Farming ore and herbs for gold.

[Chickat]

SO recently ive had the urge to farm some gold using mining and herbalism. On my server however, herbs sell anywhere from 25g per stack to 50g per stack.
Ore on the other hand goes for 80-120g per stack. I feel like its worth it to skip herb nodes completely since they sell for so little and mines re spawn fast enough to never run out. Thoughts on this?

[Sunnydruid]

Generally farming is a loss of potential profit, but if you really want to then by all means!

If I were you, I would not be skipping the herb nodes at all unless they are out of the way completely. If you happen to find some, it is 25-50g more then you had before for a full stack. And Fincher is correct, don't forget to smelt those ore's-bar's during the whole posting process! I usually did something along the lines of 30%/70% bar-to-ore ration when posting the gathering materials on the ah. If the demand was greater at the time for either one then of course I would alter my approach to how many I smelt ect.

[Deleted]

Lotus and it depends what you are farming with.

Sunnydruid you summed it up it is only opportunity cost profit, but servers are all different and it is not always the case.
before you farm happy then you should look at your market and farm what people are buying plus what makes the most profit. Supply and demand again.
Agree with looking at the bar market but again check the prices.

[Killadrix]

Generally farming is a loss of potential profit, but if you really want to then by all means!

How is farming a loss of profit?

Technically speaking, and from a strictly gold-making standpoint, it's 100% profit with mostly zero risk.

Now, you can argue that it's time consuming, with a fairly capped rate of growth, but at least it's easy, consistent, and depending on your server, near instant money.

Personally, on my Herb/Miner, I get every node which I don't need to kill mobs for.

[Nohara]

Sitting in a major city undercutting your opponents at non peek times is also a waste of time, you can only sell so much. You have to be on a very busy realm like (EU) silvermoon/outland alliance or Stormscale/Kazzak Horde if you want to keep selling all day. I see this so often, 2/3 people undercutting eachother in the morning, fighting over a few shabby customers. Good timing is where money is made!

There is no need to keep an eye on the AH 24/7 if you want to make a decent amound of gold. You dont need an AH addon. What you need is common sense.

If prices are up, and you are playing on the slow hours, you can not lose a single dime by farming.

[Deleted]

Hate to break it you but you need to know basic economics.

Heard the phrase time is money?

With one hour what could you be doing? You can do either
Lets say with farming you can make 3k an hour but with ah playing you make 4k an hour. Then it would be fair to say farming when youn cna make more money on the ah makes little sense. That is opportunity cost. For the purposes of the example we will assume the 4k is net of any costs.

Nohara raises a few points.

There is a false assumption that opportunity costs mining v ah stays the same, but as he points out profitability of activity varies. Generally it favours ah, but not always.

Where I disagree with Nohara is about the use of addons as they increase efficiency massively. Timing helps but if you wnat to make the max amount of money then am afraid at the moment you have to compete and that means a listing war unless you are willing to discount substantially. Timing and common sense help, but they dont deal with things by themselves.

[Deleted]

Well, if you got a spare druid alt then going flightform makes herb picking easy, but if not then the herbs income/hour generally doesn't make you enough gold to favor picking them

[Pyro1990]

I generally farm on my gathering characters while waiting in ques for random things and as long as you don't have to waste to much time fighting stuff to gather a node I'd probably still get it. Maybe on non druid characters it might be more annoying/less worth it, but i would still get the herbs.

[Sunnydruid]

How is farming a loss of profit?

Technically speaking, and from a strictly gold-making standpoint, it's 100% profit with mostly zero risk.

Now, you can argue that it's time consuming, with a fairly capped rate of growth, but at least it's easy, consistent, and depending on your server, near instant money.

Personally, on my Herb/Miner, I get every node which I don't need to kill mobs for.

It's the labor of it my good man. Labor=money no matter how you look at it, you could easily make 2..3..4..5x the profit just sitting by the AH. But that's not what the OP wants to do, he is in a farming mood and he realizes the it's not the best way to make gold.

Sorry to get off topic but figured i'd answer.

[Killadrix]

It's the labor of it my good man. Labor=money no matter how you look at it, you could easily make 2..3..4..5x the profit just sitting by the AH. But that's not what the OP wants to do, he is in a farming mood and he realizes the it's not the best way to make gold.

Sorry to get off topic but figured i'd answer.

I agree, and understand what you are saying, and I am not saying it's the most effective way to make gold.

Honestly, I've found Tmog flipping to be overall the fastest, but it requires a large time and money investment, and can be risky.

Time/labor = money is hard to argue because the markets fluctuate, and it's hard to say exactly how much that time is going to cost you.

[Agnar]

If you plan on farming ore and herbs, one suggestion is to not farm every day for 4-8 hours for over a few weeks. Suspicious behavior like that can get you banned. Happened to me. I was making about 3-4k an hour and around 12-25k a day for a few months.

[Deleted]

I'm farming both and more by soloing Zandalari Warbringers & Zandalari scouts.
Highly dependent on server & time of day though and it isn't as reliable as traditional farming.
The Big Bag of Zandalari Supplies are quite addictive though as are reputation tokens and the 3 epic mounts (unfortunately not sellable.

[meedle]

farming ore and herbs is fine as long as you aren't botting