Farming Gold With Engineering & Mining in WotLK

Here’s one of the fastest ways to make gold in Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK).

There are some requirements, but if you can do it then you will earn lots of gold fast. The requirements are:

1. You need to be a miner, preferably 450 skill
2. You need to be an engineer, at least 350 skill
3. You should ideally have an epic flying mount

This method involves farming ore and crystallized elements with mining and engineering, using your epic flying mount to move rapidly between locations.

In case you don’t know, engineers can make a device called Zapthrottle Mote Extractor which is used to extract motes in Outland and crystallized elements in Northrend from gas clouds. With certain engineering items you will be able to see the clouds on your minimap. Tracking clouds does not interfere with tracking mining nodes, so you can do both at the same time. Here are the items that allow you to see the clouds (use one of these only):

1. Ultra-Spectropic Detection Goggles
2. Any epic engineering goggles that say “Shows the location of all nearby clouds on the minimap.”
3. Belt-Clipped Spynoculars

Combining gas cloud farming and mining can earn tons of gold.

Here’s a map of a good route in Sholazar Basin:

I tried it for 60 minutes in Sholazar Basin and this is what I got:

Item	Quantity
Saronite ore	197
grey items	–
Eternal air	1
Eternal shadow	5
Eternal earth	7
Eternal fire	7
Eternal water	3
Crystallized fire	7
Crystallized water	2
Crystallized shadow	6
Crystallized earth	6
Crystallized air	6
Titanium ore	15
Chilled meat	1
Frostweave cloth	24
Huge citrine	2
Chalcedony	2
Shadow crystal	2
Bloodstone	1
Sun crystal	2
Dark jade	2
King’s Eyesocket of the Sorcerer (blue ring)	125g

 

After doing this test run, though, I realized that Cobalt ore is actually higher priced on many realms than saronite ore. So you might earn more by farming in a lower level zone, with less competition.

To increase your earnings you can even use engineering or smelting to craft some items worth more than the raw materials. Examples might include smelting ore into bars, smelting titansteel bars, crafting scopes and ammunition. Just be aware that crafting actually takes time, and time = money. So it may be more profitable to sell the raw materials on the auction house so you can spend more time farming.

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 either.

You can try this even if you don’t have an epic flying mount. You can earn a lot on an epic ground mount or normal flying mount as well.

The addon I use to import the location of mining nodes and record the location of gas clouds is called Gathermate and Gathermate_data.