10-13-2005, 12:02 AM
Quote:The other drops were a nice added bonus for about 20 to 25 hours total work across several days. Using Nobbie's figure of 100 crystals at a 3% drop rate with 2 to 4 minutes means 3300 nodes mined on average or 6600 to 13200 total minutes or 110 to 220 total hours. Dunno about you, but I'd rather keep all those Arcane Crystals for personal uses and guild uses and spend about an eighth to a quarter the amount of time and still come out with just about the same amount of gold (all drops if I sold them on the AH that were worth selling there would have netted around 1500g, not bad for 20 to 25 hours work).
You can mine the same node 2-4 times, so reduce that time by a third.
With my priestess who is tailoring/enchanting and therefore can't make the big bucks that mining and herbalism can bring, I choose to farm in locations that give me both cash and faction. A special bonus is given if they also drop runecloth which can be sold for a steady income. My favorite spots are the furbolgs in northern Felwood and the high level undead scourge at the farm at the eastern most end of the western plaguelands. The furbolg village is great, because there are tons of furbolgs there that can easily be killed, and there's a boss who gives 5x faction who respawns quite quickly there. The best way to farm them is to get in a mage-priest team. The mage gathers them all up and aoe's them while the priest keeps the mage alive. The killing speed is unbelieveable.
The scourge in the easternmost farm of the western plaguelands drop both invader's scourgestones (as opposed to the lesser minion scourgestones from the other farms) and items that go toward fulfilling the cauldron quests. So, they're a double source of Argent Dawn faction. Plus, they drop runecloth and other decent items. In both of these places, I find a decent amount of greens and the occational blue. Most of the time, I DE the greens and blues and sell the resulting materials on the auction house, but occationally, I'll sell the items on the AH directly (particularly the boe blues) for decent cash.
The only problems with these locations is that a fair number of other people know about them, too, and on a PvP server, that means frequent fights. On quiet nights or less popular times, however, they're good places to farm.