Still Useful Farming Posts Recap

With everyone so focused on Mists of Pandaria dailies, leveling & raising new Pandaren alts, it's easy to forget that some of the old tried & tested items can still make good money on the Auction House. I thought I'd cheat a little today & just recap some of my old posts that I'm still finding useful on a regular basis especially as these items can be snatched up pretty cheaply at the moment.

All these items are on my snatch shopping list & I check them almost every time I'm in the Auction House. There are so many new alts being raised now that these items find their way to the Auction House by players who have no idea of their market price or their niche uses & who just want to make a few gold here & there. That's where the experience & time learning comes in handy for gold makers!

• Essence of Air - used mainly for 2 enchants for Heirloom weapons and usually sell for 150 gold or more. There's a nice where to farm essence of air map in this post. I've seen these as low as 20 gold on my server recently. The enchants aren't selling for me at the moment but I know that they will sell once the shinyness has worn off Pandaria a bit!
• Spider's Silk - I tested 3 farming areas in Where To Farm Spider's Silk post early last summer & it's still relevant. Spider's Silk is used for the Spidersilk Boots (rare quality) tailoring pattern & the Toughened Leather Gloves (rare quality) Leatherworking pattern, these items are steady sellers especially for low level PvP'ers. Spider's Silk is also used for the Spidersilk Drape but with the advent of heirloom capes, the market for this item dried up last year. I usually snatch Spider's Silk up for 3 gold or less whenever I see them but I have so many now, I've been selling a few at 25 gold each.
• Essence of Water & Globe of Water - I started farming Globes of Water for the Mechanical Yeti pet when all the Battle Pet excitement started but I've stopped now - the pet market has changed completely & until it settles down, I'm just going to keep an eye on it. The Essence of Water however, I'm still snatching up whenever I can. Once other transmutes with cooldowns are no longer so profitable (thinking Living Steel at the moment), I will return to the Essence of Water to Essence of Air transmute. I started testing for the Farming Globe of Water post not knowing about the Water/Air transmute but when I picked up so many, I had to change the angle of the post to include where to farm Essence of Water too!
• Large Fang - Oh how I hate these large fangs! I tried to find a place to farm Large Fangs but it was really painful so I've resorted to buying them whenever I see them on the Auction House. I've not even bothered to make the Barbaric Bracers as I can sell large fangs for 25 gold each, having bought them for 5 gold or less.

Are there any items like these that you farm regularly or would like to know where to farm them? I'm quite happy to go test areas out so let me know in the comments section :)


Image © Natalie Maynor under Creative Commons licence

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 :)

Patch 4.0.6 - What Caught My Eye?

I've seen other blogs talking about this patch for weeks now but the word on the wind is that it's going live tomorrow in USA & that means Wednesday morning for us in UK & Europe. I think it's safe to say that most regular gold blog readers know about the 3 new enchants & 3 new meta gems as well as the changes to the existing meta gems. There's a whole host of little bits & pieces in there for classes, gear & professions but 4 tiny snippets caught my eye. The whole lot is here if you want to have a look for yourself.

Not the biggest gold-making news by far but the lowly & seemingly useless Murglesnout is going to have it's own recipe, the Scalding Murglesnout! So now when you fish up all that fish, at least you'll be able to level your cooking a bit or save on mana drinks between fights. I doubt it will sell for big money at the AH - it's not a buff food after all but if you're fishing them up anyway, you may as well try to make the best out of them.

Secondly, the drop rate for Spider's Silk has been improved. If you read my lowbie LW post a while ago, you'll know that 1 of the items I recommended uses Spider's Silk & whilst I've been snatching it on my server for a while, supplies have definitely dried up lately. I'm not sure whether this improved drop rate is a good thing or not. Personally, it was always a pain to farm for so I always kept it when any alts picked it up.

I think most of the spider's silk I've picked up at the AH recently have been from levelling alts or people making space in their banks. Why do I say that? Well, the LW recipe & 2 tailoring recipes that use it most are blue items & there have been very few on the AH at all. This suggests that the people selling the silks don't have LW or Tailoring or they just can't be bothered with the lowbie stuff.

The third snippet to catch my eye is that they have improved the LW levelling from 500-510! Grrrrr, my LW is at 512, having struggled through with that stupid Cloak of Beasts just a week or so ago!

And lastly, the drops from the Tiny Treasure Chests have been improved slightly. It will be interesting to find out how much they mean by 'slightly', not that I'm a great tiny treasure chest farmer or anything but I have tried. I'm just not very good at killing lots of stuff quickly yet :)

Apart from the obvious biggies, what's caught your eye in the patch notes?