Today I thought I’d take another look at an ever popular topic (or so the searches that find the blog tell me): Diablo 3 Farming – specifically gold farming. Given the costs to get those lovely gold auction house gear upgrades to progress; to counteract the repair bills you get more and more of when you move through inferno; and to create novelty items (such as the Hellish Staff of Herding), it’s no wonder players want as much gold as possible in as short a time as possible!
I go into more detail in the gold guild but let’s have a look at some of the common factors you need to consider when farming gold in D3.
Profitable Areas For Your Level
Level 30 Monk Tripping the Light Fantastic
Some spots are sweeter than others, and the general consensus is the higher you go the better (plus get to 60 to begin stacking Nephalem Valor) but what if you’re not 60? What if you’re level 30 and you’re enjoying normal in no hurry?
Well did you know, for instance, that Whimsyshire – which you can access in normal after a bit of rare drop hunting – contains loot that’s roughly a level above the level you enter it on? For instance, you take the normal staff of herding to the entrance near New Tristram on normal difficulty and run through it. You’ll get pages of blacksmithing and jewelcrafting, gems above what you can get in Act IV and a decent amount of gold and magic items – often with ilevels above normal.
That’s a bit of an awkward spot to gain access to, I agree. Alternate farming areas like Bastion’s Keep and the Gardens of Hope are also very profitable – even at a lower level. In fact, anywhere with a high mob, or breakable container count can be great! If you’re geared right… which brings us to:
Gearing For Farming
Try to get this as high as you can
Part of the beauty of Diablo 3 farming is that with a gold find/magic find set, your favourite spot in game becomes a money maker. Take advantage of this and start building a gold find set. It can start humbly – 50% – and build to a decent amount – like the 182% above – but the more gold and magic items you find the better your chances of upgrading your GF and MF sets will be – it’s a positive feedback loop of farming glory.
Gold Harvesting together with Gold Farming
You can get this kind of traffic in under an hour
Gold farming is one approach to getting gold in Diablo 3. But remember that while you do so, you could be letting gold grow elsewhere. Let’s think of an analogy that works with ‘farming’. I like ‘harvesting’.
Think of juicy RNG rings and amulets rolled by trinket vendors; think of underpriced goods on the auction house; think of those magic items that drop while you’re farming – all these are ‘seeds’. You plant those seeds in the fertile soil of the gold auction house and then you continue your gold farming business. All the while those seeds are ‘growing’.
Get in the habit of listing auctions (priced right – which is something I cover in my guides) every 30 minutes and taking a break from slaying and gold farming to check on them. This is ‘harvest time’. You’ll grow to enjoy checking your active auctions and seeing 5/10 where it was 10/10 before. Sending your harvested gold to stash is a warm feeling – like a sip of strong alcohol in the cold of a winter night. Keep this kind of cycle going during your playing session for maximum gold farming and gold harvesting benefit. You will not regret it!
