Warlords of Draenor Alpha: Mining and Herbalism Node Changes

     Noticed an interesting change today while testing on the Warlords of Draenor Alpha, so I thought I'd do a quick post before I go back to grinding out the rest of my profession guides.

     After 10 years, it seems like Blizzard has finally decided to update and upgrade the looks of their node spawns! This is not altogether true, actually. I remember at one point there being an option for more sparkles, and then sometime around the release of Mists of Pandaria the extra sparkles became a standard feature, but up until now, it was sparkles or sparkles. Now, we have a new look entirely!

      If you have the gathering profession learned, all nodes have a soft outline around them the color of that herbalism node or mining vein. The glow will turn on and off depending on whether you have "Find Herbs" or "Find Minerals" selected. From far away while the plant is smaller, the outline remains the same pixel size. This has an interesting effect. It's easy to spot initially from a distance because of the "glow," and then you focus more on the graphic of the plant as you get closer because the glow disappears, and as you can see below, the artists have really stepped up their game on the artwork of the herbalism and mining nodes. I've tried to capture it in the pictures, but they look different from far away than they do up close. To keep the load time of this page down, I put the full-size and full-resolution image of that up on one of my new Pinterest boards (I'm trying it out, it's actually kinda fun, lol).
      So, what do y'all think of the new changes? Is this something that you farmers have secretly been begging for? Do you think that it brings World of Warcraft up to the times? Are you going to scream on the forums that it changes the face of the game (herbing does actually have a different feel to it, oddly)? Do you not care about herbs and ore and just want to kill things?  Let me know!

     And as an added bonus, here are the two new herbs from the horde starting zone: Frostweed and Fireweed.

Left to Right: Frostweed and Fireweed...in case you needed the help

P.S. Added bonus, I didn't put this up on YouTube, but I had a spare second so I put it up as unlisted. Here's my reaction to getting the alpha invite

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Leveling My Pacifist: Levels 1-14 (Herbalism+Mining)

     If you've been following me on Twitter, you might have heard a while back that I started the ridiculously daunting task of rolling a purely Pacifist toon. I first heard about these from an article back in Cata, and it always sounded like something that was really the essence of the game; creating personal RP-related xp-grinding goals and achievements and seeing if you can follow through. Long story short, Pacifist toons level all the way from 1-90 without killing a single mob, so that's purely from mining, herbalism, exploration, delivery quests, and Oh yes Archaeology. On the gold making side of things, I currently have on toon with mining and another with herbalism, and logging back and forth when I could do both on the same toon is getting really old, so it's time to roll a full time gathering druid; might as well cross off somethin from my WoW bucket list while I'm at it, right?

500 gold to the first commenter who gets the joke.

      What really surprised me about this whole journey so far is that, even at level 14, this character has taken on a life of her own. While, yah, it has been very slow, mining your way to cap...as you might expect. But think about it, back on our first toons, before we knew how to play, leveling felt slow, and it took us (or at least me) a couple hours of playing just to level once. Now with full set of BoAs people can go from level 1-20 in thirty minutes if they really push it. THAT USED TO TAKE THREE DAYS! Thing is, now, people then complain about how easy this is to do. With this Pacifist character, and when you actually give in to the time commitment, it brings back "the good old days" of slow and steady leveling. I'm currently at 21 hours played (probably 5 of those spent tabbed out in Stormwind) and I feel connected to this druid in a way that I definitely do not to my powerleveled 41 mage.

     Alright, down to brass tacks. You wanna join in on the fun? Here's what I recommend. First off, commit to not killing anything. Take any abilities that have any chance of doing damage off your bars. My bars consist of Rejuv, Nourish, Shapeshift, Prowl, and Shadowmeld. I recommend having autoattack somewhere but just not keybound, so that if you're accidentally attacking something, you can click your autoattack off before you accidently kill something and ruin the whole experiment. But all that's the boring stuff, right? You wanna know how to level. Ok? Ok.

Levels 1-4: 
     Honestly, this bit was pretty simple, once I figured it out. I started out thinking "Alright, I got a Pacifist! I'm gonna Mine my way to 90! Wooo! Not gonna kill anything!" Went to go learn the profession of mining and the trainer said "18 copper, please." While that's a pitiful amount, I was doing this character independantly, and going full RP with it, otherwise what's the point? So I went to go do a quest. The quest said kill 5 spiders. No thank you. I went to do another. Collect a windchime from the Furblog chieftain's corpse. Dammit. So here's the deal, intro quests have you killing piddly stuff. However, there is a ton of land to explore that will grant you 15%-20% xp per section. So, go spend an hour running around all the different starting zones in (Alliance bias here) Elwynn Forest, Dun Morough,Teldrassil, and Azurmyst Isle. For bonus points, do the lvl 10+ zones like Bloodmyst Isle and Westfall. Pick up any quests that you can, and if they're not too far out of your way, go ahead and complete em. Use your judgement on this.

Ugh, let me take my "Ding" screenshot in peace, Mr Mrglglrl

Levels 4-10:
     For this section, I stayed in Elwynn Forest, did all the quests in and around Goldshire, and just mined and herbed my heart out. Honestly, I can't imagine doing this with any race other than a night elf because Shadowmeld is amazing. Also, being able to throw a heal on and run away is fantastic when that is on cooldown. With rested XP and it takes roughly 50 nodes to level (opting not to use BoAs for this toon) so it goes pretty quick and even gray nodes give the same XP, at least at these levels. If you like to keep the rested XP buff up, you can gather until rested falls off, hearth to stormwind, log off for the day, and let rested accumulate, and then continue the next day - slow and steady for this playstyle never hurts.
     What surprised me about this is that after a while, it wasn't just mining. The fact that I couldn't kill the mobs added an interesting element to the mix. It was similar to the horror games where you don't have a gun and only have a flashlight, so you have to start thinking and planning more ahead of time. I dunno, maybe other Pacifists can chime in here but it was more than just a mining route. You have to think about where you're gonna go and play a game of Splinter Cell with the mobs aggro radius. I reccomend it.

Levels 10-12:
     Did a little experimentation at level 10. Went over to Westfall to try and see if I got more XP from higher level nodes since I was capped out on my professions, and there would be higher XP quests over there. Turns out, the nodes give the same XP and the aggro radius from the mobs is so much larger that you waste a lot of time running back from the graveyard. Sure, there is a little bit of XP from a quest here and there, But I think the best course of action is not to move on to the next area until you outlevel it by 2-4 levels so that all of the quests in the zone are available and you can safely run around. Back to Elwynn forest.

The Singing Sunflower is optional. Actually, I'm about to kill it.

Levels 12-14:
     Ran back to Goldshire. Farmed up a bunch more. Yada yada. Also, it's worth noting that even though these are basic lvl 1 herbs and this toon is walking from node to node, this toon has earned over 1,000g so far and has 3,000g worth of goods on the AH.

Conclusion and Future Techniques
     If anything is ever too hard, or I stop gaining experience, I can just unlearn mining and herbalism and start over again. A really interesting thing about this character that I absolutely love is that, unlike my warrior or any other character that I play where it's "kill-kill-kill as fast as I can" there is this Buddhist, Zen-like quality where you sit back and accept the grind. It will take time, so you do it, and it ends up not actually taking as long as you think when you accept it. Then once you do, it actually starts to be more fun than the the alternative because it makes you think and strategize. Funny. Worthwhile mindset to carry over into goldmaking as well.


Thanks for reading my little WoW blog! You can find me on Twitter Here, and on YouTube Here. I strongly suggest you download the TradeSkillMaster addon and the TheUndermineJournal GE addon. My brief setup guide is here, feel free to email or tweet any questions. And remember that the key to making gold in WoW is just to

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Is It Really Better to Buy Ore than to Go Mining?

     "Only Noobs mine ore." We've all heard it a million times in various forms. The more experienced and less snobbish goldmakers will tell you that it's just more profitable to do just about any other gold making action in-game. Personally, I've had at least one gathering toon for years and enjoy it immensely. For me, it's relaxing to just fly around mining while listening to Alanis Mori... I mean Snoop Dogg. Unfortunately, many new Jewelcrafters or Blacksmiths who choose mining as a secondary profession will still occasionally be hazed on goldmaking forums, since "it's OBVIOUSLY much more profitable to buy ore off the AH." While there's been a lot of talk from different screen names I haven't seen anyone do a breakdown of whether or not the above statement is actually true or not, and I like testing game-changers analytically, so let's do that now (note: general consensus is usually correct, but I learn a lot with my testing). This is hopefully going to be a little more mathy that most of my posts, so for anyone who doesn't want to read all the mumbo jumbo, just scroll down to the conclusion at the bottom for a nice, easy wrap up. Ok, so, once and for all, is it really cheaper to buy ghost iron ore or bars off the Auction House, or should you mine them yourself?

 "He sure has the reach advantage, and she has...What the?!...Is that a rack of blunderbusses and greatswords?!"

Guess:
     While a bunch of people say that it's always more profitable to buy ore off the AH, I'm gonna have to go with a hypothesis of, "It depends." The times that I would rather be lazy and buy ore are the moments when I don't have very many gems to cut; the miscellaneous flight time seems more weighted when you're only farming 5 or 6 stacks of ore versus the massive 200-stack grind sessions. So, I naturally feel that it's better to farm ore for bigger stacks than smaller stacks. But enough guess work. On to math!

Calculations:
     First off, we'll start with the basic profit equation of Profit=Revenue-Expense. In this case, our revenues are the gold earned from selling gems or armor. The expenses are going to have to be monetary, but the big problem with mining, or the blessing, depending on how things turn out, is that it is pure profit from trading in time and prospecting ore. So, we'll turn the time spent mining and prospecting on both sides into an expense. Jewelcrafting should be more fun to play with than Blacksmithing, so let's focus on that profession, ok? The process for buying will be 1) purchasing ore for gold, 2) spending time prospecting which we will convert into potential gold lost, and then 3) selling cut gems. The process for mining will be 1) mining ore (Duh), 2) spending time prospecting, 3)and then selling the gems. Alrighty, here we go duhn du-duh-duhhnnnn: when is it more profitable to buy ore?

Profit(Buy) > Profit(Mine)

Revenue-Expense(Buy) > Revenue-Expense(Mine)

GemSales-[(#Stacks)(Price/Stack)+(#Stacks)(ProspectTime/Stack)] > Gemsales-[(#Stacks)(MiningTime/Stack)+(#Stacks)(ProspectTime/Stack)]

     Gem Sales (the only revenue) are the same on both sides, so that cancels out. The awkwardly named MiningTime and ProspectTime are in terms of "gold/stack." We can put in variables to make all this shorter and easier to read as well. Also, the inequality flips when we subtract out Gemsales and divide by the -1, my least favorite algebra trick that I always forget to do.

GemSales-[(#Stacks)(Price/Stack)+(#Stacks)(ProspectTime/Stack)] > Gemsales-[(#Stacks)(MiningTime/Stack)+(#Stacks)(ProspectTime/Stack)]
X: #Stacks,  Y: Price/Stack, Tp: ProspectTime/Stack, Tm: MiningTime/Stack
XY+XTp < X(Tm+Tp)

X(Y+Tp) < X(Tm-Tp)

Y+Tp < Tm-Tp
Y < Tm
Ore Price < MiningTime/Stack

     So there ya go, we have a surprisingly simple and obvious answer after almost everything cancels out. in short, it's cheaper to buy ore if your time is more valuable than time it would take you to farm. That's not 100% the right interpretation though, as we'll go over quickly in the conclusion. Also, I'm ignoring small miscellaneous time costs like buying from the AH, mailing between characters, and flying to the Valley of the Four Winds, since most of those can be reduced to almost nothing with addons like TradeSkillMaster. Basically, this should answer a bunch of the questions you might have been having about the process.

Either way, when you mine, lookout for that one stupid tiger that always freakin aggros.

Conclusion:

     It is only more profitable to mine when ore is more expensive than other alternatives. It essentially comes down to the age old question of "is mining a good profession." Assuming, you know what you're doing and can farm up 40 stacks every hour, at current US prices of 3.49 g/ore that comes out to about 69g per stack or 2,800g per hour. There are many other farming options and dungeon runs that can net 4k+ per hour, but the question is, are you going to do them? Mining remains a fantastic option for trading time for profit. 

      To give an example of this all, one hour of mining would yield 40 stacks of hour, giving you about 7 of each rare gem and 40 of each uncommon after prospecting (for values, hover over the number in the % column on any prospecting tab of WoWhead). Prospecting takes about 13 seconds to work through a stack of ore (2 second cast w/avg 1.25 seconds of looting), so at least 8 minutes just doing that in this example.

Profit(Buy) > Profit(Mine)

Revenue-Expense(Buy) > Revenue-Expense(Mine)
11,400g - [(40stacks)(69g/stack) > 11,400 - (4k+)
11,400g - 2,760g > 11,400 - (4k+)
8,640g > 7,400g
[Buying ore is 1,240g/hr more profitable than mining.]

     The trick to all this though is that if you DON'T go run dungeons, or if you just buy up ore on the AH, prospect it, and log off, when you would have been willing to go and mine it, you're losing that potential profit, and mining would have been the way to go. Here's why. That opportunity cost varies according to what you would have done in that specific hour. In other words, if you would have sat around in /G talking about how overpowered holy pallies are, then you're making zero gold and MiningExpense/OpportunityCost/last-part-of-the-formula, changes considerably.

"Logging off after Buying n' Prospecting" Scenario

Revenue-Expense(Buy) < Revenue-Expense(Mine)
11,400g - 2,760g < 11,400g - 0g

8,640g < 11,400g
[Mining is 2,760g/hr more profitable than AHing.]

     So, as you can see, either course of action can be more profitable depending on the mining expense - whether or not you make gold in ways other than Jewelcrafting. My concluding thought of all of this is that it's only better to buy ore if you, in the same session (or some scheduled time), go out and make up the debt you've accrued by purchasing that ore rather than farming it, because you've cost yourself 3k in potential profit if you do nothing. Don't be that guy. On the other hand, if you're super busy, raid's about to start, you have four other professions to manage, and you just don't have that much time to spare, then don't worry about it, you're still making 8,000 gold for 8 minutes of prospecting, a little bit of gem cutting, and a quick cntl+scroll on TSM 2.0. So, grats!

     Thanks for reading my little WoW blog here! Subscribe to my Twitter for future updates, and until next time, remember that there's no secret to making gold in the World of Warcraft, all you have to do is just

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Ever Day.

     P.S. For anyone calculus inclined, I apologize, I was hoping the math would get exciting, too, but it all just cancelled out all nice and purdy. If you really want to play with derivatives or whatever, find the minimum hourly profitability of a dungeon run to make buying ore better. Honestly though, the answer is right there on the other side of the equation. Whamp whamp. I'll find something more fun next time.