Thorium Crater

Since when did Un’goro Crater become Thorium City?  I have been going all-out leveling a Hunter, and went through Un’goro en route to level 60.  Because Un’goro Crater has been my oldest gold grinding spot dating back to the early days of vanillla WoW, I know the Rich Thorium and Small Thorium vein spawn points like the back of my hand.  Little did I know, this time around, there were veins everywhere!  I couldn’t run 20 yeards without being in range of another vein it seemed, and sometimes veins were spawning immediately after I looted them!

In exactly 34 minutes, I looted:

• 241x Thorium Ore
• 315x Dense Stone
• 16x Mithril ore
• 4x Truesilver Ore
• 3x Arcane Crystal
• 3x Star Ruby
• 2x Large Opal
• 1x Huge Emerald
• 1x Blue Sapphire
• 1x Azerothian Diamond

Selling everything I made about 200g, because Thorium Ore has plummeted in price.  I can see why.  I never had to drift away from the edges of the zone at all.  Just one big circle around Un’Goro and I was set.  Made 3 complete circuits in 34 minutes.

Is this a gold making strategy?  Yes, but it’s not huge.  The market could easily be flooded with Thorium Ore, and profits would be minimal.  FYI, Dense Stone sells for crappola.  I just vendored them all.

On the bright side, this is a great zone to hit if you are leveling Mining, Blacksmithing, Engineering, or Jewelcrafting.  It would appear 30 minutes to and hour would be all you’d need (and then some) to skill up.

I’m not sure when Blizz made this change, but it had to be fairly recently.

Let me break this down a bit so you can see where I am coming from:

Blizzard sets ore and herb nodes in what I call ‘sections’.  Each zone, such as Un’goro, has a set number of sections where ore and herbs spawn.  Lets say, for the sake of ease, Un’goro was divided into 10 ‘sections’ for ore purposes.  Each section has 2 possible ore spawn points, and only 1 is active/live at any given time.  The respawn on a node when it is mined is about 5-10 minutes.

So, if all ore veins were active in Un’goro, there would be a maximum 10 veins at any given time.  If I mined every vein, then they would respawn on their set timer, and would respawn in either the same place or in the other designated spawn point.

With me so far?

In actuality, the old Un’Goro had about 4 possible sections for Rich Thorium to spawn, and they were isolated to Fire Plume Ridge and the SW corner of the zone.  Each section had roughly 3 possible spawn points.

Currently, itn ow appears Rich Thorium spawns everywhere in Un’Goro.  Littered across the edges are also a bundle of Small Thorium Veins as well.  It almost seems that Blizz created new ‘sections’ and/or gave each possible spawn point its own section.  I haven’t quite worked out the details, but it’s ALOT of veins out there.  Don’t believe me?  Head over to Un’goro early one morning and make one circuit.

Regardless, the bottom line is that Un’goro is now literally bleeding Thorium, so if Thorium is what you need, head on over and rake in your easy share!

Here’s the full SS for anyone interested, click to enlarge: