Dead Zones
Indomitabull said:
Just for the sake of pointing this out... For all those people who have twinks with 1 bubble left till ding or are similarly worried about not having room for gathering profs, you can get from 1-290 mining without ever leaving the forge. You can smelt your way from 1-290 if you just shell out the money on the AH. you then need 10 thorium nodes to hit 300, then you can smelt to 340, mine 10 nodes to 350, and smelt cobalt to 375. Depending on how much of the high level zones your twink has explored already, it should be possible to hit at least 375 mining without killing a single thing or gaining a single exploration XP.
For skinning, again, it depends on how many zones you have already explored. Just have a high level kill and loot everything and you can get to 375 skinning. Not 450, sure, but it might be better than nothing.
Herbalism might end up being the easiest depending on your exploration since most herbalism takes place in the zone of the main city, barrens, STV, hinterlands, and felwood. If you've explored zone of zangarmarsh you can easily get to 375, then use the newly explained 1-node-to-450 herbalism explained on the front page.
If you haven't gone out of your way to explore high level zones, at the very least you can smelt your way to 225 to get use out of the 700hp mining bug until it goes away
Additionally, there does exist what I like to call "Dead zones" throughout Azeroth, Outland, and Northrend. When in a dead zone you don't gain experience for discovering it. One that I know of you can walk to from a city and gain 0 xp. The other two require warlock summons.
First, when leveling Mining, Skinning, or Herbalism and getting through the lower half of Outland skill levels, fly to Honor Hold (Alliance) after porting/hearthing to Shattrath. I'm not sure if it's possible to get here without a summon and without getting experience as Horde as it is with Alliance. Take the ramp straight South of Honor Hold and beginning Gathering, you can venture as far South as the orc camp by the cliffs and Thornrazor Trail, as far East as the voidwalker fields and the ghost city, and as far West as the large wall. If you need a visual representation of where you can and can't walk, discover (yes, discover.) the Zepplin Crash, it gives 0 experience and will fill up your dead zone on your map. Just be careful of how close you get to the other clearly defined areas as you will discover them.
It is entirely possible to get to Mining 350 without discovering in Outland. Fel Iron remains green from 340-350 (Just be aware that there are very few Herbs and Veins to find in this dead zone, which is to be expected in such a small area), although I was in a hurry before one Tuesday and had half of a level to spare so I just went discovering a quarter of Hellfire.
The second and third benefit mostly Skinning, I haven't looked to see if there are any Herbs or Veins in these dead zones yet. In Borean Tundra, directly in between Amber Ledge and Warsong Hold is a pack of rhinos and Nedar, Lord of Rhinos. When warlock summoned here you will not discover anything, but again, stay inside that small area or you will. There are enough Rhinos here to slingshot you through skinning until the next dead zone.
Get a warlock summon to Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight, and have your chaperon aggro skinnable mobs and train them as close to the temple as they can without resetting them before killing them. As a general rule, don't step off of the actual temple steps and you are guaranteed not to discover anything, however, I was able to walk as far as 50 yards in various directions before getting very leery of where I was walking (Discovering nothing, but fearing it). This area when used after the previous will get you to 450 Skinning. Again, I'm not sure how many Herbs or Veins you can reach, probably not many at all. I'll update when I get to Herbing and Skinning on my Rogue.
Sorry for the lengthy post, I hope it helps those that are close to dinging realize their full potential.
Also, if you know of any more dead zones, please share! It could be possible to level gathering from 1-450 without a single experience point gain with careful planning and execution, and most importantly, patience and the help of a friend.