Northrend Mining Guide

As a miner in WoTLK you have three different great places available to you to mine. The three places you can farm are Wintergrasp, Zul'drak and Sholazar Basin. Wintergrasp is probably the best place out of the three depending on what time of the day you're farming there and how many other people are farming there. Sholazar is the second best after Wintergrasp since it has equally as many mines as Wintergrasp. The only downside about Sholazar Basin is it is very open and the mines are very spread out. The final location, Zul'drak is mediocre at best and I only recommend coming here to mine if you need Cobalt Ore.

 

Wintergrasp Mining Path

You will quickly come to realize that the mining in Wintergrasp is great. In Wintergrasp you will not only find a ton of mines but you will come to realize they are all very close together. This is great news if you're the only one farming here... But sometimes if two people are in this zone farming and they know where all the mines are, it is too many. The closer it gets to prime time the more people you will see farming mines, elementals and herbs in this zone and the worse farming here will get.

The best times to farm Wintergrasp are extremely late at night or extremely early in the morning. So that means if you're one of those people that likes to wake up at rambunctious times or pull all nighters all the time you'll love farming Wintergrasp. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Expect PvP in this zone.

Sholazar Basin Mining Path

Sholazar Basin is the second best zone for mining in, in WoTLK. The only real flaw this zone has is it is absolutely huge. Although, that flaw can also be considered a huge advantage since up to five miners could farm here without ever running into each other. Sholazar Basin is most commonly used as the "overflow" zone when Wintergrasp gets too crowded. Since it is literally right next to Wintergrasp you'll barely lose any time farming by switching zones. One thing you may want to do while in Sholazar Basin is make a macro that says /target Loque.

This will allow you to keep an eye out for an extremely rare beast named Loque'nahak. He is part of the Frostbitten achievement and is well known to be one of the hardest mobs to find for this achievement. If you don't care about this achievement then you could probably sell Loque'nahak's location to someone for upwards of 500g. If you'd like to learn more about Loque'nahak and the Frostbitten achievement click here.

 

Zul'drak Mining Path

Zul'drak is a fairly decent farming location for anyone in search of Cobalt Ore. Since Zul'drak doesn't have much Saronite or anything else really the only reason you'd want to come to this zone is for the Cobalt Ore. If you're in search of money, try Sholazar or Wintergrasp. If you need that good ol' Cobalt Zul'drak is your best bet.