Breakfast Topic: To farm or not to farm?

by Elizabeth Harper Dec 23rd 2007 at 8:00AM

My guild-mates have told me more than once, "You shouldn't buy X (or Y, or Z) on the auction house! Farming it yourself is much cheaper!" I don't doubt them at all -- after all, farming something makes it free, doesn't it? But for some classes and specs, going out in the world and farming for items is a slow, slow process. And when the time spent farming is longer than it would take to do dailies to acquire enough gold to buy it on the open market... do you go out and farm, or do you hit the auction house when you need items? And even for classes that have an easy time farming whatever they might need, sometimes you find yourself with limited playtime, but you need one more primal fire to craft your epic thingamajig? Food or potions for tomorrow's raid? The Goblins tell us that time is money, after all. So today I ask you, readers. What do you find to be easier? Farming or buying?

Tags: auction-house, buy, farm, farming, gold, world-of-warcraft, wow

Filed under: Economy, Breakfast topics, Making money

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

jaxson_bateman Dec 23rd 2007 8:20AM

I think a good rule of thumb is to farm the stuff that's easy for you to farm, sell the excess, and buy that which is not easy.

For example, as a paladin I have an easy time farming high level pre-BC enchanting mats in Strath, Scholo, Dire Maul and the like. However, I have a hard time farming things like primals. So I farm the pre-BC enchanting mats, sell them on the AH, and use the profits to buy and primals I might need. Works great for me.

fLUx Dec 23rd 2007 8:37AM

Alot of stuff is "cheaper" to farm, meaning other stuff you could do to pay for the AH item(s) would take longer.

Its free - but could you do something else (i.e. dailys) to make more money than you proberly could farming that one item just for yourself?

At the end of the day, I would rarther just pay for stuff. Given the chance, I would rarther pay for a quest item, than acctully spend upto an hour grinding them.

Idu Dec 23rd 2007 8:42AM

I would just like to point out that even though you farm items, doesn't make the items free for you. The cost is your time (and perhaps some gear repairs) you have to spend farming. We don't expect work to be done free of charge, work has value. That's why npcs give us payments and other things for completing quests. The bigger the task, the bigger the payment.

Peronally I spend both my time and my gold to get things. Potions and primals I buy, mats for engineering I mine. Additional gold I get from dailys and producing primal mooncloth.

donoteatmikezila Dec 23rd 2007 8:58AM

I hate farming. I make plenty of money just vendoring/auctioning the stuff I get out of instances, doing the dailys, and reselling stuff I see on the auction house.

I always buy what I want from auction rather than grind for it myself. Then again, I'm and engineer, and there isn't a lot of farming to be done with that. Minerals, I guess, but those aren't exactly farming I don't think. Once you know the circut, it takes about an hour to get an insane ammount of rocks.

Shawn Dec 23rd 2007 8:59AM

Money is too easy to come by with Auctioneer and a little know-how. To misquote Jesse Ventura, "I ain't got time to farm."

hofra Dec 23rd 2007 9:30AM

Farming is a boring way to play the game. Just do some quests with your friends and the buy the mats that you need for your gears.
Actually I only farm stuffs that are easy to farm for me....

zygote Dec 23rd 2007 9:43AM

It takes both kinds to make Azeroth go round.

After all, if everyone farmed who's going to buy my overpriced ore?

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go swim in my gold vault with Scrooge McDuck.

Mabon Dec 23rd 2007 10:12AM

I play on an RP server, and recently needed 14 Primal Earths for Glove Reinforcements. A friend of mine (whose character is a miner) went out and farmed the Rumbling Earth things up in Nagrand. Two hours of great RP fun later, we had all I needed. If I can farm with a friend, specifically an RP friend, I will. It makes the "work" into "fun."

supersaint Dec 23rd 2007 10:46AM

I always farm. I have a number of alts that have gathering profs, and I try to farm items for the AH.

I don't understand people that say that farming is boring. I think running non-stop raids and BG's is boring.

bbrad Dec 23rd 2007 11:10AM

i would go with farming yourself. unless its a really, really good deal :P

Pingmeister Dec 23rd 2007 11:19AM

I'm another one of those crazy people that actually prefer farming to grouping.

Milktub Dec 23rd 2007 11:24AM

I always feel a little "ikcy" about buying materials on the AH, like it should remain my dirty little secret.

Jasperwind Dec 23rd 2007 2:20PM

And now we all know your dirty little secret.....

sporteeee Dec 23rd 2007 11:24AM

My main is a prot-spec warr (e.g. no DPS) so farming is no fun....I created a rogue engineer just for farming (and sick crits!)

Hollywood Ron Dec 23rd 2007 12:29PM

I feel your pain, brother. I can't farm to save my life.

alex Dec 23rd 2007 11:32AM

Here is how i got my primals for my Khorium Destroyer:

Go do dailies in Skettis, Go to elemental Plateau Farm until bored (usually about 1 or 2 primals), vendor trash, Visit AH and buy the rest with gold from dailies and trash.

roger3 Dec 23rd 2007 11:42AM

It all comes down to that age-old formula: gold/hour.

Basically, there are several ways you can go about earning money in WoW:
1. Dailies
2. Grinding harder mobs for gold
3. AoE grinding easier mobs for gold
4. Gathering

Each character is going to be more or less efficient at one of these so it's up to you to figure out which is best for you.

Take doing the dailies as a base, you can figure out if you can make more g/hr doing another activity.

I play a Tank, so AoE grinding is out and even in my DPS gear, I'm not so quick to burn down mobs. So, for me, dailies and gathering seem to be the way to go.

Zemalf Dec 23rd 2007 1:01PM

I see two kinds of farming:
- farming for personal need
- farming for gold (things to sell)
..I rarely farm for personal need, I rather buy what I need and go doing something more "useful" or farm to sell

I buy if:
- I can't farm the thing myself
- buying it takes me to my goals faster (and get me back to making gold or doing things I actually want to do)
- rare item(s) where the time I would have to invest farming it is too big (and even then unsure that I get it)
- Farming the item(s) myself takes time, and if I can get more gold by farming (or doing) something else in shorter time

I don't think my gold would be any good if I didn't use it to anything :)

baudkarma Dec 23rd 2007 1:26PM

I'll buy the stuff in the AH if the price seems reasonable, otherwise I'll go farm it. There are a lot of factors to consider when you're deciding farming vs buying. One that a lot of people overlook is the possibility that other items might drop while you're farming or gathering. The chance of a nice blue world drop off a trash mob or a Fel Lotus popping up while you're picking flowers can tip the scales in favor of farming.

One thing I refuse to do is pay for an item if I consider the price grossly overinflated. I went to the AH a couple of weeks ago looking for iron buckles, and there was only one person selling, charging 3g50s APIECE for them. A bit of investigation convinced me there was a potential market there, so I made a new Pally (always wanted to try Pally), quested up to level 10, sent over a bunch of ore and stone from my mule... viola! Now I'm making buckles and selling them.