Christmas so I've only done the Darkmoon Faire stuff maybe once or twice since it all changed. Last month, I decided to go & do some of the silly game quests - I am a pet & mount collector after all & I need those available from Darkmoon Faire.

While I was swimming back from the stupid cannon shot landing circle, I had a fishing node pop on my mini map. Ever the keen fisherwoman, I equipped my Kalu'ak Fishing Pole & dropped a few casts into the Shipwreck Debris pool. Not thinking anything of it, I went back to the silly games. But something was stirring at the back of my mind - hadn't I read something somewhere about DMF fishing? Oh well, I'll look later I thought to myself.

Off I went, googling merrily (yeah right! anyone that knows me, knows that I do not think like Google does - finding anything takes me ages!) & came across a couple of blogposts by Wolfgangcat & VilesAuctions.

Vile specifically talks about it as an Embersilk farming method & my tailor needs Embersilk cloth so off I went, water walking potions in bags & spent a quiet hour or so, racing other fishermen up & down the coast of the Darkmoon Faire Island. Apart from the goodies in the boxes, there is also the chance to fish up the Sea Pony pet or even, just maybe the Sea Turtle mount. Luckily I'm an insomniac so I outlasted them into the wee small hours of the morning & ended up with the island to myself.

Here's my haul
9 x Rumsey Rum Black Label
20 x Obsidium Ore
184 x Embersilk Cloth
14 x Heavy Savage Leather
23 x Elementium Ore
5 x Heartblossom
5 x Volatile Fire
3 x Volatile Earth
4 x Azshara's Veil
4 x Stormvine
5 x Twilight Jasmine
12 x Cinderbloom
2 x Elixir of Deep Earth
45 x Darkmoon Firewater
2 x Elixir of the Cobra
4 x Potion of the Tol'Vir
2 x Mythical Healing Potion
3 x Pyrite Ore

Now I did start counting how many junkboxes I picked up but I lost track a little. My best guess after the fact was around 45 boxes. I sent the potions & elixirs to my banker for selling but the ores, volatiles & herbs all went to appropriate crafting alts. Nine stacks of Embersilk Cloth was a nice result though - my tailor made short work of that lot but I ran out of enthusiasm & didn't go back for more.

Next month, if the Embersilk market is still good, I will possibly go fish with one of my other alts & use this method to not only gather plenty of Embersilk but also to level my fishing skill. I find having those skill points clicking up are a good incentive to keep going.

Spare Inks? Faire Inks!

As a side benefit of milling herbs for all the different levels of inks for my scribe, I usually end up with shedloads of uncommon or 'green' inks like Hunter's Ink or Royal Ink. I'd been selling a few at the AH but they just seem to dribble out of there & I decided I really needed to do something with them or my bags were gonna explode!

So two Darkmoon Faires ago, I made up all those inks into the various cards & sold the decks and spare cards at the AH. I managed to shift 64 low level decks at prices ranging from 35g to 85g (Rogues, Swords, Mages & 1 Demons Deck). That netted me a healthy chunk of gold across the week, just over 3000g, according to my MySales data.

Last month the Faire was in Thunder Bluff on my server so sales were lower but I still managed to shift about 20 various decks but prices were much lower so only about 500g on my MySales but I did find someone asking in trade for decks & managed to sell them 36 decks (mainly Rogues) for 1000g.

This month I have fewer inks to use up. The prices of Cataclysm herbs have dropped a fair bit whilst supplies of the lower herbs have reduced and forced prices up, so I've been using Blackfallow Inks & the Ink Trader much more.

Also this month, I have a fair few Primal Lifes - my warrior & hunter are both going through Outlands & my Main has been working on her Loremaster out there so I've collected them at random. I've made up as many Greater Darkmoon Cards as I can & have listed each one at 75g. These are the old TBC, lvl 70 equivalents of todays' Hurricane/Tsunami cards so they don't have huge value but I get more Darkflame Ink than any of the others. I've tried selling the ink but it just doesn't seem to move at all!

I keep the cards in stacks & make up the decks just before I'm ready to post, they stack in 20's whereas the completed Decks don't stack at all. The Faire is in Shattrath for us this month so it will be interesting to see how the demand is.

What do you do with your uncommon inks? Any other suggestions for me?