Mocha
Legendary
Introduction:
As many of you know, as of 6.0 the zone drops in Shadowfang Keep have been buffed in drop rate. I speculate that this is the same for all dungeons, but can only confirm for SFK. A few people have come to me about how we should have kept this on the down low and are upset that Shadowfangs and Gloomshrouds etc are easier to obtain now as many people have been seeking to make a huge profit on the few that they have available. However I'd much rather EVERYONE have free Shadowfangs etc than to financially benefit from others lack of knowledge.
If you're looking to farm your Shadowfangs, this guide will give you all the info you need. Although farming zone drops in SFK is now achievable, it is by no means consistent nor easy. The drop rate for each zone drop is still considerably low, however, now some of the drops that were thought to be nearly grandfathered are now able to drop from trash mobs in the instance as well. This includes Shadowfang, Assassin's Blade, Duskbringer, Gloomshroud, Necroweave Robes, and more.
You will want to loot as many mobs as possible and all chests to maximize your chances at zone drops. This includes locked chests. To maximize efficiency, only stop once you've reached a chest. You should also use a Battle Horn if you need to quickly grab as many mobs as possible. I use Arcane Torrent to pull the horses.
Since you'll need to pick lock boxes, need a single AOE and be as fast as possible, I suggest using a sub rogue specced into burst of speed if possible. This makes for extremely speedy and complete runs.
Kills Per Hour:
With 6.0 the limit of instance entries before you become locked out have increased from 5 to 10. This means you can do 10 runs maximum an hour at 6 minutes per run. With that being said, your runs should be as close to 6 minutes as possible and with as many mob kills as possible. The strategy is to find your pace where you can kill as many mobs as possible and run out of the instance as close to 6 minutes as possible.
I suggest clearing up to and including lord Walden only as depending on your speed with chests this should allow you just enough time to exit, run in and reset. You are only missing a small handful of mobs at the end of the instance. Your time will be used more wisely if you kill as many mobs as possible per hour. Running all the way to Walden and out by following my route will allow you to check every chest spawn location and gather all mobs.
If you have a faster movement speed you can continue further if you'd like but be sure to exit out of the instance as close to 6 minutes even as possible. With 6.0 some movement speed increasing items now stack. The list of some items that will increase your run speed can be found here
However, if you are farming for less than an hour and you are not concerned with being locked out (perhaps you've got 30 minutes before work or school) you can run sfk as quickly as you can. I suggest simply doing the first half or so and resetting as the majority of the mobs exist in the first half of the instance.
Instance Reset Macro:
Copy and paste the below text into a new macro and hotkey it to your action bar. When you exit SFK, hit the key and it will automatically reset the instance and you can zone back into a fresh one.
Route:
1) So you're starting off by gathering all mobs and killing them before you kill the first boss. If you kill the boss before you kill the mobs, the mobs will despawn.
2) Collect all mobs in the courtyard and pull the horses with arcane torrent then enter the kitchen / dining room area, pulling all mobs and instead of taking a left at the back of the room to proceed to Springvale, turn right instead and head through the series of corridors in order to grab all of the mobs on the ramp way. This is where the arrow turns green to pink in the picture.
3) Backtrack from the ramp through the corridors towards Springvale, pull him and continue through all the way to Walden.
4) Your exit out is the blue dotted line. Instead of running through, you can run on the roof top and jump down to the instance portal.
Bag Space:
You will need as many open bag slots as you can obtain. While farming for Rare Zone Drops you will encounter an abundance of junk such as food, juice, gray junk items, white common gear and more. I personally do not bother with looting green Uncommon drops as I'm looking to save as much time as possible and mailing off greens every few runs is of no interest to me. It is up to you on whether or not you want to loot greens, however I advise you skip them as we're focusing on Rare Zone Drops.
Cloth, ores, gems etc stack up to 200 now which gives you a good reason to loot these items. You can mail them off every few hours if you gain too many stacks. These trade goods do well on the auction house.
This is one perfect of example of why you'll want to have a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth. You can easily obtain the gold from running some cata 25 heroic raids as discussed in this thread on how to play WoW for free.
SmartLoot Addon:
Warning: Be cautions of when you have SmartLoot enabled and on which characters! I suggest you only turn it on whilst you're farming and then immediately do not forget to take it off. If your SmartLoot is not working, you need to type /reload after you either enable the add-on or disable the add-on via the interface.
I have found a lovely add-on available on Curse.com and via the Curse Client that will be your best friend when it comes to farming SFK. This add-on will delete whichever items you do not wish to loot and it loots items considerably faster than traditional auto looting. I do not bother with Uncommon items and below as they fill up bag space. Henceforth, my looting threshold is set to Rare
Set up like this, your character will quickly loot everything and instantly delete everything that isn't Rare in quality. I suggest you customize your loot filters so you can keep some items that you do want.
To do so, find the Type Filters tab:
At this window you'll be able to select exactly what you want to keep:
For SFK I have mine set up to loot Rares, Potions, Gems, Alchemy, Books, Cooking, Engineering, First Aid, and Tailoring Recipies, Cloth, Devices, Herbs, Leather Goods, and Metal and Stone. There are blacklists and whitelists if you'd like to enable them, but I opted out of them for pure reliability sake. RNG is RNG. This may take you 1 run or 9001 runs to get the items you desire. You can set up Blacklists and Whitelists, but I did not bother.
After 3 runs of farming, I have obtained the first confirmed drop of Shadowfang post 6.0. Shortly after I have received multiple Assassin's Blades, Night Reavers and more.
Additional Notes:
Tip from @Squidgy
If you decide to run all the way to Lord Godfrey for some reason, you can save a few seconds by manually opening the door instead of waiting for the NPC to do it. There is a lever on the left side in the next room that you can reach through the door if you stand close to it:
Just move your mouse around that area and scroll click (Mocha has a guide for that as well) and it should open.
Best of luck and happy farming,
Mocha
As many of you know, as of 6.0 the zone drops in Shadowfang Keep have been buffed in drop rate. I speculate that this is the same for all dungeons, but can only confirm for SFK. A few people have come to me about how we should have kept this on the down low and are upset that Shadowfangs and Gloomshrouds etc are easier to obtain now as many people have been seeking to make a huge profit on the few that they have available. However I'd much rather EVERYONE have free Shadowfangs etc than to financially benefit from others lack of knowledge.
If you're looking to farm your Shadowfangs, this guide will give you all the info you need. Although farming zone drops in SFK is now achievable, it is by no means consistent nor easy. The drop rate for each zone drop is still considerably low, however, now some of the drops that were thought to be nearly grandfathered are now able to drop from trash mobs in the instance as well. This includes Shadowfang, Assassin's Blade, Duskbringer, Gloomshroud, Necroweave Robes, and more.
You will want to loot as many mobs as possible and all chests to maximize your chances at zone drops. This includes locked chests. To maximize efficiency, only stop once you've reached a chest. You should also use a Battle Horn if you need to quickly grab as many mobs as possible. I use Arcane Torrent to pull the horses.
Since you'll need to pick lock boxes, need a single AOE and be as fast as possible, I suggest using a sub rogue specced into burst of speed if possible. This makes for extremely speedy and complete runs.
Kills Per Hour:
With 6.0 the limit of instance entries before you become locked out have increased from 5 to 10. This means you can do 10 runs maximum an hour at 6 minutes per run. With that being said, your runs should be as close to 6 minutes as possible and with as many mob kills as possible. The strategy is to find your pace where you can kill as many mobs as possible and run out of the instance as close to 6 minutes as possible.
I suggest clearing up to and including lord Walden only as depending on your speed with chests this should allow you just enough time to exit, run in and reset. You are only missing a small handful of mobs at the end of the instance. Your time will be used more wisely if you kill as many mobs as possible per hour. Running all the way to Walden and out by following my route will allow you to check every chest spawn location and gather all mobs.
If you have a faster movement speed you can continue further if you'd like but be sure to exit out of the instance as close to 6 minutes even as possible. With 6.0 some movement speed increasing items now stack. The list of some items that will increase your run speed can be found here
However, if you are farming for less than an hour and you are not concerned with being locked out (perhaps you've got 30 minutes before work or school) you can run sfk as quickly as you can. I suggest simply doing the first half or so and resetting as the majority of the mobs exist in the first half of the instance.
Instance Reset Macro:
Copy and paste the below text into a new macro and hotkey it to your action bar. When you exit SFK, hit the key and it will automatically reset the instance and you can zone back into a fresh one.
HTML:
/script ResetInstances();
/click StaticPopup1Button1Route:
1) So you're starting off by gathering all mobs and killing them before you kill the first boss. If you kill the boss before you kill the mobs, the mobs will despawn.
2) Collect all mobs in the courtyard and pull the horses with arcane torrent then enter the kitchen / dining room area, pulling all mobs and instead of taking a left at the back of the room to proceed to Springvale, turn right instead and head through the series of corridors in order to grab all of the mobs on the ramp way. This is where the arrow turns green to pink in the picture.
3) Backtrack from the ramp through the corridors towards Springvale, pull him and continue through all the way to Walden.
4) Your exit out is the blue dotted line. Instead of running through, you can run on the roof top and jump down to the instance portal.
Bag Space:
You will need as many open bag slots as you can obtain. While farming for Rare Zone Drops you will encounter an abundance of junk such as food, juice, gray junk items, white common gear and more. I personally do not bother with looting green Uncommon drops as I'm looking to save as much time as possible and mailing off greens every few runs is of no interest to me. It is up to you on whether or not you want to loot greens, however I advise you skip them as we're focusing on Rare Zone Drops.
Cloth, ores, gems etc stack up to 200 now which gives you a good reason to loot these items. You can mail them off every few hours if you gain too many stacks. These trade goods do well on the auction house.
This is one perfect of example of why you'll want to have a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth. You can easily obtain the gold from running some cata 25 heroic raids as discussed in this thread on how to play WoW for free.
SmartLoot Addon:
Warning: Be cautions of when you have SmartLoot enabled and on which characters! I suggest you only turn it on whilst you're farming and then immediately do not forget to take it off. If your SmartLoot is not working, you need to type /reload after you either enable the add-on or disable the add-on via the interface.
I have found a lovely add-on available on Curse.com and via the Curse Client that will be your best friend when it comes to farming SFK. This add-on will delete whichever items you do not wish to loot and it loots items considerably faster than traditional auto looting. I do not bother with Uncommon items and below as they fill up bag space. Henceforth, my looting threshold is set to Rare
Set up like this, your character will quickly loot everything and instantly delete everything that isn't Rare in quality. I suggest you customize your loot filters so you can keep some items that you do want.
To do so, find the Type Filters tab:
At this window you'll be able to select exactly what you want to keep:
For SFK I have mine set up to loot Rares, Potions, Gems, Alchemy, Books, Cooking, Engineering, First Aid, and Tailoring Recipies, Cloth, Devices, Herbs, Leather Goods, and Metal and Stone. There are blacklists and whitelists if you'd like to enable them, but I opted out of them for pure reliability sake. RNG is RNG. This may take you 1 run or 9001 runs to get the items you desire. You can set up Blacklists and Whitelists, but I did not bother.
After 3 runs of farming, I have obtained the first confirmed drop of Shadowfang post 6.0. Shortly after I have received multiple Assassin's Blades, Night Reavers and more.
Additional Notes:
Tip from @Squidgy
If you decide to run all the way to Lord Godfrey for some reason, you can save a few seconds by manually opening the door instead of waiting for the NPC to do it. There is a lever on the left side in the next room that you can reach through the door if you stand close to it:
Just move your mouse around that area and scroll click (Mocha has a guide for that as well) and it should open.
Best of luck and happy farming,
Mocha
Last edited:
