What is the most efficient way to farm Subtle Essence?

So, as I continue to level up, I find myself wanting to explore the crafting world a little more. However, as I continue to do so, I find myself lacking an excess amount of Subtle Essence, the basic crafting ingredient.

What is the most efficient way to farm Subtle Essence? I have found that every Blue item always dishes out 1 Subtle Essence. Is it worth creating a farming character for the low levels with high magic find, or do items at higher difficulties yield more Subtle Essences?

Higher difficulties will yield more blues mainly because of the Nephalem Valor Buff, which is given to your character when you kill unique bosses and do not switch skills. Also, higher level gear, if they have the +% to magic find attribute, will naturally have a higher percentage to magic find that only high-level characters can wear.

Thus, I think your best bet for farming blues and crafting subtle essence is to play at as high a difficulty as is safe for your character.

Crafting materials are linked to difficulty, so if you want to farm subtle essence, you have to play on Normal. The catch is, all magic items are equivalent when it comes to salvaging - level is irrelevant. The essence you get from A level 25 magic snake is just as good as when it's on a plane old level 3 Axe

So the easy answer is, play the easiest content you can farm with the most magic find you own, because it doesn't matter what drops, as long as it's blue.

Alternatively, if you've got the gold to spare, you can simply buy gear from vendors, then sell it. I found a relatively cheap pair of gloves for 500 gold that gave me a subtle essence without any fuss, just from one of the vendors in New Tristram.

And lastly, if you really want them fast, you can simply buy them from the auction house.

Honestly, given the current state of the economy, I'd say your best bet is to just farm gold, by whatever means is most effective, and buy the Subtle Essence off the auction house.

Currently, they're going for a fraction of the vendor value of even the most basic of Act 1 Normal Mode Blue Items. Eventually the market is going to settle in to a point where the value of a Subtle Essence is roughly equal to either the vendor price or the market value of an 'average' normal mode Blue. When this happens, the most efficient means of farming will likely to still be to farm gold with a high level character in the highest appropriate difficulty mode and buy the essence. The only reason you would want to farm Subtle Essence directly is if you're playing a low level hardcore character without access to any resources from a higher level character. In that case, just kill the hardest things you can kill safely, and melt the blues at the blacksmith.

Farming is for suckers, just go to the shop and buy some!

I've found the easiest way to farm subtle essence is to head over to the Auction House. I picked up 1000 Subtle Essence for 22k gold.