Now that I’ve completed my latest crafting endeavour – the Belt of the Guardian – it’s time for me to start piecing together resistance sets for Hydross. Eugh, this is gonna be expensive.

Along with sundry enchantments, completing both sets means crafting six pieces of epic armor, two blue necklaces, and two epic rings. The mats for all of this are quite expensive – something to the tune of 26 x Khorium Bar, 30 x Felsteel Bar, 48 x Primal Fire, 46 x Primal Water, 48 x Primal Shadow, and 46 x Primal Life.

That’s quite a bit.

Why Are Primal Shadows So Expensive?

I remember when Burning Crusade first came out and Primal Shadows were a dime a dozen. Every demon in Outland dropped some motes, and anybody that did any farming had a ton of Primal Shadows sitting in the bank.

I was sitting on two full stacks and selling the excess for less than a gold per Primal. Of course, I had plenty to spare – I farmed hundreds of demons to get cloth for my tailoring and Aldor rep (which I traded for Scryer rep).

Now I have a need for 48 Primal Shadows, I’ve only got a few in the bank, and they’re selling on my server for 35 – 40 gold. Yowza.

Oddly enough, they don’t seem that hard for me to farm. I took my Mage out to Nagrand. After I completed the goggle quest for the Shattered Sun Offensive, I circled around for ~40 minutes and slaughtered Voidspawns. Although I went through a few drop droughts, I walked away with four full Primal Shadows.

That averages out to an approximate gathering rate of 6 Primal Shadows per hour. You could also look at that as a whopping 240g per hour, if I sold all those Primals. Wow.

As long as no one else is out there farming, this is a great money-maker.

The Cheap Stuff

Primal Water and Primal Fire, on the other hand, have been selling for 20-25g each. I plan on picking those up at the Auction House. Sure, it’ll cost me 2000g or so, but farming gold (through dailies, herbs, ore, etc) is more efficient than trying to farm the Primals directly.

If I were to farm the Primal Fires directly, I’d probably gather them at about the same rate as the Primal Shadows. However, they’re worth a little over half as much.

In other words, if I were to farm the Fires and buy the Shadows, I’d be out a ton of money. I think this is kind of like what my economics professor tried to explain as a “competitive advantage.” Kind of like getting something for nothing.

The ore I’ve already gathered or bought. There’s really no sense in “farming” Khorium, and I was able to pick it up for 4-5g per bar. Same with the Primal Nethers.

The Primal Lifes I’ll most likely end up farming through Talonsworn Forest-Rager. Although they’ve been busy lately, they’re still the best source of Primal Life and herbs. With the price of Terocone going through the roof, I should be able to pick up some extra loot to help buy those Fires and Waters.

How Long Is This Going to Take?

Good question. I could probably gather all of the Primal Shadows and Lifes in about 15 hours or so. Depending on how much time I’m willing to spend on farming (and not on heroics, raiding, and dailies), that could be two weeks or so of play time.

As for the Waters and Fires, I’ve got plenty of loot and that will keep accumulating as I do some dailies and the daily heroic. It should take 2-3 weeks of patient buying to get all of the Primals at a cheap price.

So I’m aiming for three weeks. June 3, I might be running around with a LOT of Nature and Frost resistance.