Extensive Mining and Herbalism Guide

[jpte]

Preface:
I added this guide because I didn't find a guide that covered how to lvl up Mineing and Herbalism at the same time and how to make money with both of them.
This guide is intended to give the reader tips on how to maximize profits using mining and herbalism. In this guide we will discuss zones, routes, addons, leveling, and profitable craftables. If you have any comments please leave them below and I will review them, or add them to the guide if applicable.

Legend:

LB - Lichbloom
IT - Ice Thorn
GC - Gold Clover
SN - Saronite Node
TN - Titanium Node


Leveling

Leveling Mining and Herbalism at the same time is fairly simple actually. I will discuss macros that will allow for easy switching of tracking nodes. For now we will assume that you read that section and continue with the guide.

1-125 Barrens (Peace Bloom, Silver Leaf, Copper, Tin, Silver, Mageroyal, Bruiseweed, Kingsblood)

125-175 Thousand Needles (Silver, Gold, Iron, Mithril)

175-250 Tanaris (Mithril, Iron, Gold, Silver)

250-300 Un'Goro Crater and/or Silithus (Thorium, Rich Thorium)

The relative closeness, placement of both herbs and minerals, and the lack of people farming make these areas suitable for simultaneous leveling of mining and herbalism.

300-350 Hellfire Peninsula (Fel Iron, Adamantite) *Remember at this time you can use the addons listed in the addon section to optimize your routes*

350-400 Howling Fjord

400-450 Sholoazar Basin

Addons

OK there are two addons that I use religiously. They are Gathermate data and Routes. These two addons are designed to import large amount of node data for treasure, herbs, fish, minerals, and gas clouds. Routes, an addon designed to to optimize your route in a specific zone. Some of the features of routes are:

*A friggin line on your hud and/or minimap !!! BONUS !!1
*You can chose to only display node icons while tracking or not at all
* Color coordinate your routes to make them easily visible to to assist you with remember what route your on
*Automatic route updates based on node availability and number of drops

In order to set these up first you need to open GatherMate and import data. You can do this by typing /gathermate in your chat box and hitting enter. Once there, open the import tab, click the drop down menu and select wotlk and click import data. Next open routes, select add route. In order for you to create a route you need to name the route first. For this example we are going to use Scholozar Basin. In the Field type Happy Monkey Butt in the name field (notice the okay button that appears next to it) click the okay button to add the route to the list and open up the create route buttons. Once you have named it select what nodes you are looking for where ever you may see them. For this example we will be using Saronite and Titanium. Once your nodes are selected hit "Create Route". On the left hand side, select the routes option. Under this the zones will be displayed. Click the plus sign next to the zone to bring up Happy Monkey Butt. Click Happy Monkey Butt do display a series of options for this tab. I am only going to go over the ones you need to know for more advanced look into these addons please visit the author's site. Click "Optimize Route" out of the list of tabs. There are two buttons to click here, Cluster and Foreground. This will cluster nodes with in 60 yards so your not bouncing to every node 2 secs away from each other. And Foreground will make your route not all screwed up looking. This concludes the addon section of this guide hope you enjoyed.

Zones

EDIT: First I am going to talk about how to farm Thorium because I think it will be of great help to many and just recently Mm0-champ wrote this prospecting guide on Thorium which boosted the prices through the roof. And if they wouldn't be extremly high on your server. Just prospect the thorium and gain loads of money that way.

Just head to the Auction House and check the price of Thorium Ore, then check the prices of

Large Opal
Star Ruby
Azerothian Diamond
Blue Sapphire
Huge Emerald

That's the 5 gems you will get when you prospect Thorium, the interesting thing is ... on most servers, their value is much higher than what it costs to prospect them from ore bought at the Auction House. In the past people commented on my guides to point out that I play on a crazy server and that everything I write is useless on any other server. I'll just use Wowhead's average prices this time: Thorium price is 40G a stack, gems are :

Large Opal - 20G
Star Ruby - 20G
Azerothian Diamond - 15G
Blue Sapphire - 10G
Huge Emerald - 5G

The average price of these 5 gems is 14G, you have a pretty high chance to get 2 of them (probably 30%) but I'll just assume that you're very unlucky and always get one. 4 gems at an average price of 14G will sell for 56G ... That's a 40% profit just for pushing the "prospect" key.

The profit is much higher most of the time because you get more than one gem but I don't really like to theorycraft about that kind of stuff, if you need a spreadsheet to figure out if it's worth doing it, the profit is already too low and you shouldn't do it (or you really suck at maths but let's pretend you're all smart!)

You can also expand that to a few more ores, but Thorium is usually the most profitable. (You will also need to wait a few days before actually doing that, because everyone on your server saw this guide and relisted the Thorium at 300% of its original price)

Yes, that's it. The title says (Mini) guide for a reason and I thought it was a pretty good way to point out how easy it is to make gold from the AH without any effort. (And the Thorium trick is actually VERY profitable on the long run, you should be able to pull 200~300G/day out of this without too much problem)

Farming Thorium Ore
Believe it or not, the most profitable non-rare spawn ore is Thorium which is from the original
World of Warcraft. The reason behind this is simple, more and more people are power leveling
their professions to 450 to get awesome Epic items in Wrath of the Lich King but none of these
people want to go out and farm Thorium because you can't use a flying mount to farm it and most
people would rather just buy it in the Auction House. This is bad for them, but good for those who
want to make some money. So below I will give you the best 2 routes to get Thorium. Remember
there are Rich Thorium Veins (required skill 275) and Small Thorium Veins (required skill 245).
Thorium in Silithus
You will most likely want to be around level 55 or higher to farm this route without getting killed
frequently. Don't forget there are Ooze Covered Rich and Thorium Veins in this zone to be mined
just like regular Rich Thorium Veins. Most of the nodes are around the hives where the bugs are.


Thorium in Un'Goro Crater
I have set the minimum skill for this route to 245 but keep in mind there are Rich Thorium Veins
around the center and western edges that will require 275 skill to mine. It is vital that you make
sure you go into the cave in the northeast and drop down into the Hive in the south in order to
maximize your ore.
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The Storm Peaks - This zone is AWESOME!! This zone has a high concentration of IT, LB, and FL. In addition, you can toss out a route that includes treasure and track everfrost chips while you farm BONUS!!

IceCrown - Not excited about this route too many mobs some sections are filled with elites, but, this has been said to be a good farming area if it works for you routes has a"taboo area" feature that you can use to mark areas that you don't want to farm.


Howling Fjord - This area is great for farming Talandra's Rose and Gold Clover. You can also score a decent amount of Deadnettle which is useful for about nothing aside from making ink.

Sholozar Basin - Great for Alder's Tongue, Gold Clover, and Talandra's Rose. Adler's Tongue sells good to leveling alchemists.

Making Teh Munies!

OK here is how it works. Flasks 25-40g a pop, enchanting mats 75g a stack of dust 15-30g each cosmic you get and dream shads can get upwards of 25g. Also, Cards to make (I don't recommend this simply because the massive amounts of materials it needs and the possibility for very low pay out).

Prospect your ore. Take the green gems and your eternal earths to a Jeweler. Have the jeweler craft you level 70 rings and necklaces. These will disenchant into a rather considerable amount of dust essence and shards.

Next take your herbs make as many flasks as you can with your frost lotus then take the remaining mats and farm up a couple stacks of gold clover make runic mana/healing potions and then transfer those potions into injectors (engineers make this for 2 saronite bars and some cobalt bolts). These sell for 140g a pop and the mats are stupid easy to farm.
This concludes the mining and herbalism guide. As state above any and all comments are welcome. If you have a suggestion I will be glade to add it in here.

[jpte]

Oh come on, So much time i took to write this and not a single comment?

[fataly1]

Nice guide. I like how you have your opinions on where to go and ect. I could have swore i saw the leveling part on another site, but then again it is kinda common sense if you think about it so ya. Good job +Rep

[crzyballr]

hey! Thanks for taking the time to write the guide. Quite useful. I also suggest using Carbonite (addon) it is reaaaallyy good for farming. Plus it also shows other people farming on the map aswell (only if they have the addon as well i think). +Rep Good job

[chris010285]

nice write up, appreciate the effort +Rep

[jpte]

hey! Thanks for taking the time to write the guide. Quite useful. I also suggest using Carbonite (addon) it is reaaaallyy good for farming. Plus it also shows other people farming on the map aswell (only if they have the addon as well i think). +Rep Good job

lol, I like how people think saying +rep and doing nothing more gives others +rep.
Anyhow, thanks. I will take a look at the Carbonite addon

[Duparumuna]

Thx for guide

[Trollblod]

No maps for herbalism? Nice guide anyhow +rep mate.
Edit: I must spread you're writing too much nice stuff ;P