Meet Ohnekase: Profession Series, Part Three. Herbalism

Meet Ohnekase.

Bloodhoof, US

Due to the gloom of last week, and considering the topic, we are going in a different direction.  Last week, we looked at Ohnekase dying and being reborn as a Forsaken.  This week, we will look, instead, at the history where he was born to 2 Tauren Horticulturists.  Growing up in the beautiful plains of Morgore, he embraced the ways of Nature and the secret skills of Horticulture.  As such, he can talk to us about making money through Herbalism.

Flower-picking hippies...


For those that love flowers, Herbalism is a Gathering profession that allows us to wander the land in search of  of flowers and herbs.  These herbs are used by Alchemists for their potions and elixirs, or they are turned into inks by Inscriptionists for their inks, books, and cards.  As such, this gives us a great money-making opportunity.

In addition, each Herb node gives you XP, just like the Ore Nodes do.

Let us go ahead and look at the Undermine Journal for the Bloodhoof information on Herbalism.

Ok, so the numbers may not be as good as Skinning or Mining on this server, but we can find a lot of herbs very easily.

So lets see what we can do with this.

Let's go ahead and test this out...


OK, so again, we have to be level 5 before we can train Herbalism.  So lets get there first...

But I don't want to take up my weapon.  Can't we all just get along.

Stop fighting.  I can make cookies for everyone.

Oh, no!  They got Johnson.  He had one more day until retirement.
They...must....pay....!

Fear my Nature loving wrath.

You will pay for killing my friends!

Revenge is sweet.

So, now then, we just hit level 5, so we can train for Herbalism.  Because we are a Tauren, that means that we need to talk with Lalum Darkmane.  She can train us in Herbalism.

Fortunately, unlike Skinning and Mining, there is nothing extra needed.  So, now that we are level 5, and trained in Herbalism, let us go find a Node.

Hey, man, want some Herbs.  Sweet.


So, first thing to note, of course, is that you can track Herbs on your Minimap.  See below.

Before

After

Alright, so now that we know what we are looking for, lets go ahead and set the clock for 1/2 hour.

Come on, I am trying to get the herb.  Nothing against you.
Leave me alone.

Earthroot is usually found next to mountains, or on rock formations.

After a little bit of nothing, I finally found some more Herbs. 

Never get tired of this spell effect.  It is very cool. 

Silverleaf is found next to trees. 

Peacebloom is found in fields. 

Full inventory.  Lots of monsters have been attacking me, so I need to
make some room. 

As I hit 30 min, I ran into this one, so I thought I would get it.

Alright, so now that we are done, lets take a look at what we got.

14 Peacebloom, 22 Silverleaf, 1 Tigerseye, 24 Stringy Wolf Meat,
7 Small Eggs, 7 Earthroot, 1 Malachite

Ok, so the Peacebloom, the Silverleaf, and the Earthroot are the herbs we got.  However, the Wolf Meat and the Eggs are used in cooking.  The Tigerseye and the Malachite we have seen before.  So, lets talk with the Auctioneer, then see what we can get from that.

Not great, but still a gold, which is something.

We can get a bit more from the fact that we have more, but still not great.  Still worth it though. 

Earthroot was a little better, but we only have 7 of them.

Now here is something unexpected, that could really be good for us.
This is something that could make us some good money, if it sells. 

Nothing up, lets check the average on TUJ for horde and see what we can find.

Ok, so they list the market price at 50 silver, the Horde Average is 1 gold 25 silver.  I decided to try for 1 gold, but we will see where we get to.

We will check what sells later....

Later...


Ok, so let's see what all sold.

Wow, just about everything sold.

Nice, everything but the Tigereye sold.  This is pretty good, lets take a look at our ending cash.

Ok, so that is pretty good.  However, one thing to remember is that the majority of that money was some 40+ gold I got from the Stringy Wolf Meats.  The Herbs sold, but not for as much as our other professions have.

Why Herbalism is still worth getting.


OK, so I could see someone being skeptical of the use of Herbalism when all we got out of it was maybe 5 gold, and we have seen much higher values on Skinning and Mining.  Skeptics might be saying, well why bother getting herbalism at all if it won't make me money.

I will counter that it will make money.  And as much or more than Mining can make you.  First, take a look at the markets for Silverleaf, Earthroot, and Peacebloom (our low-level herbs):

Earthroot

Peacebloom

Silverleaf

OK, so notice three fields:  Market Price, Mean, and US Horde Mean.  Notice that both the Mean and the US Horde Mean are higher than the Market price.  Even notice that they are higher by as much as 50 silver more per herb.  That means that you can get an extra 10 gold per stack of 20 that you get.

For those epaying attention, it also means I made a couple of mistakes in choosing this profession and this server.  Let us look at my mistakes

1. Bad timing:  I usually set aside 2 times to work on these characters for these blogs.  If my Mean price is higher than my Market Price, it does mean that the price of our Herbs goes up and down.  Had I wanted to, I could have waited to post things on the Auction House until I thought I could get a better profit margin from them.  This is an important lesson in gold making in general:  Timing is quite important.  For example, on several gold-making blogs, they discuss posting late at night (after 10 pm or so) or during the mid-morning (after everyone has likely gone to work) so that you have less chance of being undercut on your auctions (thereby, more likely to sell).  Secondly, I could have posted in the middle of the week, when fewer people had a chance to be on and getting their herbs up.  Just changing the timing could have gotten me more for my money.

2. Wrong choice of profession for this server:  If you read most gold blogs that have random tips on items, most of the time you should see something letting you know that your results will vary.  The reason is simple:  No matter how awesome the market for XYZ is on server ABC, your server may not have that market.  However, there are always markets on every server.  Lets take the server we went with (Bloodhoof US), and take a look at the Skinning and Mining on TUJ for this server.

On this server, right now, Copper is going for 58 Silver each and Light Leather is going for 92 Silver each.  Both might have been better choices for this character.  Also, I could have added either to my characters choice of professions (I get two) and earned a higher income from them.

3. Don't count your chickens before they hatch:  We always look at the lowest level crafting materials because that is how the blog currently is (that might change).  However, we should not forget that this is for characters that are leveling themselves as well. Someone might be level 30 that is looking at this and wanting to making some money.  And the other herbs might have a better market than our low level herbs.  We can take another look and find herbs that sell really well:

So, sure, our three low level herbs aren't big sellers, but look at Mageroyal, which we start herbalizing after those three.  It is going for 70 Silver each, which is better than we talked about.  Briarthorn, which we get about the same time, has an average price of 1 gold, 17 silver for it (Alchemist use it to level quite a few points).  If we were leveling up and found we needed money, we could use Wowhead to find good places to farm some of these and spend 1/2 hour making better money than we have.

In short, your profession won't be the most profitable profession at every single skill point.  However, there are profitable places for every profession.

To Make a long story short (too late....)


Herbalism is a great profession.  I am very fond of it and there are two primary reasons for it.  First, you will find herbs anywhere you are.  You will not always be killing animals to skin and you will not always be near rockfaces, but Herbs literally grow everywhere in the world.  Second, similar to the first, you will usually find more herbs while you are questing than you will the other two.  In my experience, when I have had Mining/Herbalism on a character,  I find that I have roughly double the stacks of herbs than I do of ore.

This post brings us to the end of our series on the primary gathering professions.  In my opinion, for money, you can never go wrong with just having gathering characters.  The trade materials you get almost always sell, and you don't have to do a lot of extra work while you are playing the game.

Next week, we are going to take a look at a secondary gathering profession:  Fishing.

So, until then.

See ya next time...