Darkmoon Faire Exalted – User Submitted Tips
Here’s the second round of ‘best of’ guide tips. This week’s round focuses on the Darkmoon Faire and the best way to get together your card decks.
Again this is a great chance for everyone to post feedback and updates on how they feel things have changed over the year for this particular grind. Have a read from what I’ve put together and correct or add anything you think might help fill the gaps.
- Hollock found that [Dense Stone] was an extremely cheap way to get to 2000 friendly by making [Dense Grinding Stones]
- Tickingbomb bought as many herbs as possible from classic through to wotlk (except silverleaf, peacebloom and earthroot). He also bought lots of [Eternal Life] and [Primal Life]. He found that it was often difficult to get these at reasonable prices so saved enough gold to buy in bulk whenever cheap lots came up.
- Deenmark suggested only turning in level 80 decks and then reselling the trinkets to recoup the gold. This method takes longer but helps you save.
- Muted used the gold earned from selling random Dire Maul drops to finance a lot of the grind.
- Pentudo commented that Talonsworn Forest-Ragers can be herbed for the best BC herbs and 2-5 motes of life each. There are 4 per reset, he parked his herbalist alt there and did a circuit every 20 mins or so.
- Irinixx found the most satisfying part of the grind was making heaps of gold selling the trinkets received after turning in the decks.
- Aliana provided the following advice on her AH/herbing technique – “When deciding upon herbs to farm, check the AH and see what cards people tend to post. If lvl 70 cards prevail, farm trees in Skettis. If there’s an abundance of lvl 60 cards, farm Winterspring. There’s no guarantee of even distribution of cards you will create, so you’ll want to complete your decks through the AH anyway, and it can be a pain if you choose the wrong type.”
- Shiny noticed that the Classic Vanilla decks have no “extra mat” (mote of life/eternal life) so might be a bit faster to make.
- Healthstone spent a lot of time herbing in Sholazar. “You get a lot of Eternal Lifes and Frost Lotus (which you can sell). Sure some of the herbs like Goldclover, Tiger Lily, and Deadnettle don’t mill into as many Icy Pigments, but I was able to farm about 50 stacks in 2 hours. Most of those stacks being Adder’s Tongue (which has same mill chance as Icethorn and Lichbloom).
Next week – Ravenholdt!
I’m still working on this one. Don’t forget about Sayge’s Fortune, especially if the Faire’s in Shatt or *not* in the opposing faction town.
Also, if you’re leveling a rogue for Ravenholdt at the same time, make him/her an herbalist (especially if you’re doing part/most of the leveling in the outside world rather than instances).
And, obviously, having 2 accounts (and thus access to both Alli and Horde markets) is a great advantage, although that probably goes without saying ;-)
Players can now make characters on either faction whether or not their server is PvP.
I used Pentudo’s idea of farming the Tree guys in Skettis. They drop heaps of motes and herbs for the BC decks. Also levelling an alt with inscription is helpful.
Another tip – check the AH, all the time! You never know when cheap decks will be up. Anything less than 200-250g / epic deck I immediately bought. Rogues decks are also sometimes extremely cheap. If you are like me and start the grind without gold, that’s okay too.
I was a real ‘dumb’ Insane grinder; I didn’t make profits by selling enchanting mats, I didn’t successfully sell many Darkmoon trinkets, and I certainly wasn’t one of those ‘OMG I made 100k from this grind’ people. Dailies, raiding and random dungeons give enough gold to funnel funds towards a slow deck collection.
All the high-end vanilla herbs grow in Hellfire Penninsula and Zangermarsh, so you can have the advantage of epic flight speed whilst you farm. Combine that with the lack of additional non-ink related ingredient on the lvl 60 cards, and you can fill out any gaps in your vanilla cards quickly.
Also, creating the level 60 cards with a scribe’s “Darkmoon Card” can yield hard to get lvl 60 cards (such as Ace of Portals or Ace of Warlords).
This is how I got exalted in about a week and only cost me 6k gold from revered on my alt – http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25170612363&sid=1
When I started this grind, I made calculations that suggested I could complete this in a few months making level 80 decks from AH mats and roughly break even.
This was based on
1) Estimated prices of darkmoon trinkets: 4-5k for greatness, 600 for death, 300 for others, for average value of about 1300g
2) Eternal lifes readily available on AH for 20g or less.
3) Icethorn/Adder’s Tongue readily available on AH for about 0.75g, sometimes less.
4) Estimated value of Ink of the Sea about 3g. Also for a while some scribes were dumping Snowfall Ink on the AH for 7-10g.
5) There are approximately ZERO vanilla/BC herbs for sale on the AH on my server, so any lower decks are just not an option without farming all mats.
So my plan was to buy all the cheap herbs and lifes I could find, mill all the herbs and make inks, make cards, and cash out the excess Ink of the Sea by making other inscription products (mostly vellum).
Things seemed to be going well for a while, but the market has shifted and I’m not sure how I am going to finish this.
Darkmoon trinkets are not selling as well as I had estimated. I sold my first two Nobles decks as decks (figuring I would have a bigger market by giving the buyer the option of what to turn it in for). First one I did get 4k, but the second was marked down repeatedly to 2500g before selling. In retrospect I should have just turned it in and sold trinket.
The herb farmers are gone. Going rates for high Northrend herbs are now more like 1.5g, and sometimes there are none at any price. Cheap lifes are gone too, although there are still a few.
I am way behind on my plan of converting Ink of the Sea to gold; I still have a few thousand in stock. I still don’t want to cave yet and convert them into snowfalls, which would value snowfall inks at around 30g each; but that is still an option. There is no longer a Snowfall market on my server.
I dumped herbalism on my main to learn enchanting up to 225 for all the solo level 60 dungeons I was running for the Insane, and that has been very useful and profitable, but now I don’t have a high level herbalist any more, and it no longer looks like I will be able to complete this grind without one.
Unless the herb farming bots come back, of course.