Go diving - Gathering in Vashj'ir - Part 1

This post is part of the Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival of January. From January the 11th you can check this page to look for other posts about gathering in Cataclysm.

While I was writing this post I discovered that Cold at Cold's Gold Factory was going to host a blog carnival exactly on the topic of my post!
Well, I suppose that since farming is still the best way to get gold in Cataclysm this is really something worth writing about.

The problem and the solution
Mt. Hyjal is getting more and more crowded and, at least on my server, you see more nodes being gathered than free nodes... And if your gathering with a not-maxed character in a PvP realm you'll get attacked a lot by players from the opposite faction, since most of those farmers are lvl. 85.
Yesterday I was questing with my gathering alt in Vashj'ir (as I suggested in my post about Cataclysm "leveling and time schedule" made for another blog carnival, this time hosted at JMTC). And suddently I started seeing more and more herbs and mining nodes, spawning too fast for me to gather them. Sadly they're in the middle of a lot of mobs, but this actually also help keeping other characters from gathering them.
Here there is the location, "The Clutch" in the Kelp'thar Forest:

The number of nodes doesn't seem so great, but I tested it again this morning (the image is from yesterday, after just 10 minutes of questing and gathering in the clutch, check on wowhead and you'll see there are more nodes than that) and I didn't have nearly any downtime between gathering two nodes.

Continuing the research
So, today I tried to wander through Vashj'ir looking for nodes (I usually look for my good spots, because even wowhead can't catch that "feeling" about the rarity of the nodes or the crowd of people gathering them). The results were amazing: I tried it just for half an hour, without knowing were to go and discovering new zones of the map in the process, and still manage to gather as many [Azshara's Veil] as the [Cinderbloom] that I would gather in Mt. Hyjal, just a little less [Obsidium Ore],  and more [Stormvine] too. And this was just wandering casually in the three Vashj'ir maps!
Even if I've shown you a spot from Kelp'thar Forest, both from wowhead and my personal experience it seems that Shimmering Expanse is the best map for nodes, but you should try both to see which work best for you. You could also take sometimes a break from gathering and do some quest, so your gatherer will be stronger against the few mobs that will aggro you... In this case you'll visit all the zones in some time, and you'll be able to make a better decision.
And know what? This maps are huge and solitary.
If you manage to orientate yourself in this three-dimensional world (for some it will be easy, for others difficult), you'll soon be able to discover your personal spot, away from the crowd of gatherers the other zones know.

Some other things to know:

• When you see a node on your mini-map, start looking for it on the ocean floor: if it's a mining node it will always be there, and the same will happen in most cases also for herbs. If you can't find the node, look above you: if there can be some kind of plane thing (a big oyster shell, a coralline reef, a rock) go higher until you find some other kind of "floor" it will be usually quite easy to locate the herb your looking for.
• If you're a druid, your swimming form will work as well as the seahorse (after the first quest in the map, the one who gives you underwater breathing), with a difference: you can shift form while in combat. (and, as always, you can gather maintaining your swimming form).

What about higher level maps?

With the nerf on the number of nodes in Deepholm and Twilight Highlands, the benefits of going to gather in higher level maps is really server dependent. In my server, [Obsidium Ore] sell higher than [Elementium Ore], and the prices for herbs doesn't vary too much (and [Azshara's Veil] are more valuable than [Cinderbloom], another reason to choose Vashj'ir over Mt. Hyjal for farming).
You should also notice that being in a zone that you outlevel (as you'll do sooner or later) will make your gathering easier and faster.

This may change in the future, especially when the mats where more required for actual crafts than for leveling. You just have to be smart about that and know your market, as always.

(Update*)Further reading about [Azshara's Veil]
Just days before this post, Mageshadow at The Gnomish Coin posted his favorite route for farming [Azshara's Veil] ... This beautiful farming spot is in Tol Barad, so you need to be level 85 to get there, but if you're interested just in the [Azshara's Veil] (and you don't like the 3D world of Vashj'ir), you should give it a try.
It's also worth checking while doing the Tol Barad dailies!

(Further Update) This post now has a follow up that you should check: Go diving - Gathering in Vashj'ir - Part 2 

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* I put this here from the comments so it's more easy to spot ^^