Friday 25 March 2011

Gold per Hour -Skinning part 1

I found these zones to be most profitable in terms of what I gathered per hour played. The actual profitability will depend on prices on the realm and most importantly the demand for those materials.

All of the values were based on using a level 58+ Hunter with questing gear and survival spec. I found survival to the best farming spec for my play style. As a rule it is best to kill as many of the mobs as possible at first due to the way the re-spawn mechanics work. If someone else is questing in the same area I let them complete their quests first. Often this resulted in extra mobs to skin. The gold values do not include any additional items.

You can work out gold per hour based on these figures by looking at prices on your auction house. A few hours farming each week in each of the areas mentioned can result in enough stock to last through the week depending on the demand on your server. I often found it difficult to keep up with demand at times especially medium leather.

Ruined Leather Scraps / Light Leather
Zone: Silverpine Forest
Mobs: Rabid Worgs (10-12), Giant Rabid Bears (10-13)
Method: Kill the bears and worgs along both sides of the road between the Sepulcher and the Forsaken Front. A circuit took me around 10 minutes, by which time they had respawned on the other side of the road.

Light Leather (plus ruined leather equivalent) 209
Stringy Wolf Meat 90
Total gold value 283

I also got bear meat but this didn’t sell very well.


Medium Leather

Zone: Northern Stranglethorn
Mobs: Thrashtail Basilisk (29-30)
Method: Go to the Crystalvein Mine, there will be a number of basilisks outside the mine. Do a circuit killing all the mobs but don’t loot them. On the second circuit start looting and skinning. If/when you run out of mobs start killing mobs in the mine. If you do go into the mine be careful of the Ironjaw Basilisks due to their special gaze attack that will stun you for 5 secs. I rarely go into the mine, instead I often log off for 10-15 minutes to do a couple of daily quests on an alt and then start again.

Medium Leather 114
Heavy Leather 39
Medium Hide 12
Heavy Hide 6
Total gold value 327

Thursday 24 March 2011

Gold per Hour - Introduction

The road to farming
A few weeks ago I found myself with a small problem. I had decided even before the launch of cataclysm to have a dedicated farming character. To this end I had started to level a Druid with Mining and Herbalism. Once the expansion launched I only levelled by gathering and doing the daily quests in Orgrimmar, as a result I had not upgraded my gear until I reached the low thirties. Dustwallow Marsh proved to be something of a gear check, I only went there because of the Love is in the Air daily quest.

Checking the Auction House I found no suitable gear for a Feral (Cat) druid so it was time to level leatherworking on one of my alts. However another check on the auction house for materials found no light leather, medium leather or even ruined leather scraps. While there was some heavy leather it was in short supply and priced at 6g for each piece (120g/stack). As the day wore on I kept checking the auction house but it seemed nobody was listing leather, I even saw someone spamming trade chat offering to buy all light and medium leather.

Time to start farming leather, fortunately I had a level 58 Hunter with skinning so it was just a case of finding the best places to farm it. I am not a big fan of farming, as a general rule I have always bought my materials on the auction house where possible. I want to give my thanks to the contributors to WoWHead (http://www.wowhead.com/) this is an excellent source of information as to the best places to look for materials particularly if you read the comments section. It guided me to the best places to farm all the leather I needed. As I was farming I started to wonder how much gold per hour I could earn if I was selling this leather on the auction house, selling it at the normal price.

I want to share my findings with others in a way that can be applied to any realm so that people can more easily make gold out of farming. I started with skinning before applying the same model to mining and then moving on to herbalism.

Wednesday 16 March 2011

Casual levelling diary - week 6

I haven’t posted in a while mainly because my goals in WoW have been changing, this will be the last Casual Levelling Diary entry for a while as I am more focused on my characters on Hellfire-EU. However I will be posting a series on gold farming called Gold Per Hour. The first of which deals with farming leather in the 1-60 zones, I will also cover Mining and Herbalsim. I expect to cover all levels of the game by the end.

The daily quest in Darkshire came at just the right time and really helped speed up the levelling this week. I am concentrating on just levelling rather than do much in the Auction House, I have around 450 gold which is plenty for the moment. The next significant point is level 30 when dual spec is made available for a paltry 10g and makes using LFG a possibility within the timeframe I am using. DPS classes can expect queue times of 20 minutes plus but tanks and healers can get a group much quicker.

Day 36
Reached level 23, previously I had put my talents into Crusade(3), Improved Judgement(2) and Long Arm of the Law(2). The last one gives a 15% bonus to speed regardless of being mounted or not and helps optimise time played. The next 3 points will go into Rule of Law as at the moment I am not grouping an improved critical chance for Crusader Strike/Word of Glory is more useful than reducing the cooldown on Hand of Protection/Freedom.

Day 37
Level 24 brings a new ability, Consecration, however it is quite expensive to cast so not much to get excited about for now.

Day 38
Yet another level, that is three levels in 3 days! Or 90 minutes played! The quests are all in easy reach of the flightpoint which has helped and is a feature of the revamped world in Cataclysm. As I level further not all quest hubs will be so close so I expect a slow down after I leave this zone. I still have yellow quests at this point so there is no rush to move to the next zone.

Day 39-40
With level 26 comes a new aura, Retribution. This increases damage as opposed to Devotion which gives more armor. Because mobs are not really doing much damage it is an easy choice to make as to which aura I want to use.

Day 41
Another day and another level.

Day 44
I reached level 28 and for now this character is on hold as I turn my attention to levelling crafting professions on Hellfire-EU