WotLK Classic Howling Fjord Gold Farming Guide | Best Spots & Routes

The farms below are spread across the zone rather than clustered, so this section is organized by spot. Shoveltusk herds and Cobalt are the bread-and-butter. The Thornvine Creepers southeast of Camp Winterhoof are the early-gold standout. Everything’s listed with coordinates.

Main Locations

Shoveltusk Farming (Zone-Wide)

• Location: Scattered throughout the entire zone. 
  • The plateau east of the Ancient Lift (44, 60) and the area west of Skorn (northern Howling Fjord) are great areas to farm
  • Kill Shoveltusk, Shoveltusk Forager, and other variations for Shoveltusk Flank drops. Skin for Borean Leather and Arctic Fur
• Materials: Shoveltusk Flank is used for Great Feast + Tender Shoveltusk Steak (one of the best Spell Power food for casters). 
  • Great Feast feeds your entire party and provides health and mana regeneration over 30 seconds; being well fed gives Attack power, Spell power, and Stamina for one hour.
  • Borean Leather is plentiful from these beasts. 
  • Arctic Fur can also be skinned.
• Because Shoveltusk is farmed less than Worm Meat, the meat tends to sell at a better price.

Eternal Life Farming Southeast of Camp Winterhoof

• Location: Go just southeast of Camp Winterhoof (53.4, 16.6) in northern Howling Fjord
  • Kill Thornvine Creeper mobs for Crystallized Life (turn stacks of 10 into an Eternal Life)
  • You can harvest herbs from their corpses for good measure
• Combined into Eternal Life, this material drives demand for Darkmoon Cards and trinkets, making it highly profitable early on.

Best AoE Leveling Spot for XP Grinding

• Southeast of Explorers’ League Outpost
  • Location: Southeast of the Explorers’ League Outpost (≈ 78.5, 74.2)
    • Abundant with Lion Seals and Lion Seal Whelps offering quick XP, Chilled Meat, and excellent AoE efficiency.

      

    • Great for multi-tasking: leveling and farming simultaneously.

Herbalism: Goldclover & Tiger Lily

• Howling Fjord is a strong Goldclover zone, with Tiger Lily along the waterlines. The two share spawns, which is the key trick: clearing Goldclover forces new Tiger Lily to pop on the next cycle, so a tight loop keeps both flowing.
• Goldclover loop: Ring the turtle pens north of Kamagua (~25.1, 57.7) and loop the Isle of Spears. Patches around Ember Clutch (~40.6, 52.2) intermingle with water-edge Tiger Lily, so you can pull both tiers in one circuit if you follow the rivers and ponds.
• Tiger Lily (requires Herbalism 375): Grows beside ponds and waterfalls south of Ember Clutch toward Bleeding Vale and other river and lake edges. Weave the waterlines for uninterrupted picking, and detour through the Runewood ponds during the iron-dwarf storyline for extra spawns near Nifflevar and the Kamagua islands.
• Both herbs can yield Deadnettle on pick, a high-value Inscription and Alchemy reagent, so keep a bag tab free for the bonus drops.

Cobalt Ore Deposit Mining

Howling Fjord is one of the top Cobalt zones in WotLK Classic, and it sees fewer miners than Borean Tundra early on. Demand is high during the profession-leveling rush (Engineering, Jewelcrafting, Blacksmithing), so sell into that early window.

• Giant’s Run cliff loop: Start at the north cliffs (~66-70, 16-28), zig-zag the ridge south toward Fort Wildervar, then cross east over the riverbanks. Nodes are common along these ledges.
• Baleheim ruins: Ore spawns around the ruins and upper ledges near (66.4, 39.9). Check the outdoor walls and ledges between pulls.
• Shield Hill perimeter: Circle the graveyard edge around (57-60, 77-79); Cobalt appears on the slopes around the hill.
• Smelting needs a forge: use Westguard Keep (has an anvil and forge) or Valgarde to free bag space and gain Mining skill as you go.

Fishing

Fangtooth Herring Schools fill the zone’s lakes and rivers, each pool giving 3 to 5 catches at a 90 percent herring rate. A small number of Glacial Salmon pools appear along the rivers toward the Grizzly Hills border, though Grizzly Hills itself is the real salmon zone.

Cast from Kamagua’s docks (24.7, 57.8) for open-water catches between pool runs.

The Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Pole (Exalted reward, +30 skill and underwater breathing) makes deep-water casts effortless.

• Travel trick: fish a few Kamagua pools, then take the giant turtle to Moa’ki Harbor and continue a fishing circuit there.
• Open water: the deeper channel yields Pygmy Suckerfish, which Alchemists turn into Pygmy Oil for several Wrath recipes.

Profession Pairings

• Skinning + Herbalism: Shoveltusks and herb nodes are both dense throughout the zone, so you’re always farming one or the other.
• Mining + Herbalism: Fewer players run this combination, which means less competition for nodes.

Market Timing

• Howling Fjord gets less traffic than Borean Tundra but has comparable resources, so auction house prices tend to hold better here.
• Shoveltusk Meat stays in demand all expansion because cooks need it for Spell Power food and Great Feasts. Lower supply from a less-farmed zone means it sells above what you’d expect.
• At max level, any quests you haven’t done here pay out in raw gold instead of XP.

Gathering Circuit

In-zone, run a Shoveltusk Sweep: a single zone-wide loop that combines Shoveltusk kills with herb and ore pickups along the way, so nothing on the route is wasted travel.

Howling Fjord also anchors a cross-zone herb loop (Howling Fjord → Grizzly Hills → Dragonblight → back), which picks up Deadnettle alongside the primary herbs.

For the full cross-zone circuits, see the WotLK Classic Northrend Gold Making Guide.

• Herb Route: Howling Fjord → Grizzly Hills → Dragonblight → back to Howling Fjord. This loop picks up Deadnettle as a bonus alongside primary herbs.
• Shoveltusk Sweep: Run a zone-wide loop combining Shoveltusk kills with herb and ore pickups along the way.
• Sky-loop (with Cold Weather Flying): Chain Giant’s Run → Baleheim → Nifflevar → Ember Clutch to hit every ore and herb type in roughly twelve minutes. Flying turns the zone’s spread-out farms (its one drawback versus clustered Borean) into a fast aerial circuit.

Preparation

• Make sure you prep as an Engineer: Complete the TBC Engineering quest The Zapthrottle Mote Extractor! before flying north. Arctic Clouds drift through the zone’s northern snowfields and extract into Crystallized Air and Crystallized Water.
• Set up macros to toggle between herb and mineral tracking so you aren’t switching manually.
• Check Borean Tundra’s auction house prices against Howling Fjord materials. If a resource is oversupplied from Borean Tundra farming, yours will sell at a premium.