The return of Wrath of the Lich King also means the return of great gold farms as players will be flocking to World of Warcraft once more. Between mounts, professions, raid consumables, and gear, you'll be surprised how many thousands of gold you'll need in order to purchase everything you want.
With all of that in mind, we've put together the most important materials to farm as far as the auction house is concerned. Professions like blacksmithing, jewelcrafting, and tailoring are all incredibly important for crafting some of the best gear in the game in Wrath, and each one of them relies on materials you can farm in the world as reagents. Here are the most important ones to pick up and use for yourself or turn over for a profit.
8 Iceweb Spider Silk
This spider silk is necessary for a plethora of Northrend tailoring recipes including pre-BIS (best in slot) items, time gated Spellthread materials, and even mounts. However, you can only find it dropping off of mobs in two locations across the entirety of the frozen northern continent: Trapdoor Crawlers in Zul'Drak and Crystalweb Spitters and Weavers in The Storm Peaks.
Because this item is used in a wide variety of tailoring recipes and only has two spots to farm it from, it's bound to cost many times its weight in gold on your server. After all, scarcity plus demand equals value. It's best to farm this material during off hours when other players aren't killing all the mobs located in these areas. Otherwise, you're probably better off searching for another material on this list.
7 Chunk o' Mammoth
Cooking is an important profession for characters to maintain yet again in Wrath as food buffs supply great boons to DPS, healers, and tanks alike. Chunk o' Mammoth is used for cooking recipes to make Mega Mammoth Meal which is one of the best DPS food buffs in the game.
Furthermore, it's also a reagent for the Great Feast which creates a clickable feast on the ground that will supply your raid with food buffs in case they were too lazy to pick up their own. Consequently, a lot of mammoths are going to be eaten as raids progress through content across Northrend, and prices will stay at a good, steady price.
6 Dragonfin Angelfish
Fishing also serves a great purpose over the course of Wrath content, primarily thanks to the Dragonfin Angelfish serving as a reagent for the best food consumables for strength and ability-based classes. While Mega Mammoth Meal provides the same amount of attack power, its buff doesn't stack with other buffs that increase your stat scores such as Blessing of Kings.
For this reason, Blackened Dragonfish and Dragonfish Filets are actually slightly better food buffs than Mega Mammoth Meal. While Dragonfin Angelfish will serve as the most sought-after fish to acquire, Musselback Sculpin, Nettlefish, and Glacial Salmon will also demand a decent price thanks to their involvement as reagents for the Fish Feast.
5 Frozen Orb
Frozen Orbs drop from final bosses of Heroic instances in Wrath and are a necessary material in 70 different recipes, many of which serve as pre-BIS or BIS items. You can also purchase Frozen Orbs from badge vendors in Dalaran at a price of 10 badges per Frozen Orb.
The problem with farming Frozen Orbs is that, beyond paying badges for them, it's not a guaranteed drop. You'll have to outroll the four other members of your dungeon group in order to secure one. Nonetheless, this still remains one of the most important materials in all of Wrath, and can easily be sold on the auction house to turn a quick profit. If you happen to have a super well-geared character, you might even be able to convince a dungeon group to give you the Frozen Orb at the end of a heroic in exchange for carrying them.
4 Arctic Fur
Arctic Fur has a very low chance of dropping for skinners off of any Northrend beast you skin, with a few select mobs providing much greater probabilities. These mobs include Drakuru Raptors, Infected Grizzly Bears, Dappled Stags, Ragemanes, Icemaw and Icepaw Bears, Sinewy Wolves, and Tundra Crawlers.
Arctic Fur is a key reagent for nearly 50 leatherworking recipes that are important for end-game content. Perhaps most important among these recipes are the Frosthide and Icescale leg armors which are bis enchants for all classes. Needless to say, Arctic Fur will remain in high demand across the expansion as players replace their gear with upgrades.
3 Frost Lotus
This is the most important herb in Northrend due to its low drop rate and the fact that it's a necessary reagent for the best consumable flasks in the game. Frost Lotus has around a 5% chance of dropping off of any Northrend herb you gather. Lichbloom and Talandra's Rose have slightly better chances of providing you with a Frost Lotus, but the difference is pretty much negligible.
Herbalism, or herbing, has always been a great source of gold due to the importance of consumables in raids. However, as with Arctic Fur and Skinning, the issue here is that Herbalism will take up one of your two highly valuable profession slots. If you enjoy picking flowers and always having consumables on hand, this is a no-brainer farm, but it's certainly not for everyone.
2 Titanium Ore
Titanium Ore can be gathered from titanium veins found across Northrend as long as you have the mining profession. Like Arctic Fur and Frost Lotus above, again the greatest deficit of this farm is that it requires one of your two profession slots.
However, Titanium Ore is used in not only a number of highly important crafting recipes for items, but is a valuable reagent for the time-gated crafting of Titansteel Bars as well. Furthermore, titanium and other mining veins across Northrend have a small chance of dropping gems used in Jewelcrafting when you mine them as well. As a result, Mining supplies multiple income streams due to demand from multiple professions. While this is great, it's also important to keep in mind that it also means that Mining will be a very popular profession choice and a highly contested farm.
1 Eternals
Last but not least, Eternals are essentially the new form of Primals from the Burning Crusade. Eternal Water, Fire, Shadow, Life, and Earth are all used in a variety of crafting recipes across all crafting professions. Furthermore, they don't require any kind of profession in order to gather. For these reasons, Eternals are both the most accessible and most useful materials to farm in all of Wrath.
Eternals drop from elemental mobs found throughout Northrend, however, you can find all the different elementals located in Wintergrasp. That being said, you can only see and farm these elementals if your faction currently maintains the Essence of Wintergrasp buff for winning the most recent battle for Wintergrasp. This is also a zone that's incredibly popular for players looking to PvP (player versus player), so it's important to come ready to fight if you plan on taking advantage of the Wintergrasp elementals. If you don't like PvP, it's a better idea to stick to elementals found in various other locations across Northrend.