Farming Up Fire and Shadow

I like to be as self-sufficient as I can, so I have alts with nearly every profession maxed out. two profs that I'm still lacking in my stable are leatherworking and inscription. when I started Raz, I made her a leatherworker to fill in one of those gaps. now that she's 80, I've been working on those last few points to 450 so that I can craft [Drums of Forgotten Kings] and [Drums of the Wild]. as anyone who's ground out those last few points can tell you, it takes an awful lot of [Eternal Fire] and [Eternal Shadow] to get there. here are some suggestions for how to get the materials you'll need.

Eternal Shadows are pretty easy to come by. [Crystallized Shadow] falls out of saronite and titanium veins fairly frequently and since everyone and their dog is a miner these days (thanks in large part to blacksmithing and jewelcrafting having the biggest impact on personal dps), you can usually find it cheap on the auction house. like, stacks of 20 eternals for under 200g cheap. if you don't want to buy it and you aren't a miner, you can farm crystallized shadow pretty easily off the Wandering Shadows and Shadow Revenants in Wintergrasp. a few things to note if you plan on farming these mobs:

1. when the battle for wintergrasp officially starts, all the elementals despawn until the battle's over, so don't plan on farming while the battle's raging


2. the wandering shadows will sometimes cast Chilling Touch, which can make farming them as a caster less than ideal


3. it should go without saying, but remember that you are always flagged for pvp when in wintergrasp, so expect to get attacked while you're farming

Eternal Fire is a bit harder to come by. on my server they sell for about 25g a piece, making a full stack cost upwards of 500g. ouch. luckily, for those of us not made of money, there are several farming options. unlike shadow, farming fire via mining is poor choice because [Crystallized Fire] is only found in titanium veins, not in saronite veins. if you're an engineer, you can extract crystallized fire from Steam Clouds with your handy-dandy [Zapthrottle Mote Extractor]; clouds are frequently found in Sholazar Basin and there are also a few scattered around the Borean Tundra. non-engineers will have to farm the old fashioned way - killing stuff :)

you've got four choices when it comes to farming locations; north-western Borean Tundra near Bor'Gorok Outpost, the canyon east of Dun Niffelem in the Storm Peaks, the Frostfloe Deep cave just north of Camp Tunka'lo (also in Storm Peaks) and the small, fiery area on the south-eastern edge of Wintergrasp. I'll tell you now that the cave is where the money is.

Frostfloe Deep is full of Wailing Winds mobs (and nothing else), which have about a 1 in 4 chance to drop crystallized fire. they're packed close together and respawn quickly; by the time you clear to the back of the cave (it's small), respawns should start popping up at the front again. note that these mobs will sometimes charge and stun you, which can be a problem when 2 or 3 of them do it in a row. they don't hit all that hard, but you don't want to be running around with 20% health or they'll kill you while you're stunned. fun fact - if you can get close enough to see it you might notice that they leave footprints in the snow! even more odd is that, judging by their footprints, they only have one foot...

the one major downside to farming in the cave is that you often won't be alone. if it's just one other player, then the respawn rate should keep up with the two of you. when you're competing with three or four other players, thought, it's time to move on to the next best spot, which is the canyon east of Dun Niffelem.

the trick with farming the canyon is that it's a phased area. if you haven't done the quest line to open up The Sons of Hodir daily quests, the canyon will be filled with both Seething Revenants (good) and elite frost giants (bad). you can farm it in this phase, but it'll be slow going as you'll have to dodge the giants. once you open up the sons of hodir dailies and complete Battling the Elements, the canyon will change to a new phase where the elite giants are gone, making farming this area viable.

I find farming the canyon to be a mixed bag. on the one hand, there are a fair number of mobs and they have decent drop and respawn rates. unlike the mobs in Frostfloe Deep, the revenants here can also drop [Relics of Ulduar], making this area more 'efficient' to farm if you're also grinding out sons of hodir rep. the mobs are much more caster/ranged dps friendly then those in cave, since they don't charge and seem to have a slower movement speed then players. on the other hand, the area is often heavily populated by other players who are either farming themselves or doing the Hot and Cold sons of hodir daily, so you may have to fight for mobs. if it's too crowded here, you can try your luck in Borean Tundra.

the elemental battleground next to Bor'Gorok Output in the Borean Tundra is teeming with low-level (70-71) fire and water elementals. they die quickly, but have a lower drop rate and respawn rate then the mobs in the Storm Peaks. I don't farm here much because, as the goblins say, time is money.

last on my farming location list is Wintergrasp. the drop rates here are technically better than anywhere else, especially when your faction owns wintergrasp and you can farm Flame Revenants in addition to the usual Raging Flame elementals. however, there are very few mobs in the area, they don't respawn all that quickly and you will literally have to fight for mobs since it's a heavily farmed spot in a pvp zone. I don't find farming here to be very efficient, time-wise, but your server may be different.

happy farming!