As an avid pet collector with 124 pets to date, I decided to pick an alt character to level up Engineering. Sounded like a better plan than to buy the following Engineering-built vanity pets from the Auction House. Thinking about the overall cost on AH gives me dreadful chills:

To level up Engineering, you might end up spending over 2000 gold in materials easily. I have spent 1,400 gold already at Engineering level 160. Considering how much the pets costs overall (minimum 2700), I’d say starting Engineering profession is worth the investment.

In order to build all the mechanical pets for my collection, and as a bonus the Mechano-hog (motorcycle) which costs 17,000g in AH — an engineer requires lots of core materials that come from mining profession: copper, silver, gold, iron, mithril, truesilver and so on. Some people grab mining along with Engineering, or create an alt with it, but some people prefer to buy the materials from the Auction House because they don’t wish to spend time riding or flying around in circles for hours mining.

All was good in Engineering until I had to farm gold veins — which as you know are rare spawns off mithril and iron veins. As people keep mining mithril and iron veins, a rare gold vein spawn in its place later on. Not really a biggie, but time consuming to get those extra engineering points. Prices in the Auction House are quite expensive and not many pages come up for Gold Bars. They are rare to find in the AH, and pricy. I created a Death Knight yesterday and leveled it up a bit to level 58 to start mining profession.

It stroke me. If these people are making that kind of money off gold and mithril in the Auction House, why not do that myself?

After researching and reading I came up with an excellent spot to mine Mithril and Gold veins.

After the Cataclysm, Thousand Needles is now mostly underwater when the outer-wall of mountains to the east succumbed to the earthquakes. Water from the Great Sea poured in like a tsunami into the canyon, flooding it.

Thousand Needles feels now like the Cow Level of Miners. You can find several Mithril, Truesilver, Gold and Iron veins throughout the length of Thousand Needles underwater, and some above in the mountains.

The favorite Gold vein spot is in the center of the map, a cave named Splithoof Hold — now underwater — just south of Razorfen Down. There are a few Remora mobs level 40-43 within. You can find around 3 Gold veins inside at all times. No spawn-sharing with other veins. It’s just guaranteed Gold veins in that cave.

In this video, you will see me entering the Splithoof Hold cave. I mined 9 Gold ore. I also found a few Gold veins throughout Thousand Needles.

Ok, you hate Thousand Needles with a passion. I know. Especially the slow and tedious swimming. Shh! — here’s a little secret I’d like to share with new miners. There’s a quest titled “To the Summit” which starts at Mudsprocket (southern Dustwallow Marsh). The quest is given by Nyse (Horde). The Alliance version is given by the former Hippogryph Master of Thalanaar: Thyssiana. She’s also at Mudsprocket standing in front of Brogg (The Stonemaul Survivor).

Once you accept this quest, walk toward Dyslix Silvergrub (Flight Master) in Mudsprocket. Don’t take the taxi flight to New Thalanaar (Alliance) or Westreach Summit (Horde). When you click Dyslix, you will see a bubble option to talk with him. Click the bubble+text and he will fly you directly to your destination. You will see onscreen the completion of the quest text.

Speedbarge Diving Helm BuffComplete all of the quests thereafter, leading you to visit the Fizzle and Pozzik’s Speedbarge. There you will get a quest that grants you a permanent buff: Speedbarge Diving Helm.

This is a zone-wide buff you obtain whenever you enter Thousand Needles. Similiar to the one you get in Vash’jir. After completing the quest, it becomes permanent and sticks with you forever.

Open your character window by pressing “C” on your keyboard. Under the General section look for “Speed”. Your normal swim speed is 67%. With this Speedbarge Diving Helm buff you will get a permanent 108% swim speed anytime you enter Thousand Needles.

This buff is very handy for miners and herbalists. Thousand Needles has a few Stranglekelp and the mine veins mentioned earlier. If the player doesn’t have a flying mount yet, swimming this fast back and forth is a welcomed benefit. For those with a very fast flying mount, this buff allows you to dive down, mine, and dive up very fast allowing you to summon your flying mount in a breeze of time. Rinse and repeat. Another benefit is underwater breathing, which comes handy when mining veins inside underwater caves.

It’s hard to even find Gold Ore and Gold Bar on Auction House due to its rare spawns. However, that Thousand Needles cave has a continuous spawn of Gold veins which guarantees a good profit. Without Gold bars, it would be very hard for Engineers to level up.

Here are some examples of Thousand Needles mining profit in the Auction House:

  • Iron Bar (x20) costs around 80g – 90g
  • Mithril Bar (x20) costs around 50g – 85g
  • Gold Bar (x20) costs around 20g-60g
  • Truesilver Bar (x20) costs around 58g – 72g

At Engineering level 150, Engineers get the Gold Power Core recipe from the Engineering Trainer. This item requires one Gold Bar. Engineers get points for creating Gold Power Cores from level 150-189. However, because this recipe comes up as yellow text, there are chances to make no point, specially when you get to green text. That translates into several gold bar attempts. Since gold bars are hard to find in the Auction House, it’s wiser to level up making Gold Power Cores up to Engineering 160 and then pick up leveling off Iron Strut which is more available than gold.

The other recipe options’s materials are harder to come by, so Gold Power Core becomes the sole point maker until at least Engineering 160 where you get the option to create Iron Strut (which requires 2 Iron Bars) but provides points up to Engineering 179.

Between Engineering 170-175, Engineers are stuck again requiring 1 Iron Bar + a Gold Power Core to create a Gyrochronatom — which translates into at least 10 Gold Bars and 5 Iron Bars for those five points.

At Engineering 175, they switch to Solid Blasting Powder which requires 1 Solid Stone.

At Engineering 175, things get grim for Engineers. Tons of Mithril is needed. If the Engineer didn’t pick up Mining, he will seriously need to spend over 500+ gold in Mithril to level up from Engineering 175-230.

And from that point forward, Engineers will need Thorium, Truesilver, and so on.

Sometimes Engineers might not go into Mining because of how much time consuming it is to level up and mine all what they need. This is where miners can do some serious profit off players who have level 85 characters with plenty of gold to spare.

Thousand Needles is then a profit making machine that miners should consider. Not many people can be found in this place.