Winterspring
Overview
Key Facts
Level range: 50 - 60
Instances in this zone: None
Connects to zones: South to Felwood and Moonglade.
Horde flight path: Yes
Alliance flight path: Yes
Bank:
Silver Mobs:
Grizzle Snowpaw - Winterfall Village
Zone Guide
[Cut and pasted from Ynir's forum post. http://www.theamazonbasin.com/wow/forums/index.php?showtopic=12091]
There is money to be made in Tyr's Hand, East Plague, but Spangles cannot tolerate the congestion. The ambience in the Plaguelands is worse than in Linden, NJ. She hates every second of her time in either place.
She likes Winterspring. The sky is blue, the air invigorating, and the zone is largely empty most of the time. Death is everywhere, so get to 55 or so before farming here. Do the Timbermaw faction quests in Felwood beforehand so you can get thru the tunnels without hurting anybody.
Spangles is a tailor so she farms Jadenar demons in Felwood for Felcloth, and surrounding areas for rare plants. So does everybody else. The best farming is in Shadow Hold, which is empty of competiton on off-hours. Just go from the entrance to the end, back and forth, killing at your own pace until your bags are full.
Timbermaw faction is good farming. The three Winterfall furbolg areas in Winterspring are Frostfire Springs in the west, Winterfall Post in the southwest, and Winterfall Village in the east. Competition for kills is fierce at times but most aren't serious about it and drift off after a while.
The pattern and enchant rewards for revered status are worthwhile. The epic Timbermaw Guardian trinket gained by exalted status is similar to the Baron Peasant Caller: fun, but useless.
Defender of the Timbermaw (epic trinket, faction reward, analysis by Miniraa) Summons a Timbermaw ancestor, a ghostly sprite of a furbolg that has roughly 900 to 1000 HP. It lasts for 20 seconds or until your death, whichever happens first. It will heal you only if you drop below 50% hp, and only if it hasn't been attacked. The healing wave is a 2.5 second cast that heals for approximately 500-560. If your timbermaw ancestor is attacked, he will go into melee/lightning bolt spam mode. His lightning bolt does about 225 to 300 damage and has a 2.5 second cast. His melee attacks do between 40 to 50 damage. The cooldown on the trinket is 10 minutes, and has the typical 30 second cooldown on equip.
Winterfall furbolgs drop good money, runecloth, firewater, good greens, grey items that vendor for for 1g or so, and food/drink. They also have some of the best blue/purple drop rates of mobs in the game. Their chests spawn regularly. Spangles found the Heirophant Band in one of them. She found a Krol blade on a Winterfall Pathfinder.
You can expect to clear 3g/hr under normal conditions. Normal conditions mean lots of competition, no spectacular drops, and before selling the cloth and firewater. You can make significantly more on off-hours, or when you pick up more greens than usual.
All three camps are studded with thorium nodes. Miners can map the thorium and do the circuit but most nodes are gone during prime time. Icecaps grow everywhere for flower pickers.
Spangles' earnings are skewed to the low end because she farms for Wintersaber trainer faction, which means that she spends 7 out of every 12 minutes commuting from Winterfall Village to Frostsaber Rock to renew the faction quest. Since this trip will ruin more than 100 hours over the entire quest, some comments about mitigating this agony are in order.
First, buy an epic mount to get an epic mount. You will make back the money farming, especially if you are a miner or skinner, and return to better things tens of hours sooner. The direct line trip from Winterfall Village to Frostsaber Rock has become very dangerous since 1.9. The bears and chimeras will unseat you if you are on a slow mount, which is annoying but survivable.
The Frostsabers on the last leg of the trip will literally eat you alive if you don't wear plate, however. The road north from Everlook takes more time than the overland trip and is mindnumbingly boring. The sabers at the end of that road are especially densely packed and tenacious.
I use a Kensington Expert trackball with a circular ring that provides smooth panning from the closest first-person view to the third-person view from a helicopter. The helicopter view allows time to dodge most attacks, but Spangles is still routinely unseated. If she fights a group of sabers she will die, so she just keeps running until they give up and let her remount.
The Wintersaber trainer faction quest line begins with Frostsaber Provisions, a truly terrible quest that requires farming infrequent drops from animals that yield nothing else of value. This is no trick for hunters, who are questing demons there anyway. Spangles spent the worst week of her life floundering in the snow, however, gutting through what obviously is a gatekeeper quest.
Wintersaber trainer faction provides no reward worth persuing. Exalted status entitles you to pay full price for an epic tiger with exactly the same properties as any other, except that it is a Wintersaber Pride Watcher, without armor or decoration. You can find details about the quest lines here:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Wintersaber_Trainers
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y26/Mirajj/cat3.jpg
(Mirajj, astride a Wintersaber Pride Watcher, with matching pet!)
Farming is more fun with a longterm objective other than money. However, it's still very dilute fun.
Spangles is 5000/21000 to exalted, roughly 600/900 turn-ins of 10 furbolg each for the Winterfall Intrusion quest, which will total more than 10,000 furbolg kills. Killing thousands of anything requires some planning, and Winterfall Village is her laboratory for speccing (11 arms / 40 fury), learning to fight dual wield, and gearing to kill furbolg as quickly as possible. The results of her experiments are summarized in the "Farmer" profile:
Killing quickly is of the essence when competition is fierce. Note the Black Dragonscale armor, usually worn by hunters. The shoulders, chest and legs provide over 1100 AP buffed. This configuration enables Spangles to demolish a single furbolg in 10 seconds or less. (Thanks, Monkey, for this example of outside-the-box thinking.)
The mechanics of a very short fight are implemented carefully, because the low AC/HP of the "Farmer" profile leave little room for error:
(1) Target, then Bloodrage, Battle Shout, Berserker Rage, Intercept.
(2) Hamstring or Sunder during the stun interval to jumpstart rage generation. Demoralizing Shout.
(3) Do nothing whatever, let the game play itself until Bloodthirst lights up.
(4) Do nothing whatever, let the game play itself until Bloodthirst or Execute light up.
(5) The only useful option is one pummel to a Shaman to prevent health regeneration.
Bloodthirst and Flurry do the work, micromanaging just prolongs the fight. A short fight is 6 seconds, average is 12, a long fight is 20 seconds. The DPS meter ramps from 80 at the beginning to 250 at the end. A short fight consumes 15% - 20% of 4100 HP. 600 HP is the minimum required to survive a single encounter.
The only cause of dying is forgetting to bandage between fights. There is no excuse for this. Runecloth drops so copiously that the cost of bandages is below the limit of error.
If an Ursa adds to a Shaman, fear the Ursa when the Shaman is one blow from dying. Bandage before the Ursa gets back. Two Ursa are taken down serially without bandaging. Two Shaman require full health at the start to survive ranged attacks from the add.
Spangles seems to be the only character on the server that cannot solo Chief Winterfall and his two adds. She can take on any two, but three are not survivable without health potions, which are unaffordable.
Winterfall Village is the scene of overlapping faction quests, Timbermaw and Wintersaber trainer, so the activity can be very hectic. Most are grinding Timbermaw faction and finish or give up quickly. Wintersaber faction farmers are few, know each other, and group to share kill credit and the misery of an hopeless grind. Spangles also groups with the lvl 58s that appear to quest the Chief, to get them their kills and speed them on their way.
Horde show up, usually in less than proportionate numbers, and are generally ignored in the shuffle. Every now and then they will act badly, rampaging around, ganking kills, and parking their pets in aggressive mode in front of spawn sites.
Cows in epic gear are as easy to herd as any other cows. The quest for the Timbermaw Guardian trinket includes planting a summons for the 61 elite demon Xandivious, who stomps around the mezzanine level of the Village until he is killed to obtain the trinket. For some unknown reason, the summoning device is obtainable repeatedly, and usable indefinitely by anyone exalted with the Timbermaws. (Thanks, Tribade, for this nugget of arcane knowledge.)
When the bovines require rounding up, Spangles summons the demon, and resumes farming. She issues a warning to other Alliance to stay calm and go about their business. The horde are baffled, of course, and flail at the demon, and die, and call up reinforcements.
This affords the rest of us at least 20 minutes of relative peace until they succeed in killing Xandivious. By which time the 8 minute cooldown on the summoning device is up, the demon returns, and the cycle repeats until the cows amble off to greener pastures in MC and AQ.
(Spangles never met a cow that can read, and is not worried about horde spies deciphering this post.) laugh.gif
The trash mobs north of Everlook and to the east of the road to Frostsaber Rock are not worth farming. The chimeras, bears and frostsabers drop useless junk. Owlkin in the northeast are too far from Everlook to bother with for most. Questers in the area report a good drop rate of purples, though.
Highbourne ghosts on Kel'Theril, the lake south of Everlook, drop good greens and important recipes/patterns. There is nobody home but the occasional quester. Yetis and owlkin to the southeast drop cloth and money but the yield from furbolgs is better.
The best farming, and the most fun, and the most dangerous, is in Mazorthil. Here be the famous blue dragons that surround the cave that questers run for the Awbee epic armor quest and Ony key quest.
The good news is that these dragons are plentiful, spawn quickly, and are not part of any alliance quest. There is a horde hunter quest here but usually there is no competition at all. These mobs drop excellent money, important alchemy recipes, and some of the best greens I have ever seen. Epic shoulders dropped for Spangles from a cobalt whelp, and a Hanzo sword appeared recently.
They also drop the Arcanite Mechanical Dragon schematic (highly sought after due to its rarity), the Robe of Winter Night pattern (BoP), they have a good blue rate, and if you are so lucky as to get your hands on a Mature Blue Dragon Sinew... you will make some hunter very happy, or yourself at least 400g richer.
The bad news is that these animals are very dangerous. Nobody but a hunter will farm them solo. Spangles will team with a healer, or a hi-end rogue or mage for dps. A party of three can kill on the run nonstop. She won't farm in a bigger group.
Working outside the cave requires nonstop killing to avoid being jumped by respawns. There are named mobs that seem to pop out of nowhere. These are a hassle for a small party and never seem to drop anything.
Working inside the cave is easier because you can pull the mobs to a wall. It is safest to clear one side of the cave from beginning to end, jump on the elevator rune and work outside for a while until respawn is complete. Running back to the entrance through repops is very dangerous.
Working in the cave after another party has cleared is also dangerous. Spangles will group questers and help them get to the rune so they don't train mobs on her head.
The conventional wisdom for questers is to run in as far as possible, die, rez, and then run the rest of the way. This is silly. Any stealth class can just walk to the rune. Group with one other person if you are unstealthy, and you can make some money on the way.
There are only two named in the cave, and they always patrol the same area near the rune. The small one can be taken by two or three, but never seems to drop anything. Spangles has never tried to take out the big boss, a horde quest object. She rarely finds him dead, so he's probably not worth the effort.
There are opportunities to be explored in the far south of Winterspring. Fafner and Spangles have hunted the elite Frostmaul Giants and Preservers for Wintersaber faction, but saw nothing important drop. This may have changed in a recent patch, we shall see. The Giantkin are the only source of the Greater Frost Protection Potion, something a lot of Alchemists like to have. They have good blue/purple drop rates as well.
There are very ferocious demons guarding Hyjal, a future zone/instance containing the World Tree, a back door to Ony's cave, and other scenic attractions. The demons are very hard to farm, but drop the (BoE) Eye of Shadow that priests need for their epic quest. You can make a priest very happy, or yourself much richer as it is impossible for them to solo farm the Eye.
Spangles is parked in Winterspring for the months it will require to obtain a Wintersaber Pride Watcher. She will group with you to farm or to get to the rune anytime. __________
(Thanks to Mirajj, who is quoted directly in many places in this text.)