More efficient Death Knight mining

Despite being sick of mining with my Death Knight I still had ore to gather if I wanted to increase my blacksmithing skill so that I could craft my Stoneforged Claymore. I still take time out to enjoy the Death Knight class by questing, but I have a target to reach that I still think is necessary in order to enjoy Northrend more by being able to mine, smith and quest in unison once I get there.

Having past the need for mithril and thorium I now need plenty of fel iron to increase my smithing skills. The obvious place to gather a load of fel iron ore seems to be Hellfire Peninsula, so I head to Honour Hold and start wandering around the vast landscape to mine once more. And once more I quickly get bored with the tedium of mining. At least the mobs that inhabit the region don't completely ignore me and provide a slight challenge for my combat skills when I try to collect the ore, but mining still seems like a chore. After a higher-level character swoops down on his flying mount and gets to some ore a footstep ahead of me I am ready to give up, but instead I decide to head to another zone.

I cross the border from Hellfire Peninsula and enter Zangarmarsh. When adventuring here I have spotted a fair bit of ore dotted around the landscape. Not just fel iron ore either, there is some adamantium around too, which will come in handy later. I start skirting around the zone, looking for ore deposits on the rocky edges. Before long I have completed a couple of laps of Zangarmarsh, have a decent amount of ore in my bags and am not only lacking that feeling of tedium but appear to have settled in to a nice groove.

I realise what has happened. When I was mining mithril my favoured zone was Tanaris. I could run laps around the outskirts of the zone whilst picking up ninety percent or so of the ore from the edges, with only a couple of incursions to investigate rocky outcrops. By the time I had made my way around the map I could repeat the process and the ore would have respawned, albeit in slightly different locations. When mining Thorium I eschewed the irregular landscape of the Eastern Plaguelands and ran laps around the simple rocky edges of Burning Steppes, again with the same results as with Tanaris.

When I decided to go to Hellfire Peninsula it was a recipe for tedium. The vast, sprawling landscape with mineral deposits able to crop up just about anywhere meant no real circuit of the region could be completed. It was a lot of running around with little to show for the effort. By comparison, Zangarmarsh suits my mining style perfectly. It is bounded by rocky edges that suit mineral deposits, with a couple of caves also on the edge of the map that hold some ore, and is perfect for running laps around. By heading in to Zangarmarsh I am finding that not only am I collecting a decent amount of ore but I am also having a fairly good time doing it as the occasional foray in to a cave allows for some combat.

As I already have the Mysteries of the Marsh achievement for completing all the quests in the zone the only problem with spending my time mining in Zangarmarsh is that the permanent dampness is causing my armour to start growing mushrooms. Ah well, I'll have the ore to craft some new armour soon enough.

Posted in Gaming |
Tags: death knight, gnomesblight, mining, mmorpg, professions, world of warcraft