The other day I did something that I hadn't done in, well, ages.
I logged into Azshandra and went herb farming.
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| Hel-loooo, Plaguebloom... |
This whole thing began with Spring Cleaning.
I have two bank alts, and in both cases their entire bank slots are taken up with, well, junk from Classic: Old mats, some spell scrolls, some green gear I never sold on the AH (or disenchanted), stuff like that. What that included were a ton of old herbs I'd farmed in preparation for making potions for Naxxramas, and those herbs had been languishing since around last May. So, I figured, I might as well toss them up on the Auction House and see how it goes.
Much to my surprise, those herbs did sell, especially the 'big three' out of the Plaguelands: Mountain Silversage, Plaguebloom, and Dreamfoil. And not for a discount price, either.
Oh sure, they weren't selling at their high point in early/mid Naxxramas, but 20 or so gold per stack is nothing to sneeze at.
Therefore, I thought that it might be worth it to spend about 1/2 hour back in the Plaguelands just to see if that was just a one off or whether there's still a market for some of these herbs.
***
The first thing I discovered is that I've spent entirely too much time going through the Old World as a max level toon, because I forgot two things:
- Az is no longer max level
- An L60 in the Plaguelands can't steamroll over the mobs there.
Uh, oops.
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| My fingers were trying to remember Az' old rotation. Eventually they did. |
I at least had the decency to remember to repopulate my talent trees, unlike the last time I logged onto Az*, but there were still a few fights that I had to remember how to Vanish and run so that any DoTs wouldn't have me instantly reappear in front of the mobs again.
But still, once I got used to giving a wide berth to mobs I wasn't interested in fighting, the time spent picking herbs was rather pleasant. And I even found a Black Lotus early on, just lying out there without anybody else around.
That made me suspicious, because the previous King of the Herbs was so rarely found out in the wild like this, so I checked in /who to see who else was around and....
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| o_O |
Oh.
Oh wow.
This never happened in Classic. There was always --always-- someone else around in Eastern Plaguelands.
Okay, so it truly is a brave new world.
I went ahead and finished my circuit, forwarded along the herbs to a bank alt, and put them up on the AH again just to see what'd happen. Wonder of wonders, they sold.
Well, almost all did. Can you guess which one didn't sell?
Yep, the Black Lotus.
In a way, that makes sense: not only are the flasks you make out of Black Lotus not worth as much in a TBC world, but the hassle of going into Scholomance or Blackwing Lair to make the flasks isn't worth it either.
So, I kept the Black Lotus in my bank for posterity's sake and made a mental note that I could make about 60 gold in 1/2 hour's worth of 'work' just cruising through an empty hellscape for a while.
You know, I bet that if I take Azshandra across the Dark Portal and get her trained in Master Herbalism, she could come back to the Plaguelands and likely get about 2/3 of the way to max skillset in Herbalism before all of the herbs stopped giving her skill ups. After all, Plaguebloom alone only just became pickable before she hit max skill level in Classic...
*I crept into Zul'Gurub with my questing buddy to do some "farming" there. She brought her L70 Druid, so she was able to zip around mobs that Az couldn't.
Oh, that's funny about Black Lotus. I remember getting excited when I found it. Wow, I remember the fun, okay for me at least of spending time picking flowers and making some money. I haven't sold any herbs for ages.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I haven't done it in ages, although mainly so because I only had one toon in Outland. I used to occasionally take Briganaa out to farm some leather in Nagrand, but for the effort the rewards were so minimal (a couple of gold for a stack of Knothide Leather) that I stopped doing it. From what I've been told, you get a lot more gold from fishing and then cooking up food to sell, and even more just running dailies. But I've done the dailies routine before, and it always felt like I was on a hamster wheel, chasing some imaginary ending with about a couple thousand friends hanging around doing the same thing. Even the reward of a cool looking mount didn't excite me that much, given that I lived through the Sparkle Pony Apocalypse.
DeleteThose EPL herbs are quite handy for someone leveling alchemy. While you can find Mountain Silversage and Dreamfoil in Outlands, those tend to be hard to find in those zones. People forget to either go back to the old zones or the fact they can't fly in them is off-putting enough to stop them from herbing there.
ReplyDeleteEven though they were basically useless once BC hit, finding Black Lotus was fun. It was like finding a relic from a different era. But I can be a soft touch for certain nostalgia.
I find it odd that the lack of flying keeps people from running through the Plaguelands, because there's not that much of a lack of convenience there. I'd imagine there's much more inconvenience based on that the Plaguelands are stuck in a corner of the Old World, far away from an Alliance capital city, than anything else. At least the Horde has Silvermoon the Undercity nearby.
DeleteHmmm... That makes me think that Quel'Danas will change the game here a bit for ease of access to the Plaguelands.