Goldthorn Farming in Scarlet Monastery Cathedral
NOTE: After patch 5.0.4 and the changes to Scarlet Monastery you will no longer be farming Goldthorn for this guide. You can still, however buy it and resell it.
Farming Goldthorn is a great source of income since it has such a high sales price per unit on almost every server. On my server, Arthas, I can easily net 10g for each piece of Goldthorn and I can easily get an entire stack in a single run of Cathedral without the Bountiful Bags perk. In addition to getting Goldthorn you will also occasionally get some Silk Cloth and Mageweave Cloth when you're required to kill mobs that are in the way of you getting to your Goldthorn.
All you need to do to get a massive amount of Goldthorn is leave a character logged out in Scarlet Monastery Cathedral with at least 150 Herbalism to gather Goldthorn periodically throughout the day. You will be able to gather the herb 5 times an hour before you max out your instances per hour that you're allowed to farm. Now there are two locations that Goldthorn spawns inside of SM: Cath, one in the first courtyard and the other once you go up the stairs and into the other courtyard.
On average with each gather you will get anywhere from 1 to 3 Goldthorn, up to 9 with the guild Bountiful Bags perk (literally having a chance to triple the amount you make with each gather). Now Goldthorn goes on average for 9 to 12g for each piece but don't think you can farm it endlessly and then sell 5,000g worth of Goldthorn over night. That is not how the Auction House works for things like this. Go farm up at least three stacks of Goldthorn and then put 10 - 15 of them on the Auction House for 9 or 12g a piece (if no one is lower than you) then you may sell some in the time they are on the Auction House.
I have noticed that usually all or none sell over night and it is never the same person buying it. It usually takes me 2 or 3 days to sell a few stacks of Goldthorn, usually averaging 1 stack sold a day, or sometimes I get lucky and sell 2 or even 3 stacks a day, it really is completely random. The one thing I can tell you for certain though is you shouldn't expect to make bank with Goldthorn in a single day, it will trickle in over time, sometimes faster than others.
Goldthorn Farming Map
Besides Goldthorn you will also see another herb here, Liferoot. Now at least on my server Liferoot sells for absolute crap, usually 10 - 20s each, which makes it not even worth my time to spend gathering it. The decision is up to you though, if you want to gather it or not, I recommend against it.
Goldthorn Tips
- I recommend always leaving a character logged out in Scarlet Monastery: Cathedral for whenever you need more Goldthorn
- Farm it periodically when you know you won't be doing instances incase anyone buys out all your Goldthorn
- If you need to kill the scarlet NPCs that are here be sure to loot them. Silk and Mageweave go for a lot
- Ignore the Liferoot if you want to maximize your hourly income
Now if you're new to my 10k an hour set of guides, you should know that at the very bottom of each page I will have a link to an individual "math" page which will show all of my sales of the item that I took a picture of, proving that it sells for as much as I say it does as frequently or non-frequently as I say it does.
Goldthorn Math Page