Farming for Mageweave

Mageweave is where things began to get a little tough in terms of farming things on my own with my 65 mage. Jintha’Alor in The Hinterlands is a great place to get a lot of mageweave, but the 48+ elites [May 2008 update: mobs in Jintha'Alor are NOT ELITE anymore!] were way slower to mow down than the ~40’s in Scarlet Monestary - particularly because there’s a lot of casters/ranged attackers in Jintha’Alor that I didn’t find as often in Scarlet Monestary.

One of my guildmate friends was looking for something to do the very night I was heading towards Jintha’Alor to see how I’d fare on my own, so he joined me and I didn’t have to worry about switching over to my 70 Hunter as a result.

We headed quickly to the top of Jintha’Alor and were about to head into the cave when we were both whispered by some other Horde players appropriately leveled for the area, asking if they could join our group to finish off a quest that involved going into the same caves. I responded that all I was here for was the Mageweave, and asked that we be given the Mageweave from the caves, in return for the assistance in going through there. They agreed, dropped group, and joined ours, making our team of two a team of five.

Jintha’Alor - Excellent Sources of…

Mageweave Cloth, obviously. Primary reason why I went there.

Wildvine - used in the 225-300 Leatherworking range and sells very well in the Auction House.

Ghost Mushrooms - while only three are spawned at a time in the caves at the top of Jintha’Alor, a high-level character could farm the area every 30 minutes, logging over to another toon in between farming loops, and amass a nice amount of mushrooms in a short few days. These also sell VERY well in the Auction House.

Purple Lotus - this herb isn’t found in many areas of the game, either, but is nowhere near as valuable as the Ghost Mushrooms are. Purple Lotus can be used to level Alchemy to some of the more interesting recipes, however.

Farming For Runecloth

Runecloth is where I got very fortunate in terms of cheap powerlevelling: Three or four guildmates had an overabundance of Runecloth eating up bank space on their toons and since they had no immediate nor forseeable future use for the cloth other than to sell it, a lot of it came to me.

I’d like to think that their generosity was a result of my own generosity in the past, but I also know that what makes our guild work so well is that everyone who has been in the guild for more than 6 months is constantly in a state of both Giving and Receiving with other guildmates. (New people take a bit to get into this cycle, but the good ones fit right in after 6 months)

At any rate, I found that the trek from using Runecloth to advance my Tailoring skill through to being able to use Netherweave was a MUCH shorter grind than from Silk to Mageweave or Mageweave to Runecloth.

If I would have had to farm Runecloth, I’ve found through research and experimentation that the Western Plaguelands is a great place to farm if you’re alone (Scarlet humanoids north of the road, especially, but the undead drop ‘em too), but if you have a friend or two who is looking to get some quick experience and maybe burn off some quests as well, consider entering into the dungeon instance of Blackrock Depths which is chock full of humanoids, has some decent drops for pre-Outland toons (getting way better in patch 2.3!) and a lot of quests to help those 50s toons zoom into the 60s.

Netherweave Everything

With one toon at level cap (70) and another toon actively working through the 60s (and everyone over 35 with 375 First Aid already), I had about 70 stacks of Netherweave Cloth stacked up on one of my bank toons, just waiting to be used. One of my guildmates had the same deal going on, so he sent me all of HIS Netherweave Cloth as well, and I sent him back a bunch of 16 slot bags as they skilled me up at the time.

Major Relief On The Bank Toon

Wow, after going through all of that Netherweave Cloth, my storage bank toon had a LOT of free space - for about three hours.

What did I fill it up with again? Check back another day to find out the exciting answer! ;)

Bluehairmage was a mere level 23 when Burning Crusade came out, and has recently reached level 60 in the Outlands, while questing with a few strangers in Hellfire Peninsula who happened to be working on the same things I was, all three of us at level 59. I had decided to hold out until 59 before jumping through the portal with this one at 58, just in case that extra level would help me much in terms of reducing my aggro range, since one of my vocal guildmates had made a big deal of his clothy getting swarmed by mobs with a “mile-wide aggro range”.

I found it was much easier this time than it was when I brought my Warrior in (she who is still at 61 and is not played often), and while the fights were probably about the same with my Hunter (who entered the portal the day after the release, with 2000 other lvl 60s), the familiarity and complete lack of competition made this Mage’s trek a lot easier.

I only finished enough quests to get me to 60, so I could return to Azeroth and to Sen’jin in Durotar in particular, to train for my Epic Land Mount (540g) and buy a Swift Olive Raptor for the actual ride. Yay for faster feet!

Epic Land Mount also makes the Outlands a lot more bearable, simply because it’s a lot easier to outrun all of the aggro on faster feet, and there are beasts and humanoids and flying things EVERYWHERE out there. Very few spots you can find that have the empty barren landscape like used to be found regularly in Azeroth.

Neat Trick - Sheeping Bonechewer Raiders

[edit, I've read in May 2008 patch notes that this has been fixed, anyone test? :) ]

While working on the very first quests one obtains in Thrallmar, I found a rather neat thing with my Mage, in terms of taking down the Bonechewer Raiders.

You see, Bonechewer Raiders are the Bonechewer guys who are riding around on a wolf mount, and who patrol the side of the Path of Glory that is nearest to Thrallmar and most likely where players will be collecting Bonechewer Blood.

If you start battle with them when they’re on their mounts, they dismount and both the raider and the raider’s mount head towards you for battle. The mount doesn’t despawn when the raider goes down, so you need to take them both out.

That is, unless you sheep the Raider before engaging in battle. Then, the mount completely disappears and when the sheep wears off or is broken, only the Raider remains!

Simple to kill that way, and who really needs the few scraps from the Mount, if he even drops any??!