herbalism vs mining Follow

Stick some capital letters, commas and periods in there, and I might understand it. Oh, location of said punctuation is not critical.

I've had both mining and herbalism, although never on the same char, and in my experience mining tends to make more money at low levels, but herbalism makes more at high skill levels.

And since both herbalism and mining have a tracking function that can only be active for one skill at a time, I'd suggest you drop one of them in favour of a different gathering skill, like skinning or disenchanting.

Once you are in your 20's you can start to gather stranglekelp in the wetlands. Then up into Arathi Highlands for better herbs. That is when you start making more money with it.

It is true that you cant track both herbs and minerals on your minimap at the same time. However, it's your character and up to you which professions to pick. You could add any other gathering profession to your herbing to make additional money.

I don't follow the most popular advice in that I have both herbalism and mining on my hunter. However, that was my choice, and It is fun to be able to use any node I see anywhere.

Skinning is also great (sell well), and disenchanting makes tons of cash (you get to just chill out reading the forums while you are scanning the ah).

Regardless of what you pick, you can fish too.

See, there are lots of ways to make cash. All you have to do is choose. There is no wrong answer. All the gathering professions make money.

Edited, Sep 14th 2007 7:32am by dadanox

In my opinion it depends on how quickly you want to level. On my server its much easier to level herbalism than mining( so much competiotion for nodes) but ore generally sells for more. Once you get to the 350+ levels of gathering both are great moneymakers. You can probably level herbs up faster, but you will make more money along the way with the lower ore.

If money is your goal, then I would not recommend dropping mining. At higher levels, mining is a cash cow. The motes and gems that you get while mining, as well as the ores, at high levels are a steady source of money.

Herbalism can also be a money maker, but all gathering professions pick up steam the higher you get. It's kind of like a pyramid, with things like Silverleaf and Peacebloom at the bottom. There's lots of it and lots of people picking it and trying to sell it. Supply often outweighs demand. The higher skill level you go, demand passes supply and prices go up.

My own choice if I had to start from scratch would be to take mining and enchanting. Mining seems to yield money more quickly at even the lowest level (copper is always in demand). Enchanting used for disenchanting your own greens accumulates enchanting mats over time, which also usually sell well at most levels and don't require AH deposits.

I did the same thing as Dadanox has done with his hunter, I now have maxed out herbalism and mining.

Originally I had skinning, but dropped it after I reached level 70, as it's not a big money maker on my server. So in the same week I power leveled both mining and herbalism. I won't say how much I make or where my favorite money grubbing spots are, but I will say the money is good.

If you are also going to do the mining/herbalism combo, I have a few things to recommend.

1. Make sure you have a decent graphics card on your PC. With my old card, it was very difficult to spot herb nodes (especially if you have the detail and distance turned down on your card). Now alot of times with my new card I can actually see the plant on screen before it even shows up on my radar.

2. Get used to looking for both ore and plant nodes visually on the ground, and try not to rely on the radar as much. I've gotten to the point where I only leave my herb tracking on, as some of the smaller, more hidden plants are difficult to find, so tracking helps locate it, while a mining node is generally just there out in the open for everyone to see.

And the whole reason I went mining/herbalism? Because I kept running across alot of herbs and mining nodes right next to each other. You'd be surprised how many are within a few feet of each other. (And this will especially become more noticeable once you get a flying mount and can spy these nodes from the air).

Also, sometimes some of the areas you are farming will be filled up with other people after the same nodes. I find that very few of them have both herbalism and mining, so if a group of people are monopolizing all of one type of node I can just switch to another. This keeps me going with a steady supply of cash.
(In fact, on my server mining seems to be more popular than herbalism. On peak hours on the weekend I've literally seen three players race to the same mining node but completely ignore the plant node next to it, even though the plant was of a type that was worth more on the auction house than an entire stack of ore that the other players were fighting over).

Good luck in your money grubbing adventures! :D

Since I started playing WOW 2 months ago, I have played three characters at the same time. I have three accounts, one computer. The 3 are a lvl 37 mage, lvl 37 pally and a lvl 37 hunter. I use the mage for dps,ports, food&water. The pally for rezzes,heals and buffs. The hunter for tanking. I have three windows open and line up the macros so that i can press the same key as i switch between them when fighting. What is unique for me is , as a single player, I have 6 professions. Herbalism,Mining,skinning,Leather working, Tailoring and Enchanting. This has allowed me to basically gather everything I see, disenchant any greens. So having the above six right now disenchant,mining and skinning is paying the most. Part of this is my herbalism is only 100 while the other 3 are in the 200's. I believe herbalism will come up after i get mounts at lvl 40. My fishing is lvl 160, cooking is lvl 180.