Wednesday, January 30, 2013

The Best Farming Spot

Day 10 of Nev's Goldmaking Challenge, half way through!

Do you farm materials? Why? Why not? & which ones, where?

Gathering Professions
I feel like day 10 is going to see a lot of gathering profession rants, and let me be the first to add my contribution to that pile.  Gathering Professions are, by far, hands down, without a doubt, the worst way to make gold in World of Warcraft.  Right now with the herb and ore prices sitting where they are on many servers, you're not making half the gold every hour that you could be with a crafting profession.

Gathering is for the people who don't want to learn how to properly maximize a crafting profession, or learn certain markets, even though doing so would be more lucrative in the long run.  A lot of people with dual gathering toons tend to not even use their professions to the max anyway.  If you go farm herbs/ore/leather for even 2.5 hrs a week, you could make more gold doing an Enchanting and Alchemy CD for 15 seconds every day.  That's not even considering all the other possibilities with those 2 (arbitrarily picked) professions.

The best argument that anyone can come up with to support gathering professions is the logical fallacy that "it's 100% profit".  It is true that you don't have to invest gold.  But this assumes that your time invested into farming is worth nothing.  Okay if you need start-up capital that's one thing, but if you have a few thousand gold, stop farming, put your time to good use!

Gatherers Anonymous
This is the fun part of this post, pointing out my own logical fallacy, and why I support it.

My name's Phat and I have a gathering toon.  Yes it's true, after all that ranting and raving, I have a Tauren Druid with Mining/Herbalism.  *Gasp* Phat how could you do that to us!?  I know, I know.  As someone with over a million gold, I enjoy certain luxuries in game, and this is actually one of them.  I did not buy a Grand Expedition Yak.  I have a gathering toon.  Could I be making more gold if I slapped another profession on them?  Yes, I barely even gather as is.  There are 2 reasons I keep my gathering toon, and only 1 is vaguely related to gold making:

  1. Save gold making bars: Instead of paying a premium for bars, I can buy either ore or bars (whichever is slightly more cheaper) and have the ability to make bars myself using Mining.  
  2. Easy mats for Leveling Professions: As a gold maker I tend to switch professions on my alts, and I just hate when the mats aren't in the AH to powerlevel from 1-600.  At that point I'm more than willing to go out and farm on my Druid.
So those are my excuses what are yours?

The Exception
While it's not traditional farming, the Tillers have given a great way of acquiring virtual wealth in World of Warcraft, and this is one type of farming that I can support.  It's the type with little time invested, and large rewards, seems like a sound investment to me.  Having a few toons exalted with the Tillers is a licence to print money, and even without max level, alts can still take advantage of their 4 plots at 85.  



Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!
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9 comments:

  1. I'm with you on the Tillers! The crops sell really well on my server. I've also known people to buy the soy sauce and sell that for a fair bit :)

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    Replies
    1. Yeah the Ironpaw trade is another great way to make gold. The Undermine Journal has a section under Gathering -> Cooking to help determine the lowest cost of an Ironpaw Token :)

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  2. Hi, I'm Anonymous and I am a gathering addict.

    Seriously tho, I too have a gathering toon. There's something about it that I enjoy. I flip on the TV and after I've posted all my crafted auctions I fire up my routes addon and just fly around a zone from node to node, half watching TV and half watching my mini map. There are a few lower level mats that are bottle necks when leveling a profession that can provide decent returns. Other than that, after a couple passes in a zone you've got a few 100g worth of AH material to sell/smelt/prospect/mill etc OR you have saved yourself a little gold for your next round of crafting auctions.

    Gathering alone won't make you WoW rich, at least not in any sort of timely fashion, but if you enjoy it then more power to you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh I agree, if you actually farm and enjoy it more power to you! In the end WoW is a game for your enjoyment. I do dailies even though they're terrible for gold, but I enjoy gearing up and whatnot, and that's a necessity for it. If your end goal is to make gold though, gathering is not the best way to make it by far.

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  3. Your comparison is a bit off. Proper comparison would be daily crafting cool downs with random gathering while one does their normal pve stuff.

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    Replies
    1. I disagree. First of all not everyone does 'normal pve stuff'. A character need only be level 80 to do daily CDs, not 90, and even then gathering is a waste of time. You could spend the 3 (or 1.5 if you have the gloves) seconds plus traveling timecutting 2 gems for profit or milling a few herbs for more of a gold difference than mining/herbing/skinning. Much better things you could be doing with your time, and those seconds add up.

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    2. Your comment seems a bit "elitist". On low population servers I have toons, you could craft, cut gems and list glyphs and enchants until your hearts content and not make a single sale all day. On the same server I sell out any ore, herb or skin I list completely. You may have to qualify your statement. Gathering certainly are high profit potential professions on low population realms where there is a dearth of gathered mats.

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    3. I'd really like to see this realm where gems and glyphs never sell.

      The server I play on is classified as Low Population by Blizzard. Realmpop.com lists it in the bottom 20% in population of all US servers. I did exactly what you suggest not doing and I made 130k last week.

      Who do you think buys all the ore and herbs? People consuming it and not using it to turn profit? Rarely, and they're not the ones buying the bulk of it. If you're not making single sale all day, I don't care what server you're on, you're doing something wrong. I will not change my statement, in fact you make more gold per hour on small servers with crafting professions, because the % markup is generally about equal, and the same % of a higher mat cost means more profit per craft.

      Farming may be more beneficial on a smaller server, but it's still a waste of time. To quote my article: "Gathering is for the people who don't want to learn how to properly maximize a crafting profession". If you don't make a single sale all day, you're not doing it right.

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    4. I must say I completely agree with you here. I am on a "Low Population" EU server and the gold making potential with Crafting is lucrative. Gathering on the other hand is petty. I know this as a fact as I purchase 1000's of ore's for little amount's of gold compared to what I'm earning once all the ore has been shuffled/processed. Herb's are also a joke, the cheapest herbs are all MoP herbs and they sell for under 1g each every time i search guaranteed! This makes a glyph cost under 15g and they sell EVERYDAY for 250g+. So making 50k a week is easy. Making a 130k a week like Mr Lewts here is a bit more tricky as he dabbles in a lot more markets than the average Joe and Transmog is not a market I'm brave enough to try on my low pop realm.

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