Nerds at Play

When I was trying to level my Rogue’s mining to 300 so he could snag some Fel Iron, I had trouble finding Thorium. I leveled in Felwood, WPL and EPL - all of which have some Thorium Ore. However, there didn’t seem to be a good concentration of it, and I hit 58 while I was still around 260 mining.

Now that I’m looking for blacksmithing mats - and I’ll most likely need about 600 Thorium bars - I’m once again looking for a place to mine Thorium. This time, I found it.

Head to Silithus

I’d heard people say that Silithus was a great place to farm, but I never liked the place. I leveled there on my Mage, and I thought the zone was crowded with mobs and somewhat dangerous for a 57-59.

On my level 70 Paladin, protection wasn’t a problem. As an experiment, I headed over there during an AV queue to see how much ore I could find. I had roughly 15-20 minutes to get there and mine.

First, I took the teleport from Shatt to the Caverns of Time. Then, I rode up to Gadgetzan. Then, I flew straight to Silithus. That process takes roughly five minutes… fairly convenient.

After checking out Wowhead (click on the map above to go to the Wowhead data on Ooze Covered Rich Thorium Veins), it seems that the best veins are centered around the three insect hives in Silithus. In the caves, and occasionally on ground level, you’ll find Ooze Covered Rich Thorium Veins and Ooze Covered Truesilver Veins.

And they are plentiful. In a ten minutes or so, you can scope out one of the hives. On average, you’ll probably find two to three veins. Don’t be afraid to jump down and run through a cave - you’ll usually be able to find a vein in there (although not always).

I made a half dozen or so passes through Silithus this weekend while running AVs. With the average Alliance queue (15-20 minutes), that gave me just over 10 minutes each time to mine. That was plenty of time for me to snag an average of 2 to 3 veins, and I scooped up around three stacks of Thorium Ore in all. I also got a handful of Arcane Crystals and a few Truesilver Ore.

So… you want Thorium? Go to Silithus.