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Big part of how successfull you are in WoW is do you have the resources to back up your doings. Most people do not have all crafting or gathering professions on their characters and they need to rely on support from friends or gold to fill in the gaps. And even if you’d have all of the professions there will still be at very least the repair costs. Nowadays it’s very easy to get gold but it wasn’t always. Back in vanilla, and most of Burning Crusade there were no daily quests to do. You had to grind, grind and grind a bit more. So let’s take a trip down the memory lane and see what was the hot stuff back then (from my personal point of view obviously). This is TOP 10 countdown of most grinded mobs pre-wrath.

Aah the legendary patch 1.9 and Ahn’Qiraj. Handfull of repeatable quests which mostly involved killing bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. And I did kill bugs.. enough to get exalted with Cenarion Circle. All the Silithid were elites so you could not solo them with all characters and those who could not were forced to group up. I however could, outdoors anyway.. roots didn’t work indoors back then. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would have been if I would not have been able to solo them. Grindy stuff like that is something you want to do on your own time… late at night. I wonder what for I was grinding the reputation anyway. Oh well.. couple years later you got a fancy title for it.

Yes this is a fish. And quite elusive one. You can fish it from several locations: Hinterlands, Winterspring, Moonglade, Eastern Plaguelands, Zu’Gurub… But the tricky part with this was you can catch it only during the night and not same amount all the time. If you fished between 12am and 6am the only fish to drop was Nightfin. Sounds fun doesn’t it. It was! My favorite place to fish them was Hinterlands.

Level 59-60 elites which meant they dropped 17-20 silver each which was quite amazing amount back then. Also if you look at their loot list it’s mostly just grey items which were good for cashing at vendors. And since they’re elites not everyone could solo them and there was not much competition for them. Not my favorite place to grind money but a solid option if some other place was feeling too crowded.

I didn’t grind at Tyr’s Hand until rather late part of vanilla. All mobs are elites and many are ranged, lots of patrols and bunched up mobs. So as a druid it was a little bit difficult if you wanted to do it alone. But eventually my gear kicked up and I could do it. And they of course added the Moonkin form into game so I could actually take few hits. Money was pretty much the same as from giants in Winterspring but Scarlets also dropped Runecloth which was nice addition.

The main food source during Burning Crusade. These guys dropped Chunk o’ Basilisk which was needed for making Blackened Basilisk. There are other locations to get it besides Terokkar Forest but this was best of them by far. If you just followed the small streams or the northeastern cliff edge you would find lots and lots of them very close to each other. Very easy to farm and I did it a lot.

Later in the game I spent lots of time grinding at Northdale. Lots of ghosts around who drop Runecloth, Essence of Undeath and Invader’s Scourgestones which you could use for Argent Dawn reputation. Then there’s the water elementals who drop Essence of Water which I used for making Hide of the Wild to sell in auction house. Back then the droprate of essences was very very low so they fetch quite a price.

I’ve always thought the Timbermaw Furbolgs are kinda cool so I did a lot of rep grind for them, before they made it a bit easier and actually gave some repeatable quests. It took ages and I got past revered before the quests were put in. But I made some serious money while at it and damn it felt good when you finally hit exalted and turned in The Brokering of Peace and Magni yelled for all Ironforge to hear:

Above and beyond the call of duty indeed… the amount of time involved kinda creeps me out now when I think of it.

This was the number one grind spot in Burning Crusade. The place was jam packed with mobs dropping Mark of Sargeras, Fel Armament and Netherweave Cloth. This is where I grinded two characters to exalted with Aldor. I didn’t buy anything from auction house to speed up the reputation so I saved and earned a lot while doing it myself. Another good thing about this spot was the two elites patrolling in the area which cut down the amount of bots.

Best place to grind in vanilla. At least it was for me since I had skinning. Yetis are kinda funny.. they’re one of the two skinnable humanoids in game (in addition to worgen). And being humanoids they also drop money so double win for me. I made lots of gold by selling the Rugged Leather in auction house. Whenver I needed money without too much hassle or stress I just headed for Winterspring.

Holy crap these guys are the most awesome thing ever. When I was leveling through Un’Goro I didn’t get killed by them but I did get chased by them every now and then. And oh it was so hilarious to watch someone get stomped by them. At some point.. maybe level 56 or so I thought I am so going to try and kill one of these things on my own. It wasn’t that easy and not all Devilsaurs are the same.

When I got to level 60 it was time to start collecting money for epic mount. I had (tribal) leatherworking and skinning as professions and I had put a lot of effort in keeping the skill high. Often instead of leveling I paused for long times to skill up my leatherworking instead. So, I had profession high so I bought myself Pattern: Devilsaur Gauntlets and Pattern: Devilsaur Leggings. Then it was just a matter of lots of grinding and hopefully selling the products for good price.

I’m sure everyone’s been to Un’Goro so you know that Devilsaurs are pretty small in numbers. There was four spots where I sat and waited for them to walk by. Killing them wasn’t easy so I needed safe locations with lots of room to mess around without accidently running into other mobs. After a while it became fairly routine so the stress factor weared off and I actually became quite good in hunting them.

The biggest hazard for me was other players. I understand they might have meant well when they come rushing to my ‘aid’ and breaking my roots so the Devilsaur just charges and beats hell out of me. And every time I tried to explain why I need to do it alone they just went “lol you were going to die and I saved you lolz”. Sigh. Of course I was going to die because you freaking tried to kill me! So I just made a shout macro and spammed it every time I saw someone coming to ward them off. Sometimes it worked sometimes not.

It took forever but the items I crafted sold for 80-100g a piece which was insane amount of money back in those days. And for quite a while I seemed to have the monopoly on these items at the auction house so.. yay for me. Eventually the day finally came when I had collected the 1k gold I believe it was back then and bought Reins of the Swift Frostsaber. And I have Devilsaurs to thank for that.

Hm.. seems like I got a bit carried away on this last one. But they deserved it.

Couple days ago I went and made the biggest auction house purchase of my whole WoW career. 10k gold for Parrot Cage (Hyacinth Macaw). I’m pretty passionate pet collector so for me it was all worth it but there was a problem now since I was down to around 50 gold. Well obviously I’d have to do dailys a lot for a while to get back up where I don’t have to worry about money. But how much do I need to keep myself up to snuff on raids anyway. I have never really thought about it before and the answer was quite surprising.

The Essentials

1) Flasks & reagents

These are the things no serious raider goes without. Nobody. Flasking up once / hour gives a serious boost to whatever you’re doing. And the price? Well obviously everything depends what server you’re on. On my server the average price for 1 flask is 25-29g. Let’s say 30g tops.

Reagents? They cost so little I don’t even remember how much. Just keep a good stack with you at all times if your spells require them or you haven’t glyphed out of them.

2) Repair costs

This is where it gets trickier and obviously depends what type of armor you’re using. Is it a farm raid or wipetastic progress raid. Last Thursday I had a farm raid. I repaired before leaving Dalaran as I always do and went to Wintergrasp and did Firewatcher, then moved to ToC 25 and cleared it. Then we went to Onyxia 25 and did that. I didn’t die a single time during this and when I came back to Dalaran and went to repair I had lost durability worth ~3 gold. Wow.

Progress raids then? Well I can’t say I have really memorised how much but I’d think around 60 gold for one night is pretty close.

3) Food

First let’s think the health/mana food/water. There’s usually a mage around so 98% of time you won’t be using vendor bought food or water. And what if you were.. only time you’d be eating/drinking it is right before new pull after you’ve done buffing.

Buff food then. I know nowadays people slack with this when you can just take a bite from someone elses Fish Feast. Which by all means is fine but you still should have your own stuff as backup. Just like normal food it might sit there for months before you take a bite off it but it’s good to be prepared.

4) Health and mana potions

Another ‘when do I use this anyway’ category. I don’t know how much they cost in auction house.. not a clue. I’m still using the ones I’ve got as drops while questing or doing instances. Health potions I had not used hardly at all until having a go on hardmode Mimiron. So yee.. 1 boss in current content. Mana potions I’ve used more often but still very rarely. If I end up so low on mana I have to use them it’s probably because it was one of the longer fights, I had to combat res someone and give my Innervate away – probably to the person I ressed. But still the usage of these potions is so low I won’t have to buy or make more of them during this expansion if it stays the same.

5) Gear upgrades

Gems, enchants… armor kits. Once you’ve got your first proper raiding gear all the big money investments are probably gone. I don’t think many get huge number of upgrades in short amount of time. Let’s say 1 new item / week tops if even that. Last time I got something was… 20 days ago. And it was a necklace (without socket) so no additional expences required. So expences on your gear are so sporadic you can’t really count how much gold you need to keep up with them.

6) Luxury items

For me this is Potion of Speed, Potion of Wild Magic, Fish Feast, Runescroll of Fortitude and Drums of Forgotten Kings.

Fish Feast I use all the time because I think it’s nice you can provide stuff for your group with so little effort. And I do like fishing. Mostly anyway.

Potion of Speed and Potion of Wild Magic I have to buy from auction house and they’re both around 25g for 5. How often do I use them is another thing.. not very often. If it’s some hardmode fight they’re nice to have and give you some DPS boost but that doesn’t happen so often. I only have to restock maybe once a month.

Runescroll of Fortitude and Drums of Forgotten Kings are something I can make but what I don’t carry around with me. At least haven’t so far. But I do keep various crafting materials on my banker so should we ever miss a priest or paladin I don’t have to mess around with auction house or go grind mats.

What’s the damage, doctor?

Scheduled raids 3 nights / week, 1 of them is farm raid, 2 are progress/hardmode ones if signups permit. Farm raid is 2 hours because it just doesn’t take longer with current content… other two are 3 hours.

Flasks: 224g
Reagents: whatever
Repairs: 130g
Food: none
Potions: none
Rest: too sporadic to count

Grand total of 354g. With all the money falling from skies just by doing few dailys that amount of gold is nothing. I bought the pet 2 days ago and I’m already at 900g. Only things I’ve really done is some Argent Tournament dailys, skipping lancing ones and the TFA, and a little bit of questing at Borean Tundra.

Also about the flasks or anything for that matter.. if you do have the professions to provide you the only thing what’s really going to cost you is the repairs. I do have a herbalist and alchemist btw but I’m too lazy to grind. Actually I got every single profession covered on some character except jewelcrafting – but I have a miner so I can get the raw materials and have someone else craft for me. So technically I could be self-sufficient if I’d just want to but I’m too lazy for that… doing few dailys once a day or even every couple days feels like a snap when grinding mats is just a drag.

What did I even worry about.

1. Easy to level

One reason why I rolled a druid back in the days was because I read it is a good soloing class. And you know what.. it is. You start off a bit slow with only fraction of your abilities but as you gain levels it only gets easier. You can attack from range, stealth past enemies, heal yourself, travel fast in water and turn into bear form for extra durability. Prior to patch 3.2 and lowering the level required for mounts the travel form also was a nice addition to make your life easier. It’s not completely useless nowadays either though. Since you can use it even while in combat unlike normal mounts it provides means of escape and significant tactical advantage in PvP.

2. Versatility

Great thing about druid is that you can literally play any role; tank, melee dps, ranged dps and healing. There is no other class that can do all that. There was a time when only healing part was end game viable but that is long gone. If you just know your stuff any of these roles can be done well enough. Granted the DPS part is somewhat behind of the pure classes but not so far that you should feel bad about it.

3. You provide tons of buffs to others in your group

Many players might not like playing druid enough to do it themeselves but they will love you for playing one.

Basic things every druid has:

Gift of the Wild + Imp. Mark of the Wild
One of the best buffs in game. Personally I think it’s 2nd only to the paladin Blessing of Kings. And once they change how stats work in Cataclysm it is going to be even more amazing.

Innervate
Surely very welcome to any caster. If you don’t need it yourself there’s always someone who does.

Rebirth
Someone is bound to die… but have no fear.. you’ll be there to res him so he can die again. Err.. no it came out right I think. Just don’t die yourself.

Thorns
Used on tanks but how much it contributes is another thing. Last I checked tanks haven’t had any problems generating aggro. Oh well.. it’s there anyway.

Balance druid:

Moonkin Aura + Imp. Moonkin Form
Everyone loves to crit. And with increased haste maybe crit even sooner?

Improved Faerie Fire
Getting the hit cap is annoying task and every little bit of hit you can leave out from your gear is more stuff invested on DPS.

Earth and Moon
Simply amazing increase to your caster DPS.

Restoration druid:

Tree of Life
Other healers love to heal for more and rest love to receive more heals. Win win all the way.

Feral druid:

Leader of the Pack + Imp. Leader of the Pack
Melee loves to crit too. And free heals? Wehey.

Quick note about these… my experience about Feral and Resto is very limited so if I am missing something please feel free to correct me on comments.

4. Easy to learn but challenging to master

When you look at the basics on any guide it’s pretty obvious there isn’t much to playing a druid. However from experience I have to say I’ve bumped into more medium level players than high end. Not really sure why… and yes I can be totally wrong here. This is just the impression I’ve got. You can read and pick up the basics in 5 minutes but I guess executing it is still difficult. Plan is only as good as person seeing it through.

5. Rich lore and representation

If you’re into lore there’s bucketloads of it in WoWWiki and I could make a whole post or two from it so let’s leave it to that.. for now. Representation? In addition to player controlled ones you can bump into druids just about anywhere. Do quests for them and even grind reputation for them. We even got our own zone in Moonglade and the holiday event Lunar Festival is hosted by druids. Remember Silithus back at the very late vanilla? Druids. Who did you have to do stuff with in order to repair close to Serpentshrine Cavern? Druids. Who set forth the killing blow on Archimonde before he could steal the power of Nordrassil and use it against whole Azeroth? Malfurion Stormrage, and yes he was, is, a druid.

6. Interesting class quests

It’s shame you do not have to do them anymore because they’re very well done. Even the infamous Trial of the Sea Lion. Yes it sent you to literally to other side of the world but man what an adventure it was back in the days. Personally I had never been to Westfall or anywhere near it until I got this. Traveling there really showed me the world. And almost made me drown when I chose to swim from Wetlands instead of walking… good times.

In Burning Crusade we got the quest for Swift Flight Form which was the best and the most epic quest I’ve ever done. You got to fight all these bosses and really use your abilities to the fullest if you wanted to be able to solo them. Then you ended it all with a highlight in Sethekk Halls. Another memorable thing at least for me was the tauren woman in Nagrand. She was so nice.

7. You get to stand out from other druids

Big problem with gear nowadays is that eventually everyone will look same. With the shapeshift forms changing based on your hair/skin color at least you can get some diversity. For now this is only treat of the ferals but eventually balance and resto will get their share too. Let’s just hope it’s sooner than later. At least the poor resto druids could really use a makeover.

8. More /dance moves than any other class

Balance and resto druids get 4 and feral 3. Counted cat and travel form only as one since it’s the same thing. Only other class getting more than 1 is shaman.

9. We’re all family here

This is interesting social bit what I should talk about in more detail someday. There seems to be some sort of honor among druids thing going on with druids of opposite factions. At least I’ve got tons of lovely emotes from Horde druids every now and then. Maybe all this Horde vs. Alliance rubbish doesn’t apply, at least so heavily, on druids. How can you fight against each other when the universe is going to hell in a hand basket. Rubbish.

10. Good gear availability

In theory anyway. Feral druid shares loot with rogues, balance and resto with each other. Mostly the itemization is just poor at least for a balance druid and makes you turn to cloth. But in all fairness there’s always few really nice non-set items that pop with new content. Like Boots of the Unreleting Storm and Leggings of the Awakening from ToC 25 and their heroic versions.