5 Best Vanilla Gold Farms in WoW The War Within
Markets shift, patches and expansions come and go, but some good-old Vanilla farms still hold up, giving you a reliable and steady income even in WoW Retail. If you’re tired of the overcrowded War Within spots or simply feeling nostalgic, we’ve rounded up five of the best Vanilla gold farms that are still worth your time today.
And if you want to give yourself a break from grinding but don’t want those earnings to stop coming, you can simply buy WoW gold from WowVendor and get any amount you need fast and stress-free. They’ve got lots of premade packages for all game versions at very nice prices and with ultra-fast delivery (your gold will land in your mailbox in just a few hours!). So if you’ve been thinking about trying something new, now’s the perfect time to give your wallet a little boost and finally get all those things you’ve been dreaming about.
How to Make Your Farming Sessions More Efficient
The farms we’re about to cover don’t rely on rare drops or hard-to-sell big-ticket items but rather offer consistent, steady income from materials and loot that are always in demand.
Every spot on this list is completely soloable and can be farmed on any class, but if you’re looking to max out your gold per hour, there are a few ways to crank things up:
- Farming in a group speeds things up big time. When you handle them in a team, mobs respawn quicker, which means you get more kills, more loot, and more gold for everyone in a party. If you’ve got a couple of friends or guildies to run with, that’s great. If not, no worries—you can easily find groups for specific farms using the Premade Group Finder tool. Just join one of the existing parties or create your own and wait for folks to hop in.
- Class-wise, Druids have a big edge when it comes to farming thanks to their instant cast spells and quick mob tagging.
- Wearing a speed set (gear with movement speed bonuses or enchants) definitely won’t hurt either, as it’ll allow you to kill and loot mobs a lot faster.
Again, none of this is necessary, and every farm on this list works perfectly fine as it is. These things are just little nice-to-haves if you want to push your gold per hour even higher.
And now let’s finally jump into our list of classic gold farms that still make real money in Retail WoW!
Top Vanilla Farms in WoW Retail
Essence of Water
This item is pretty famous among Classic players as one of the best money-makers in the game. The good news is that it’s still quite profitable in Retail as well, netting you about 100 gold per piece. Depending on how seriously and efficiently you grind, you could pull in up to 40,000 steady gold per hour.
Essence of Water drops from a bunch of mobs all over the world, including places like Swamp of Sorrows, Winterspring, Terokkar Forest, and more. But we’d recommend you check out a small island in Northern Stranglethorn first and farm the Lesser Water Elementals there. They’re pretty easy to kill and, on top of the essences, they drop some useful crafting reagents and a whole bunch of BoEs that you can sell for some extra gold on the side.
Arcane Crystal
For this farm, you’ll want to head to Un’Goro Crater on a character that has the Mining profession. The route’s super simple: you just fly around the edges of the map in a loop, mining every Thorium Vein node you come across. The higher your skill, the more Arcane Crystals you’ll be getting from the nodes. Plus, as a nice bonus, you can farm and sell Thorium Ore, which goes for about 4-5 gold a pop on the Auction House. The Arcane Crystals themselves can fetch around 70-100 gold each.
If you happen to have Herbalism too, you can farm herb nodes you find along the way, but what we recommend checking out is the Fungal Rock cave and its Ghost Mushrooms. These shrooms usually sell for about 30-60 gold each, plus you can loot some handy stuff off the mobs there, too. You can even leave an alt with Herbalism here to log in now and then for some semi-AFK mushroom farming and make that gold with little to no effort at all.
Golden Pearl
You can find Golden Pearls in a bunch of places, but we recommend hitting up the Swamp of Sorrows. Go to the right side of the map and just kill every murloc mob you come across in the area by the ocean. You can either farm in one spot or run up and down the coast, looting mobs along the way. The items you’ll be looking for are Big-Mouth Clams. These are the ones that have a chance to drop our coveted Golden Pearls, which usually sell for around 200 gold each.
Essence of Undeath
Here’s another essence on our list, found in Eastern Plaguelands at Corin’s Crossing. The strategy is once again extremely simple: all you need to do is run around and kill whatever mobs you bump into. Apart from the essence, you can also farm Dark Runes, which can fetch anywhere between 150 and 400 gold each. The Essence of Undeath sells for a bit less—around 30 to 50 gold—but it does add up fast, and you could be pulling in up to 30,000 gold per hour just from these two items. Plus, this location is a very popular spot for transmog farming, so you might snag some nice gear to sell as a bonus.
Warbear Leather
Warbear Leather serves as a key ingredient for loads of old-school crafting recipes and can sell for about 60 to 100 gold each.
You’ll want to farm it in Blasted Lands by killing and skinning Tainted Black Bears (yep, Skinning is a must here, so make sure your character has it). The more you kill, the faster these bears respawn, so anything that can speed you up here will come in handy.