There is something wrong when it’s more efficient to camp node spawns than it is to go out and actually farm routes. Almost every single RTV node on Pagle has someone watching it, so it’s just dumb luck if you manage to find one. I feel like the black lotus bots have simply moved on to RTV from herbs, because they’re easier to camp now.
Beyond that though: A look at the AH also shows the issue. Thorium ore itself is going for only 1g per stack, 2g for bars. By contrast, dense stone is at 4-5g per stack, and the price of arcane crystals has gone through the roof. This is going to get even crazier when Naxx hits, as people need them for attunements, as well as for the T3 armor set turnins. Back in vanilla, on most servers stacks of thorium bars were at least 5g per piece, and dense stone seemed more common, so is something off kilter here?
Blizz recently made a change to the spawn rates of black lotus. As Naxx approaches and arcane crystals get even harder to find, I believe that something else needs adjustment to match the new server populations and mindsets. A few options I can think of.
A. Increase the drop rate of dense stone. Thorium really isn’t worth much on its own, since most recipes either require dense grinding stones or blasting powder.
B. After BC back in 2007, a patch was implemented that made it so that small thorium veins had a chance to drop crystals, RTVs were guaranteed to be at least a 3 tap, and the slime thorium in silithus could be up to a 7 tap. Consider doing this earlier? To me, this was an acknowledgement then that the drop rate wasn’t nearly good enough, and this is factoring in the fact that with BC, less people would be making the arcanite recipes.
C. A complete shakeup/increase of RTV spawn locations, similar to black lotus so that it’s not as easy to camp them, and easier to stumble across them?