Mining for Fun and Profit

According to one guide I read, “Mining is maybe the most profitable gathering skill.  Why? It’s used for 3 different tradeskills.”  That means you always have lots of potential customers for your ore.  Some ore veins will drop rare gems, which are in high demand for jewelcrafting and other skills.

I can tell you from my personal experience that mining can be very profitable.  I looked at MapWow.com to locate all the Rich Thorium veins in Un’Goro crater, and put together a list of all the coordinates.  Then, I spent an hour or two moving from one of those places to another, looking for a Thorium Vein to spawn there.  When it did, which was maybe 1 in 4 places, I would collect anywhere from 1-6 Thorium Ore, Dense Stone, and sometimes a gem or two.  At the end of the run, I had a stack of Thorium I was able to sell for 19 gold.  That’s definitely a nice profit.  Along the way, I also gained XP from killing mobs and managed to complete a quest or two for additional XP. So if Thorium sells for as much on your server as it does on mine, and you’re level 50+, this could be a very valuable tip for you.  Burning Steppes, Eastern Plaguelands, and Winterspring are supposed to offer good Thorium deposits, but I’ve never farmed those so I can’t vouch for that.

If you’re going to be serious about mining, get an add-on like MetaMap that allows you to keep track of where you find ore in a given area.  Ore spawns in a limited number of locations in an area, so if you mine that area for long you will have a pretty good idea where all the ore locations are.  This can make your mining efforts incredibly efficient.  You can literally just run from one location to the next picking up ore.  Remember, this can be useful even if all you’re doing is loading up on Copper Ore, since there is always someone who needs whatever ore you’re selling.  An area that’s rich in Copper Ore is also probably populated with very low-level mobs an thus is pretty safe for you to mine in.

While a number of people say that mining Lesser Bloodstone Ore in the Drywhisker cave hear Hammerfall in the Arathi Highlands can be profitable if you list it in the Booty Bay auction house, I’ve not found this to be the case myself.  The theory behind this tip is that you’re making the ore available in the only place in the game where you can actually use it.  In my experience, it seems to remain unsold for days on end, at any price.

The same is also said of Incendicite Ore, which is in a cave north of Dun Algaz in the Wetlands.  This ore is used for Pilot Stonegear’s quest “Search of Incendicite” in Dun Morogh.  Again, I’ve personally had little success selling this particular ore.

If you’re a hunter, this is one heck of a valuable skill.  It’s also very easy to max out.  Most beasts you kill can be skinned, and the skins can be sold in the Auction House for quite a nice bit of money.  At the higher levels, you can sell a stack of  hides for 1-2gp or more.  You can also follow behind other players who don’t have the skill and skin their kills for them, giving you the chance to make money without taking the risk of being killed.  I can definitely recommend this.

If you have skinning skill, I recommend doing your level-up grinding at areas where there are lots of beasts you can skin.  The reason being that if you make it a habit of skinning the beasts you kill as you level, you’ll return home to find that you have backpacks full of valuable hides you can sell.  And don’t sell those hides to an NPC vendor.  You’ll be throwing away money. List them in the Auction House.

If you’re up to the rigors of Outland and have a high skinning skill, you have a unique opportunity to make a good bit of gold by farming the Clefthoof Bulls which are just beyond the Northeast exit of Halaa in Nagrand.  These particular creatures seem to drop the expensive “Thick Clefthoof Hide” fairly often.  I’ve spent an hour or so there and gathered a stack or more of it, which sells for over 20 gold on my server.

I haven’t tried this skill, so I can’t tell you if it works or not.  I’ve heard some players say it doesn’t, and others saying it’s a fairly well kept secret how profitable it can be.  The truth may be somewhere in the middle.  According to one guide, “Herbs are a bit hard to find, but if you know the spots it becomes actually easy if you have no competition. Herbs sell surprisingly well on the AH and are not offered often.”

Elsewhere, I’ve heard that you can make a lot of money farming the Black Lotus with Herbalism.  The herb can supposedly sell for 5-25g depending on the server.  The herb can be found in Alterac Valley, Silithus, Winterspring, Burning Steppes, and the Eastern Plaguelands.

If your Herbalism skill is 245 or above, you should be able to gather Ghost Mushrooms.  They are one of the most sought-after herbs in the game.  These are located in a cave called Skulk Rock in the Hinterlands.  Supposedly you can gather 10-25g worth of these per hour in that cave.  Your character needs to be at least level 44, because the mobs in the cave are level 46-48.  The mushrooms respawn approximately every 12-15 minutes.  The first spawn area is on the upper ledge of the cave on the east side, occasionally on the pathway down to the lower level of the cave.  The second area is on the lower level in the western room with the small pond in it.  The third area is on the lower level in the easternmost room.  The mobs in the area will occasionally drop rare and epic items.

I’m also told that the Elder Shardtooths in Winterspring drop a lot of Rugged Leather and Warbear Leather.  I haven’t confirmed this.