The "Secret Khorium" Node (Patreon)

This article is mainly for retail but will be useful to classic players when Wrath goes live shortly on September 26. I have summarized the trick here at the end for those who do not like reading.

The Deathforge in Outland Shadowmoon Valley contains is an underground cave complex which, at its southernmost extremity, has a gated-off area blocked by a heavy portcullis. 

Behind the portcullis is a small filled with infernals and guards which has a mining node spawn. 

This portcullis can only be opened by a "deathforge key"* which is provided for the "Bring Down The Warbringer" quest. This quest can be accessed after completing the Wildhammer stronghold quests up to the "Legion Hold" quests and then starting the "To The Deathold" Chain.

A comment on wowhead about the key got me very interested in the node which spawns behind the portcullis:

If you are a miner I suggest you to keep it in inventory since there is a Khorium vein that can only be reached using this key.

Khorium is the most valuable ore in wow. A single ore sells for 400 gold currently on the Auction House in retail wow, and a miner can get up to 8 from one node. This means you can get potentially 3200 gold of value from one node-to put this in perspective my recent public wow video on raw gold requires 20 minutes of farming to make that much. 

I noticed a number of other posts mentioning a "Khorium vein" that spawns in the Deathforge. A khorium vein in fact has only a low percentage chance of appearing at any node. And, indeed the vein that spawns in the Deathforge is often not khorium but adamantite ore. However it does seem to be the case that the vein that spawns here is much more likely to be khorium than normal.

I think what has happened here is that Khorium farmers have heavily depleted all the surrounding nodes. When khorium spawns in the deathforge it is less likely to be mined as most players will not access to the area behind the portcullis. 

So the strategy for gold farmers here: 

1. Take a lower-level character you do not use to Outland, Shadowmoon Valley.

2. Access the Deathforge by questing from Wildhammer Stronghold up to the "Bringing Down The Warbringer" quest, or use the ghost walk exploit (see above). 

3.  Check back every so often to see if a khorium node has spawned. 

4. When you have enough khorium sell it (and any adamantite you may have farmed) on the auction house. 

*Even on retail this will take 5-10 minutes, classic taking 30 minutes so you might wish to exploit your way past the portcullis by removing your gear and killing your character (pinchwhistle nitro fuel + a cooking fire is a good way to do this in retail, in classic just let the nearby mobs kill you at the portcullis entrance) then ghost walking through the portcullis.

In Classic

Currently in classic khorium ore is worth only 6 gold on my realm-yielding a potential maximum of 48 gold from 8 ore that you can get from one node. This isn't bad at all. However it expect the price to get much higher soon-this is because Outland is still the active expansion and Khorium is farmed heavily by casual players. When Wrath is released these players will go to Northrend and I expect the price to rise significantly. The above strategy should then work as well as or even better than on retail.