Wealthy elves I have known
by Allison Robert 
Feb 27th 2008 at 2:00PM
It's probably true that the best way to make money in the game is to farm primals, but sometimes you just can't stomach the idea of killing yet another elemental or -- given how busy most of the primal hot-spots are -- having to compete to kill them. It's in trying times like these that your thoughts turn to quieter pursuits like flower-picking, finishing some quests you left lying around, or at least taking your mindless slaughter act on the road.For my money, nothing beats the manaforges in Netherstorm. The elves there are like hundreds of milling, unsuspecting piñatas, ripe for the clobbering. Over an hourlong grind session with not-terrible gear, and with occasional breaks to tell people that you will never set foot in Shattered Halls ever again even if it is the daily, you can get the following:
- 17g in cash drops
- 24g in netherweave cloth (if it's not selling for much on the AH, make them into bandages and vendor 'em for 6g a stack)
- 2-7 arcane tomes depending on your luck (selling on average for 15g each on my server)
- 12-35g in green drops
- Dreaming Glory and Netherbloom spawns if you're an herbalist, Adamantite and Rich Adamantite veins if you're a miner, and the occasional gas clouds if you're an engineer
- And, once in a blue (har!) moon, something like Legguards of the Shattered Hand or Design: Solid Star of Elune (and yeah, I know they could technically drop anywhere, but don't spoil my statistically pointless fun)
People get very attached to their own private farming patches, so your mileage may vary. But whether it's fantastic luck or they really are that lucrative, I seem to get more out of grinding the elves than anything else.
Filed under: Tips, Economy, The Burning Crusade, Making money
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Dreadbeard Feb 27th 2008 2:12PM
Don't forget the occasional chest spawns around all of the manaforges, which can contain everything from exotic cheeses to ore and herbs, not to mention pots, which sell nicely if placed in the AH strategically...mad props to the belfs, yo...thanks for helping fund the uber-roflcopter of doom...
Nyght Feb 27th 2008 2:13PM
I have done all the various farming locations. But I recently discovered the King of them all. I currently run alot of heroics and end up getting about 12 Primal Nethers per week. As a LW I can make Nethercleft Leg Armor. These sell for about 280g on my server and I sold 12 of them this week. Thats alot of moolah!
clerkenwell Feb 27th 2008 2:13PM
I was forced to grind those elves, specifically Sunfury Bowmen, for hours on end in order to get my Khorium Scope schematic. It was an easy grind, and it did yield absolutely ridiculous amounts of netherweave, greens, and signets. But it would still be hard to go back, now that I've finally gotten my schematic.
Tasty Feb 27th 2008 2:36PM
=x i got it on about my 8th kill
Milktub Feb 27th 2008 2:14PM
Definitely one of my favorite spots when I'm on my rogue. I can grind for hours there without going through so much as a half stack of food. Stunlocking Elves ftw!
Charlie Feb 27th 2008 2:19PM
Nooo! Why are you giving away my secret spot!
Hehe, I farmed just south of Manaforge Bnnarr when on my mage right after I hit 70. I was the first tailor in my guild with the Runed Spellthread Recipee, and one of the first on the server. (375 Tailoring and Scryer Exalted). I sold everything else i got for $$ for my Spellfire set.
Now what good did that do me? Oh, by farming 10 primal manas in about 2.5 hours (At Wizard's Row, where nobody really farmed much back then), then grabbing Primal Nethers, I sold those damn threads for around 600-700g! Jesus i made a fortune off of those. Lol. (Average cost of Mats was 250-300g for primal manas at the time, and 120g for a nether, the fact that I was one of the first on the server to get that recipee, I was the few to put it up on the auction house.)
Of course, that lasted for less than a month before the server evened out, but it was still awsome. I definatley have fond memories of Manaforge Bnarr
Netherscourge Feb 27th 2008 2:23PM
I've run out of stuff to farm gold for.
While doing the Netherwing Dailies to get my Nether Drake, I managed to make about 4K gold, mixing in some Mining Runs for Adamantite and Fel Iron stacks.
Problem now is that there's nothing to save up for! I'm assuming Blizzard will introduec new money sinks for WOTLK, but that's probably months away.
I don't have any ALTs I care about to waste gold on either. I also don't want to buy any more mounts. Lord knows I have enough stupid mounts.
I wish there was something like, oh I don't know... PERSISTENT PLAYER HOUSING??!??!!?!?!?... I'd love to set up a house for my NELF in Winterspring or Felwood.
But knowing Blizzard, it'll be some goofy instanced thing that nobody but you will ever see and it'll just be plain dumb.
AlmtyBob Feb 27th 2008 2:50PM
Hah, non-instanced housing in WoW. My fairly low-pop server has 1200 Alliance 70's alone. Assuming a quarter of them get houses (Horde too) and another 100 guild houses, that's 700 houses. Azeroth would become a sprawling metropolis. This isn't SWG with it's vast tracks of featureless land.
jbodar Feb 27th 2008 3:54PM
The ultimate cross-faction raid:
"We're in your house, raidin' your fridge."
Benor Feb 27th 2008 2:28PM
I became the Ogre Slayer for Consortium rep. Those damn beads became my life until I hit Exalted.
But if you're a JC looking for Consortium rep, then I'd still recommend killing the ogres inside the Burning Blade Ruins cave. It's easier than killing for Zaxxis insignia, you can mine the occasional ore deposits that appear (though it's all Adamantite and the occasional Khorium, in case you need Fel Iron), and you can also get Mag'har or Kurenai rep from each dead ogre. Which doesn't help much if you're not a leatherworker too, but anyone can use a Talbuk, right?
Side note-I also raised my weapon skills to 350 on those ogres. So if you've neglected that, it's not a bad time to try.
Khanmora Feb 27th 2008 3:13PM
I stayed with beads until honored with Consortium. The only problem with the ogres is that they don't drop ethereum prison keys, whether you are trying to get the Mana Tombs master keys for the prisons in there or selling the keys for 100g each on AH (since devalued a bit b/c of the daily quest).
I did my grind at The Heap and literally pulled in thousands of cloth (I helped 3 of our guild tailors max their tailoring skill) and the money and occassional gems, pots, misc greens, herbs and ore. This was a big contribution to my epic flying fund (along with taking out some sunfury researchers in netherstorm to get my pally's signets and tomes).
Krick Feb 27th 2008 3:26PM
Farming Zaxxis insignia south of are 52 is a much faster way to gain consortium rep than the ogres if you are a protection pally. I can round up 10-15 ethereals at once and let them beat themselves to death on my shield spike. It's even easier if you team up with a mage for double AOE goodness.
It's also fun with a hunter. They can kite loose mobs over to you while you stand there and nuke them all.
Once I hit exalted, I helped a few guild members grind consortium rep the same way. I did the majority of the killing, but I let them pick up all the insignias while I got all the drops and netherweave.
jake Feb 27th 2008 3:09PM
I farm Thorium.
You heard me, Thorium!
I'm usually the only one riding around EPL from node to node on my epic ground mount with Crusader Aura. No flying mounts to compete with! With everyone prospecting ore to level up JC, I've sold as much for a stack of 20 as Adamantite does. I send my Arcane Crystals to an alchemist buddy to make Arcanite Bars that sell okay too.
I make about 100-120g per hour. Not the highest end profits, but decent.
JPN Feb 27th 2008 3:07PM
Shhhhhh.....
Abraxxis Feb 27th 2008 3:13PM
In patch 2.4, after the initial stage of reclamation of Quel'Danas, a daily quest opens up to get a drop from any blood elf in Netherstorm. The drop rate was pretty high on the PTR, and the reward was 11g99s.
I ground out Exalted with the Scryers and tailoring to 375 on the blood elves, so I have a fondness for this prey.
Jadden Feb 27th 2008 9:33PM
on my feral druid was farming the zaxxis raiders in netherstorm to get the zaxxis insignia for consortium rep. ive found they do drop alot of money i would guess in an hr i collected about 5-6g and also some netherweave cloth and different greys and greens, and sometimes if u r lucky u get the prision keys to get more rep. another nice place to farm is in nagrand at the osgun mountian(not sure what the offical name is) to get alot of motes of shadow and then u get enough to make a primal which sells for 15-20g on the gilneas srvr
Dave Feb 27th 2008 4:00PM
Primals are only the best way for a non-gathering, non-epic mounted character to farm for money. And really, it's the only way for someone who has neither to make money.
The reality is that the best way to make easy money, is still to gather herbs and ores and sell them raw on the AH. Flasks, Pots, Weapons, Armor, whatever you can make with the mats is NEVER worth as much as you can get through smart auctioning of the raw mats themselves. There are always people who for whatever reason are more interested in buying mats than farming them up themselves.
The smart player will borrow epic flyer money from someone if they're short. Tell the person you'll pay them back, plus 500g in a month. (or 1k, or whatever the person thinks is fair.) Yes, it sounds like a lot of money to you the poor person with no epic mounts, but the reality is that you can strip entire zones of ore or herbs in less than an hour. If you can't sell those proceeds for 100-200g then you've got a crap AH or you're not trying. This is just an hour's worth of farming up stuff.
The benefit over primal farming, is that you can do this with absolutely no gear at all. It's somewhat zone-independent, since if there's another farmer you can go to an equally profitable spot elsewhere, you're constantly shifting position so there aren't any PVP situations for the most part, and it's never in such a compressed space that you're going to have a reduced rate of acquisition for the stuff you're looking for, most of the time.
My typical routine lately has been to log on, and open the LFG for whatever instance I'm looking to run. I'll then mount up and fly around some zone and just haul in ore/herbs until the group gets together. (small guild with friends, not raid guild so typically 2-3 of us are ready to go... not so much on the last end of the group, but I'm not scared of PUG's like most people). Sometimes this gives me 30 mins of farm time, sometimes an hour, sometimes I end up wasting the entire night farming for herbs since we end up without a decent tank. I've made roughly 4k in 2 weeks worth of this sort of activity.
No fighting, No grinding. Just lots and lots of flying. I think that's a pretty important distinction since at L70 lots of classes switch from their max-damage spec to a raid/instance-friendly spec that doesn't really let you clear out a camp of blood evles in a reasonable amount of time or kill things at the Elemental Plateau. (resto druid/shaman, holy priest/paladin, prot warrior, etc).
Seriously, borrow the cash from someone. Multiple people if you have to. It's well worth it and you should make the money you borrowed back within a month. After that, it's smooth sailing to profit land.
I personally just rolled a druid alt to do all this. It has herbs and mining. I sent every single green drop to an enchanter to d/e and sold all the proceeds. I sold every herb/ore I found while leveling up, and I hit 70 with around 3.5k. The last 1.5k was pretty easy to get with quests and such. (and as a Druid you dont have to pay for normal flying so that saves 1k).
At this point, I can farm up herbs/ore and sell them for cash far far easier than getting any primals on any character and I just buy whatever I want from the AH instead.
Swiss Feb 27th 2008 4:21PM
For those of us who don't have a gathering profession or an alt that does, (I'm a tailor / enchanter) there are still ways to make a lot of cash quickly.
Lately I've been spending a lot of time in pre-BC instances. Namely Stratholme and Lower Blackrock Spire. With decent gear, I can clear one of those instances in a reasonable amount of time, shard all the greens and blues, vendor the trash, AH the cloth, etc. Generally, I come out of one of those runs with 6-10 large brilliant shards, 3-5 greater eternal essences, 20 illiusion dust, and 3-5 stacks of runecloth.
Check your local AH for those pre-BC materials. Some of them may be worth much more than you thought... Righteous Orbs sell for 38g on my realm...
Heela Feb 27th 2008 5:02PM
Farming instances is a great way to make a profit, with no competition (other than the "5 instances per hour" restriction).
I have two alts a Rogue and Paladin. Both are Herbalist / Enchanters. Uldaman, Dire Maul, and Living Strat are great instances to farm @ 70.
Nails Feb 27th 2008 5:04PM
that recent article about Cartographer Routes has made me finally start saving up for my epic mount, it makes gathering so efficient it's nuts
ive been using my 60% speed flying mount to gather up nightmare vine in SMV and netherbloom in Netherstorm for the last 8-10 days and have already saved up 3,750g