Time is Money: Saronite
by Amanda Miller 
May 21st 2009 at 8:00PM
Saronite translates into easy WoW gold, and can be farmed in massive quantities in Sholazar Basin, Icecrown and Storm Peaks. Wintergrasp is also a great place to farm it, despite being ground-bound.
Miners
Sacred Duty, a prot pally blog, recently posted an excellent example of a simple yet effective saronite farming route in Icecrown.
If you cannot fly yet, I highly recommend Sholazar Basin. Follow the rivers, run around the pillars, and circle the province perimeter. In fact, pretty much anywhere you go, you will find saronite, and the mobs are mid-seventies, unlike the heavy hitters in Icecrown.
As for Storm Peaks, make sure to fly up where you would think you have no business being. Giant cliff walls that stretch for miles and random peaks may be boring, but they do contain nodes.
An hour could easily grant you a few hundred ore. Before you smelt it, check your AH prices for ore versus bars. Because two ore go into a bar, you will want to smelt your ore into bars to sell if one ore is worth less than half of one bar. Otherwise, sell the ore! Jewelcrafters will buy it up for prospecting. Jewelcrafters
Prospecting saronite is very profitable. The probability for a blue-quality gem is around 21%, Scarlet Rubies routinely sell for 70-80g on my server, while raw ore might cost 70s-1g a piece (remember, you need to prospect 5 at a time).
Even if you had to pay 5g for each set of 5 ore, and only sold each ruby for 70g, that would give you 14 chances at prospecting a ruby (one, at least) before you'd begin to lose money, and that is without taking into consideration the profits you would be reaping from the other gems that would be coming out of the process.
As for Wowhead, it estimates that you'd be able to sell a ruby for around 100g a piece! Always learn the average prices for relevant items across days and times, so that you know how to spot a deal.
Stay tuned for more tips to help you make piles of gold on Time is Money. Kebina Trudough is dishing the dirt on coveted gold-making secrets, and you won't want to miss it! Check out my guide to choosing lucrative quest rewards for resale to a vendor, tips for disenchanters, or a list of addons to help you sell your loot. Finally, check out my tips to using the Auction House to make the most gold!Filed under: Mining, Items, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Economy, Jewelcrafting, Features, Making money, Time Is Money
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Dah May 21st 2009 8:22PM
Why farm Scholozar when you can farm Icecrown and get a better chance of finding Titanium?
Brouck May 21st 2009 8:30PM
I find Titanium in Scholozar just as frequently as I do in Icecrown. The real place for a quick and easy farm run is the Crystal Web Caverns just north of K3. The spiders have a chance to drop http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42253 which vendor for 1g a piece. Also there are typically four or five nodes to be found in the cavern.
nyctef May 21st 2009 8:40PM
You want to be putting spider silk on the AH, not vendoring it.
Kemikalkadet May 21st 2009 8:43PM
On my server it Auctions for the same price it vendors for meaning you actualy make a loss by auctioning it once fees are taken off. That's assuming it actually sells and doesn't expire losing you your deposit.
Same for icy dragonscales and them things from jormungar.
elfennau May 21st 2009 8:46PM
@Brouck Vendoring the spidersilk?? I can't decide if I should laugh at you, or cry for all the tailors out there that you could be taking money from for those.
Bronwyn May 21st 2009 9:27PM
re: spider silk
This varies depending on the server. On my server, the iceweb spider silks sell for little to nothing on the AH (IF you can even get them to move), so vendoring is better.
kia May 21st 2009 10:46PM
Yep I'm on another server where you're better off just vendoring it.
Different servers, different economic priorities =)
Veknir May 22nd 2009 6:21AM
Tailors have money? Wow, where do they get that? I mean, not like there's much in tailoring that you can make money off :(
Chris May 21st 2009 8:19PM
I shouldn't have dropped mining for alchemy -.-
Rilgon May 21st 2009 9:26PM
Instead of just providing a link to someone who's like "oh follow this route", why not link to a guide about how to combine Routes, GatherMate, and GatherMate_Data to forge your own routes with all populated data on WoWHead? I know there's at least one out there - because I wrote it.
Aureliusz May 22nd 2009 2:07AM
I followed that same technique myself. Now I just follow the pink lines and right-click nodes every now and again. I make a killing.
Darias.Perenolde May 21st 2009 9:38PM
I happen to be a Miner /Enchanter. I was originally doing it because I wanted to actually give a little back to my guildies, and Skinning / Herbing was boring. I didn't start this until after Wrath though.
What I found was that if you dig up Infinite Dust on Wowhead, you'll find the 4-5 items that take one of the crappy green-quality gems and one CRYSTALLIZED earth. Every miner knows that earth and shadow fall out of your pockets after a few dozen passes.
Hook up with a JC friend (or an alt) and have them prospect the metric tons of Saronite you'll be amassing. Then, have them craft those crappy 325 JC items...and promptly shard them. Every one of them drops 1-2 dust, sometimes 3.
I liquidated half my stock of Saronite ore and only a stack of Eternal Earth and I was buried in Infinite Dust. Fantastic resource for the enchanters out here! Then again, you could even sell it for a tidy profit!
QQinsider May 21st 2009 11:42PM
"Every one of them drops 1-2 dust, sometimes 3."
1-2 only from lower level greens, always. See http://www.wowwiki.com/Disenchanting_tables
Kuasi May 21st 2009 10:15PM
Another JC ring takes 2 eternal earth to make, and each ring will net 2-5 dust, or 1-2 greater cosmics, or a Dream Shard. I use my mining DK to feed eternals to my JC pally, who makes the rings and sends them to my enchanter shaman. And now all of them are maxed out on skill level :)
Charlie May 22nd 2009 4:20AM
As soon as i hit 80 on my dk i'm doing same thing
DK Miner > Mage JC (repsecing from herb) > Priest Enchanter.
TheMad May 22nd 2009 1:32PM
There is also a great JC recipe called Jade Dagger Pendant that requires 4 green gems and 1 eternal earth that will disenchant for a Dream Shard every time.
Also, selling Eternal Earth and Shadow is sometime more profitable than selling ores on my server. I sold Eternal Earth 10g a piece when Saronite was only worth 15g a stack.
Finally, I agree that prospecting and selling Rubies is the best way to make money with Saronite ores.
Qaeto May 21st 2009 10:47PM
i've found saronite to be a disappointing moneymaker, mostly because 20bars sell for around 30g - 35g on the AH with around a 15g cost to put it up. and with the massive amount of saronite out there if you get underbid you just lost 15g, and 20bars vendors for 25g, just kinda weird. almost want to vendor the stuff to avoid the hassle :P
Myf May 21st 2009 11:02PM
The secret to making sure it sells, is knowing who will buy it.
Try selling bars in stacks of 2.
Most blacksmith recipes only require 2 bars (or multiples of), so they really dont want to buy 20
The easiest way to sell saronite ore is to JC's.
I usually sell a 20 stack for 18g50s, which is under the market rate of about 20g on my server.
Now while you may be limiting your profit per stack, the JC's scream ZOMG at the cheap ore and buy everything you listed in one go, which beats losing a lot of money (saronite list price is way too high) on list fees.
keith May 22nd 2009 3:17AM
@Myf
I hate when people do that. The only reason I'll buy your silly stacks of two bars is if they are the lowest buyout per bar. Even then, if there is a stack of 20 with a negligible difference in buyout per bar, I'll buy that instead to save time. After all, "Time is money, friend".
sprout_daddy May 21st 2009 10:55PM
I think this tip is highly dependent on your server. On the three servers I'm on (Windrunner, Aggramar, and Grizzly Hills), saronite ore and bars are priced pretty low - around 20g a stack on the AH, and while some of the rare gems do fetch prices around 20g or so, there is nothing near the 80g mark. I still grab every node I find and prospect it, but it's not as lucrative as it appears to be on your server.