Mining for Power Leveling

My Shaman, who is now 65, will be heading to northrend shortly.  Mostly likely after the next time I feel like playing it and bang out those 3 levels.  My mining was already northrend level but my blacksmith ability is way behind.  From questing I noticed there was no way in hell that I was going to get enough ore in those next three levels to get my blacksmith skill up to northrend level.

That is one of the downfalls of blowing through outlands.  Skill leveling is harder.  Also, in turn, it means that items used for leveling skills from outlands are usually outrageously priced. I was left to decided between one of a few options.  Farm it on my Shaman, keep leveling until I am 68 and then see where I am, check the auction market or farm it on an alt.

Farming it on my Shaman is out of the question for a few reasons, one being that it has slow flight which makes farming a  lot longer and the other is that it is only level 65 so it will have lots of fights with creatures for ore.  Waiting was also out of the question because I hate to leave skills behind and if I wanted to 68 to play catch up I would then need to go back and I do not want to go back.  The auction house as well was over priced so it looked like my level 80 druid would go for a few fly overs to gather ore.

After it was all done I leveled my Shaman all the way up and noticed something quite interesting.  A small fortune can be made in the outlands if you are willing to invest your time.  I farmed for a bit over an hour.  Something like one hour and 9 minutes to be exact.  I use my buff duration to keep track of time.  In that time I mined a crap load of stuff.  I did waste a little time in Shadowmoon valley doing a full pass and only getting four nodes.  Apparently that is where the gold sellers have their bots.  There was nothing to be found and being no one ever quests there any more unless they are working on loremaster or for their drakes it is the perfect spot for the bots to go unnoticed.  So if I minus that mistake on my part I will say I farmed for 1 hour.

Below I will list what I got and what the prices are on my server for them.  Mind you, prices on your server can be higher or lower of course.  But this is what I saved myself from spending 1 hour of my own time to farm instead of buying.  This is also what I would be capable of earning per hour if I decided to sell them next time instead.

Fel Iron Ore - 162 - 3g50s = 567g
Adamantite Ore - 183 - 2g50s = 457g50s
Eternium Ore - 17 - 1g = 17g
Primal Fire - 2.4 - 10g =  24g
Primal Earth - 11.7 - 2g =  23g40s

Which means I saved myself from having to spend 1088g90s by investing 1 hour of my time.  In turn, I could have sold all of that and would have make over 1000g for one hour of farming.  BC materials are a gold mine for people that are willing to invest the time.  When you are talking return on investment 1000g for 1 hour is pretty darn respectable.  As weird as this might sound however.  I would easily farm for an hour to save myself from spending 1000g but I am not completely sure I would farm in an effort to make the 1000g.  I can make 1000g a lot faster with all the professions I have.  But for people just coming up or those idiots that keep saying they can not afford their repair bill this is a perfectly acceptable way to make money with a small amount of involvement time wise.

So sometimes power leveling is not as costly as some might make it seem if you are capable of getting the materials yourself and are willing to invest your own time to do so.