In World of Warcraft, farming refers to haunting the same area, over and over again, gathering the same resources. There are several reasons to farm: maybe you need leather, cloth or primals to level up one of your primary skills. Maybe you need these same things to sell at the Auction House to make some cash and buy some newfangled gizmo or flying mount or whatnot.

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Maybe you’re farming to gather up gold so you can sell it back to your fellow WoW players for real-world cash. If you’ve read my other posts, you know what I think about that: it is a blight on the system and should be prosecuted — in-game, that is — to the fullest extent of Blizzard law. But enough about that.

I’m going to concentrate on the honest farmer who wants to make some extra cash, or level up a crafting skill, such as tailoring or leatherworking.

There are a few rules to follow when  farming for mats. The three I share with you here are basic and essential, but there are many others.

Rule 1 – There is no such thing as Overkill

Basically, use the highest-level character you have that can do the job. Farming can be tedious at times, and you really don’t need to get killed doing it. If you have a level 70 toon that can pull dozens (anything more than one is good!) of mobs at the same time and AoE them to death, then that’s the thing to do.  Your farming efforts will be infinitely more rewarding if you can do it quickly and painlessly, and that means that you’ll have more time to spend on actually playing the game, discovering new things, leveling your alts, interacting with other players, all those things that you play WoW for in the first place.

Rule 2 – Two’s Company, but Three’s a Crowd? Not Quite.

Let’s say you’re gathering leather for whatever reason (see above). Now, being a smart cookie, you go on Thottbot and find out What’s-its-Name, a “Rare” named mob, has 100% drop rate for the kind of leather you’re looking for…

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I’m going to stop this right now, as I’m certain you can see where I’m going with this.

Leather comes from skinning beasts, and most beasts, when skinned, dropped (1)  leather. You do the math. If you need 10 stacks of leather, you’ll have to kill 200 beasts.

So you don’t want to spend your time running around looking for them. Go to places where there are lots of mobs. For knothide leather, I recommend the assorted Talbuks and Clefthoofs of Nagrand, you will never run out.

By the same token, kill mobs that have a fast respawn rate. The Yetis of Winterspring, for example respawn so fast that by the time you’re at the end of the cavern, the ones at the beginning have already begun to respawn. So you just go back to the beginning and start over. Rinse and repeat.

Rule 3 – Elites May Damage Your Sanity

If you go on Thottbot and check the drop rates, you’ll see that the mobs that have the best drop rates are, in almost all cases and for all mats, the Elites that populate an instance. That’s fine and dandy, but in my experience, you are much better at just looking down the list to find which non-Elite, non-Rare mob have the best drop rates and go for that. Farming Runecloth from the Expedition Armory is a great example of that, as they are non-Elites with a great drop rate and excellent respawn rate.

The primary reason not to farm Elite mobs is that they are harder to kill, and thus take more time. The exception to that rule is farming low-level instances — such as Scarlet Monastery, Deadmines or Wailing Caverns — with a level 70 character. You should not have too much trouble managing that.

Epilogue

I know, an epilogue is supposed to be at the end of a book. Tell me something I don’t know. The most precious resource you have, indeed the ONLY one you have, as a WoW player or in real life, is time.

Hopefully these simple but unavoidable tips will help you make the most of what time you have!

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