Insane Gold Farming

Last updated: 2008-04-09

Here is probably the fastest way to make gold right now, except maybe prospecting.

It’s not for everyone, since there are some requirements, but if you can do it then you can earn insane amounts of gold in no time. The requirements are:

1. You need to be a miner, preferably 375 skill
2. You need to be an engineer, at least 350 skill
3. You need to have an epic flying mount
4. Ideally, you want to have 375 fishing skill, but it’s not required

What you will do is farm ore and primals with those three professions, using your epic flying mount to move rapidly between locations.

If you didn’t know, engineers can make a device called Zapthrottle Mote Extractor which is used to extract motes from certain gas clouds in Nagrand, Zangarmarsh, Netherstorm and Shadowmoon Valley. With craftable goggles (or the epic engineering goggles) you will be able to spot those clouds on the minimap. Tracking clouds does not interfere with tracking mining nodes, so you can do both at the same time.

Combining mote farming, mining, fishing and a couple of daily quests is what will bring in extraordinary amounts of gold. I will now walk you through the process.

Start in Shattrath and accept the daily quests The Multiphase Survey and Gaining the Advantage (the latter is completed just by mining).

Equip your engineering goggles (NOT the goggles you got for The Multiphase Survey), and turn on track minerals.

Make a sweep over the small area of Terokkar Forest to the north west of Shattrath, mining any ore you find. Then head to Nagrand.

The gold dots are windy clouds reported by others and the blue dots I have added myself.

Follow this map around Nagrand and farm any gas clouds and ore you find along the way. Be aware that some gas clouds in Nagrand hover in the air and you need to go up on floating plateaus to farm them. However, some will be out of reach and must be skipped (heart breaking, I know). It’s a known bug and will hopefully be fixed soon.

When you get to the Spirit Fields in Nagrand (the large green area around Oshu’gun), equip the other goggles that were given to you for The Multiphase Survey. This will let you see (though not on the mini map) fires that you can do a reading on by using (right clicking) the goggles while equiped. Once you got 6 readings, equip your engineering goggles again and continue the route.

Once you’ve done a round, go up to the elemental plateau and check the lake for any pools of pure water (they are light blue pools). There are a total of 6 spawn points but only 2 will spawn at any time. Once you empty a pool it will despawn and another one will spawn elsewhere, provided no one else has been fishing there for some time. So it’s possible to fish out all 6 pools if no one has been around for a while. Doing that will typically net you 25-40 motes of water in 12 minutes.

Then head to Zangarmarsh and follow the map there. Some places I’ve drawn do not lead straight to a gas cloud. However, they do lead to areas rich in fel iron and adamantite, so the detours are worth it.

The clouds in Zangarmarsh will give motes of water, which are very profitable right now. Zangarmarsh has less adamantite deposits and Rich Adamantite Deposits don’t spawn in Zangarmarsh either. It is still a very profitable zone to farm since there’s typically less competition. After you’ve done a full circle in Zangarmarsh you can restart the route, flying up to that area of Terokkar north west of Shattrath again.

When you feel you’ve had enough of farming, go turn in the quests in Shattrath and auction the loot.

To increase your earning you might even use engineering to craft some items worth more than the raw materials. Examples of this would be Adamantite Scope, Adamantite Shell Machine, Adamantite Arrow Maker. Just beware that crafting actually takes time, and time = money. So it might actually be more profitable to dump the raw mats on the AH so you can spend more time farming.

Here’s what I earned in 60 minutes of farming, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. server time (worst possible time). The prices are from www.wowhead.com and may vary, but however you look at it this will be VERY lucrative.

Grand total: 379.8-385.8g in one hour!!

Keep in mind that I didn’t even have fishing on this character, so with fishing you could probably add 60 gold to the total. I was lucky enough to find a blue gem, but even without that I’d still be making well above 300g per hour.

Additional tips:

• Buy or have a leatherworker craft you a riding crop.
• Make sure you have some aquadynamic fish attractors ready for fishing in elemental plateau. You can make those with engineering.
• This is a great way to farm for holy paladins, holy priests, resto druids, protection warriors and all other specs that can’t farm mobs fast.
• There are no repair costs associated with grinding either.

I never thought engineering was that good for money, but right now it’s probably the best profession. Especially with mining.

For more info on engineering and mining, check out this engineering & mining guide.

For more gold tips, check out my gold guide reviews.