[MoP] Food Ingredient Farming

[VerneAsimov]

This guide should tell you the best locations for farming the stat buff foods' ingredients. I checked every location myself and they're likely the best locations in the game. A guide like this wouldn't normally be necessary since the retail folks had it down to a science. However, a lot of the retail spots and methods are broken or half-working, making them useless for for farming. There's an issue where the end-game buff food recipe won't stay in your cookbook. I'll update when I find a solution.

 

The first thing you need to know is that you will definitely need Ironpaw Tokens unless you've got the listed ingredients by the hundreds. Tokens are used to buy ingredients that can't be farmed by design (low % to drop) and also ingredients that should be farmable (missing mobs, no drop) but can't be on this server. Tokens can be gained in multiple ways:

• Dailies: Each branch of Pandaren cooking gives a daily that gives one token on completion. The only broken one is The Thousand-Year Dumpling from what I saw.
• Groceries: You can take useless ingredients and convert them into Bundles of Groceries. Each bundle can be turned in for a token with this quest: turned in.
• Regular quests: There are a couple one-time quests to do around Halfhill.
• Leveling cooking: Each trainer gives you a quest to deliver raw ingredients to them as well as cook a relevant recipe. This is one time quest.

You can buy every single ingredient with tokens or catch some off the auction house but eventually you will run out if you use food a lot. Each token buys exactly enough of one ingredient for one recipe (e.g. 25 Mogu Pumpkins). Fish seem to be working fully, just pick the normal farming spot; they're also amazing for taking excess and turning them into bundles. Finally, tell me if I got something wrong, I'll be happy to fix it.

Agility

• Rice Flour: Token only
• Tiger Gourami: Fish here
• Raw Turtle Meat: Jade Forest @ Windward Isle, Lake of Stars @ Dread Wastes (small amount but you can farm for Intellect food at the same time)
• Scallons: Token because of bugged drop rates

Intellect

• Black Pepper: Token only
• Emperor Salmon: Fish here
• Mogu Pumpkin: Token because of naturally low drops
• Raw Crocolisk Belly: Pools of Purity @ Valley of the Four Winds, Lake of Stars @ Dread Wastes, White Petal Lake @ Valley of Eternal Blossom

Spirit

• Rice Flour: Token only
• Jewel Danio: Fish here
• White Turnip: Token because of naturally low drop 
• Raw Crab Meat: West of Briny Muck @ Dread Wastes, underwater

Stamina

• Rice Flour: Token only
• Raw Tiger Steak: Jade Forest @ Windward Isle
• Redbelly Mandarin: Fish here 
• Red Blossom Leek: Isle of Giants, dropped by Zandalari (gear recommended)

Strength

• Black Pepper: Token only
• Giant Mantis Shrimp: Fish here
• Mushan Ribs: One of the few mobs that exists just about anywhere in large numbers and isn't bugged. Pick any mob from this list, I recommend Townlong Steppes' Longshadow Mushan.
• Green Cabbage: Tokens highly recommended. These drop from virmen mobs which are numerous but have a very low drop rate by design. Try the burrow east of Thunderfoot Fields @ Valley of the Four Winds

Edited April 3, 2016 by VerneAsimov