I have a question for all you grandmaster artisan folks: is it faster to gold farm, and then buy ore from the bazaar, or is it faster to farm ore in the tower archives in DS? If the answer is gold farming, which bosses should I farm? I am a level 56 ice and I am in CL up to the floating land.
The bazaar is hit or miss with many items, based on whether or not others are willing to sell a good deal of ore. In my experience as GMA ore harvesting is more reliable, that said, if you farm any boss in CL you should get plenty of items to sell and take a chance at buying ore, which has been in higher quantities lately. But if you have the time finding a few KT and DS routes to realms switch and ore harvesting can provide more consistent reward. Also take a look at crafting if you have a stock of the components.
I usually prefer to get materials from as many sources as possible, specially since crafting is usually a long term process unless you get really lucky with at the bazaar.
For instance, for any quest requiring black lotus, I crafted/transmuted as many lotus as I farmed.
Also, If you're looking for ore, there seems to be quite a few spawn locations for it at the dragon spyre academy :) Scotland yard roof top is a good place to farm for stone blocks if you need those :)
I always prefer collecting reagents to buying them in the Bazaar - I buy the dropped reagents in bunches of 10 or so when there are 500 in stock. I would never buy Ore, since it's so plentiful - it's in every world except Celestia.
But if you don't have the patience, good luck with buying it.
This one I would farm, it's incredibly easy to get. My best advice is to go to Dragonspyre Academy and skip the Atheneum entirely (The Atheneum is really really really over- farmed). If you are lucky, you can get four ore drops every time you go through there. Good luck :D
