Well Blizzard. You win. You once again beat me down and convinced me that I need to buy mats from bots to level my professions.
Traditionally (and still in Retail) all of my toons have gathered mats for their own profession, but that’s been a real struggle in Classic. Ore in particular is painful to farm. I can spend 2 hours running around a zone and come out with less than a stack or ore.
I’m in Hinterlands and it’s just my new DK and 3 bot DKs running around the zone looking for Mithril. I can lap the entire zone and not see a single ore spawn outside of Jintha’alor. I’m guessing the bots steer clear of Jintha’alor due to the tougher navigation and mob density. Similar to trying to farm Mithril in Tanaris. The only place I can find it is in the bug tunnels which aren’t easy for the bots to navigate and have a high mob density.
So because the spawn rate is so low, and the bots are already in zone scouring any ore that eventually will spawn, that’s left me to decide it makes better game use of my time repeating max level dailies on my main, then just buying the ore from a bot on the AH. Piss off, RPG game emersion, you are not welcome here. How do I know I’m buying the ore from a bot? No sane person is running circles around Tanaris or Hinterlands to farm Mithril to sell at the AH. Like I noted, just me and the L58 DK bots are the only ones in zone.
Increasing the spawn rate would definitely help, but Blizzard has decided to keep spawn rates at 2004 levels even though today’s mega servers have much larger populations.
If you can boost an opposite faction toon you can really block them up. Sometimes I can manage to trap them in combat and they don’t know how to react.
if youre looking for mithril… just run mara if the zones are being farmed, or low drop rates/hard to find etc. especially if you got a toon that has both mining and herb. spam mara, profit. 2-5 (maybe more) mithril nodes per run plus ghost mushrooms. want thorium? run DME. tons of herbs from the plant guys, and 2-4 RICH thorium nodes at the end of it all. 15m runs. got all the mats i needed for my alt engineering this way. will be doing it again for any other engi/alchemy alts i make.
I’ll give that a go next time. Sounds like a much better idea. Still feels bad though, kinda like post-apocalypse Terminator world where we’ve conceded the open world to the machines and the humans are resigned to farm the caves & dungeons for their sustenance.
most people stopped farming because of the bots. you get rid of bots, you give normal farmers a chance again. the competition will never stop when it comes to farming, however, adding bots into the mix certainly doesnt help it. and i will agree. running dungeons for ore/herbs definitely feels bad. mainly cause youre stuck running everywhere, so i’d also recommend getting movement potions and maybe a set where you can get extra speed (i think theres a belt and boots in vanilla era).
but its also not as bad as youd think once you get use to the pathing. slap on a movie or podcast and time flies
My thinking is that the spawn rate is so low now in Vanilla content that even without bots, it’s a slow grind. As slow as the spawns are right now, it’s only profitable to farm ore if you have a bot that can absently look for and farm ore for hours on end.
That’s my thinking anyway. I don’t have near the same problem farming ore in Northrend (and I’m about to find out about farming ore in Outland).
Maybe most bots are just doing Vanilla farming. Not sure. But seems there would also be bots farming mats in Northrend that most folks are using on a regular basis.
That might be your problem, tbh. Hinterlands is spread WAY out so the nodes are farther apart. Badlands and Feralas are probably going to be better suited to you; the only thing I had to worry about there back in TBC was a level 70 (word censored as per Blizz forum rules) stealing the nodes before I got to them.
The nodes are EXTREMELY far apart in HFP, so it’ll probably be Terokkar before you start mining regularly.
Why are you buying ores from AH? Why dont you just buy the Engg kit from the BOT. its much easier , faster and cheaper than stacks or ores. It also includes free screws and other stuff that you can vendor once engg is leveled.
I think you are just lazy, go farm gold and buy the Engg Kit from a bot. Also its your fault for not having 10 bot accounts.
since this thread has been necroed anyway:
there seems to be a lack of bots in low lvl areas recently, atleast on my realm that was the case (i could level mining without much bots at all).
And a protip: always leave stones if not needed inside the mining node, that will lead to bots still mining the leftovers, and you having a headstart for the next node.
Good advice for Mithril. Thorium, however, seemingly hyper spawns in Un’goro Crater. Much faster to just run a few laps in Un’goro and there are plenty of Rich Thorium Veins that spawn too.
only when the bots arent there. when un’goro has 3-5 people running the same path, youll be faster getting it from DME. but yes, odds are, un’goro will be the better route for thorium
