Shimmering Flats – THE Best Grind Spot, Levels 30-36

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know if this really is THE best spot – Stranglethorn is a great area also. But I do know that Shimmering Flats is the spot I have grinded almost exclusively for these levels for EVERY character I have ever made in WoW, Horde or Alliance.

Why? Originally I tried this area for the awesome vendor trash the mobs in this area drop; the best example is the Speckled Shell Fragment which sells to vendors for 45 silver a stack. After playing in a pvp setting for a while I also realized the virtue of the area not having nearly as many players as in Stranglethorn Vale (aka Gank Central). Plus the racetrack in the middle of the area has some good “kill xx mob quests” as well as some of the more interesting travel quests – including the quest to get you the carrot-on-a-stick trinket to increase your mount speed.

Shimmering Flats is the southernmost section Thousand Needles. While I’d say all the mobs here are good grind fodder (perhaps not the scorpids), the mobs you want to focus on are the Sparkleshell Tortoises and the Sparkleshell Snappers. These are non-aggroable (yellow) tortoises that are located throughout Shimmering Flats, with a large cluster roaming the north end near the wrecked Elven sailboat.

These turtles don’t respawn as fast as I would like, however if you have the place to yourself you won’t experience too much downtime. I wouldn’t recommend this area for more than two players to grind together in, however. The thing that makes Shimmering Flats so great though, is that you can easily move south and grind more turtles and Saltstone Basilisks until the area around the ship has respawned.

All in all, Shimmering Flats is a great area not only to pretty quickly and easily grind yourself up to level 35-36, but with the awesome vendor trash the mobs drop, it will also help you earn the gold for your mount a lot quicker as well. And as for Stranglethorn Vale (especially on a PVP server) – my best advice is to grind yourself up to level 36 in Shimmering Flats and then go there. The early quests will still be at least green to you and you’ll be a bit tougher for the gankers to gank.