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wow paladin icon Making World of Warcraft Gold - Herbalism

Posted by Khor | 7/05/2009

Making gold in World of Warcraft is easy, or at least I think so. I never put insanely lofty goals for myself in regards to how much gold I bring in, therefore I am pretty much happy with whatever flows into my little WoW account.

My paladin is not an herbalist, though I realize many paladins are. My rogue, however, is an herb picker, and I will share exactly how I make my gold with her. Keep in mind there are many ways to make money with herbalism, and this is just my personal choice of methods.

I kept track of my profits over three days this past week so I could make this post. Since I am a stay at home dad, often I am chasing my baby girl around the house, leaving my toons sitting in their afk positions quite often. This means I am not allowed a great amount of continuous time to farm, so what I post here is based on two 30-minute intervals and one 60-minute interval.

I farm Lichbloom and Icethorn, selling everything I gather, as well as any Eternal Life or Frost Lotus as well. I only hit Storm Peaks, in one continuous pattern.

Starting at Dalaran, I head immediately to the K3 area, completing a full circuit. Then, I head up the frozen waterfall and into the area east of the Temple of Storms. After circling the edges of that area, I shoot through Brunnhildar Village and into Dun Niffelem, completing that massive circuit, followed up by entering Thunderfall. After that, it's a complete skirting of the boundaries of the large area between Thunderfall and Terrace of the Makers, followed by the Snowdrift Plains, Valkyrion, back down the frozen river, over the frozen waterfall, and back into K3 to rinse and repeat.

Here are my 3 runs:

1. 30 minutes @ 0800 am server time. Very little competition. Only sold full stacks of 20 herbs.

  • 62 Lichbloom (35g/stack)
  • 67 Icethorn (21g/stack)
  • 3 Eternal Life (12g/per)
  • 1 Frost Lotus (30g/per)

Total: 105g + 63g + 36g +30g = 234g

2. 30 minutes the very next day @ 1130 server time. One other person (druid) I saw clearly farming herbs as well.

  • 43 Lichbloom (36g/stack)
  • 55 Icethorn (20g/stack)
  • 3 Eternal Life (11.5g/per)
  • 3 Frost Lotus (30g/per)

Total: 72g + 40g + 34.5g + 90g = 236.5g

3. 60 minutes the next day @ 2330 (1130 pm) server time. No competition that I was aware of.

  • 129 Lichbloom (36g/stack)
  • 106 Icethorn (21g/stack)
  • 7 Eternal Life (14g/per)
  • 7 Frost Lotus (31g/per)

Total: 216g + 105g + 98g + 217g = 636g

Everything I put up in the AH sold within 24 hours, because I undercut, as I usually do, so everything sold very quickly. Here are the numbers and gold/hour and gold/30 minutes:

  • 1106.5g over 2 total hours
  • 553.25g/hour
  • 276.62g/30 minutes

That's alot of gold/hour! Of course, I may have been lucky and picked times with very little competition, but I know that kind of income is possible.

As a sticking point, remember there are a couple factors that can determine if this is a profitable method, and worthy of time spent on doing it:

  • Chance of Frost Lotus dropping. This makes or breaks your big profits. If lucky, 2 or 3 extra Frost Lotus can really boost that gold/hour.
  • Chance of Crystallized Life dropping. This, although not as big as the Frost Lotus, can really help increase your gold intake. Takes 10 to make the Eternal Life.
  • Competetion. Weeknights around 1600 to 2100 see more people trying to herb, so this is not an ideal time. Try off hours, like early in the morning or later at night. Weekends also can be pretty tough going.
  • Epic Flying - If you don't have epic flying, and this should be a given, herbalism is not going to be profitable at all. Paladins have the 20% mount speed boost to help, and Druids can stay in flight form.

My total income last week from herbalism was around 1700g over 4 days. That puts me at around 425g per day herbing, so not too bad. There's much more to be made with more time devoted, so give it a try!

Khor