Mining Rich Thorium (pics)

[Matt]

Mining Rich Thorium
If you’re a high level miner then you’re likely on the lookout for rich thorium veins for metal, high level gems, arcanite and cash. In my experience there are only two zones worth going to to farm rich thorium veins and they are Burning Steppes and Ungoro Crater.

What to bring
- Make sure you have at least 10 slots free in your inventory since thorium ore only stacks to 10 and you will be getting lots of dense stone and possibly gems as well.
- You definitely want a mount to speed things up, and an epic mount is twice as good.
- Enchantments that speed up your mount help a little bit too such as the carrot on a stick trinket and mithril spurs on your boots.
- +Mining enchantments apparently help you get better yields from veins although I haven’t seen any real proof of this but it is worth trying.
- Grab the gatherer ui mod from http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=44 , it will keep track of places you have mined before and will make your mining much more efficient.

Burning Steppes
Steppes is easily the best high level mining zone in WOW at the moment. There are heaps of mining locations, most of the mobs can generally be avoided, and it has a nice open layout without too many barriers blocking your way. It doesn’t just have rich thorium veins either, you can also find mithril, gold, truesilver and small thorium veins.

Rich Veins

Blue dots are the rich veins

This is a map of most of the rich thorium vein locations in Steppes. The black line is the route I usually take to visit them all as I do laps around the zone. Its easy to do this circuit at level 60 without attracting any mobs and lower level players shouldn't have too much trouble if they keep an eye out. If you don’t mind picking up the other veins in the area as well, or there are too many other miners doing the same route then this other circuit can be handy too…

All Veins

Blue dots are the rich veins
Light blue dots are the other veins

The main difference in this route is covering the eastern part of the zone where you will find a lot of truesilver and mithril. You will find that even when there is a lot of competition for the rich thorium, this part of the zone is usually empty of players so you can pick up a lot of other ore while still having a good chance at getting the rich veins. If all you are after is rich veins and there is just too much competition in Steppes, or the mobs in steppes are too high level for you to avoid then you may want to head over to…

Ungoro Crater
Although Crater doesn’t have as much rich thorium as Steppes does, I have rarely seen any other miners competing with me and the number of veins isn't that bad.

Blue dots are the rich veins

As before the black line is the route I take to cover most of the rich veins in the area. There are a few more mobs to avoid than in Steppes but they are much lower level so they are less dangerous and have less agro radius

[lvlrbojang1es]

hella nice guide, i will have to try it

[sum41hrly]

ya the gather mod pwns i have had it for a while. It's really great for some quick last minute dreamfoil farming for mc = )