Herb PurchasesFollow

Crafting with inscription requires the inscriber to get pigments from herbs. The process, called milling, is similar to jewelcrafting's prospecting: five herbs are destroyed to create a small quantity (1-3) of pigments. A few beta testers have put out levelling guides describing how to powerlevel the skill, but those guides have shied away from recommending specific herbs to mill. That makes sense: herb prices vary from server to server, and since the craft is still deep in the playtesting process, there's a good chance that any recommendations made now will be obsolete when it goes live.

However, since many of us here are already stockpiling herbs to powerlevel or profit when the craft goes live, I'm going to share my thoughts on what herbs to procure. Different pigments come from different tiers of inks; you get the same pigment from milling peacebloom as you do from silverleaf, bloodthistle, earthroot and mageroyal. So there's no point in milling earthroot, which is generally the most expensive of these herbs, instead of bloodthistle or peacebloom, which are generally the cheapest. Of course, none of these early herbs cost more than a handful of silver anyway, so bargain hunting isn't very rewarding at this level. To powerlevel, I suggest buying a stack of peacebloom and a stack of silverleaf (these herbs are used straight in an early ink), and three stacks of any of these herbs. I wouldn't bother stockpiling these low-value herbs.

The next pigment comes from briarthorn, bruiseweed, stranglekelp and swiftthistle. Bruiseweed is generally the cheapest of these. Get two stacks of it for powerleveling. Stockpiling it doesn't seem like it would be very profitable, since so little of this ink is needed for powerlevelling.

The next hit on the pigment parade is from kingsblood, gravemoss, liferoot or wild steelbloom. Kingsblood and liferoot are generally cheaper than the other two. You'll want five stacks total of the two of them combined for powerlevelling. Stockpiling these herbs might be quite profitable--they're cheap enough that you could mark them up pretty heavily and still have a stack cost less than someone gets from a single daily quest. People unfamiliar with the herb market won't balk at that price, leaving you a huge profit margin.

The next pigment is found in goldthorn, fadeleaf, khadgar's whisker, and wintersbite. Anyone who has ever leveled herbalism knows just how common and how hard to sell khadgar's whisker is. Powerlevel with 5 stacks of that cheap herb, and stockpile it for more huge profits come inscription.

There's many sources for the next pigment: blindweed, sungrass, firebloom, purple lotus, arthas' tears, ghost mushroom and gromsblood. Here server prices begin to vary wildly: purple lotus is cheapest on one server I know, arthas' tears on another, and blindweed on another, with enormous price differences differentiating them. Still, any of the above are likely to be cheaper than sungrass, much less ghost mushroom or gromsblood. You'll need a whopping twelve stacks for powerlevelling. If you have the budget to stage a buyout of these herbs, you might be able to corner the market. That's a risky move, but could pay big. Stockpiling is bound to be profitable, as these herbs are spread out and not terribly easy to farm.

They're easier to farm than the next tier of herbs, though: golden sansam, dreamfoil, mountain silversage, plaguebloom and icecap. Expect to pay a gold or more each for all these herbs. Icecap might be the exception--the demand for it has been so low, any on your AH might be quite cheap. Otherwise, you'll have to pay the high costs of golden sansam and dreamfoil, which tend to be cheaper than plaguebloom and silversage. You'll need 15 stacks for powerlevelling. These are the herbs to farm in anticipation of inscription--they're hugely profitable now, and their value will only go up. Their high prices make stockpiling from the AH or trying to corner the market expensive, but the potential profit is huge.

The last pigment available before the expansion comes from Outland herbs: dreaming glory, felweed, flame cap, mana thistle, netherbloom, nightmare vine, ragveil, teracone and ancient lichen. The volume of these herbs should be quite high on your AH, but steady demand keeps the price up in many cases. I've found that felweed goes up at low prices, however, sometimes cheaper than khadgar's whisker. Buy plenty of it; you'll need 15 stacks or so for power leveling. At those prices, buying some to mark up on inscription day might also pay off well--again, there are people who don't know the market.

These herbs will get you the pigments to make the inks to craft the glyphs that will level a character to 350 inscription, or even to 375 though waiting until the expansion for those 25 points would be economical--the next pigment comes from Northrend herbs only, and makes an ink that is yellow at 350 inscription.

Good luck to you all. May flowers turn to gold in your pockets.

Sigh, its gonna SOOOOOOO suck being an alchy for the first 3-6 months of this expansion as every herb node is stripped bare the second it spawns by pharmers and stuff like peacebloom is going for 20g a stack in the AH. >_<

Not exactly. From what I've read, you can use (almost) every herb from each tier to mill into pigments. You do have the option of milling the cheaper herbs if you're buying your herbs from auction. If you wanted to go uber-pennypincher, you could sell the more expensive herbs from a given tier and use them to buy a larger quantity of cheaper herbs from the same tier, but meh...that sounds too much like work.

I'll add on to Emmit's post a little...

Assuming you're actually farming these herbs yourself (yes, some of us still farm!), there are some useful places to go and find these.

For the tier with blindweed, sungrass, firebloom, purple lotus, arthas' tears, ghost mushroom and gromsblood, the easiest place to find a bunch of blindweed is in the Swamp of Sorrows. The stuff is EVERYWHERE. Running a circuit for an hour or so through the SoS, you'll come out with several stacks of blindweed, plus some other herbs as well.

For the next tier, plaguebloom is found in semi-static places throughout the plaguelands (go figure). Each of the four farms in WPL has one static plaguebloom spawn. If you're looking for other herbs, farming dire maul west might also work; I believe there is gromsblood, ghost mushrooms, and other herbs there.

Not a huge help, but if you'd rather farm than buy up stuff, there you go!

Edit: Oops, forgot the Outland herbs! Any level 70 worth his salt can farm the Ancients in Skettis (hopefully there won't be much competition). They drop some herbs and motes of life, so it's best to farm these before the next expansion when Primals will go the way of Essences. You just need to kill the elite and then herb the corpse. Easy!

Edited, Sep 18th 2008 10:57am by LockeColeMA

Since we're giving away all the secrets...

(ur bad k)

I didn't bother messing around with Plaguebloom or Icecap or any of that nonsense. I have the benefit of a 70 toon with epic flight and it was much, much faster (and easier) to pillage HFP for Dreamfoil, Mountain Silversage and Golden Sansam (and Felweed and Dreaming Glory to boot) than it would have been to cruise around WPL/EPL looking for things. Now that my rogue is in HFP, I'm continuing to gather whatever I come across and banking it, but I had 19 stacks of the top tier Azeroth herbs set aside before my rogue had even crossed through the Dark Portal for the first time.

And yes, Swamp of Sorrows is bloody amazing for herbs. No other zone could compare for density and ease of access for that particular tier, which is good, because it's another one of those, "zomfg this is a pain" tiers.

What do you mean by "vendorherbs"?

You mean herbs that are so cheap you end up just vendoring them??

On my server, Emerald pigment gets down to about 25S per herb, violet pigment = 50S per herb, and Silvery pigment = 1G per herb.

Nothing is a cheap herb here.

It's a kind of reference to goldenscale vendorfish. :P

When inscription wasn't there those herbs were so cheap that you'd vendor them. Putting them on the AH was a waste of time because you'd have to put them up for several days (or over a week) just to get a few extra silvers. In the past I just vendored those or simply not loot the node.

Surely with inscription they will no longer be vendored and their price will go up a lot the first days of inscription.