I will start by saying two things:

1) this is NOT a request for solo instances.
2) this comes from the perspective of a rogue

My thoughts are borne from the gold buying/selling thread, but deals with a tangetial subject. We grind for gold because we need money. We hate doing it because it's fricking boring.

My issue comes from the fact that most encounters in the game are either trivial to accomplish solo, or impossible. There is very little grey area between the two. Grinding would be much more enjoyable if there were an actual challenge involved. Yes, i can grind twilight mobs for 40+ gold an hour. This, however, is insanely boring.

My dodge is 45% more than at level 59
My crit is 87% more than at level 59
My Health is 55% more than at level 59
My Attack power is 73% more than at level 59

I *can* do a lot more in theory than I could then, but the game does not seem to have many options to make use of these increases other than to allow for faster grinding of the same mobs.

If i want a step up in difficulty from the twilight guys, the pickings are slim. There is solo grinding lower level elites (troll packs outside of ZG and Ogres outside of Dire Maul), and the pulls are reasonably quick, but both have downsides. There is much more ganking (on a pvp server at least) at the ZG entrance, and with both trolls and ogres the green drops are such that they usually disenchant into horribly cheap components.

You might ask, what about solo grinding in instances? This is so far my favorite method of grinding at the moment, with BRD being the best cash/time, but it has the same disenchanting disincentives as listed above, and many packs are simply too large to take down. My next favorite is BRS. This gets difficult quickly, however, and packs of more than 2 mobs often force cooldown useage - hardly an efficient way to grind. The only other place i've really put an effort into solo'ing is in ZG, where I can usually get one of two mobs in the 2-troll-patrols to about 10% before I'm forced to vanish. Anything close to efficient grinding is not an option here (for a rogue at least).


So my question is this -

given that there are not many killable mobs in the outside world that pose a challenge, and given that large packs of mobs are pretty much the rule for solo-killable instance elites (if they could be pulled single), what have you found to keep you from being bored out of your mind while grinding for cash?

I'd really love an instance / repeatable encounter that would play to the strengths of a healing class. Where my gear upgrades actually matter, so I'm not forced to use DPS leftovers from a two tier lower instance. For example, an encounter where you'd have to escort a few NPCs through some scripted encounters, and they will tank and DPS for you and it's your job to keep alive. The more NPCs you have alive at the end, the better the rewards. Similar to the Rajaxx encounter, if you will, but turned into a viable alternative for healing classes to grind.

Go for a more specific drop rather than quantity. Schematics, recipes and such. It averages out to about the same gold/hour as mobgrinding, but usally more fun to stealth to specific targets and use cooldowns to take out boss/larger packs for the drops than just repetive grinding. Examples being Greater protection recipes, blue AQ20 drops, DM books and such...

This phrase intrigues me. Which mobs exactly do you refer to?

If you have access to a raidID from a raid that killed Rajaxx, there is some grubs you can kill in the waspboss room, they drop Blue BoEs, scarabs, idols and Larval Acid.

Yes, that's true; when gearing up for Huhuran we'd always have an AQ20 with everything except Ayamiss cleared up. Any hunter/rogue can ride into the tunnel between Buru and Ayamiss, and round the other way into Ayamiss's room and just clear out all the little larval worms there. They have a 10% drop of larval acid in addition to scarabs and idols. Much, much more efficient than grinding EPL.

I've actually often said to myself that it would be nice if there was more solo gaming involved at level 60. :) I thoroughly enjoyed leveling to 60, to the point that it took me 28 days /played, and when I finally hit it, I was considering quitting the game, because everything else was so heavily group-dependent. Sometimes I LIKE achieving something on my own--and I don't mean farming, because I hate farming. I doubt Blizzard will (nor should they, considering most people don't play MMORPGs to solo stuff) develop content to cater to higher-end solo players, but that doesn't keep me from thinking wistfully about it.

As to challenges, I'm enough of a latecomer to the raiding game (and slow enough in the game) that my bow quest was a fairly recent challenge, so that kept me busy for a while (I hope none of my guildmates chime in to say exactly what I mean by "a while," even though I have my excuses.) :) Until I had started playing the beta recently though, I hadn't really gone out and worked on my solo playing skills for a long time. Other priorities always seemed to interfere. It's a lot of fun though, in the beta, to see how many mobs I can handle, train my crowd control skills, and work on techniques that I've ignored for a while in 40 and 20-mans.

As to what keeps me from being bored out of my mind while grinding for cash, I'd have to say guildchat, but I "farm" my cash by playing the auctionhouse, so that doesn't really count. :D

Hearthglen is fun. There's not many (any?) other places where you can fight single 61 and 62 elites for fun and profit.

Grinding BRD is nice, but as you said, most mobs will drop greens with level 50 and below. Farming Tyrs Hand and Hearthglen is also a way to look for more challenging fights, especially in the upper parts of Tyrs (I like to assasinate the rare mob that spawns either in the castle or the cathedral when he spawns in the latter house) but its also very crowded and in the lower part of tyrs you suffer again from green drops below lvl 50.

Some spots that can be fun:
1. Mazthoril in Winterspring, grind the dragons, especially the mageweavers. The drakes drop a) Schematic Arcanite Dragonling and b) Recipe Greater Arcane Protection Potion as well as the mature blue dragon sinew. ,
2. Dire Maul East - while I didn't kill Lethendris yet - farming the satyrs for felcloth and drops is a bit more challenging. Unfortunately you cannot really clear the instance solo but rather you have to pick your targets carefully. I don't think that this is profitable, but sometimes its fun for a change.
3. If you are Skinner, you might give the Level 55+ drakes in the Burning Steppes a try. But be careful, the real drakes are immune to disorients and the melee dragonkins can hit you for 1,2k against leather. If you are not a skinner, you still might give them a shot but obviously the benefit of getting black dragonscales and a lot of rugged leather is nice. I did this with my hunter and it was fun.
4. If you think those guys are too easy, go to grim batol and fight the red dragons there. But those ones are really hairy imho.
5. The isle close to southshore, inhabited by level 57+ elite undeads.

@ Lavode: yes, Verek and his master are definitely soloable, improved sprint is recommended due to the frostnova, the dorf sometimes casts.

Another final recommendation: get yourself a pally (shaman might work as well) and duo BRD. Its possible to clear BRT in 90 minutes (perhaps even less) though you might want to cheese the imp by splitpulling his girlfriend first :)

Edited for my own stupidity...

At the risk of sounding like an idiot, whats BRT?

Argh, I meant BRD (BRT is the German acronym - my bad).

As a T3 geared rogue i would love a step up in grinding difficulty.

Twilight mobs are too easy... Tyr hand.. I kill one in <12 seconds ( CS > SND and before it runs out the mob is dead ) ... DM ogres are a bit tougher but dont have much variation..


My favourite place to grind is upper Tyr Hand .. Different mobs .. nice packs .. lots of spels / abilities .. pickpocket ..

I would like to see a upgraded Tyr Hand i think..

Maybe abit unrelated to the OP's question, but might be interesting for people reading this topic:

I found alot of amusement (and a great time/money investement) in duoing Strat scarlet. It basicly takes a well/great geared DPS warrior and a healer that can take a few hits (inner fire+shield shoud do more then decent I think). Certain pulls are real close sometimes but that's what keeps it interesting.

Yep, I know such a duo. I think this combo can twoman almost every normal instance nowadays. But Strat scarlet is probably the easiest and most profitable run you can do.

I made a killing off creating librams of resilience for people back in the Vael days.
Nobody likes farming their burning essences, and for a rogue with imp sap, it takes no more than 10-15 mins to find the location of and kill the dark keeper. I doubt most of the spawns are soloable with anything but raid gear.

I haven't looked around too much lately as I haven't needed gold but I'm sure there are other similar things that can be done. Killing that spider just west of the Naxx entrance for 5-7 crypt fiend parts every few mins while gathering herbs isn't bad. Some stuff in DM is 1-2 mannable and has decent drops, etc...

The Wildshaper in Dire Maul East can be duoed by a mage and a shaman in about 15 minutes - and there's plenty of herbalist stuff to pick up, 2 rich thorium to mine, and plenty of stuff to disenchant as well.

Rogues from my guild found that they could suprisingly solo most of DM east, back when the Rapidities were so important (the bosses, anyway). The beauty of being a rogue is the ability to get to the bosses without intervening mobs, and I think the bosses are the most interesting parts.

Myself, I took to soloing Incendius for a while (relatively easy with 300 FR as a shammy), and am working on 2manning various instances (as the tank usually, with a geared priest). I think 2mans are more interesting because you can take more challenging things, and it gives the healers in your guild more ability to grind as thier upgrades do NOT help them grind solo as a rule.

Thanks all for the suggestions

Those two quoted above are the most interesting so far. I"ll pick up my fire gear fromt he bank and try grim batol, which is actually unexplored on my map o_0

Also, do you have a name for the southshore mobs? I picked a few zones in thottbot and said "give me all 55+ elites in these zones" but i didnt find anything obvious on the southshore area. I did find some Shaz____ in Duskwallow Marsh which I'll probably also attempt as well.

Oh, and my new piece of info for the day... at least as a combat rogue with my gear/skills, the Chimaera's on the Isle of dread are not possible. I can get to 40% but then it's vanish time. :-( Gouge immunity really throws a wrench into a bunch of fights (Barov!)

Try the elite giants in the gorge in southern winterspring, they drop ek'o for +40ap (doesnt stack with winterfall firewater but still) but more importantly the greater frost protection potion recipe which can sell for 50-250g roughly.

Harry potter book on tape on the ipod. Seriously, I could grind on the most boringest stuff for DAYS while listening to magical wizards cast evil spells at each other.

Not much ingame that I can suggest to make things more fun, except maybe changing everything around so that elite ogres actually look like little fuzzy bunnies and quoting monty python every time you die.

"I soiled my armor I was so scared!"

as a mage i enjoy killing the Henderine (sp?) mobs in wintersprings for demonic runes/nice cash and greens/ and the occasional Eye of Shadow.

It's definitely not the most profitable activity but it's not as boring. Profitwise it's hard to find anything that comes close to herbalism even now.

They're the Cursed* and Condemned*. Their levels are wrong on Thottbot. It appears that these were lower level at some point the past, and not even elite. I tried my hand at grinding there with a slightly off spec and a little worse gear than now but most of the mobs were simply doing too much to me and I had downtime, when I took chances I died a couple of times. That corpse run is not for the faint of heart. ;) They dropped a little better than Tyr's generally does but I found them a lot harder.

I never did try DM-E farming. Guess I should give it a whirl.

As to the OP I would love for them to include a challenge element to cut down on the time investment of farming gold. It's not, I expect, easy to incorporate but it would certainly enhance a lot of players game experience and lessen the amount of gold-buying that goes on simply to keep at the high end. Color me a cynic but I fully expect Black Temple (if not the other 25m zones) to be every bit as messed up in regards to farming as Naxxramas.