Circle Grinding

Circle Grinding, OH FUN!!
Here is a little tip, grind in a circle.  Let me further explain to those of you who are a bit, shall we say, "dense".
The concept of "circling" means that you end up where you started.  Of course, there are some things you need to make sure of before you just run off in circles.

1. The area is filled with the item(s) and/or mobs you need.
2. Your circle is large enough that the mobs/items respawn behind you before you make it back around to their area, but not so large that you lose time and run out of the "cluster".
3. Find the cluster.  I'll give you an example using Green Crabs that you can farm Savage Leather and Savage Leather Scraps from in the Shimmering Expanse.

This concept really isn't that difficult to grasp but if you make it a habit you can really grind out stuff to sell quickly and even use it to power level your skills and professions.

So here goes my nifty little example.

First off, using my skinner, I found a "cluster" of green crabs.  This is an area where the mob/item spawns in high volume within a limited area.  This works great for grinding mobs because many of the respawn rates have risen over the last few patches and it pays off big time.

Welcome to the Shimmering Expanse
This little booger, The Green Crab, is what I'll be grinding today getting some more stacks of savage leather.

Now, as you can see this is a pushover neutral creature, I can take out 3-4 at a time without much of a problem so they are ideal for grinding and skinning.

Now the trick is to find their "cluster".  You'll see these guys scampering around everywhere, but if you tried to simply grind in a circle in any old place, you'll have little to show for your wasted hours.

Behold!  The cluster revealed!!

In case your a moron, the cluster is labeled in RED. That area from the edge of the Abyssal Depths to just outside the Silver Tide Hollow.  In this area, these crabs spawn every few feet.


Basically, when I circle grind this area, I head out to the Abyssal Depths ledge and then circle around that red area in a clockwise motion.  Speed is of the essence.  Pull as many as you can kill in a relatively quick time, loot, skin, and get moving again.
You can do that as long as you want because these crabs respawn FAST.  Then you go vendor the trash, AH the loot (I've even gotten up to 4 green items in an hour or so of grinding) and watch the dough roll in.  I picked up almost 4k gold in a few days just farming this little circle.


The concept in general works on many things, skinning, mining, herbalism etc, you just have to do alittle research to find the cluster first. Check the area out, find the things you want to skin, mine nodes, etc, look them up on wow head, or wow wikki and see where the normal zone for them is and they will show the cluster for them.  Circle grind it.  Rinse and repeat.


*NOTE*  For miners and herbalist, this can be a bit tricky.  You have to find an area where the nodes pop up with some regular frequency and are closer together.  The zone your looking in may not supply this ideal set-up for you so you should change zones, or forgo this method.  If you don't have a clustered area of items which respawn then you'll waste more time than you'll actually make money.  HOWEVER, there are several zones, even starting in Durotar, which have areas where you can circle grind ore.  Herbs are more difficult because they occur less frequently than most other items.