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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsTime 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 2 of 3)
Daet May 21st 2009 11:11PM
I'm sittin on about 3000 pieces of saronite at the moment, havn't got a decent AH price and
I'm planning on taking up Jc. Shall be so much fun prospecting that much
Thander May 21st 2009 11:11PM
This method is very realm dependant. At the best times I was making ton, but as things slowed down the profit margin got worse. I can only make a profit on 3 of the gem colors. Saronite costs 20g and the 3 good gems are worth 40g when cut. The chance that I get one of those colors in a stack of saronite is 42%. So on average, I won't break even with this method. I will probably lose a little money each time.
Also remember that you can't mass produce gems and sell them in one day. The best moneymakers are things you can do for as much time as you have and would continue to make money. You don't want to be in a situation where you have to stop farming because you can't sell all the stuff you're getting.
The absolute best method I have found is pairing DEing with a crafting profession. You can make guaranteed money by just buying cheap mats, DEing the crafted item, and selling the enchanting stuff. Best of all, enchanting stuff costs nothing to put on AH. If you make too many items, it doesn't cost you anything to have them listed everyday.
Thander May 21st 2009 11:16PM
It depends on where your server is at progression wise.
On one server, the dungeon and heroic queues are virtually empty. Most of the guilds are fairly progressed. All the 80s are pretty much raiding. The crafting mats like silk just don't sell well on this server. The guilds are already past the point of leveling their skills.
On another server I play on, the dungeon queues are populated. There's only one or two guilds regularly raiding. Most people are pugging raids. The crafting mats are selling really well. A lot people are still leveling their skills.
Ugkul May 21st 2009 11:24PM
I find mining old nodes in TBC more profitable really, and hardly anyone is doing those.
TonyMcS May 21st 2009 11:44PM
You really need Gatherer with a Wowhead database or a gatherer equivalent add-on. This will then show you on your main and mini map all the mining nodes for a region that have been discovered. You can then plot your own flight path. Any node locations you find will be shared with other guild gatherer users and it's the quickest way to farm any metal. THe same applies to other things like flowers.
I've also found it useful if you have another toon to put them both in the same region when farming. Many a time I've been farming flowers/relics of Ulduar/leather and I'll stumble across saronite/titanium - a quick log-out and 45 secs later I'm grabbing it with my mining toon.
Richard May 22nd 2009 12:13AM
I find that no matter when I mine in Sholazar, I always get about 16 titanium ore an hour, busy or not. I know how the titanium nodes work on respawns, and people recommend not mining there when its quiet, but I find that when it is quiet I'll get 3-4 titanium nodes in a row. All I can say is that Sholazar is definitely more profitable for me than Icecrown, as Icecrown involves varying altitudes, higher level mobs (if you accidentally aggro them) and the path is not as defined, whereas sholazar you can just do circles almost blindly.
For the sake of calculating my income, I did a test run in Sholazar last night. Set my watch for 1 hour and and 4 empty bags. In that hour I mined:
-268 Saronite ore
-36 Titanium ore
-8 eternal earth
-6 eternal shadow
-2 eternal fire
-22 various green gems
-3 blue gems
Saronite sells on my server for between 15-25g a stack, eternal earth for almost 200G a stack (and it usually sells within minutes of me putting it up!). I have eternal earth coming out of my ears I get that much of it, and I only use 1 every day to make titansteel. Titanium ore is down to under 40G a stack on my server, which is abysmal.
Regarding Scarlet Rubys, I wish I was on your server! They sell for about 15G on my server, I don't even auction them now, just give them straight to my JC friend.
Another thing I found is that Cobalt ore sells for 25-30G a stack on my server (as every level 80 miner floods the market with saronite). I find its more worthwhile sometimes to mine the cobalt instead, and make more money than selling the saronite and titanium combined - although you get less eternal earth too.
Zanathos May 22nd 2009 1:19AM
Thank you for encouraging people to waste their time farming sarnoite, that will keep them busy from figuring out a real way to make money
Gothia May 22nd 2009 3:32AM
Omg, you guys are a bunch of dumb bells. This is not about being a miner, who are the peons of Wow. Amanda, our host, is probably a jewelcrafter that is making a ton off you idiots. The moral to this story is to drop mining and go JC. Miners make 18-20 gold a stack on saronite. JC's buy it up, prospect and double (triple) their profit. The more serfs gather saronite the lower the prices go = more profit for JC's. How does it feel that the product that takes you hours to gather is being turned around by JC's for insane profit? What do you get - pocket change - your hair ruffled - and a pat on the ass - "Good boy! Go fetch me some more."
Warren May 22nd 2009 7:22AM
well on my server i am getting gems from nodes and I get excited that found a blue gem! Then i send it to the AH and it only selling for ten gold. :(
Flint May 22nd 2009 3:47AM
Slightly steering away from the whole profit side of things but am I the only one who finds saronite being used as a crafting material a bit... dodgy? You are wearing armor and weapons made out of some solid form of oozing from the Old God of Madness. That, uh, can't be good for you.
Seth May 22nd 2009 4:07AM
/facepalm...
saronite ore... if WoW-I had looked at the AH, they would have seen that the price is down at rockbottom on 9 out of 10 servers, that the competition is fierce and that half of the ores/bars aren't selling... right now you'll get more money out of mithril farming then out of Saronite... as long as you don't prospect saronite => stay away from it!
God... first: learn how to earn money, then try to write an article of it... If you want to learn, visit the great blogs about them... (and not copy from them like last time...)
Sinthar May 22nd 2009 8:22AM
Oh Great Seth, pray tell us then, exactly which servers, what are the prices, and please give us your superb guide, server by server, as to how to make gold. Please include detailed map locations on all areas, flight routes, AH variations by hour, stack quantity, and whos actually going to buy it, what mobs we are going to face potentially pulling and a class and level guide as to how to slay each of these fearsome beasts.
Or at least stop being such a whiner. If you dont like it - DONT READ IT. If your going to criticize, and tell people to learn of the 'Great Blogs' PUT A LINK or at least TELL people what sites you are refering to. If you cannot consider there are going to be GREAT variations in each servers economy, making ANY article inaccurate to a greater or lesser degree depening on what server you happen to be on, then please just STFU.
Strangely enough i have done a quick mini survey on 4 servers i have toons on (both alliance and horde). In 3/4 saronite sells for approx 20g a stack on AH, on the 4th its 23g. Scarlet rubies seem to go for anywhere between 35 and 55g, Eternal Earth and shadow are basically worthless on all 4 realms. As to your other comment "as long as you don't prospect saronite => stay away from it!" - may i suggest - befriend or rent a JC to prospect FOR YOU (guildies usually do that for free in my experience). Most JC'ers seem to have enough money so they dont care about 'compition' from a non JC miner selling a few gems to make some gold.
Lastly a non seth related point, Stormpeaks has one advantage over the others - in spite of its lower node rate, it DOES spawn a certain plagued drake, which i believe a few people want, so maybe grind there at the same time keeping an eye open for the drake, just for a change from SB and IC.
Oh i also do not recommend Basin for non Flyers, not on a higher pop server at least, as there are a LOT of miners there, almost continually in my experience.
Oh yeah, love a certain few fights - so just for a laugh thought id put my comment 'in the manner of'. Bet you can guess who too :)
Jormungandr May 22nd 2009 6:04AM
I just feel the need to say that I HATE it when I am trying to level (as a miner) through Sholozar, having not hit 77 yet, and I can't get a single node because there are ten people out farming the stuff with their epic flyers.
Evo May 22nd 2009 6:58AM
You do know selling saronite to ANY vendor gets you an easy 25g per 20 bars...
Gothia May 23rd 2009 4:56AM
20 ore = 18-20 gold average
20 bars = 40 ore
If you sell 20 bars to a vendor for 25 gold you have lost 13-15 gold profit
If you mine an average of 3 ore per node and it takes 5 minutes in between nodes x 7
then not only have you wasted 13-15 gold, you have wasted 35 minutes also.
vendor = poor investment
Warren May 22nd 2009 7:23AM
i hate when they do topics like this on this website. cause then everyone makes a mad dash to sell x item or farm z mob. prices go down.
zappo May 22nd 2009 9:33AM
I wouldn't be too concerned. Farming saronite isn't new. Yeah you can go to Sholazar Basin and run around in circles like everyone else. The competition is just too fierce if you don't have an epic flyer, and even then it's tough. I finally called it quits when someone asked "so hows the saronite farming?" in general chat, and got about 5 replies.
Saronite really isn't all that profitable for the time invested. Look at the price on the AH, then think about how much time it takes to gather that much vs how much gold you earn, you'll find it's not that great of a return. Can you think of better ways to earn money than that? I can. You just have to think about it a bit.
So for the most part these topics are WAY behind the curve. By the time the news hits here, the word has been out for a while. The people who REALLY made a profit have already moved on.
placebo May 22nd 2009 7:48AM
"Before you smelt it, check your AH prices for ore versus bars."
I don't think the author has even attempted to sell Saronite Bars on the Auction House before. If they had they would have mentioned that its a 30g deposit for a stack of Saronite Bars for 48 hours. Just as others have mentioned, this is server dependent as Saronite Bars go for maybe 35-50g a stack on mine. The real money comes from Fel Iron Ore at a 2.75g (cannot recall exactly) deposit selling for 75g a stack.
Tor May 22nd 2009 8:10AM
nothing new with route plus misses out most of the better spawn areas, easist is to do 2 circuits icecrown then fly over glacier to sholazar do 2 circuits rinse and repeat.
Sinthar May 22nd 2009 8:25AM
Oh B0ll$%s. I forgot the WI comment system, all my extra work trying to make it amusing and fun :( Oh well never mind, please disreguard my last comment on the post above - it wont make ANY sense without the extra bits WI comment system deleted.
Sorry folks