Comments

Comment by 37589

Cobalt looks to be the new Fel Iron, minable at 350 mining skill from Cobalt Node, and taking 1 ore to smelt into a bar. Wowhead also has an entry for Rich Cobalt Node, whereas Fel Iron in The Burning Crusade did not have a rich eqivalent. I'm assuming that the suffix "Node" is just a placeholder for the beta, and will be replaced by "Vein" or "Deposit".

Edit: It's a few months later, and the suffix "Node" still remains. The word doesn't seem to fit in with the game world well, but it's no big deal.

Comment by 34382

And now in the latest build, cobalt ore prospects properly into Northrend gems. Sweet.

No more dust apparently, fwiw.

Comment by 95744

Prospecting data here must either be wrong or Blizzard haven't finish it. According to my experience all colors of gems "spawn" with same rate.

Comment by isendims

As of late, It only takes one ore to smelt cobolt into a bar, other northrend ores still take 2

Comment by Althal

This route that I found looks kinda nice:

http://almostgaming.com/files/images/HowlingFjordCobaltMiningMap.jpg

Check it out.

Comment by 78894

@yogomove

Its just incomplete, after only 2000 records of prospecting you dont have enough data to make the estimate accurate.

But its probably about 22% chance each (since you can get multiple gems from 1 prospect).

Comment by 90123

is it just more or is the spawn rate of these less than everything else in classic and outland nodes? In borean tundra I have leveled and only seen like 5 nodes. In Classic and Outland Fel Iron and copper were every 2 feet.

Comment by 65439

Cobalt is actually a real mineral and here is the article about it :

Cobalt (pronounced /ˈkoʊbɒlt/) is a hard, lustrous, grey metal, a chemical element with symbol Co. Although cobalt-based colors and pigments have been used since ancient times, and miners have long used the name kobold ore for some minerals, cobalt was only discovered in 1735 by Georg Brandt. It is found in various metallic-lustred ores for example cobaltite (CoAsS), but it is produced as a by-product of copper and nickel mining. The copper belt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia yields most of the worldwide mined cobalt. Cobalt is used in the preparation of magnetic, wear-resistant, and high-strength alloys. Cobalt blue (cobalt(II) aluminate, CoAl2O4) gives a distinctive deep blue color to glass, ceramics, inks, paints, and varnishes.

Name, symbol, number cobalt, Co, 27
Element category transition metals
Group, period, block 9, 4, d
Appearance hard lustrous gray metal

Standard atomic weight 58.933195(5) g·mol−1
Electron configuration 4s2 3d7
Electrons per shell 2, 8, 15, 2
Color metallic gray
Density (near r.t.) 8.90 g·cm−3
Liquid density at m.p. 7.75 g·cm−3
Melting point 1768 K
(1495 °C, 2723 °F)
Boiling point 3200 K
(2927 °C, 5301 °F)
Heat of fusion 16.06 kJ·mol−1
Heat of vaporization 377 kJ·mol−1
Specific heat capacity (25 °C) 24.81 J·mol−1·K−1

Vapor pressure P/Pa 1 10 100 1 k 10 k 100 k
at T/K 1790 1960 2165 2423 2755 3198

Comment by verse

Heres my route I'm using without a flying mount, I'm sure it'll change somewhat then. Its simple and easy to remember after a couple laps.

http://i44.tinypic.com/200tzlx.jpg
http://www.imagebam.com/image/267e5322323901(##RESPBREAK##)8##DELIM##Gryphon##DELIM##

Comment by 170994

Prospectable at 350 JC

Comment by 239168

got a lvl61 DK who i made for mining purposes.
Anyone know the best place to find a vein without lvl?
mobs coming after him ? hes mininglvl 425 so any vein will do.

Comment by 163845

Using the Wowhead plugin for Gatherer I followed a route in Howling Fjord. I hit every node going from Fort Wildevar, south, past the Explorer's Outpost, north of Utgarde, south east to New Agamand, and then followed the eastern coast to the mountains, and back to Fort Wildevar again.

I am going to keep records of my cobalt received during a circuit. I will follow my route everyday, probably once a day.

Run 1: 95 Cobalt Ore, 1 Blue Gem(s): Forest Emerald
Run 2: 75 Cobalt Ore, 2 Blue Gem(s): Autumn's Glow, Sky Sapphire

I tried to go to Zul'Drak for rich cobalt but it seems to yield less cobalt. May or may not be caused by other farmers.

Run 1: 35 Cobalt

With the blacksmithing nerf I will stop gathering cobalt until I find another reason for them.

Comment by 337408

I found this a great way of making money. Some people sell the ores for half the price of the bars because they don't know that you only need 1 per bar if you see ores raaly cheap and bars with a higher value buy them smelt them sell them with profit :)

Comment by 28138

My somewhat limited experience in prospecting these and saronite ore tells me that cobalt ore is better to prospect than saronite. Why?

Because i usually receive 2 uncommon quality gems per 5 prospected cobalt ore while this is more uncommon when prospecting saronite. The drop rate for rare quality gems does not seem to be very much better when prospecting saronite ore than cobalt ore.

A downside when farming cobalt is that you won't find any titanium ore.

Comment by 334790

Cobalt can NOT be mined just by being level 350 mining.

My level 55 priest, which I had worked really hard at getting her mining skill up so i could get the +60 stamina benefit from toughness and have enough life to survive against dks in bgs couldnt mine it. Even though she had learnt the grand master skill, had 375 mining (the node was also yellow) and could smelt it. It just said my level wasn't high enough. (Not mining skill level, just my level)

I was rather annoyed, because it didnt happen when i did the same thing in OL, I could mine adamantite when i was level 40.

Im not sure what level you do have to be to mine it, probably 60, hopefully not 68 but Ill let you know when I get there.

Edit: Cobalt can be mined at 65. I just went back today and could get it and read some other guys post on thottbot that said level 63s couldnt mine it so I guess 65 is the lowest level you have to be.

Comment by Strikk3r

Here are my prospecting results for 9 stacks (180 cobalt ore):
14 x Shadow Crystal
10 x Sun Crystal
11 x Dark Jade
5 x Bloodstone
9 x Chalcedony
5 x Huge Citrine
1 x Monarch Topaz
1 x Autumn's Glow
1 x Twilight Opal

Comment by 531966

Maybe I wasn't lucky enough but I think that flying over Borean tundra is better.

Comment by 771700

Flying over the tundra is awful, i spent about 30 minutes on the route from wow-professions, I mined only 9 ores. My mount is only 150% speed though, but still, very rare.

Going to try out the howling fjord guide someone posted. Heard that Zul'Drak is great but its not really a good place for routes, just random it seems.

Comment by 771700

thank you so much for this guide, its amazing, WAY better than the wow-profession one. I was shocked at the stacks I had after I did one route, was able to make 101 cobalt bars. Way better than any other guide or advice I seen.

Comment by 806894

For Borean Tundra, there also seem to be a few of these along the cliffs near Valiance Keep. Not many but I found one or two there. They're very scattered through the Coldarra area too. Guess this part of Northrend is just not the best for them ;). Thanks for the links showing a good route though.

Comment by bookworm13

For the best resource for determining the Cataclysm adjusted mining levels as well as the best zones to farm them in, browse through the Mineral Veins listing.

This will also give you coordinates for the vein spawns.

Teach an elf to fish...

Comment by subby

I have read here that since Cata was released that Cobalt Ore was becoming harder to find, I was lvling Engineering and Blacksmithing so I was not happy to hear this.

I used this addon to help me - GatherMate2 & the GatherMate2 database both downloaded from Curse. I used this instead of Gatherer because gatherer doesn't by default come with a database and the one they do supply is way way out of date.

I also googled quick "Mining 1-525 guide" this gave me a quick map of the Howling Fjord. (I farmed at about 10am servertime weekday)

I didn't miss even one node on this map (except underwater nodes), it took about 35-40 minutes to do 3 clean sweeps in the time I also killed 3 rares which was nice :D

277 Cobalt ore
64 Crystalized Earth
45 Crystalized Water
64 Frostweave Cloth
1 Scarlet Ruby
2 Huge Citrine
2 Shadow Crystal
1 Egg-Warming Blanket
1 Soul-Sealed Belt
1 Worgen-Scored Shackles
Plus 70 gold

So to sum up, I don't think it's that bad really, it's not thorium ore in Ungoro but it's not bad.

I hope this helped ppl farming , if you got some hope from this please mark it up so others can see it.

Edited for spelling!

TL:DR!
Goto Howling Fjord for Cobalt Ore
(I just made 3 more runs, I got 316 ore this time, so the amount is consistant, I was there at around 4pm servertime, weekday.)

Comment by Padeen

As of October 27th has cobalt in Howling Fjords been nerfed? I did 3 complete sweeps and have only 37. The nodes just aren't there!

Comment by 864663

just did one circuit at 8am and got 34 ore. with a return like that i didn't have the patience to fly it two more times. gonna try borean, but reading the comments i'm not all that hopeful.

Comment by YinRav

Best place I've found for it is Zul'drak, This is at 11pm English time, Finding quite allot compared to my trips around Howling now.

Comment by 918016

4.3 has just gone live and the previous post is still true.

All this data was collected around midnight GMT, with a 280% mount and the bountiful bags perk.

In a single run of the zone, I found:

118 cobalt ore
31 crystal water
31 crystal earth
1 blue gem
2 green gems

Which took under 25mins. This is around double what I found in Zul'Drak in a similar timeframe.

Previously, I had been running zul'drak and I found most of the nodes, even at off-peak times were inactive, giving roughly a 10% hit rate (of the known gathermate nodes).

Howling Fjords on a full loop of the area was yielding a 30% hit rate, which more than makes up for the overall scarcity of nodes compared to other areas. As an added bonus, respawn rate is mind-boggling, it is also very rare to find other miners competing.

A couple tips to maximise your runs:

Most of the mines/caves are small enough to sprint through, grab the node and be back within a minute.
Baelgun's dig (SE corner) has some hard to reach nodes that are worth ignoring.
Do full loops, take advantage of the whole zone by playing dot-to-dot with nodes
Get upclose; even at low latency, there is a delay for the node to be visible, so fly at the right altitude to avoid missing nodes
Don't be afraid to backtrack, take advantage of the high respawn rate

Comment by 969253

Zul'Drak IS NOT a good place to farm these as a few would have you believe, after an hour of flying around in my lvl 82 warrior I found ONLY 5 NODES! and they do not respawn quickly as previously stated... you will have much better luck in Howling Fjord.

Comment by Samander

Be very careful what you sell your stacks of Cobalt Ore for prior to MoP's launch (which is now slated for Sept.25, 2012)!. In other words, for the next 2 months, unless you are getting an exuberant amount for your stacks, don't sell them.

In order to proficiently level blacksmithing you need roughly x320 cobalt ore. That's 16 stacks for ONE leveling blacksmith. This ore is one of the more "irritating" ores to farm in that it is somewhat scarce in its respective zone(s) and is native to Northrend: an area players will quickly want to level and leave behind in their pursuit to level 90 and Pandaren zones.

This isn't even taking into account JCs who will need to prospect ore for gems or Engineers who will need a ton of this ore to level, as well (approx. x275). Granted, JCs will probably skip right over cobalt ore due to the markup it will get (because of what I mentioned above) but there may come a time when there is no saronite ore on the auction house and just your stacks of cobalt ore for 150g (results will vary due to server economy variation).

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Cobalt Ore

Item Level 72

Max Stack: 20

Sell Price: 10

Cobalt Ore

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