Comments

Comment by 618121

My best guess is this will be one of the elements used in Cata to make items (like motes in BC and crystallized items in WotLK.)

Comment by 615838

I think Blizzard just got rid off the "10" goes in 1 , like 10 mote of earth to primal earth 10 crystalized -> eternal,
just stack to 200 (20 big elements).

sweet idea.

Comment by 433189

gas clouds are gone in the new areas. volatiles drop from certain types of mobs, as well as gathering professions.

Comment by llangevi

Take a port to My Hyjal. side of where you arrive are loads of Scalding Rock Elemental that have an amazing respawn rate. I stood in one place and was killing about 3/minute (one at a time as a level 85 priest). In 20 mins I got 13 Volatile Earth. I tried Twilight Highlands because the chart had a much higer percentage, but in 15 mins I got nothing from much tougher kills (1/min), and they are spread out more with longer respawn rates. If you are grinding for mats and don't want to pay the AH prices, this is the way to go.

Comment by 518496

The drop rates listed for this are phallaciously high. They do not drop that often.

If you are trying to farm this, the best way, by far, is to mine in Deepholm.

Comment by 739760

This early in the expansion I did my research and looked around multiple different areas to find the best place to farm almost all of the new Volatile materials used in tradeskills. I've managed to find the best areas to farm every single one expect for Life, which im still in the process of finding the best area for. (The one in Hyjal was nerfed recently). Anyway, below you will find links to each locations youtube video.

Volatile Fire Vid - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDGMKS-DDIE

Volatile Water Vid - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ToiIIZ_a6E

Volatile Earth Vid - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7uLOtecDSQ

Volatile Air Vid - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TWuNUU7HEc

Humbolts Conflagaration Volatile Fire Farming Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaKvxkQvo6c

Volatile Air Farming in Uldum Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lASXxQ3Ckxo

Comment by haylen

*Must have mining to farm using this method*

As of right now, I've found the best place to farm the Volatile Earth's are in Deepholm. If you go into the Crumbling Depths and kill the Gorged Gyreworm's as well as Gyreworm's, then mine them..the drop rate is pretty decent for Volatile Earth's. The drop rate from nodes isn't as great as I'd like..so this is the best way I've found to farm the Earth's atm. Good luck!

Edit: There are also a few nodes inside the Crumbling Depths, so you get some ore as well. =)

Comment by 691812

Miners keep an eye out in deepholm for energized geodes and lodestone elementals killed by other players doing quests, particularly around the entrance to the temple. The geodes, when killed, look like a blue spikey ball, and the elementals will look like an elongated rock. You can mine the corpses and get volatile earth and obsidian ore.

Comment by Banishy

Here is the best way to get your Volatile Air, Water, and Earth. Transmute Life to Air/Water/Earth.
its 475 alch, You can farm 100 herbs, and get like 30-50 life in a hr. Drop rate is like 30-40%

Transmute give 14-16 Volatile of your choice.
Note: Transmute spec has a cool down of midnight the next day
Ex. 8pm = 4 hr cool down left. 1pm= 11hr cool down
1 thing to tell u on the Cool down is that its on the same cool down as True gold transmute.

Note: Water = Vashj
Air = Uldum
Earth = Deepholm
Fire = Mt Hyjal (Note its better to fish in Twilight highlands u can get like 10 -18 in 10 mins. The timer of each pool is around 10 min cool down.( I trade these for water/life in trade)

Transmute spec Alch: If you are a transmute spec.
Still go to the zone u want, but you maybe get 15 of another element. Like I wanted water, I went to Vashj and my proc did water +earth + fire It doesn't do 15x2 of that Volatile. Instead its 15x1 + 15x1 of another element.

You can sell the herbs, or use the herbs for Inscription/Alch to level it w/o trying to level it up.
I use the herbs to level Jewel Crafting, and using Alch transmute (no cool down on gems) (starting at level 500) 3 Herbs + 3 of each Green color gem = a blue color gem. Cut the gem = your gear or money. (Great way to level JC and Alch w/o trying)

Mining isn't very good for getting Volatile. 100-150 ore = 5-8 earth or fire/and or water isnt very good compare to the transmute for where it is 1 day and not much work since herbing has a drop rate of 1:3 herbs drop a Volatile life compare to mining has 1:8 to 1:13 drop rate

Comment by 746092

30 Gorged Gyreworm's kills in Crumbling Depths not a one single drop so i dont know what u on guys about.

Comment by 770489

Thraisenth,

RNG is RNG, you could, theoretically, kill 1000 and not get a single drop, and then kill another 1000 and every single one would drop a volatile earth, does this mean there is a trend? No. Your comment was rated down for this reason. To clarify, the reason that the pattern of your drops doesn't matter is because we know that drops are completely independent, it doesn't matter what happened before, because for each kill the drop rate will be exactly the same.

How do you know, the drop rate will be exactly the same? Blizz could easily include various drop rates, depending on some variables like number of kills, time spent in zone, etc.
We don't know that. We just can hope that Blizz is going for fair, constant drop rates. But even then, if it's not a drop rate of like 1% or lower, with the number of kills increasing, the average drop rate will always some time meet the real value. (if there is one, real, constant value, like said before)

Comment by 783918

Farming Volatile Earth in Hyjal results:

3 out of 47 kills.

Mobs are easy to kill but the drop rate for V.E. has been nerfed to about 5% or so.

-Maxxy

Comment by 777214

Has anyone tested if Mining in Deephole means more earth? Hyjal more fire etc?

Comment by 89813

Very good spot especially to the east of where you port in because they are in mobs. That said, after noticing a less than 9% droprate (25 kills and nothing) I decided to go back to mining. Mining also give you lots of Elementium, Pyrite, fire, water and air to create items and\or skill up and even if you don't get a lot of earth, you can make a ton of money selling what you mined and buy the Volatile Earth. Also, no fighting required, you can do your dailies and have a better chance of higher value drops when you get them rather than level 80 drops.

I almost hate to even share this :)

Comment by em3raldxiii

I am just going to summarize the discussion above into one unified post for new visitors, etc.

It would appear that the consensus is that mining is by far the most effective method of farming Volatile Earth, particularly in Deepholm where they will drop from mining nodes as well as many of the mobs (killed by the player or by other players). The most effective mobs appear to be the Gyreworms in the NE quadrant of Deepholm, and the Deepstone Elementals in the South-Southwest area.

Other notable methods are to kill the various earth elementals in Mount Hyjal, particularly near the zone-in area due to the very high respawn rates of the mobs. Also at 64x58 in Hyjal are Molten Tormentors with a similar drop rate and high mob density. The downside here is the lower mob respawn rate.

Much discussion has been put into the tendency for drops to happen in some sort of pattern. As far as I know, there is no special way to maximize your V.E. drop rate through pattern farming. It would be similar to saying (if the drop rate is truly a random selection) that you could maximize your "heads versus tails" coin flip results by flipping the coin by switching from left handed versus right handed flipping. It is conceivable (although with diminishing probability) that you could flip a coin 1000 times and get heads each time using no special flipping technique (See Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead for a full philosophical discussion on this phenomenon).

Finally, it is also noted that you can get Volatile Earth from prospecting Pyrite ore, and with a fairly respectable drop rate. The argument against this, of course, is that the Pyrite may be worth substantially more within your server's economy and as such, you should investigate the profitability of selling the Pyrite Ore and purchasing the Volatiles.

I hope this helps!

Comment by 800238

I haven't noticed anyone mention this, I wish someone had told me before I had already progressed past it...

Towards the beginning of the Therazane quest line ( I think during The Very Earth Beneath Our Feet ), the back side of the Temple of Earth is under attack by waves of Irestone Rumbler. They attack at several different points, coming in waves of 5 or more at each area, and can be mined as long as you help kill them. I say help, because the npc's will be killing them off either way. They have a 10% chance of dropping 1-2 volatile earth, so on average you get 1 out of every wave of 5, and a new wave comes every 30 seconds or so. I got 18 in a little over 5 min.

The only problem with this great source of earths, is that as soon as you complete the quests in that area, they are gone for good.

Comment by sivla

as a blacksmith and a miner...and the shocking drop rate...in fact in 4 hours i have had 2 from mine nodes and non from elemental mobs..so the way i see it, either up the drop rate or remove the stupid requirement for it in the first place.

Comment by stardrow

i have to say that i find the elemental's in the first area of Mount hyjal to be a excellent place to farm these...whilst the drop rate is low your killing them at about a rate of 5 to 1 of any other mob that may drop these

Comment by sivla

i spent 2 hours mining the corpses, and nothing (starting area hyjal) surely the best place to get them is from elementium?

Comment by littleminx

Just spent 30 mins farming Scalding Rock Elementals in MT Hyjal and not one single Earth dropped, so have blizzed nerfed the drop rate for these things or am i just unlucky?

Comment by 541568

So far I have tried the mount hyjal location. I spent over an hour there killing, looting and mining the mobs. I got 6 VE's.
I went to deepholm. Same thing with the worms. Over an hour. 5 VE's Mining elementium and pyrite.. well lets just say. the time it took to get 4 stacks of elementium and about 6 pyrite.. I wont farm anything any more but nodes...

Comment by 541568

spent the better part of an hour there twice and got 3 VE's
i believe they were nerfed. I get more mining elementium by a huge degree AND I get ore..so..win win for me.

Comment by 123178

Judging by the 3 comments that have been posted since 4.1 and by the fact that I've been killing Scalding Rock Elemental in Hyjal for 35 minutes without a single drop whereas I used to have around 6-10 VE, I think it's more than safe to say that the drop rate was definitely nerfed.

If you want to farm Volatile Earth get your mining ready and go farm some deposits.

Comment by 826522

From my experience the only notable method of farming volatile earth, is to kill Gyreworms in Deepholme. Also from my own experience, the gorged gyreworms didnt drop as many volatiles as the little, normal gyreworms.

Dont forget to mine them after you've killed them. This method > all other methods, that iv tried so far.
(other methods iv tried: Killing mobs in twilight highlands and mt hyjal, and mining ore)

Comment by cyberdreck

Just unlucky , my guess. i have to farm them for many pieces of gear on 2 toons so ill be at it a while. I do have an alch to transmute I may have to go that route.

Comment by 825461

Okay; I normally wouldn’t really want to help my competition farm my areas, but since a lot of people seem to be confused about where to go to farm volatile earth I’ll let you in on the secret: Obsidian Stone Slaves, though the drop rate from looting them is only about 15%; the drop rate from mining the corpses is an additional 10% (in addition, the mobs are in a location that also spawns Elemental veins quite often), not to mention that the mobs have an incredible respawn rate. I picked up 6 in the first 5 minutes of this.
GL

Comment by 780613

Nodes FTW - don't waste your time killing mobs if you've got mining. If you don't need the ore you'll make a fortune selling it along with gems and any other volatiles you don't require.

Comment by MonsterERB

From a small sample size last night, it looks like the Deepholm method (Gyreworm drops, then mine the corpses) still works decently. In roughly 7-8 minutes before heading to bed, I killed/mined about a dozen gyreworms and gorged gyreworms, for a haul of 5 volatile earth. If droprate is 13% (roughly 1 in 8) for 1-2 VE, followed by a similar rate for mining the corpses, you would expect to get (0.125 * 1.5) + (0.125 * 1.5) = 0.375 VE per worm, or 3 VE per 8 worms mined, which is roughly what I saw. (This also assumes equal chances of getting 1 or 2 VE, which may not be true.) Assuming it takes about 40 seconds to find, kill, loot, and mine a worm, that's 90 worms per hour, which should give about 33 VE per hour.
...
Next chance I get, I'll head back up there for a longer session to see if these numbers hold, or if I was just lucky. It does make some kind of narrative sense, that volatile earth would be easier to find in an elemental earth plane.

Comment by MonsterERB

Alright, tried the Deepholm method again, for exactly 30 minutes this time. The final tally:

10 volatile earth (20 VE per hour)
13 conductive shards
86 shimmering shards
52 scintillating crystals
1 "trash item" (warped greatsword)
The shards/crystals/trash item autosold for 59g13s70c

Still a pretty good method, but not as good as the initial shorter test indicated. For what it's worth, I believe every single volatile earth I got was from mining the corpses, not from initial loot drops. So, if you're not a miner, I wouldn't bother with this method.

Comment by Pinktail

since when u mining it not give u volatile earth anymore?

Comment by rslogic

Right outside Nordrassil, in Hyjal, I killed the Earth Elementals from 8:58am to 9:32am.
As an Arms Warrior, 85, they went down in about 2-4 key strokes, which means an average of about 3-4 seconds to kill one mob, 2 seconds to loot, and another 3 seconds to Mine. I didn't stop flying/charging new mobs until 9:32.

8:58am - start
9:12am - 9 volatile earth (all from looting, none from mining)
9:22am - 16 volatile earth (only 1 from mining corpses)
9:32am - 18 volatile earth (I think 2 total from mining)

Now, if we speculate that, on average, I killed, looted and Mined one ele every ...20 seconds (low estimate just for the sake of argument) that's 34 minutes • 3 = 102 mobs.

18/102 = 17.64% drop rate. Small sample size, obviously, but this just goes to show that they STILL drop VE.

On top of that, since my only purpose was farming VE for Hardened Elementium, all my "loot" went towards purchasing VE on the AH.

I started with 2108.56 gold, and after vendoring had 2194.58 gold. That's mostly the gray drops from looting and mining, with 1 gray armor piece thrown in (also got one green, but it's DEd). So, 86g profit in 34 minutes.

AH on Nazjatar, I got a little lucky. Some ppl were selling VE for only 5g each, so, with my 86g, I bought 17.

In 34 minutes of farming, I acquired 35 Volatile Earth.

I will try other methods, like Deepholm, today also.

I just finished a full flying and mining run in Twilight Highlands (a rather long run because I like to run through the entire mine, killing everything while mining) with the following results (It took about 2 hours):

12 VE
11 VF
17 VW (killed all the water eles on the first part of the run and got some more from mining)
161 Elementium Ore
24 Pyrite Ore
1 Alicite
1 Jasper
116 Gold from humanoids in the mine and junk
89.23 gold worth of greens (worth WAY more if sold on AH)

All in all, Twilight Highlands is a pretty good run for some variety, but I'd much rather focus-kill a particular set of mobs for any particular Volatile farming.

Comment by desprado363

Mt. Hyjal is probably the best place to farm Volatile Earth. Kill Scalding Rock Elementals. Bonus for miners is that you can mine the elementals and get more. Still only about a 10% drop rate though.

Comment by 982836

Im sorry but i can find any of these in Mount Hyjal,Deepholm,Twilight Highlands all i get is just these stupid Shimmering Shards... can any one help me ?

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Volatile Earth

Item Level 83

Max Stack: 200

Sell Price: 8 75

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