Thanks to LockeColeMA and thermalnoise for past editions of this guide.
Table of Contents
1) General Trade Questions
Primary Trade skills
2) Alchemy
3) Blacksmithing
4) Enchanting
5) Engineering
6) Inscription
7) Jewelcrafting
8) Leatherworking
9) Tailoring
10) Herbalism
11) Mining
12) Skinning
Secondary Trade skills
13) Archaeology
14) Cooking
15) First Aid
16) Fishing
1) General Trade Questions
Q. What are trade skills?
A. Trade skills are the crafts of World of Warcraft. You take items you have found off of enemies, bought from vendors, or gathered in the wild, and turn them into something that is hopefully more useful. Many times you can sell these items; sometimes you'll use them immediately.
Q. What are the requirements for trade skills?
A. You can start getting trade skills at level 5. If you need to find a trainer, ask a guard (they'll put a flag on your mini-map if you ask under "Professions"). There are tiers for skills, posted by Zemosalt on the battle.net forums:
Apprentice – Skill levels 1 through 75, need to be skill level 50 and character level 10 to move on.
Journeyman – Skill level 76 through 150, need to be skill level 125 and character level 20 to move on.
Expert – Skill level 151 through 225, need to be skill level 200 and character level 35 to move on.
Artisan – Skill level 226 through 300, need to be skill level 275 and character level 50* to move on.
Master – Skill level 301 through 375, need to be skill level 350 and character level 65 to move on.
Grand Master – Skill level 376 through 450, need to be skill level 425 and character level 75 to move on.
Illustrious Grand Master – Skill level 451 through 525, this is the max level for professions with Cataclysm.
* Level 45 minimum required for Fishing, and level 35 required for Cooking/First Aid.
These apply to the primary production skills: Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Tailoring, Engineering, Alchemy, Jewelcrafting, Inscription and Enchanting.
There are also three primary gathering skills: Herbalism, Mining, and Skinning. With mining and herbalism, you will get a "track resource" button. Clicking this will show resources nearby on your mini-map as yellow dots. If the dot is grayed out, the resource is under the ground. With patch 4.01, players now have the ability to track more than one thing at a time. So if you wish to track ore nodes and herb nodes together, you may do so.
It is important to note that gathering professions have different character level requirements than the production skills:
Expert – level 10
Artisan – level 25
Master – level 40
Grand Master – level 55
Only accounts that are Burning Crusade expansion-enabled can learn Jewelcrafting. Non-expansion accounts may use items made by Jewelcrafting, though. Similarly, you must have Wrath of the Lich King to learn Inscription, although anyone can use glyphs or other crafted items from Inscription. You must also have Cataclysm to learn Archaeology.
You can ONLY have 2 of these 10 primary trade skills. You can drop one to make room for another, but if you take it back up later, you will have lost all of your recipes and all of your skill levels.
In addition, there are four secondary trade skills: fishing, cooking, first aid, and archaeology. You can have all four of these in addition to your primary trade skills.
Finally, there are some professions that will require you to be level 84 and to have reached the first part of phasing for Twilight Highlands to move on past level 500. These professions are Enchanting, Tailoring, Leatherworking and Blacksmithing.
Q. Do I need to train Master profession skills in Outland or Grand Master in Northrend?
A. Not anymore. Profession trainers in both Orgrimmar and Stormwind can now train players from skill level 1 up to 525.
Q. How do I craft something?
A. Push "P" to open your spellbook. Under the Professions tab, if you have the skill (say, tailoring), click the tailoring button. You'll see a list of recipes that you have learned and can make. If you have the materials for the item, next to its name you will see a number: this is the maximum amount of the item you can create with the materials you currently have on hand.
You will never fail to craft something in World of Warcraft.
Q. What's with the colors on my recipes/resource nodes?
A. The color system is how likely you are to get a skill-up when you gather/craft something. Orange means always (100%), yellow means usually (50-100%), green means rarely (0-50%), and grey means never (0%). Red means you need to raise your skill to gather/craft the item (A message will display on-screen that will say how high your skill needs to be).
Q. How can I make money in WoW? (Torux)
A. The best way is to take two gathering professions (mining, skinning and/or herbalism) and sell the items you get in the auction house to crafters. Some people learn enchanting, then disenchant items they no longer want (as well as soulbound items from quests), and sell the dust, essence and shards to enchanters. Shards sell for a lot more than dusts and essences.
A1. This holds true for the first forty levels or so, usually up until you get your 100% speed mount. With your 100% mount, your money-making abilities increase ten-fold. You can move faster, gather more per hour, and increase your profits (and this is just with gathering). However, even later in the game, the easiest way to get money is to get some rare recipes and make items no one else can. Charge a base line and have people bring you materials; it's free for you and good for them!
Another good way to make money is to play the AH; buy low and sell high. I won't go into this day trading technique; this is stuff for people with a lot of time and good market skills ^_^ Keep in mind a lot of people are upset by morals here: when you overstep the line and buyout everything to resell it at a higher price, it tends to become a pain. If you can do it, hey, it's all good! But odds are that a lot of people will scoff at your price and make you eat the deposit fees. A better idea: look for underpriced items and sell them at the current price. This is easy and effective. Another idea is to make a bank alt with a normal name, and do all your AHing on that character. Keep in mind that if your account gets hacked, gold and items cannot be restored to a character under level 10.
For more advanced help with making money off the AH, please read Dadanox's thread on "Making the AH your daily."
Q. How do I unlearn a skill? (Torux)
A. Open your spellbook and click the Professions tab. Underneath the name of each profession with be a red circle with a line through it. Clicking this circle will unlearn your profession. Be warned, this will completely remove any knowledge you have of that skill, and if you wish to relearn it in the future, you will have to start from the very beginning.
Q. What is the best race/class for farming?
A. This is up for debate and/or personal preference. My personal preference is a tauren druid, especially if said farmer is going to be an herbalist. Taurens have an awesome racial ability called Cultivation, which allows them to pick herbs (possibly mine ore nodes as well, not sure on this) in half a second. Every other race takes 2 seconds. In addition, Druids get flight form, and have the ability to gather in flight form, saving an extra 1.5 seconds for getting back on a mount after picking a flower or mining. This is particularly helpful if there's a mob next to said flower or ore. You can swoop down, get your node and fly back up without the mob being able to stop you.
A lot of people prefer either Paladins or Death Knights for farming because of their speed bonus for mounts. Paladins can use Crusader Aura while farming, which increases their mount speed by 20%. Death Knights must choose 2 points in the frost talent On a Pale Horse to get the same mount speed bonus. A DK could also use Unholy Presence to increase run speed if there are two nodes close to each other.
If farming includes running older dungeons quickly and selling the cloth and drops, either of these classes will do great.
REPUTATION REWARDS
A VERY comprehensive link to the different factions. Clicking on the link for any faction will take you to that faction’s page, which lists the different rewards you can purchase from said faction, including what patterns you can get and how to get reputation levels for the factions.
http://www.wowpedia.org/Faction
Q. What is the easiest way to level up X profession?
A. There is no one way to level up a profession. However, there are lots of guides out there that outline the most effective and quickest way to level up different professions. I really like http://www.wow-professions.com/
Edited, Jun 27th 2011 12:52am by PigtailsOfDoom
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- Trade Skill FAQ: Updated for Cataclysm
Trade Skill FAQ: Updated for CataclysmFollow
2) Alchemy
Overview: Alchemy is the process of gathering herbs and creating potions, elixirs and flasks from them. These items give you temporary stat increases or added effects. These effects generally last an hour before another potion is needed, or they fade upon dying. Other potions can restore HPs, mana, or remove debuffs. To make these items you need to buy Crystal vials, which you can purchase from any Alchemy Supplies Vendor or Trade Vendor.
While only alchemists make potions, anyone can use them (unlike engineering). Potions can tip the balance in your favor in PvE and PvP; however, people in duels often consider them to be unfair. Cry babies. Specify the rules first before a duel; using your profession to help you win is NOT cheating in my book.
Healing/mana potions can be found off some enemies. Stat potions are only created by alchemists or come as quest rewards. From what I've seen thus far in Cata, however, current healing and mana potions no longer drop from mobs. You must get an alchemist to make them for you.
Alchemy end game bonuses: Alchemists gain the passive ability Mixology. For Cataclysm Flasks, you will gain an extra 80 of whatever stat the flask gives you. Flask of Draconic Mind for example, will give you 380 Intellect instead of the typical 300. There are also some very nice trinkets that only alchemists can make and equip.
Q. What are these transmutes I keep hearing about? (LockeColeMA)
A. A transmutation is an alchemist's special ability (well, besides making potions, obviously). At level 225 you can create a soulbound item called a Philosopher's Stone that is required for transmutes.
And you also get your first Transmutes (from the Gadgetzan Alchemy vendor):
Transmute Iron to Gold and Transmute Mithril to Truesilver. You basically make the "normal" items into their rare spawns.
However, these particular transmutes are relatively worthless. At level 275, you can learn Transmute Arcanite. Arcanite is needed for a lot of engineering and blacksmithing items, so there is some demand for it from people leveling these professions. And only alchemists can make it! As you progress to the Outlands, you'll find transmutes for various diamonds (Jewelcrafters will need these) and Primals (useful in all the crafting trade skills). Keep in mind though that these transmute are two expansions outdated and are really only useful for people who are leveling their tradeskills or making items for alts.
Things to note: to transmute you need the necessary materials, which are usually just the metals, essences, or elements. Transmutes will often trigger a cooldown, which resets at midnight server time, on your Philosopher's Stone which means you will have to wait before you can do another. These cooldowns are character specific: having multiple Philosopher's Stones will NOT allow you to transmute more often. Many of the older transmutes, as well as Cata blue quality colored gems (not the meta Shadowspirit Diamond) do not trigger this cooldown.
Q. What are these Flasks I hear about? (LockeColeMA)
A. Flasks are the uber end-game potions. They require a significant amount of items to create. Flask effects last two hours for alchemists, and one hour for everyone else. Their effects persist through death, which makes them appealing for running instances or raids and to PvPers. Keep in mind that you can only have one Flask effect at a time, and that they count as both a Guardian and Battle Elixir, so you cannot use a Flask and one of these items as well.
Q. How do I "discover" a recipe?
Master Alchemists (skill capped at 525) can discover a new recipe randomly while creating a known potion, elixir, flask, or transmute. You can only discover a recipe by making recipes you learned in the Outlands or later. However, you can discover a recipe no matter your location.
When you discover a recipe, you'll get the same animation that occurs when you level or gain a reputation with a faction. You'll also see a note in your main chat log about what exactly you discovered. At that point, you should see the recipe in your Alchemy spellbook.
Discoveries in Cataclysm seem to be rather pointless currently. I have learned Northrend and Outland recipes since maxing out Alchemy, but nothing worth making. Perhaps Blizzard will add new discovery based recipes in a future patch? Flasks in Cata and Northrend can be learned by the trainer, you do not have to discover them as you did for the flasks in Burning Crusade.
Q. What are the three Alchemy specializations?
A. (Provided by Morthandeus)
"Master of Potions is straight-forward, basically anything like Major Protection Potion or Super Mana Potion you have a chance to get up to 5 from a single set of materials. You can expect, over time, to get maybe 15-20 percent extra yield from your materials. To become a master you must hand in 5 Super Healing Potions, 5 Super Mana Potions and 5 Major Dreamless Sleep Potions as well as get a quest drop from High Botanist Freywinn in the Botanica wing of Tempest Keep. You don't get any unique recipes.
"Master of Transmutes works exactly the same way but is limited by the shared cooldown. You might get extrememly lucky and get 5 Primal Might or 5 Skyfire Diamonds from a single set of materials, but you're only going to be doing one transmute every 24 hours unlike potions where you are only limited by the availability of herbs and cost of vials. To become a Master you hand in 4 Primal Might to the NPC (Zarevhi), unlike Master of Potions this does not require a flying mount to visit Tempest Keep and is therefore more attractive to alts. Assuming a 20% yield increase you would need to do 20 days of transmuting Primal Might to break even, after that it's all profit. You don't get any unique transmutes.
"Master of Elixirs is interesting. The obvious application is for all the various DPS boosters such as Onslaught Elixir, stat-boosters like Elixir of Mastery and the various Defense elixirs, in total there's about 30 different Elixirs in the game. What is less obvious is that Flasks also count as Elixirs. This is very significant as Flasks are high-value items made using relatively rare materials (Black Lotus or Fel Lotus) but unlike high-value transmutes there is no cooldown. Also, the new Flasks in TBC are all discovered - you can't just farm a mob for a drop. This means that if you're the only person (or at least one of a small number) with a Flask recipe and you're a Master of Elixirs then you may get a large number of raid guilds coming to you for flask-making and being willing to pay well for the service. The quest involves doing the Black Morass instance (in the Caverns of Time) and getting 10 Essences of Infinity from Rift Lords and Rift Keepers. Hand them in with 5 Elixirs of Major Defense, 5 Elixirs of Mastery and 5 Elixirs of Major Agility to Lorokeem in Shattrath's Lower City to become a Master. There's no unique elixirs for masters.
"It's well worth consulting with other guild members so you don't end up with 5 transmute masters and nobody doing elixirs and potions. Transmute mastery is 'stackable' in a guild or crafting circle due to the cooldown, whereas for Elixirs and Potions you really only need one each if those people can make the key recipes that you need. Any character who has been lucky enough to discover a Flask recipe should seriously consider Elixirs as their mastery, especially if nobody else on server can make it.
"Right now from polling my own guild and various friends it seems a lot of people (especially alts) seem to be going for Transmute mastery with an expectation of being able to sell a Transmute every day for a small amount of gold and keep any extra output from mastery procs for themselves. Taking a very simple numbers example, selling Primal Might transmute every 24 hours for 5 gold you would expect to earn 100 gold in fees and 4 extra Primal Might that can be sold for lets say 150g each on the AH. That's 700g minus fees over 20 days, or 35g / day. By comparison, a Master of Potions or Elixirs with a recipe that has a 1g profit margin could buy or gather mats for 30 potions, get a 20% yield increase for 36 potions produced and sell those for equivalent daily profit (36g/day) but with the potential for far more if you can get enough materials and there's enough demand. The work or cash investment up front drops off sharply if you have people coming to you for potions/elixirs and you keep the extras."
In Patch 2.1, players can return to the quest giver for their mastery, and "forget" it for 100 Gold. Then you have the option to pick up the quest for another mastery.
Mastery quests:
Master of Potions
Master of Transmutation
Master of Elixirs
Q. What makes money with Alchemy?
A. With Cata being relatively new, this is still up in the air. Currently the main money maker is Transmute: Living Elements. While this may seem random, you can easily determine which volatile you want to make and go to its specific Cata zone for the transmute.
Hyjal: Fire
Vashj'ir: Water
Deepholm: Earth
Uldum: Air
Also note that Transmutation masters will occasionally gain extra volatiles with this transmutation.
Last I checked on my server, the other transmutes are not very cost effective. You will either make very little money on these transmutes or you will lose money. The same is true for flasks, elixirs and potions currently. Cost of mats are vastly higher than what you can sell the items for. However, I am basing this on my server. Do your research and determine for yourself which items will sell well and for a profit.
Edited, Feb 27th 2011 4:03am by PigtailsOfDoom
Overview: Alchemy is the process of gathering herbs and creating potions, elixirs and flasks from them. These items give you temporary stat increases or added effects. These effects generally last an hour before another potion is needed, or they fade upon dying. Other potions can restore HPs, mana, or remove debuffs. To make these items you need to buy Crystal vials, which you can purchase from any Alchemy Supplies Vendor or Trade Vendor.
While only alchemists make potions, anyone can use them (unlike engineering). Potions can tip the balance in your favor in PvE and PvP; however, people in duels often consider them to be unfair. Cry babies. Specify the rules first before a duel; using your profession to help you win is NOT cheating in my book.
Healing/mana potions can be found off some enemies. Stat potions are only created by alchemists or come as quest rewards. From what I've seen thus far in Cata, however, current healing and mana potions no longer drop from mobs. You must get an alchemist to make them for you.
Alchemy end game bonuses: Alchemists gain the passive ability Mixology. For Cataclysm Flasks, you will gain an extra 80 of whatever stat the flask gives you. Flask of Draconic Mind for example, will give you 380 Intellect instead of the typical 300. There are also some very nice trinkets that only alchemists can make and equip.
Q. What are these transmutes I keep hearing about? (LockeColeMA)
A. A transmutation is an alchemist's special ability (well, besides making potions, obviously). At level 225 you can create a soulbound item called a Philosopher's Stone that is required for transmutes.
And you also get your first Transmutes (from the Gadgetzan Alchemy vendor):
Transmute Iron to Gold and Transmute Mithril to Truesilver. You basically make the "normal" items into their rare spawns.
However, these particular transmutes are relatively worthless. At level 275, you can learn Transmute Arcanite. Arcanite is needed for a lot of engineering and blacksmithing items, so there is some demand for it from people leveling these professions. And only alchemists can make it! As you progress to the Outlands, you'll find transmutes for various diamonds (Jewelcrafters will need these) and Primals (useful in all the crafting trade skills). Keep in mind though that these transmute are two expansions outdated and are really only useful for people who are leveling their tradeskills or making items for alts.
Things to note: to transmute you need the necessary materials, which are usually just the metals, essences, or elements. Transmutes will often trigger a cooldown, which resets at midnight server time, on your Philosopher's Stone which means you will have to wait before you can do another. These cooldowns are character specific: having multiple Philosopher's Stones will NOT allow you to transmute more often. Many of the older transmutes, as well as Cata blue quality colored gems (not the meta Shadowspirit Diamond) do not trigger this cooldown.
Q. What are these Flasks I hear about? (LockeColeMA)
A. Flasks are the uber end-game potions. They require a significant amount of items to create. Flask effects last two hours for alchemists, and one hour for everyone else. Their effects persist through death, which makes them appealing for running instances or raids and to PvPers. Keep in mind that you can only have one Flask effect at a time, and that they count as both a Guardian and Battle Elixir, so you cannot use a Flask and one of these items as well.
Q. How do I "discover" a recipe?
Master Alchemists (skill capped at 525) can discover a new recipe randomly while creating a known potion, elixir, flask, or transmute. You can only discover a recipe by making recipes you learned in the Outlands or later. However, you can discover a recipe no matter your location.
When you discover a recipe, you'll get the same animation that occurs when you level or gain a reputation with a faction. You'll also see a note in your main chat log about what exactly you discovered. At that point, you should see the recipe in your Alchemy spellbook.
Discoveries in Cataclysm seem to be rather pointless currently. I have learned Northrend and Outland recipes since maxing out Alchemy, but nothing worth making. Perhaps Blizzard will add new discovery based recipes in a future patch? Flasks in Cata and Northrend can be learned by the trainer, you do not have to discover them as you did for the flasks in Burning Crusade.
Q. What are the three Alchemy specializations?
A. (Provided by Morthandeus)
"Master of Potions is straight-forward, basically anything like Major Protection Potion or Super Mana Potion you have a chance to get up to 5 from a single set of materials. You can expect, over time, to get maybe 15-20 percent extra yield from your materials. To become a master you must hand in 5 Super Healing Potions, 5 Super Mana Potions and 5 Major Dreamless Sleep Potions as well as get a quest drop from High Botanist Freywinn in the Botanica wing of Tempest Keep. You don't get any unique recipes.
"Master of Transmutes works exactly the same way but is limited by the shared cooldown. You might get extrememly lucky and get 5 Primal Might or 5 Skyfire Diamonds from a single set of materials, but you're only going to be doing one transmute every 24 hours unlike potions where you are only limited by the availability of herbs and cost of vials. To become a Master you hand in 4 Primal Might to the NPC (Zarevhi), unlike Master of Potions this does not require a flying mount to visit Tempest Keep and is therefore more attractive to alts. Assuming a 20% yield increase you would need to do 20 days of transmuting Primal Might to break even, after that it's all profit. You don't get any unique transmutes.
"Master of Elixirs is interesting. The obvious application is for all the various DPS boosters such as Onslaught Elixir, stat-boosters like Elixir of Mastery and the various Defense elixirs, in total there's about 30 different Elixirs in the game. What is less obvious is that Flasks also count as Elixirs. This is very significant as Flasks are high-value items made using relatively rare materials (Black Lotus or Fel Lotus) but unlike high-value transmutes there is no cooldown. Also, the new Flasks in TBC are all discovered - you can't just farm a mob for a drop. This means that if you're the only person (or at least one of a small number) with a Flask recipe and you're a Master of Elixirs then you may get a large number of raid guilds coming to you for flask-making and being willing to pay well for the service. The quest involves doing the Black Morass instance (in the Caverns of Time) and getting 10 Essences of Infinity from Rift Lords and Rift Keepers. Hand them in with 5 Elixirs of Major Defense, 5 Elixirs of Mastery and 5 Elixirs of Major Agility to Lorokeem in Shattrath's Lower City to become a Master. There's no unique elixirs for masters.
"It's well worth consulting with other guild members so you don't end up with 5 transmute masters and nobody doing elixirs and potions. Transmute mastery is 'stackable' in a guild or crafting circle due to the cooldown, whereas for Elixirs and Potions you really only need one each if those people can make the key recipes that you need. Any character who has been lucky enough to discover a Flask recipe should seriously consider Elixirs as their mastery, especially if nobody else on server can make it.
"Right now from polling my own guild and various friends it seems a lot of people (especially alts) seem to be going for Transmute mastery with an expectation of being able to sell a Transmute every day for a small amount of gold and keep any extra output from mastery procs for themselves. Taking a very simple numbers example, selling Primal Might transmute every 24 hours for 5 gold you would expect to earn 100 gold in fees and 4 extra Primal Might that can be sold for lets say 150g each on the AH. That's 700g minus fees over 20 days, or 35g / day. By comparison, a Master of Potions or Elixirs with a recipe that has a 1g profit margin could buy or gather mats for 30 potions, get a 20% yield increase for 36 potions produced and sell those for equivalent daily profit (36g/day) but with the potential for far more if you can get enough materials and there's enough demand. The work or cash investment up front drops off sharply if you have people coming to you for potions/elixirs and you keep the extras."
In Patch 2.1, players can return to the quest giver for their mastery, and "forget" it for 100 Gold. Then you have the option to pick up the quest for another mastery.
Mastery quests:
Master of Potions
Master of Transmutation
Master of Elixirs
Q. What makes money with Alchemy?
A. With Cata being relatively new, this is still up in the air. Currently the main money maker is Transmute: Living Elements. While this may seem random, you can easily determine which volatile you want to make and go to its specific Cata zone for the transmute.
Hyjal: Fire
Vashj'ir: Water
Deepholm: Earth
Uldum: Air
Also note that Transmutation masters will occasionally gain extra volatiles with this transmutation.
Last I checked on my server, the other transmutes are not very cost effective. You will either make very little money on these transmutes or you will lose money. The same is true for flasks, elixirs and potions currently. Cost of mats are vastly higher than what you can sell the items for. However, I am basing this on my server. Do your research and determine for yourself which items will sell well and for a profit.
Edited, Feb 27th 2011 4:03am by PigtailsOfDoom
3) Blacksmithing
Overview: Blacksmithing is a profession that lets you make weapons and mail (and later plate) armor. The weapons created include daggers, swords, maces, and axes. The ability to make mail pretty much drops off at level 40, when Paladins and Warriors upgrade to plate; mail-crafting past level 40 for Shamans and Hunters is in Leatherworking at that point.
Blacksmithing had specializations from Vanilla through most of Wrath, however the weaponsmith and different armorsmith specializations were removed in the 4.01 patch. If you previously already knew the specialization specific patterns, you still have access to them and can still make them. Otherwise, you are SOL.
To get started, you'll want a few things. To make almost everything, you'll need ore and possibly gems. You can acquire ore and gems via mining, or you can simply purchase them off the AH. Gathering the mats yourself is less expensive, but also more time consuming, where as buying them is less time consuming but more expensive. This is true of several of the production professions. You also need a blacksmith's hammer, along with an anvil to create blacksmithed items.
Blacksmithing end game bonuses:
Blacksmiths have the ability to add an extra socket to both their bracers and gloves. They can only add these sockets to their own gear, and if you drop blacksmithing after socketing gear, they will de-activate. They can also make the Ebonsteel Belt Buckle which allows anyone to add an extra socket to their belt. These sockets are all prismatic, meaning that you can put any color gem in the socket you wish, without worry of socket bonuses. Given that the current blue quality gems each give a +40 stat bonus (except for stamina gems, which give +60), you gain a +80 bonus to your preferred stat (or +120 if you are gemming for stamina).
Q. Why is blacksmithing a good profession?
A. Blacksmithing is a very versatile profession. One might think that it is only useful to classes who wear plate, but this isn't true. Blacksmiths can create weapons that are useful to any class, even the cloth spellcasters. That said, the classes that will get the most out of this profession will be those who can wear plate or equip shields: Death Knights, Paladins, Shamans and Warriors. In addition, every class will benefit from the additional sockets mentioned above.
Q. Help! I'm stuck at 512 and I can't learn any new recipes, what do I do?
A. Visit the Blacksmithing Supplies vendor in your respective capital city. They will have higher leveled plans that you can purchase with different mats.
It is important to note that the epic quality patterns all require a certain amount of chaos orbs, which are only obtainable upon completing Cataclysm heroics, and are BoP.
Q. How do you make money with Blacksmithing?
A. I've asked around, and the most profitable things to make are either the belt socket, or getting tipped for making the epic items with orbs. Ask around and see how much people are asking for the orbs as it varies from server to server. With the cost of volatiles still so high, it will probably be difficult to make a profit off of any of the higher end blue items.
Edited, Mar 5th 2011 5:00pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 2:03pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Overview: Blacksmithing is a profession that lets you make weapons and mail (and later plate) armor. The weapons created include daggers, swords, maces, and axes. The ability to make mail pretty much drops off at level 40, when Paladins and Warriors upgrade to plate; mail-crafting past level 40 for Shamans and Hunters is in Leatherworking at that point.
Blacksmithing had specializations from Vanilla through most of Wrath, however the weaponsmith and different armorsmith specializations were removed in the 4.01 patch. If you previously already knew the specialization specific patterns, you still have access to them and can still make them. Otherwise, you are SOL.
To get started, you'll want a few things. To make almost everything, you'll need ore and possibly gems. You can acquire ore and gems via mining, or you can simply purchase them off the AH. Gathering the mats yourself is less expensive, but also more time consuming, where as buying them is less time consuming but more expensive. This is true of several of the production professions. You also need a blacksmith's hammer, along with an anvil to create blacksmithed items.
Blacksmithing end game bonuses:
Blacksmiths have the ability to add an extra socket to both their bracers and gloves. They can only add these sockets to their own gear, and if you drop blacksmithing after socketing gear, they will de-activate. They can also make the Ebonsteel Belt Buckle which allows anyone to add an extra socket to their belt. These sockets are all prismatic, meaning that you can put any color gem in the socket you wish, without worry of socket bonuses. Given that the current blue quality gems each give a +40 stat bonus (except for stamina gems, which give +60), you gain a +80 bonus to your preferred stat (or +120 if you are gemming for stamina).
Q. Why is blacksmithing a good profession?
A. Blacksmithing is a very versatile profession. One might think that it is only useful to classes who wear plate, but this isn't true. Blacksmiths can create weapons that are useful to any class, even the cloth spellcasters. That said, the classes that will get the most out of this profession will be those who can wear plate or equip shields: Death Knights, Paladins, Shamans and Warriors. In addition, every class will benefit from the additional sockets mentioned above.
Q. Help! I'm stuck at 512 and I can't learn any new recipes, what do I do?
A. Visit the Blacksmithing Supplies vendor in your respective capital city. They will have higher leveled plans that you can purchase with different mats.
It is important to note that the epic quality patterns all require a certain amount of chaos orbs, which are only obtainable upon completing Cataclysm heroics, and are BoP.
Q. How do you make money with Blacksmithing?
A. I've asked around, and the most profitable things to make are either the belt socket, or getting tipped for making the epic items with orbs. Ask around and see how much people are asking for the orbs as it varies from server to server. With the cost of volatiles still so high, it will probably be difficult to make a profit off of any of the higher end blue items.
Edited, Mar 5th 2011 5:00pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 2:03pm by PigtailsOfDoom
4) Enchanting
Overview: Shiny...
Enchanting is one of the more versatile tradeskills, and one of the most difficult to level. It is a very unique skill, and much easier to make money off of with the advent of Inscription in Wrath. Scribes can make Enchanting Vellum, which allows us to store an enchantment and sell these scrolls on the AH. No longer do enchanters have to sit around in trade chat and spam their recipes to make money.
Enchanting needs 4 ingredients: a rod, dust, essences, and shards/crystals. The rods are made by blacksmiths and then enchanted to a useful state by the enchanter. The dust comes often from green armor that is disenchanted, the essences from green weapons, the shards from blue items (either armor or weapons), and crystals from purple (epic) items.
Disenchanting is the bane of an enchanter's existence for the most part. You need a massive amount of materials to enchant an item, so you need to disenchant a massive amount of equipment. To get that much, you aren't selling it, so you lose a lot of money that way. Generally enchanting is not recommended for a player's first character; better to have a high character able to send easily found items to an alt than to buy them off the Auction House.
That being said, enchants can fetch very high prices.
Enchanting end game bonuses:
Enchanters have the ability to enchant their own rings with +40 to each ring of either Agility, Intellect, Strength, and +60 of Stamina. This gives a total of +80 to most stats, and a +120 to Stamina for tanks.
Q. I have heard enchanting can be used as a gathering skill... what does this mean?
A. Disenchanting can indeed be used as a gathering skill. Only enchanters can make dust/essences/shards, and there is always a demand for these items. There are a number of ways to get these items easily:
- Quest rewards are soulbound and BoP. Instead of vendoring them, disenchant them to useful materials.
- Boss drops in instances are usually blue and BoP: free shard, especially if no one wants the item, or you can farm it yourself.
- Less popular equipment, such as Boar/Wolf/Whale, usually won't sell on the AH, but it can be disenchanted.
The idea with all of these is that you take these materials and instead of using them, sell them for a profit on the Auction House. Enchanting materials have one major highlight: they have no sell value, and are free to list on the AH. These materials can go for very good amounts; be on the lookout for underpriced equipment, buy it or win a low bid, and disenchant to resell the resulting material for a profit.
Skill level determines what items you can disenchant, via http://www.wow-professions.com:
Dusts and Essences
Disenchanting Uncommon quality armors or weapons.
Skill: 1 - Item Levels 5-15 - (1-3) [Strange Dust] or 1-2 [Lesser Magic Essence]
Skill: 25 - Item Levels 16-20 - (2-5) [Strange Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Magic Essence]
Skill: 25 - Item Levels 21-25 - (2-5) [Strange Dust] or 1-2 [Lesser Astral Essence]
Skill: 50 - Item Levels 26-30 - (1-3) [Soul Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Astral Essence]
Skill: 75 - Item Levels 31-35 - (2-5) [Soul Dust] or 1-2 [Lesser Mystic Essence]
Skill: 100 - Item Levels 36-40 - (1-3) [Vision Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Mystic Essence]
Skill: 125 - Item Levels 41-45 - (2-5) [Vision Dust] or 1-2 [Lesser Nether Essence]
Skill: 150 - Item Levels 46-50 - (1-3) [Dream Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Nether Essence]
Skill: 175 - Item Levels 51-55 - (2-5) [Dream Dust] or 1-2 [Lesser Eternal Essence]
Skill: 200 - Item Levels 56-60 - (1-3) [Illusion Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Eternal Essence]
Skill: 225 - Item Levels 61-65 - (2-5) [Illusion Dust] or 2-3[Greater Eternal Essence]
Skill: 225 - Item Levels 80-99 - (1-3) [Arcane Dust] or 1-3 [Lesser Planar Essence]
Skill: 275 - Item Levels 100-120 - (2-5) or [Arcane Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Planar Essence]
Skill: 325 - Item Levels 130-151 - (1-3) or [Infinite Dust] or 1-3 [Lesser Cosmic Essence]
Skill: 350 - Item Levels 152-200 - (2-5) or [Infinite Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Cosmic Essence]
Skill: 425 - Item Levels 272-305 - (1-3) or [Hypnotic Dust] or 1-3 [Lesser Celestial Essence]
Skill: 475 - Item Levels 305-333 - (2-5) or [Hypnotic Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Celestial Essence]
Shards:
Disenchanting Rare quality weapons or armors. Shards disenchanted from rare items are always 1x quantity.
Item Levels 16-25 - [Small Glimmering Shard]
Item Levels 26-30 - [Large Glimmering Shard]
Item Levels 31-35 - [Small Glowing Shard]
Item Levels 36-40 - [Large Glowing Shard]
Item Levels 41-45 - [Small Radiant Shard]
Item Levels 46-50- [Large Radiant Shard]
Item Levels 51-55 - [Small Brilliant Shard]
Item Levels 55-65 - [Large Brilliant Shard]
Item Levels 80-99 - [Small Prismatic Shard]
Item Levels 100-120 - [Large Prismatic Shard]
Item Levels 130-151 - [Small Dream Shard]
Item Levels 152-200 - [Dream Shard]
Item Levels 272-305 - [Small Heavenly Shard]
Item Levels 305-346 - [Heavenly Shard]
Q. How far will disenchanting take me, skill-level wise?
Disenchanting will give skill-ups until 60. After that, you'll need to do enchants to further your skill.
Q. What profession should I take with enchanting? (LockeColeMA)
A. Enchanting is indeed a stand-alone profession (well, more or less). It gives you the required skill to get materials and make something out of them. In this way, it is a lot like tailoring; you don't need a second profession to support your craft (as, for example, blacksmithing NEEDS mining for most of the way up to 300).
Therefore, the tried and true formula is Enchanting/Tailoring. With this combination you can make your own items to disenchant. The catch is a minor one: you won't get any weapons made from tailoring, so getting essences can be slightly harder. Also, now you take out cloth as a source of income, making yourself even poorer.
Another combination is enchanting with a gathering skill. This way you can make money and then buy items off the auction house. It frees up any cloth you find to be sold, but means you need to either go after beasts in particular (for skinning), or out of your way for resource nodes (herbalism/mining). Out of these skills mining probably would make the most on its own, as three professions need a lot of ore.
(Added thanks to Nekar)
I would not suggest Enchanting as a profession until later in the game. Low level enchanting will not make much, if any money, for you. Pick a profession that will make you some money! At low levels, most items vendor for more than they are worth in enchanting mats. Most low level enchants are given away free from enchanters looking to get a skill-up. Even mid to high level enchants are usually sold for less than the cost of the mats.
Later in the game it is very easy to skill up enchanting to the higher levels.
(As a second skill, Leatherworking is viable in addition to Tailoring because):
1. Cloth costs more than leather. Sell your cloth and buy twice as much leather at the AH for making items. (see the price of Wool vs Medium leather)
2. Green leather armor uses less special items to make. Lots of patterns that only need leather and thread.
3. Leather armor has a greater chance to DE into essences.
I know of no cloth armor that DE's into essences over 30% of the time, with leather there are several and they only need leather and thread to make! Look hard enuff and you will find that for 1.5Gold in LW mats you can make 10Gold worth of essences 30% of the time, the other 70% you only make 1 to 3 gold.
10 items cost 15Gold to make
10 * 30% * 10G = 30 Gold
+
10 * 70% * 2G(average) = 14 Gold
So, for the cost of 15Gold in LW mats, you can make 44Gold in Enchanting mats. Need money? sell the mats and make more!
The downside to trying to level Leatherworking over Tailoring with Enchanting, is that you obviously cannot level skinning as well. While leather is cheaper than cloth in many cases, there may be times where you're trying to level leatherworking and there is no leather on the AH available. This will never be the case with cloth. There are always people leveling up alts that are selling cloth on the AH. If in some unlikely situation there is not enough cloth on the AH, you can always go to a low level dungeon and farm for the cloth that you need.
Q. How do I get the 525 enchanting recipes?
A. Visit the Enchanting Supplies vendor in your respective Capital city. These recipes cost 1 Heavenly Shard for the Elementium Rod, 5 Heavenly Shards for the green enchanting recipes, 20 Hypnotic Dust for the pet, and 5 Maelstrom Crystals for each blue weapon enchant.
Q. Any other additional tips for leveling enchanting?
A. There are a couple of add ons that can be quite useful. FizzwidgetDisenchantPredictor does what the name insinuates. Panda can be helpful for power leveling enchanting, as it makes mass disenchanting a lot simpler and easier. Also, if you already use Auctioneer, it comes with Enchantrix, which will tell you what a given item will disenchant into. This also works for milling for Inscription, and prospecting for Jewelcrafting.
If you choose to level tailoring with enchanting, I highly recommend following this guide. It shows you how to level enchanting with tailoring from 1-100 at no cost. If you wish you could even just level tailoring to 30 and get your enchanting to 100, then pick another profession and drop the tailoring.
How do you make money from Enchanting?
A. Most enchants you will take a loss from selling on the AH currently, so I would advise against making any enchants you don't need after hitting max level. Even with the Wrath changes to Disenchanting items in dungeons, Cata mats are still selling for a decent amount. So one tried and true method of making money is to buy cheap green items off the AH and DE them and resell. Another option is to sit in trade chat and link your Enchanting skills, offering to enchant for people's mats and asking for tips. Unless you have a rare enchant though, I wouldn't advise this as you probably won't make much gold from this.
Edit June 2011: The above is not entirely true anymore. There are certain enchants you can make which will turn a profit now. One that I have been making some decent cash on recently is the Hurricane weapon enchant. Most people aren't running regular heroics anymore, so the amount of Heavenly Shards is down quite a bit. Even buying the shards off the AH I make more than double the cost of the mats. Do some research and see what enchants are selling well on your server.
Another option is farming for old world enchants for heirloom gear. Heirloom gear is ilvl 1, so only Vanilla enchants can be used. For the staff, the best enchant is either Enchant Weapon - Spellpower or Enchant Weapon - Healing Power, both of which drop off of bosses in Molten Core. For a melee weapon, either Enchant Weapon - Lifestealing, which drops in Scholomance, or Enchant Weapon - Crusader which is a zone drop for Eastern and Western Plaguelands. Making any of these enchants and selling them on the AH will fetch you at least a few hundred gold per scroll.
Edited, Jun 27th 2011 1:03am by PigtailsOfDoom
Overview: Shiny...
Enchanting is one of the more versatile tradeskills, and one of the most difficult to level. It is a very unique skill, and much easier to make money off of with the advent of Inscription in Wrath. Scribes can make Enchanting Vellum, which allows us to store an enchantment and sell these scrolls on the AH. No longer do enchanters have to sit around in trade chat and spam their recipes to make money.
Enchanting needs 4 ingredients: a rod, dust, essences, and shards/crystals. The rods are made by blacksmiths and then enchanted to a useful state by the enchanter. The dust comes often from green armor that is disenchanted, the essences from green weapons, the shards from blue items (either armor or weapons), and crystals from purple (epic) items.
Disenchanting is the bane of an enchanter's existence for the most part. You need a massive amount of materials to enchant an item, so you need to disenchant a massive amount of equipment. To get that much, you aren't selling it, so you lose a lot of money that way. Generally enchanting is not recommended for a player's first character; better to have a high character able to send easily found items to an alt than to buy them off the Auction House.
That being said, enchants can fetch very high prices.
Enchanting end game bonuses:
Enchanters have the ability to enchant their own rings with +40 to each ring of either Agility, Intellect, Strength, and +60 of Stamina. This gives a total of +80 to most stats, and a +120 to Stamina for tanks.
Q. I have heard enchanting can be used as a gathering skill... what does this mean?
A. Disenchanting can indeed be used as a gathering skill. Only enchanters can make dust/essences/shards, and there is always a demand for these items. There are a number of ways to get these items easily:
- Quest rewards are soulbound and BoP. Instead of vendoring them, disenchant them to useful materials.
- Boss drops in instances are usually blue and BoP: free shard, especially if no one wants the item, or you can farm it yourself.
- Less popular equipment, such as Boar/Wolf/Whale, usually won't sell on the AH, but it can be disenchanted.
The idea with all of these is that you take these materials and instead of using them, sell them for a profit on the Auction House. Enchanting materials have one major highlight: they have no sell value, and are free to list on the AH. These materials can go for very good amounts; be on the lookout for underpriced equipment, buy it or win a low bid, and disenchant to resell the resulting material for a profit.
Skill level determines what items you can disenchant, via http://www.wow-professions.com:
Dusts and Essences
Disenchanting Uncommon quality armors or weapons.
Skill: 1 - Item Levels 5-15 - (1-3) [Strange Dust] or 1-2 [Lesser Magic Essence]
Skill: 25 - Item Levels 16-20 - (2-5) [Strange Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Magic Essence]
Skill: 25 - Item Levels 21-25 - (2-5) [Strange Dust] or 1-2 [Lesser Astral Essence]
Skill: 50 - Item Levels 26-30 - (1-3) [Soul Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Astral Essence]
Skill: 75 - Item Levels 31-35 - (2-5) [Soul Dust] or 1-2 [Lesser Mystic Essence]
Skill: 100 - Item Levels 36-40 - (1-3) [Vision Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Mystic Essence]
Skill: 125 - Item Levels 41-45 - (2-5) [Vision Dust] or 1-2 [Lesser Nether Essence]
Skill: 150 - Item Levels 46-50 - (1-3) [Dream Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Nether Essence]
Skill: 175 - Item Levels 51-55 - (2-5) [Dream Dust] or 1-2 [Lesser Eternal Essence]
Skill: 200 - Item Levels 56-60 - (1-3) [Illusion Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Eternal Essence]
Skill: 225 - Item Levels 61-65 - (2-5) [Illusion Dust] or 2-3[Greater Eternal Essence]
Skill: 225 - Item Levels 80-99 - (1-3) [Arcane Dust] or 1-3 [Lesser Planar Essence]
Skill: 275 - Item Levels 100-120 - (2-5) or [Arcane Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Planar Essence]
Skill: 325 - Item Levels 130-151 - (1-3) or [Infinite Dust] or 1-3 [Lesser Cosmic Essence]
Skill: 350 - Item Levels 152-200 - (2-5) or [Infinite Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Cosmic Essence]
Skill: 425 - Item Levels 272-305 - (1-3) or [Hypnotic Dust] or 1-3 [Lesser Celestial Essence]
Skill: 475 - Item Levels 305-333 - (2-5) or [Hypnotic Dust] or 1-2 [Greater Celestial Essence]
Shards:
Disenchanting Rare quality weapons or armors. Shards disenchanted from rare items are always 1x quantity.
Item Levels 16-25 - [Small Glimmering Shard]
Item Levels 26-30 - [Large Glimmering Shard]
Item Levels 31-35 - [Small Glowing Shard]
Item Levels 36-40 - [Large Glowing Shard]
Item Levels 41-45 - [Small Radiant Shard]
Item Levels 46-50- [Large Radiant Shard]
Item Levels 51-55 - [Small Brilliant Shard]
Item Levels 55-65 - [Large Brilliant Shard]
Item Levels 80-99 - [Small Prismatic Shard]
Item Levels 100-120 - [Large Prismatic Shard]
Item Levels 130-151 - [Small Dream Shard]
Item Levels 152-200 - [Dream Shard]
Item Levels 272-305 - [Small Heavenly Shard]
Item Levels 305-346 - [Heavenly Shard]
Q. How far will disenchanting take me, skill-level wise?
Disenchanting will give skill-ups until 60. After that, you'll need to do enchants to further your skill.
Q. What profession should I take with enchanting? (LockeColeMA)
A. Enchanting is indeed a stand-alone profession (well, more or less). It gives you the required skill to get materials and make something out of them. In this way, it is a lot like tailoring; you don't need a second profession to support your craft (as, for example, blacksmithing NEEDS mining for most of the way up to 300).
Therefore, the tried and true formula is Enchanting/Tailoring. With this combination you can make your own items to disenchant. The catch is a minor one: you won't get any weapons made from tailoring, so getting essences can be slightly harder. Also, now you take out cloth as a source of income, making yourself even poorer.
Another combination is enchanting with a gathering skill. This way you can make money and then buy items off the auction house. It frees up any cloth you find to be sold, but means you need to either go after beasts in particular (for skinning), or out of your way for resource nodes (herbalism/mining). Out of these skills mining probably would make the most on its own, as three professions need a lot of ore.
(Added thanks to Nekar)
I would not suggest Enchanting as a profession until later in the game. Low level enchanting will not make much, if any money, for you. Pick a profession that will make you some money! At low levels, most items vendor for more than they are worth in enchanting mats. Most low level enchants are given away free from enchanters looking to get a skill-up. Even mid to high level enchants are usually sold for less than the cost of the mats.
Later in the game it is very easy to skill up enchanting to the higher levels.
(As a second skill, Leatherworking is viable in addition to Tailoring because):
1. Cloth costs more than leather. Sell your cloth and buy twice as much leather at the AH for making items. (see the price of Wool vs Medium leather)
2. Green leather armor uses less special items to make. Lots of patterns that only need leather and thread.
3. Leather armor has a greater chance to DE into essences.
I know of no cloth armor that DE's into essences over 30% of the time, with leather there are several and they only need leather and thread to make! Look hard enuff and you will find that for 1.5Gold in LW mats you can make 10Gold worth of essences 30% of the time, the other 70% you only make 1 to 3 gold.
10 items cost 15Gold to make
10 * 30% * 10G = 30 Gold
+
10 * 70% * 2G(average) = 14 Gold
So, for the cost of 15Gold in LW mats, you can make 44Gold in Enchanting mats. Need money? sell the mats and make more!
The downside to trying to level Leatherworking over Tailoring with Enchanting, is that you obviously cannot level skinning as well. While leather is cheaper than cloth in many cases, there may be times where you're trying to level leatherworking and there is no leather on the AH available. This will never be the case with cloth. There are always people leveling up alts that are selling cloth on the AH. If in some unlikely situation there is not enough cloth on the AH, you can always go to a low level dungeon and farm for the cloth that you need.
Q. How do I get the 525 enchanting recipes?
A. Visit the Enchanting Supplies vendor in your respective Capital city. These recipes cost 1 Heavenly Shard for the Elementium Rod, 5 Heavenly Shards for the green enchanting recipes, 20 Hypnotic Dust for the pet, and 5 Maelstrom Crystals for each blue weapon enchant.
Q. Any other additional tips for leveling enchanting?
A. There are a couple of add ons that can be quite useful. FizzwidgetDisenchantPredictor does what the name insinuates. Panda can be helpful for power leveling enchanting, as it makes mass disenchanting a lot simpler and easier. Also, if you already use Auctioneer, it comes with Enchantrix, which will tell you what a given item will disenchant into. This also works for milling for Inscription, and prospecting for Jewelcrafting.
If you choose to level tailoring with enchanting, I highly recommend following this guide. It shows you how to level enchanting with tailoring from 1-100 at no cost. If you wish you could even just level tailoring to 30 and get your enchanting to 100, then pick another profession and drop the tailoring.
How do you make money from Enchanting?
A. Most enchants you will take a loss from selling on the AH currently, so I would advise against making any enchants you don't need after hitting max level. Even with the Wrath changes to Disenchanting items in dungeons, Cata mats are still selling for a decent amount. So one tried and true method of making money is to buy cheap green items off the AH and DE them and resell. Another option is to sit in trade chat and link your Enchanting skills, offering to enchant for people's mats and asking for tips. Unless you have a rare enchant though, I wouldn't advise this as you probably won't make much gold from this.
Edit June 2011: The above is not entirely true anymore. There are certain enchants you can make which will turn a profit now. One that I have been making some decent cash on recently is the Hurricane weapon enchant. Most people aren't running regular heroics anymore, so the amount of Heavenly Shards is down quite a bit. Even buying the shards off the AH I make more than double the cost of the mats. Do some research and see what enchants are selling well on your server.
Another option is farming for old world enchants for heirloom gear. Heirloom gear is ilvl 1, so only Vanilla enchants can be used. For the staff, the best enchant is either Enchant Weapon - Spellpower or Enchant Weapon - Healing Power, both of which drop off of bosses in Molten Core. For a melee weapon, either Enchant Weapon - Lifestealing, which drops in Scholomance, or Enchant Weapon - Crusader which is a zone drop for Eastern and Western Plaguelands. Making any of these enchants and selling them on the AH will fetch you at least a few hundred gold per scroll.
Edited, Jun 27th 2011 1:03am by PigtailsOfDoom
5) Engineering
Overview: Engineering is a fun one. Like alchemy, it is a mostly consumable profession; however, you can create a lot of extra items as well. Engineering is one of the most unique professions out there; you make pets, bombs, trinkets, and other crazy devices. At the same time, it comes with a fundamental problem for money-making: almost all of the engineering items you create need engineering skill to equip or use. Therefore, your only true market is also your competition, thus making selling items very difficult.
However, engineering is arguably one of the best PvP skills. Bombs do damage and add stun effects. The trinkets can do anything from throwing nets, to shooting fire, to deflecting magic. The equipment can give you a variety of effects, from underwater breathing to slow fall effects.
Engineering goes hand in hand with mining; everything you'll need comes from mining, with a few items from other professions (for example, leathers). So although your engineering will leave you poor (if powerful), taking time out to mine will net you some gold.
Engineering also has an inherent, um, quirk. The things you make (usually ones that aren't consumable, such as equipment with effects or trinkets with effects) can... sometimes not go as planned. Although your creations can save your party from the brink of death, it can also sometimes set you on fire at a critical moment. But hey; what's life without a gamble, right?
Engineering end game bonuses: Besides the inherent amusement of engineering, there are some really neat bonuses for end game. Engineers can create their own epic helms, which there is one for each class/spec combination. In addition, Engineers have special gem like items called cogwheels which can only be used in the killshades. These cogwheels give a +208 bonus to any of the minor stats, such as haste, mastery, crit, etc.
You can purchase the recipes from the Engineering Supplier in your respective capital city. Each cogwheel has a different currency associated with it, however. Some will end up being more expensive than others.
There are also several tinkers you can attach to either belt or gloves. These items are learnt on discovery and some, like the Synapse Springs can be useful in raiding and heroics. It is important to note that the tinkers do stack with enchants, so in the case of the glove tinkers you can have both them and a glove enchant at the same time. Also, the tooltip for the Synapse Springs on wowhead is currently broken. The springs will increase your highest stat value of either intellect, agility or strength and raise it by 480. So if you have intellect stacked the highest, it will increase intellect. The tinkers are discovered while making any Cata level engineering item.
Q. Is it true that Engineering is only useful for PvP and end game content?
A. Absolutely not. Leveling engineering with an alt can actually be very useful. Considering the cost of leveling the skill, I would strongly advise against leveling it on a server's first character, but there are several useful things that come with it. If your toon is a hunter, you can make different guns or bows. If they are a spellcaster, there's three or four different helms that only require an engineering level to equip, and are often much better stat wise than any other helm you can find while leveling or dungeoning. My priest for example, has been wearing these since she was level 35, and I probably won't find any upgrade for her until she gets to Outlands.
Point is, there's lots of fun gadgets and useful gear options for any character who takes up engineering. And if you're a pet collector, there's loads of different pets you can make to send to all your toons as well!
Q. What's the difference between Goblin and Gnomish engineering?
A. Honestly, anymore there's not much of a difference. For Cata items, the only difference is which of the new pets you can make. It's more of a flavor thing now. However, for those curious about the older items, I will re-post the "debate" between Capitolg and Locke from the previous edition of the sticky (with spelling corrections for Capitolg because I'm **** like that):
Argument for Goblin > Gnome
Argument for Gnome > Goblin
How do you make money with Engineering?
A. Honestly, Engineering is not a profession for making money. As mentioned in the overview, almost all of the Engineering items require a certain Engineering skill to use. There are a few exceptions to this rule though. All of the mini-pets can be used by anyone, as well as the Wrath mount: Mechano-Hog for Horde and Mekgineer's Chopper for Alliance.
Edited, Mar 5th 2011 6:20pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 2:33pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Overview: Engineering is a fun one. Like alchemy, it is a mostly consumable profession; however, you can create a lot of extra items as well. Engineering is one of the most unique professions out there; you make pets, bombs, trinkets, and other crazy devices. At the same time, it comes with a fundamental problem for money-making: almost all of the engineering items you create need engineering skill to equip or use. Therefore, your only true market is also your competition, thus making selling items very difficult.
However, engineering is arguably one of the best PvP skills. Bombs do damage and add stun effects. The trinkets can do anything from throwing nets, to shooting fire, to deflecting magic. The equipment can give you a variety of effects, from underwater breathing to slow fall effects.
Engineering goes hand in hand with mining; everything you'll need comes from mining, with a few items from other professions (for example, leathers). So although your engineering will leave you poor (if powerful), taking time out to mine will net you some gold.
Engineering also has an inherent, um, quirk. The things you make (usually ones that aren't consumable, such as equipment with effects or trinkets with effects) can... sometimes not go as planned. Although your creations can save your party from the brink of death, it can also sometimes set you on fire at a critical moment. But hey; what's life without a gamble, right?
Engineering end game bonuses: Besides the inherent amusement of engineering, there are some really neat bonuses for end game. Engineers can create their own epic helms, which there is one for each class/spec combination. In addition, Engineers have special gem like items called cogwheels which can only be used in the killshades. These cogwheels give a +208 bonus to any of the minor stats, such as haste, mastery, crit, etc.
You can purchase the recipes from the Engineering Supplier in your respective capital city. Each cogwheel has a different currency associated with it, however. Some will end up being more expensive than others.
There are also several tinkers you can attach to either belt or gloves. These items are learnt on discovery and some, like the Synapse Springs can be useful in raiding and heroics. It is important to note that the tinkers do stack with enchants, so in the case of the glove tinkers you can have both them and a glove enchant at the same time. Also, the tooltip for the Synapse Springs on wowhead is currently broken. The springs will increase your highest stat value of either intellect, agility or strength and raise it by 480. So if you have intellect stacked the highest, it will increase intellect. The tinkers are discovered while making any Cata level engineering item.
Q. Is it true that Engineering is only useful for PvP and end game content?
A. Absolutely not. Leveling engineering with an alt can actually be very useful. Considering the cost of leveling the skill, I would strongly advise against leveling it on a server's first character, but there are several useful things that come with it. If your toon is a hunter, you can make different guns or bows. If they are a spellcaster, there's three or four different helms that only require an engineering level to equip, and are often much better stat wise than any other helm you can find while leveling or dungeoning. My priest for example, has been wearing these since she was level 35, and I probably won't find any upgrade for her until she gets to Outlands.
Point is, there's lots of fun gadgets and useful gear options for any character who takes up engineering. And if you're a pet collector, there's loads of different pets you can make to send to all your toons as well!
Q. What's the difference between Goblin and Gnomish engineering?
A. Honestly, anymore there's not much of a difference. For Cata items, the only difference is which of the new pets you can make. It's more of a flavor thing now. However, for those curious about the older items, I will re-post the "debate" between Capitolg and Locke from the previous edition of the sticky (with spelling corrections for Capitolg because I'm **** like that):
Argument for Goblin > Gnome
Capitolg wrote:
#1 The Death Ray vs the Dragon gun: the death ray seems so cool, yet when you factor in the damage it (Always) does to you it does not take long before you realise you are not dealing with as "Cool" of a item as you once thought. I guess if you were a pally, or other low DPS class the ray has some places where it would shine, yet overall it is not that great of a item. The dragon gun looks even worse at a first glance, but looks can be deceiving. As long as you have 5 targets, the Dragon gun will out damage the deathray, My record for the Dragon gun is 19 targets, the total damage on that shot was 12350 HP between all my targets, it would take 6 realy good shots with a death ray to get that kind of DPS. Unlike the death ray, the dragon gun is not a garuenteed damage to the user....
#2 The boots, both specs make rocket boots, key difference is that the goblin ones dont require engineering so they can be sold at a larger rate than the gnomish boots.
#3 While some of these are irrelevant due to BoE status, i list them anywho.
Gnomish Shrink Ray vs Goblin Mining Helmet/Goblin Construction Helmet(because not all folks can use the minin helm) OK theese both suck, the shrink ray is better, but it is a matter of just getting one, my goblin engineer uses a shrink ray.
#4 Gnomish Net-o-Matic Projector VS Goblin Mortar Heck they both stop runners, one just does it by killing the target. The net-o-matic sounds better, but with falure rate the mortar wins, but.... they are both BoE so it dose not matter.
#5 Lil' Smoky VS Pet Bombling, while i love Lil Smokies glasses, the bombling is way cuter.
#6 Gnomish Harm Prevention Belt vs Goblin Sapper Charge. There are way better sheilds in the game(AB) and they dont have falure rates, yet the single tic hellfire that is the saper charge remains usefull through DM and ZG, yet both still BOE.
#7 Gnomish Battle Chicken VS Goblin Bomb Dispenser. The chicken holds more of a laugh factor, but bottom line is that in the end a bomb dispenser does more damage, and faster. This is a win for the Goblin folks.
#8 Gnomish Mind Control Cap (nerfed today, no longer useable on in combat targets) vs Goblin Rocket Helmet. Heck the rocket helm owned the mc hat way before they nerfed the MC hat. pushing goblin as a better choice again.
#9 Gnomish Cloaking Device Vs The Big One, so the trade off is a less than a lesser invis pot(because thats what the cloking devce is) vs the bomb with the biggest blast radius in the game. Think this one is clear who wins.
Drum roll please......
#10 World Enlarger(totally useless consumable)VS Goblin Jumper Cables XL(more reliable than the basic ones)
looking at the 10 diffrences between the specs it is eazy to see that the "Toys" of gnomish spec are mosty novilty(the nerfing MC helmet sure didn't help) while the goblin tools "really do some damage and can be helpful" Hey wait, thats what you said you wanted. So, do yourself a favor and stop wanting the grass on the other side of the fence and embrace your spec and enjoy it. it is by far the "More DPS" route of the two.
#2 The boots, both specs make rocket boots, key difference is that the goblin ones dont require engineering so they can be sold at a larger rate than the gnomish boots.
#3 While some of these are irrelevant due to BoE status, i list them anywho.
Gnomish Shrink Ray vs Goblin Mining Helmet/Goblin Construction Helmet(because not all folks can use the minin helm) OK theese both suck, the shrink ray is better, but it is a matter of just getting one, my goblin engineer uses a shrink ray.
#4 Gnomish Net-o-Matic Projector VS Goblin Mortar Heck they both stop runners, one just does it by killing the target. The net-o-matic sounds better, but with falure rate the mortar wins, but.... they are both BoE so it dose not matter.
#5 Lil' Smoky VS Pet Bombling, while i love Lil Smokies glasses, the bombling is way cuter.
#6 Gnomish Harm Prevention Belt vs Goblin Sapper Charge. There are way better sheilds in the game(AB) and they dont have falure rates, yet the single tic hellfire that is the saper charge remains usefull through DM and ZG, yet both still BOE.
#7 Gnomish Battle Chicken VS Goblin Bomb Dispenser. The chicken holds more of a laugh factor, but bottom line is that in the end a bomb dispenser does more damage, and faster. This is a win for the Goblin folks.
#8 Gnomish Mind Control Cap (nerfed today, no longer useable on in combat targets) vs Goblin Rocket Helmet. Heck the rocket helm owned the mc hat way before they nerfed the MC hat. pushing goblin as a better choice again.
#9 Gnomish Cloaking Device Vs The Big One, so the trade off is a less than a lesser invis pot(because thats what the cloking devce is) vs the bomb with the biggest blast radius in the game. Think this one is clear who wins.
Drum roll please......
#10 World Enlarger(totally useless consumable)VS Goblin Jumper Cables XL(more reliable than the basic ones)
looking at the 10 diffrences between the specs it is eazy to see that the "Toys" of gnomish spec are mosty novilty(the nerfing MC helmet sure didn't help) while the goblin tools "really do some damage and can be helpful" Hey wait, thats what you said you wanted. So, do yourself a favor and stop wanting the grass on the other side of the fence and embrace your spec and enjoy it. it is by far the "More DPS" route of the two.
Argument for Gnome > Goblin
LockeColeMA wrote:
1. Death Ray versus Dragon Gun:
Death Ray is my preference. Dragon Gun is good for people without AoE... but it can fail at a critical moment, set you on fire, and fear you for a few seconds. Ouch. Not cool. With a Death Ray, you know what you're getting: damage to yourself, and more to the enemy. There are fun things to do with this: a Paladin can make himself invincible and then cast it, for no damage to himself. Plus, the Death Ray can do a TON of single-target damage (my highest crit, on my level 46 Gnomish engineer warlock, is around 1.9k. A great finisher move, especially since you can just bandage after ^_^ Also, Warlocks have AoEs, and thus little use for a Dragon Gun).
Personally, I face single targets more often than groups. Also, many enemies have fire resistance, potentially reducing the goblin gun's damage.
2. Boots: These are almost equal, IMO.
Gnome: 30 minute cooldown and an engineering requirement. Ick. The backfire for this is that you stop getting the movement boost before the 20 seconds are up, OR you run around randomly.
Goblin: 5 minute cooldown and no engineering requirement (woo-hoo!). The backfire is that they blow up (damage is bad!), the boots are destroyed (you always lose the rocket fuel >_<), and you need to be an engineer to remake them.
I personally would choose Goblin on these... actually, I would probably use neither, but if I HAD to choose, this would go to goblin. Dang.
3. Shrink Ray: You already admitted it wins :-D
4. Net versus mortar: The main thing here is that when the mortar messes up, you get MAJOR PAIN :-P. When the net messes up, you get stuck. The mortar blows you sky high for fire and fall damage, I believe. I might be thinking of bronze mortars for the fall damage. Hmmm. One person in the mortar's item page said he got hit for 9k fire damage when it backfired on him ^_^
Since net-o-matic has the same cooldown (10 seconds), won't hurt you when it backfires, and roots the person for longer... I say net-o-matic wins.
5. Pets: Up to personal choice.
...
Who am I kidding? Bombling rocks.
6. Sapper Charge is better, but the harm prevention belt actually always works... when you get banished, you are invincible, and thus taking no damage :-P. It's good until higher levels... the protection really needs to scale up with level >_>. Sapper Charge is also insanely good at lower levels, but it does hurt you, so keep that in mind.
7. Chicken vs. Bomb: I think the bomb wins because it is AoE damage, BUT! the chicken also has its uses. It is level 46, I think, so for a lower level character... w00t! It does decent damage (15-75 per hit, 1.5 second attack, and it lasts for 1m 30s), it can fury to attack twice as fast, and it TAUNTS! This makes it a decent semi-tank item... every half an hour.
8. Helms: Goblin wins. MC cap is good if you get the drop on an enemy and they don't see you coming, though :-P
9. Yeah, this is no real contest, they are two completely different items. The Big One has a high component cost, which is one thing to keep in mind... but the cloaking device has an insane cooldown. And you are wrong about the effect of the cloaking device; it is true invisibility, not lesser. You literally disappear (you aren't even considered "stealth", so increased stealth detection items and effects do not help!). You can't use it in battle, though. But if you see someone running at you... POOF! You're gone :-D
Two different items... you can't really consider them next to each other.
10. World enlarger lowers your aggro radius, which is nice. Jumper XL work more often, but they can obviously still feel. However, the price of these are average of 39 gold, while the normal ones are 5 gold. Ouch. Once again, completely different categories.
I say they are more of less equal (obviously, hehe :-P). I like devices and effects more. I guess the idea is... goblin will make you use more materials, and gnome will make you use fewer potions (but have much longer cooldowns :-P).
On the plus side, now that every item has a different and separate cooldown (since 1.11), you can cycle through your fun effect trinkets more often! Hurray!
Different strokes for different folks; I agree with Capitolg that Goblin is good... I just like Gnomish better for my own gaming.
Death Ray is my preference. Dragon Gun is good for people without AoE... but it can fail at a critical moment, set you on fire, and fear you for a few seconds. Ouch. Not cool. With a Death Ray, you know what you're getting: damage to yourself, and more to the enemy. There are fun things to do with this: a Paladin can make himself invincible and then cast it, for no damage to himself. Plus, the Death Ray can do a TON of single-target damage (my highest crit, on my level 46 Gnomish engineer warlock, is around 1.9k. A great finisher move, especially since you can just bandage after ^_^ Also, Warlocks have AoEs, and thus little use for a Dragon Gun).
Personally, I face single targets more often than groups. Also, many enemies have fire resistance, potentially reducing the goblin gun's damage.
2. Boots: These are almost equal, IMO.
Gnome: 30 minute cooldown and an engineering requirement. Ick. The backfire for this is that you stop getting the movement boost before the 20 seconds are up, OR you run around randomly.
Goblin: 5 minute cooldown and no engineering requirement (woo-hoo!). The backfire is that they blow up (damage is bad!), the boots are destroyed (you always lose the rocket fuel >_<), and you need to be an engineer to remake them.
I personally would choose Goblin on these... actually, I would probably use neither, but if I HAD to choose, this would go to goblin. Dang.
3. Shrink Ray: You already admitted it wins :-D
4. Net versus mortar: The main thing here is that when the mortar messes up, you get MAJOR PAIN :-P. When the net messes up, you get stuck. The mortar blows you sky high for fire and fall damage, I believe. I might be thinking of bronze mortars for the fall damage. Hmmm. One person in the mortar's item page said he got hit for 9k fire damage when it backfired on him ^_^
Since net-o-matic has the same cooldown (10 seconds), won't hurt you when it backfires, and roots the person for longer... I say net-o-matic wins.
5. Pets: Up to personal choice.
...
Who am I kidding? Bombling rocks.
6. Sapper Charge is better, but the harm prevention belt actually always works... when you get banished, you are invincible, and thus taking no damage :-P. It's good until higher levels... the protection really needs to scale up with level >_>. Sapper Charge is also insanely good at lower levels, but it does hurt you, so keep that in mind.
7. Chicken vs. Bomb: I think the bomb wins because it is AoE damage, BUT! the chicken also has its uses. It is level 46, I think, so for a lower level character... w00t! It does decent damage (15-75 per hit, 1.5 second attack, and it lasts for 1m 30s), it can fury to attack twice as fast, and it TAUNTS! This makes it a decent semi-tank item... every half an hour.
8. Helms: Goblin wins. MC cap is good if you get the drop on an enemy and they don't see you coming, though :-P
9. Yeah, this is no real contest, they are two completely different items. The Big One has a high component cost, which is one thing to keep in mind... but the cloaking device has an insane cooldown. And you are wrong about the effect of the cloaking device; it is true invisibility, not lesser. You literally disappear (you aren't even considered "stealth", so increased stealth detection items and effects do not help!). You can't use it in battle, though. But if you see someone running at you... POOF! You're gone :-D
Two different items... you can't really consider them next to each other.
10. World enlarger lowers your aggro radius, which is nice. Jumper XL work more often, but they can obviously still feel. However, the price of these are average of 39 gold, while the normal ones are 5 gold. Ouch. Once again, completely different categories.
I say they are more of less equal (obviously, hehe :-P). I like devices and effects more. I guess the idea is... goblin will make you use more materials, and gnome will make you use fewer potions (but have much longer cooldowns :-P).
On the plus side, now that every item has a different and separate cooldown (since 1.11), you can cycle through your fun effect trinkets more often! Hurray!
Different strokes for different folks; I agree with Capitolg that Goblin is good... I just like Gnomish better for my own gaming.
How do you make money with Engineering?
A. Honestly, Engineering is not a profession for making money. As mentioned in the overview, almost all of the Engineering items require a certain Engineering skill to use. There are a few exceptions to this rule though. All of the mini-pets can be used by anyone, as well as the Wrath mount: Mechano-Hog for Horde and Mekgineer's Chopper for Alliance.
Edited, Mar 5th 2011 6:20pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 2:33pm by PigtailsOfDoom
6) Inscription
Overview: Inscription is the process of milling herbs (in stacks of 5) to get pigment, turning pigments into ink, and then making items with said ink and parchment which you can purchase from any inscription supplier. The items you can make vary from different glyphs, buff scrolls, Darkmoon cards, shoulder enchants and off-hand and relic items.
Also note: The noun to denote someone who has Inscription as a profession is Scribe, not Inscriptionist. If you call someone an Inscriptionist, they will laugh at you. If they have any brain cells that is.
Inscription end game bonuses:
Scribes can enchant their shoulders, with enchants that give +80 to Int, Agi and Str, and +120 Sta above the shoulder enchants you can purchase from the Therazane vendor upon reaching exalted reputation. This of course, has the added perk of you not needing to grind out Therazane rep, although you may still want to finish Deepholm to get enough rep for the 346 rings. But I digress...
Q: What are glyphs?
A. Glyphs are these nifty scroll type things that allow you to permanently learn ways to give your abilities cool new effects. For example, the Glyph of Levitate allows a priest to use Levitate without needing the light feather reagent. This is a fairly common type of minor glyph, with most classes who formerly needing reagents to cast a particular buff or spell, no longer needing said reagent. Sorry mages, you still need your dusts and runes!
There are three different types of glyphs: Prime, Major and Minor. Typically, Primes give DPS/Tanking/Healing bonuses, with major offering some sort of utility, and minor glyphs giving very minor utility such as the example used above. Glyphs unlock at level 25, with an extra slot of each variety of glyph unlocking at levels 50 and 70.
Q: So how do I learn how to make these glyphs?
A. There are a few different methods. The easiest is by learning from the trainer. A fair portion of the glyphs are learned this way. There are also two different research methods: Minor Inscription Research which you will learn at skill level 75, and Northrend Inscription Research which you will learn at skill level 385. You may only do these two researches once per day, but the CD resets at midnight so don't stress the timer too much. I have been told that once you learn every glyph you can via either research method, you will no longer be able to perform said research method, but my scribe has yet to have this happen so I can't say for sure.
There are also 3 technique scrolls you can learn that are sold by vendors: Glyph of Colossus Smash, Glyph of Lash of Pain, and Glyph of Mana Shield. Before doing the research on this, I thought they were world drops and bought them off the AH. Don't do that.
Finally, the most annoying method, Book of Glyph Mastery. Why is this method so annoying? They only drop from 82 different mobs in Northrend, they have a horrible drop rate, and as a result, people put them up on the AH for ridiculous amounts of money. Market value on my server right now is 500g a pop. And there are 54 glyphs that can only be learned via these books. Hopefully Blizz will makes changes to these books soon, but I wouldn't count on it.
Q: Which herbs produce X pigment and which pigment produces X ink?
A. Here is a nifty list, made by yours truly:
Ivory Ink, skill level 1: Made from 1 Alabaster Pigment which is milled from Peacebloom, Silverleaf and Earthroot. Moonglow Ink, skill level 30: Made from 2 Alabaster Pigment, which is milled from Peacebloom, Silverleaf and Earthroot. Midnight Ink, skill level 75: Made from 2 Dusky Pigment, which is commonly milled from Mageroyal, Swiftthistle, Bruiseweed, Briarthorn and Stranglekelp. Hunter's Ink, skill level 85: Made from 1 Verdant Pigment, which is rarely milled from Mageroyal, Swiftthistle, Bruiseweed, Briarthorn and Stranglekelp. Lion's Ink, skill level 100: Made from 2 Golden Pigment, which is commonly milled from Wild Steelbloom, Grave Moss, Kingsblood, and Liferoot. Dawnstar Ink, skill level 125: Made from 1 Burnt Pigment, which is rarely milled from Wild Steelbloom, Grave Moss, Kingsblood, and Liferoot. Jadefire Ink, skill level 150: Made from 2 Emerald Pigment, which is commonly milled from Fadeleaf, Goldthorn, Khadgar's Whisker, and Dragon's Teeth (formerly Wintersbite). Royal Ink, skill level 175: Made from 1 Indigo Pigment, which is rarely milled from Fadeleaf, Goldthorn, Khadgar's Whisker, and Dragon's Teeth (formerly Wintersbite). Celestial Ink, skill level 200: Made from 2 Violet Pigment, which is commonly milled from Firebloom, Purple Lotus, Arthas' Tears, Sungrass, Blindweed, Ghost Mushroom, and Gromsblood. Fiery Ink, skill level 225: Made from 1 Ruby Pigment, which is rarely milled from Firebloom, Purple Lotus, Arthas' Tears, Sungrass, Blindweed, Ghost Mushroom, and Gromsblood. Shimmering Ink, skill level 250: Made from 2 Silvery Pigment, which is commonly milled from Golden Sansam, Dreamfoil, Mountain Silversage, Sorrowmoss (formerly Plaguebloom), and Icecap. Ink of the Sky, skill level 275: Made from 1 Sapphire Pigment, which is rarely milled from Golden Sansam, Dreamfoil, Mountain Silversage, Sorrowmoss (formerly Plaguebloom), and Icecap. Ethereal Ink, skill level 300: Made from 2 Nether Pigment, which is commonly milled from all Outlands herbs. Darkflame Ink, skill level 325: Made from 1 Ebon Pigment, which is rarely milled from all Outlands herbs. Ink of the Sea, skill level 350: Made from 2 Azure Pigment, which is commonly milled from all Northrend herbs. Snowfall Ink, skill level 375: Made from 2 Icy Pigment, which is rarely milled from all Northrend herbs. Blackfallow Ink, skill level 425: Made from 2 Ashen Pigment, which is commonly milled from all Cata herbs (80+ zones). Inferno Ink, skill level 475: Made from 2 Burning Embers, which is rarely milled from all Cata herbs (80+ zones).
Q: What makes money with Inscription?
A. Simply put? Darkmoon cards. They are by far the easiest way to make money with Inscription.
However, depending on the market on your server, you can potentially make hefty sums by selling glyphs. This requires a lot of research though and paying attention to the market. There are 2 add ons I know of that can help greatly with this, however they really need to be paired together. Auctioneer and Lilsparky's Workshop. LSW uses scan data from Auctioneer, and will list cost to make and sell prices of different items in your tradeskill window. I use this addon for all of my tradeskills, but I think it is particularly useful for Inscription. If anyone knows of any other addons that are useful with this profession please let me know and I'll add them.
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 4:02pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Overview: Inscription is the process of milling herbs (in stacks of 5) to get pigment, turning pigments into ink, and then making items with said ink and parchment which you can purchase from any inscription supplier. The items you can make vary from different glyphs, buff scrolls, Darkmoon cards, shoulder enchants and off-hand and relic items.
Also note: The noun to denote someone who has Inscription as a profession is Scribe, not Inscriptionist. If you call someone an Inscriptionist, they will laugh at you. If they have any brain cells that is.
Inscription end game bonuses:
Scribes can enchant their shoulders, with enchants that give +80 to Int, Agi and Str, and +120 Sta above the shoulder enchants you can purchase from the Therazane vendor upon reaching exalted reputation. This of course, has the added perk of you not needing to grind out Therazane rep, although you may still want to finish Deepholm to get enough rep for the 346 rings. But I digress...
Q: What are glyphs?
A. Glyphs are these nifty scroll type things that allow you to permanently learn ways to give your abilities cool new effects. For example, the Glyph of Levitate allows a priest to use Levitate without needing the light feather reagent. This is a fairly common type of minor glyph, with most classes who formerly needing reagents to cast a particular buff or spell, no longer needing said reagent. Sorry mages, you still need your dusts and runes!
There are three different types of glyphs: Prime, Major and Minor. Typically, Primes give DPS/Tanking/Healing bonuses, with major offering some sort of utility, and minor glyphs giving very minor utility such as the example used above. Glyphs unlock at level 25, with an extra slot of each variety of glyph unlocking at levels 50 and 70.
Q: So how do I learn how to make these glyphs?
A. There are a few different methods. The easiest is by learning from the trainer. A fair portion of the glyphs are learned this way. There are also two different research methods: Minor Inscription Research which you will learn at skill level 75, and Northrend Inscription Research which you will learn at skill level 385. You may only do these two researches once per day, but the CD resets at midnight so don't stress the timer too much. I have been told that once you learn every glyph you can via either research method, you will no longer be able to perform said research method, but my scribe has yet to have this happen so I can't say for sure.
There are also 3 technique scrolls you can learn that are sold by vendors: Glyph of Colossus Smash, Glyph of Lash of Pain, and Glyph of Mana Shield. Before doing the research on this, I thought they were world drops and bought them off the AH. Don't do that.
Finally, the most annoying method, Book of Glyph Mastery. Why is this method so annoying? They only drop from 82 different mobs in Northrend, they have a horrible drop rate, and as a result, people put them up on the AH for ridiculous amounts of money. Market value on my server right now is 500g a pop. And there are 54 glyphs that can only be learned via these books. Hopefully Blizz will makes changes to these books soon, but I wouldn't count on it.
Q: Which herbs produce X pigment and which pigment produces X ink?
A. Here is a nifty list, made by yours truly:
Q: What makes money with Inscription?
A. Simply put? Darkmoon cards. They are by far the easiest way to make money with Inscription.
However, depending on the market on your server, you can potentially make hefty sums by selling glyphs. This requires a lot of research though and paying attention to the market. There are 2 add ons I know of that can help greatly with this, however they really need to be paired together. Auctioneer and Lilsparky's Workshop. LSW uses scan data from Auctioneer, and will list cost to make and sell prices of different items in your tradeskill window. I use this addon for all of my tradeskills, but I think it is particularly useful for Inscription. If anyone knows of any other addons that are useful with this profession please let me know and I'll add them.
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 4:02pm by PigtailsOfDoom
7) Jewelcrafting
Overview: Jewelcrafting is the process of prospecting ore (in stacks of 5) to gain gems, and then cutting said gems to give stat bonuses, which you can then place in gear with gem sockets. Jewelcrafters can also make rings, necklaces, one hander weapons, and trinkets, along with some other fun vanity items such as monacles and focusing lenses.
Because of the high volume of ore you will need to prospect, it is generally a good idea to have access to a miner as well. This can either be another character or you can level mining with your jewelcrafting.
Jewelcrafting end game bonuses: Jewelcrafters have access to special gems called Chimera's Eye. Once cut, these gems give an extra boost to stats over your standard blue cut gems. The bonus is +27 per gem, except for stamina which receives a +41 bonus. As you can have up to 3 Chimera's Eyes socketed at any given time, this gives you a total of +81 bonus in stats, or +123 bonus to Stamina. This places is slightly ahead of most of the tradeskills, but not by much obviously.
Also, once you reach level 81 and JC skill 475, you now have access to patterns for JC only trinkets. You acquire these via quests, which you get from different items. The trinkets 346 ilvl, which if you get the quests early enough, can really help boost your ilvl up to get you into heroics faster.
Q: What are "sockets" and what gems can I make for socketed items? (thermalnoise)
A. Socketed items contain "slots" in which cut gems are inserted. If a piece of armor or a weapon can be socketed, you can shift-click the item to open the Socketing UI window. Socketed gear will only be found in gear from Outlands, Northrend, and Cata level gear. You won't get a socketed item at level 20, in other words. In addition, cut gem patterns require 300+ skill.
There are 4 types of sockets: Red, Yellow, Blue, and Meta. You can place a jewel into any socket but to get the socketed bonus, you must match colors. Orange gems can fit red and yellow, green can fit yellow and blue, and purple can fit blue and red. Meta sockets hold high-level, powerful cut gems such as diamonds. Only meta gems can go into a meta socket.
Q: How do I count an Orange/Purple/Green gem in regards to Meta Gem bonus requirements?
A. The same as with sockets. If a meta gem requires 2 red gems and 1 blue one for example, you may use orange or purple for the red gem requirement and purple or green for the blue requirement.
Q: Help! I'm stuck at level 420/495 and can't skill up anymore. What do I do?
A: Two words. Jewelcrafting dailies. JC dailies net you tokens, which you can use to purchase patterns that teach you new cuts. At 400 this kind of sucks because you have to go to Dal and do the JC daily up there, which are offered by the JC supplies vendor. However, depending on how many Northrend blues and what variety of blues you have, this may only take 3 days. If you can get away with only purchasing one pattern and finishing up to 425, bravo. An alternative method, if you have the honor for it, is to purchase patterns from the Wintergrasp vendor. The caveat to this of course, is that your faction needs to hold WG for you to use said vendor.
Once you reach skill level 475, you can start doing Cata JC dailies. The quests are offered by the JC supplies vendor in your respective capital city. This is also how you will typically get your Chimera's Eyes as well.
Chimera's Eyes cost one token, Chimera's Eyes patterns cost two tokens, blue quality gem patterns cost three tokens, meta gem patterns cost four tokens, and there are a few 346 ring and necklace patterns that cost five tokens. Why the patterns are epic quality while the items themselves are superior quality I have no idea. GG Blizz. =x
Q:How do you make money with JCing?
This is largely server dependent. If your server has a lot of JC'ers who flood the market with gems, cut or otherwise, it will be difficult to make much gold. My own server is like this, although the main culprit is one of my guildies who is basically like the Bill Gates of WoW. So I just use JC for my own purposes. Since my druid is an alchemist I can transmute my own gems and then mail them to my JC'er to cut them. So you might not make money, but you could potentially save money.
One caveat to this is if you have one of the world drop meta cuts that were added in 4.06. If there still aren't many JC'ers on your server with these cuts, you can probably make some decent gold that way.
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 5:05pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Overview: Jewelcrafting is the process of prospecting ore (in stacks of 5) to gain gems, and then cutting said gems to give stat bonuses, which you can then place in gear with gem sockets. Jewelcrafters can also make rings, necklaces, one hander weapons, and trinkets, along with some other fun vanity items such as monacles and focusing lenses.
Because of the high volume of ore you will need to prospect, it is generally a good idea to have access to a miner as well. This can either be another character or you can level mining with your jewelcrafting.
Jewelcrafting end game bonuses: Jewelcrafters have access to special gems called Chimera's Eye. Once cut, these gems give an extra boost to stats over your standard blue cut gems. The bonus is +27 per gem, except for stamina which receives a +41 bonus. As you can have up to 3 Chimera's Eyes socketed at any given time, this gives you a total of +81 bonus in stats, or +123 bonus to Stamina. This places is slightly ahead of most of the tradeskills, but not by much obviously.
Also, once you reach level 81 and JC skill 475, you now have access to patterns for JC only trinkets. You acquire these via quests, which you get from different items. The trinkets 346 ilvl, which if you get the quests early enough, can really help boost your ilvl up to get you into heroics faster.
Q: What are "sockets" and what gems can I make for socketed items? (thermalnoise)
A. Socketed items contain "slots" in which cut gems are inserted. If a piece of armor or a weapon can be socketed, you can shift-click the item to open the Socketing UI window. Socketed gear will only be found in gear from Outlands, Northrend, and Cata level gear. You won't get a socketed item at level 20, in other words. In addition, cut gem patterns require 300+ skill.
There are 4 types of sockets: Red, Yellow, Blue, and Meta. You can place a jewel into any socket but to get the socketed bonus, you must match colors. Orange gems can fit red and yellow, green can fit yellow and blue, and purple can fit blue and red. Meta sockets hold high-level, powerful cut gems such as diamonds. Only meta gems can go into a meta socket.
Q: How do I count an Orange/Purple/Green gem in regards to Meta Gem bonus requirements?
A. The same as with sockets. If a meta gem requires 2 red gems and 1 blue one for example, you may use orange or purple for the red gem requirement and purple or green for the blue requirement.
Q: Help! I'm stuck at level 420/495 and can't skill up anymore. What do I do?
A: Two words. Jewelcrafting dailies. JC dailies net you tokens, which you can use to purchase patterns that teach you new cuts. At 400 this kind of sucks because you have to go to Dal and do the JC daily up there, which are offered by the JC supplies vendor. However, depending on how many Northrend blues and what variety of blues you have, this may only take 3 days. If you can get away with only purchasing one pattern and finishing up to 425, bravo. An alternative method, if you have the honor for it, is to purchase patterns from the Wintergrasp vendor. The caveat to this of course, is that your faction needs to hold WG for you to use said vendor.
Once you reach skill level 475, you can start doing Cata JC dailies. The quests are offered by the JC supplies vendor in your respective capital city. This is also how you will typically get your Chimera's Eyes as well.
Chimera's Eyes cost one token, Chimera's Eyes patterns cost two tokens, blue quality gem patterns cost three tokens, meta gem patterns cost four tokens, and there are a few 346 ring and necklace patterns that cost five tokens. Why the patterns are epic quality while the items themselves are superior quality I have no idea. GG Blizz. =x
Q:How do you make money with JCing?
This is largely server dependent. If your server has a lot of JC'ers who flood the market with gems, cut or otherwise, it will be difficult to make much gold. My own server is like this, although the main culprit is one of my guildies who is basically like the Bill Gates of WoW. So I just use JC for my own purposes. Since my druid is an alchemist I can transmute my own gems and then mail them to my JC'er to cut them. So you might not make money, but you could potentially save money.
One caveat to this is if you have one of the world drop meta cuts that were added in 4.06. If there still aren't many JC'ers on your server with these cuts, you can probably make some decent gold that way.
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 5:05pm by PigtailsOfDoom
8) Leatherworking
Overview: Leatherworking lives up to its name: you create pieces of leather armor using leather. Amazing! There are also some bags and items like armor kits (armor buffs that give additional armor, like an enchant). However, leatherworking later makes mail as well (since Shamans and Hunters get mail at level 40). Thus, this craft is primarily a benefit for Rogues, Druids, Shamans, and Hunters. They can also craft vanity hats. Sadly these hats are only leather and mail, so clothies will not be able to equip them.
LW'ers can also craft various drums, which can give your party a nice buff. However, due to the changes made in 4.01 to Blessing of Kings and Mark of the Wild being the same, and the low item level, these are largely unnecessary in groups. (I mean seriously, what raid group has neither a druid or a paladin!?)
Prior to patch 4.01, Leatherworking also came with specializations. Similar to blacksmithing, if you already had learned specific patterns due to your specialization you will have retained these. Otherwise you're SOL.
Generally, it's a good idea to have access to a skinner while you level this tradeskill. Depending on your server, leather can either be really cheap or really expensive on the AH. You are going to need A LOT of it though. Even with access to a skinner, I still spent about 6k power leveling LW on my druid recently. I'm impatient though.
Leatherworking end game bonuses: Wrist Enchants. These enchants give more of a primary than the enchants available from Enchanters. Not to mention, they're a lot cheaper too! Bonus is 80, except for Stamina which has a bonus of 120. This puts Leatherworking on par with most of the other crafting tradeskill bonuses.
In addition, LW's can craft leg enchants for non-caster folks and can enchant their own legs for significantly cheaper.
Q: Help! I'm stuck at skill level 510 and can't get anymore skill ups. What do I do?
A. Visit the Leatherworking Supplier in your respective capital city. They will sell you higher level patterns in exchange for 10 Heavy Savage leather.
Q: How do I make money with Leatherworking?
A. Honestly thus far I haven't done much with my leatherworker. My best guess would be selling the leg enchants and getting crafting fees for the 359 gear that requires chaos orbs. If anyone has any additional thoughts, please let me know.
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 5:35pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Overview: Leatherworking lives up to its name: you create pieces of leather armor using leather. Amazing! There are also some bags and items like armor kits (armor buffs that give additional armor, like an enchant). However, leatherworking later makes mail as well (since Shamans and Hunters get mail at level 40). Thus, this craft is primarily a benefit for Rogues, Druids, Shamans, and Hunters. They can also craft vanity hats. Sadly these hats are only leather and mail, so clothies will not be able to equip them.
LW'ers can also craft various drums, which can give your party a nice buff. However, due to the changes made in 4.01 to Blessing of Kings and Mark of the Wild being the same, and the low item level, these are largely unnecessary in groups. (I mean seriously, what raid group has neither a druid or a paladin!?)
Prior to patch 4.01, Leatherworking also came with specializations. Similar to blacksmithing, if you already had learned specific patterns due to your specialization you will have retained these. Otherwise you're SOL.
Generally, it's a good idea to have access to a skinner while you level this tradeskill. Depending on your server, leather can either be really cheap or really expensive on the AH. You are going to need A LOT of it though. Even with access to a skinner, I still spent about 6k power leveling LW on my druid recently. I'm impatient though.
Leatherworking end game bonuses: Wrist Enchants. These enchants give more of a primary than the enchants available from Enchanters. Not to mention, they're a lot cheaper too! Bonus is 80, except for Stamina which has a bonus of 120. This puts Leatherworking on par with most of the other crafting tradeskill bonuses.
In addition, LW's can craft leg enchants for non-caster folks and can enchant their own legs for significantly cheaper.
Q: Help! I'm stuck at skill level 510 and can't get anymore skill ups. What do I do?
A. Visit the Leatherworking Supplier in your respective capital city. They will sell you higher level patterns in exchange for 10 Heavy Savage leather.
Q: How do I make money with Leatherworking?
A. Honestly thus far I haven't done much with my leatherworker. My best guess would be selling the leg enchants and getting crafting fees for the 359 gear that requires chaos orbs. If anyone has any additional thoughts, please let me know.
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 5:35pm by PigtailsOfDoom
9) Tailoring
Overview: Tailoring is making items out of cloth. Mostly the items consist of cloth armor and bags to hold items. Warlocks, Mages, and Priests (all cloth-armor wearers) will get the most benefit out of this craft. Others may take it up for the bag-making. Tailors can also make several vanity items and shirts, as well as flying carpet mounts. These mounts are tailoring only however.
Tailors also have the ability to increase the amount of cloth they receive off mobs in Northrend, and once above skill level 400 (via wowhead) will have a chance to loot 50% more cloth.
Prior to 4.01, Tailors had three different specializations. However, all of the specialization patterns were purchased from vendors and are still accessible. Any tailor can learn them, although more than likely they aren't going to be of much benefit to anyone.
Tailoring end game bonuses: Cloak enchants. These particular cloak enchants have special procs that are extremely powerful. There is a spirit one for healers, an intellect one for casters in general, and an attack power one for hunters and melee classes.
There is some debate over how much better these procs are in terms of the bonus than compared to other professions. They have an internal CD of 45 seconds, which for the Intellect enchant works out to be a roughly 143 bonus over the +50 Int cloak enchant (math skills provided by http://howtopriest.com). This is a huge bonus in comparison to the other professions. The attack power enchant seems to vary depending on your class/weapon, as the higher your attack speed is, the quicker the enchant will proc. I would guess that haste will probably help boost the time to proc for the two caster enchants as well, giving this more of a bonus to classes that stack haste like shadow priests and boomkins, but don't take my word for it.
In addition, tailors can craft leg enchants for casters. Similar to in Wrath, tailors can also enchant their own pants for significantly reduced cost. Instead of the one Dreamcloth is takes to make the standard leg enchant, tailors can do the self enchant for two measly threads and three volatiles.
Q: Where do I get cloth from? (LockeColeMA/thermalnoise with edits for Wrath and Cata)
A. Okay, rather basic question. Cloth drops off of humanoid (and usually zombie/skeleton-like undead) enemies. There are exceptions to this; Naga are humanoids and do not drop cloth, for example. The level range for cloth is, approximately:
Mob Level Drops
1-15 Linen cloth
15-25 Wool cloth
25-40 Silk Cloth
40-50 Mageweave Cloth
50-60 Runecloth
60-70 Netherweave Cloth
70-80 Frostweave Cloth
80-85 Embersilk Cloth
Q: Any tips with Tailoring? (LockeColeMA with some edits based on my opinion)
A. As a way to somewhat supply yourself, you can level up skinning as there are some recipes that require leather. However, these are fairly rare and easily avoidable while leveling your skill. It is an option, but not one I would recommend.
Many people take up enchanting to supply items to disenchant. Basically, it is suggested you supplement your income with hunting good items that sell well. Also keep in mind that as a Tailor, you will most likely not sell cloth, so that takes a decent chunk out of your income. Therefore, a gathering skill can be very beneficial to make up the loss.
Q: How do I learn the 525 Tailoring patterns?
A. Visit the tailoring supplier in your respective capital city. Patterns cost either 8 bolts of embersilk cloth or 1 Dreamcloth.
Q: How do I make money with Tailoring?
A. Bags. Seriously. Not just Cata bags either. You can make some decent profits from crafting Nethersilk bags as well. You'll usually have an easier time getting those to sell than trying to sell the cloth by itself. Frostweave bags are also selling pretty decently too. More than they sold for during Wrath actually, which is kind of weird.
Another option is to charge crafting fees for the 359 epic belts and pants. With Dreamcloth having CD's to craft (except for the chaos orb one of course) and being BoP, you could probably ask for a decent crafting fee.
Edited, Sep 2nd 2011 4:44pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Overview: Tailoring is making items out of cloth. Mostly the items consist of cloth armor and bags to hold items. Warlocks, Mages, and Priests (all cloth-armor wearers) will get the most benefit out of this craft. Others may take it up for the bag-making. Tailors can also make several vanity items and shirts, as well as flying carpet mounts. These mounts are tailoring only however.
Tailors also have the ability to increase the amount of cloth they receive off mobs in Northrend, and once above skill level 400 (via wowhead) will have a chance to loot 50% more cloth.
Prior to 4.01, Tailors had three different specializations. However, all of the specialization patterns were purchased from vendors and are still accessible. Any tailor can learn them, although more than likely they aren't going to be of much benefit to anyone.
Tailoring end game bonuses: Cloak enchants. These particular cloak enchants have special procs that are extremely powerful. There is a spirit one for healers, an intellect one for casters in general, and an attack power one for hunters and melee classes.
There is some debate over how much better these procs are in terms of the bonus than compared to other professions. They have an internal CD of 45 seconds, which for the Intellect enchant works out to be a roughly 143 bonus over the +50 Int cloak enchant (math skills provided by http://howtopriest.com). This is a huge bonus in comparison to the other professions. The attack power enchant seems to vary depending on your class/weapon, as the higher your attack speed is, the quicker the enchant will proc. I would guess that haste will probably help boost the time to proc for the two caster enchants as well, giving this more of a bonus to classes that stack haste like shadow priests and boomkins, but don't take my word for it.
In addition, tailors can craft leg enchants for casters. Similar to in Wrath, tailors can also enchant their own pants for significantly reduced cost. Instead of the one Dreamcloth is takes to make the standard leg enchant, tailors can do the self enchant for two measly threads and three volatiles.
Q: Where do I get cloth from? (LockeColeMA/thermalnoise with edits for Wrath and Cata)
A. Okay, rather basic question. Cloth drops off of humanoid (and usually zombie/skeleton-like undead) enemies. There are exceptions to this; Naga are humanoids and do not drop cloth, for example. The level range for cloth is, approximately:
Mob Level Drops
1-15 Linen cloth
15-25 Wool cloth
25-40 Silk Cloth
40-50 Mageweave Cloth
50-60 Runecloth
60-70 Netherweave Cloth
70-80 Frostweave Cloth
80-85 Embersilk Cloth
Q: Any tips with Tailoring? (LockeColeMA with some edits based on my opinion)
A. As a way to somewhat supply yourself, you can level up skinning as there are some recipes that require leather. However, these are fairly rare and easily avoidable while leveling your skill. It is an option, but not one I would recommend.
Many people take up enchanting to supply items to disenchant. Basically, it is suggested you supplement your income with hunting good items that sell well. Also keep in mind that as a Tailor, you will most likely not sell cloth, so that takes a decent chunk out of your income. Therefore, a gathering skill can be very beneficial to make up the loss.
Q: How do I learn the 525 Tailoring patterns?
A. Visit the tailoring supplier in your respective capital city. Patterns cost either 8 bolts of embersilk cloth or 1 Dreamcloth.
Q: How do I make money with Tailoring?
A. Bags. Seriously. Not just Cata bags either. You can make some decent profits from crafting Nethersilk bags as well. You'll usually have an easier time getting those to sell than trying to sell the cloth by itself. Frostweave bags are also selling pretty decently too. More than they sold for during Wrath actually, which is kind of weird.
Another option is to charge crafting fees for the 359 epic belts and pants. With Dreamcloth having CD's to craft (except for the chaos orb one of course) and being BoP, you could probably ask for a decent crafting fee.
Edited, Sep 2nd 2011 4:44pm by PigtailsOfDoom
10) Herbalism
Overview: Herbalism is a gathering skill which is used to pick herbs. Herbs are used for Alchemy and Inscription. The gathering skills are pretty self explanatory. There aren't really any particular herbs that sell for more to be honest. Herbs are needed in equal amounts across the board for both Alchemy and Inscription. Market prices go up and down depending on supply. For this reason, Outland and Northrend herbs do tend to sell better as it seems like those herbs tend to be in short supply pretty often. This will vary from server to server though.
Herbalists will also loot Living Seed which is a fun item that will turn an Herbalist with 475 skill into an herb. Herbalism is also the main supply for Volatile Life. There are a few mobs that can drop Volatile Life, but not very many and the drop rate is mostly very low.
Herbalism end game bonuses: Lifeblood. Lifeblood = (480 haste * 20sec) / 120 sec CD = 80 haste. Not really that great of a bonus compared to the crafting professions. Primary stats are always better than secondary stats. That's why they are primary. I would advise against having herbalism on any character you plan on raiding with.
Where do I find X herb?
Here is a list of all the herbs in the game. To find the locations of the herb you are looking for, click on the name. This will lead you to the wowhead page for that particular herb. Click on the tab that says "Gathered from." Click on the link/s there. This will lead you to a page with maps for each zone where that particular herb node spawns, along with spawn points and how many nodes there are in each zone. Here is Briarthorn as an example. This will help you to find the zone where the particular herb you are looking for is most plentiful.
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 7:54pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Overview: Herbalism is a gathering skill which is used to pick herbs. Herbs are used for Alchemy and Inscription. The gathering skills are pretty self explanatory. There aren't really any particular herbs that sell for more to be honest. Herbs are needed in equal amounts across the board for both Alchemy and Inscription. Market prices go up and down depending on supply. For this reason, Outland and Northrend herbs do tend to sell better as it seems like those herbs tend to be in short supply pretty often. This will vary from server to server though.
Herbalists will also loot Living Seed which is a fun item that will turn an Herbalist with 475 skill into an herb. Herbalism is also the main supply for Volatile Life. There are a few mobs that can drop Volatile Life, but not very many and the drop rate is mostly very low.
Herbalism end game bonuses: Lifeblood. Lifeblood = (480 haste * 20sec) / 120 sec CD = 80 haste. Not really that great of a bonus compared to the crafting professions. Primary stats are always better than secondary stats. That's why they are primary.
I would advise against having herbalism on any character you plan on raiding with. Where do I find X herb?
Here is a list of all the herbs in the game. To find the locations of the herb you are looking for, click on the name. This will lead you to the wowhead page for that particular herb. Click on the tab that says "Gathered from." Click on the link/s there. This will lead you to a page with maps for each zone where that particular herb node spawns, along with spawn points and how many nodes there are in each zone. Here is Briarthorn as an example. This will help you to find the zone where the particular herb you are looking for is most plentiful.
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 7:54pm by PigtailsOfDoom
11) Mining
Overview: Mining is a gathering skill that is used to mine ore. Mining comes with the Smelting skill, which enables you to turn ore into metal bars, or in the case of bronze bar, enables you to turn two different bars into a new variety. Ore and metal bars are used by Blacksmithing, Engineering and Jewelcrafting. Because metal is used by three different professions, it is also in the highest demand and typically is the better money maker of the three. Like with herbs, supply vs. demand dictates how much you can sell metal for. Off hand, I can tell you that the rarer metals like Khorium, Titanium, and Pyrite usually sell for pretty high sums. This is particularly true of Khorium and Titanium, since supply is low for them. However, demand is also fairly low for these two as they are used to craft specialty/high quality items, most of which aren't in demand other than for leveling purposes. There are some exceptions to this of course. Khorium is used to craft the epic engineering flying mount, and Titanium is used to craft Jeeves. Engineers are only going to craft these items once though, so again demand is low. I personally wouldn't bother going out of my way to farm Khorium and Titanium, but if you see a node you should definitely pick them up to sell.
Please note that you need a Mining Pick in order to mine ore.
Miners have a chance at looting Elementium Geode from Cata ore, which is a non-combat pet that sells for a few hundred gold. Miners also have a chance to loot various gems from any node, as well as random volatiles from Outlands nodes on up.
Mining End game bonus: Toughness. A static 120 Stamina. This matches up to the other tradeskill bonuses for tanks. If you aren't a tank, I wouldn't recommend having mining on a character you plan to raid with.
Where can I find X ore?
Here is a list of all the metal and stone in the game. To find the locations of the metal you are looking for, click on the name. This will lead you to the wowhead page for that particular metal. Click on the tab that says "Mined from." Click on the link/s there. This will lead you to a page with maps for each zone where that particular metal node spawns, along with spawn points and how many nodes there are in each zone. Here is Copper Ore as an example. This will help you to find the zone where the particular metal you are looking for is most plentiful.
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 7:58pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Overview: Mining is a gathering skill that is used to mine ore. Mining comes with the Smelting skill, which enables you to turn ore into metal bars, or in the case of bronze bar, enables you to turn two different bars into a new variety. Ore and metal bars are used by Blacksmithing, Engineering and Jewelcrafting. Because metal is used by three different professions, it is also in the highest demand and typically is the better money maker of the three. Like with herbs, supply vs. demand dictates how much you can sell metal for. Off hand, I can tell you that the rarer metals like Khorium, Titanium, and Pyrite usually sell for pretty high sums. This is particularly true of Khorium and Titanium, since supply is low for them. However, demand is also fairly low for these two as they are used to craft specialty/high quality items, most of which aren't in demand other than for leveling purposes. There are some exceptions to this of course. Khorium is used to craft the epic engineering flying mount, and Titanium is used to craft Jeeves. Engineers are only going to craft these items once though, so again demand is low. I personally wouldn't bother going out of my way to farm Khorium and Titanium, but if you see a node you should definitely pick them up to sell.
Please note that you need a Mining Pick in order to mine ore.
Miners have a chance at looting Elementium Geode from Cata ore, which is a non-combat pet that sells for a few hundred gold. Miners also have a chance to loot various gems from any node, as well as random volatiles from Outlands nodes on up.
Mining End game bonus: Toughness. A static 120 Stamina. This matches up to the other tradeskill bonuses for tanks. If you aren't a tank, I wouldn't recommend having mining on a character you plan to raid with.
Where can I find X ore?
Here is a list of all the metal and stone in the game. To find the locations of the metal you are looking for, click on the name. This will lead you to the wowhead page for that particular metal. Click on the tab that says "Mined from." Click on the link/s there. This will lead you to a page with maps for each zone where that particular metal node spawns, along with spawn points and how many nodes there are in each zone. Here is Copper Ore as an example. This will help you to find the zone where the particular metal you are looking for is most plentiful.
Edited, Jun 26th 2011 7:58pm by PigtailsOfDoom
12) Skinning
Overview: Skinning is a gathering skill that is (shocker!) used to skin animals. No you cannot skin humanoids. I know it sucks, but there's probably some sort of moral implications that Blizz is trying to avoid. =x Most animals you can skin though. Leather is used primarily by Leatherworkers. It's also used in a few other professions, Tailoring as an example, but the amount of leather needed for these professions is very small so it doesn't create much demand. As a result, skinning is typically the worst gathering skill to have. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't level it. As with everything, supply and demand dictates how much an item is worth. Because it is well known that mining and herbalism usually make more money, there are more people with mining and herbalism than with skinning. You could potentially make more money with skinning because of this, if supply is particularly low on your server.
Please note that you need a Skinning Knife in order to skin animals. Unless you're a Worgen of course. Apparently they skin animals with their claws. Gross.
Skinners also have a chance to loot Strange Bloated Stomach from Cata level mobs. These contain a few random volatiles.
Skinning end game bonuses: Master of Anatomy. A static 80 to Critical strike rating. As with Herbalism, this bonus isn't that good compared to the crafting professions. Primary stats are always better than secondary stats. That's why they are primary. I would advise against having skinning on any character you plan on raiding with.
Q: How does skinning skill work? (LockeColeMA)
A. Your skinning skill determines what level of beast you can skin. The number it works out to is skinning Skill / 5 = Level. So if you have 200 skill, you can skin up to a level 40 beast. Skinning skill does not determine the quality or item you get.
Q: What will I skin? (LockeColeMA with edit for scraps)
A. It depends on the beast. Usually you will get leather; the types of leather generally follow the rule of cloth. However, there is more of a mix-up with what quality you will get; even when I skin level 56 bats in the EPL, I still get Thick Leather (which I can get off level 40 enemies). Also note, the number of leather you get can vary; I usually get two leather off of elites instead of one.
Other items you can skin include hides. These are rarer; generally I get around 1 Hide every 10 pieces of leather. Again, the quality of hide can vary; I can get both Thick Hides and Rugged Hides.
Off certain monsters you will get different items. Turtles, for example, can be skinned for Turtle Scales. Same with Scorpids. Dragonkin, although not beasts, can still be skinned (I loved ST and UBRS!). Dragonkin will also drop Dragon Scales of varying color; it depends on which dragon flight you skinned. These scales are used almost exclusively in Leatherworking; and obviously Dragon Scales are used mostly to make Mail armor. Scales are typically skinned off level 40+ mobs.
Some mobs may drop leather scraps instead of actual leather. Most of the level 1-10 animals you skin will drop Ruined Leather Scraps. Lower level mobs in Outlands, Northrend, and Cata areas will also drop scraps. Don't vendor these. Leatherworkers can use these to make leather, so if you have a LW you can turn them into leather and sell them. If not, you can still them on the AH. You just won't get as much for them as you will standard leather.
Edited, Jun 27th 2011 1:20am by PigtailsOfDoom
Overview: Skinning is a gathering skill that is (shocker!) used to skin animals. No you cannot skin humanoids. I know it sucks, but there's probably some sort of moral implications that Blizz is trying to avoid. =x Most animals you can skin though. Leather is used primarily by Leatherworkers. It's also used in a few other professions, Tailoring as an example, but the amount of leather needed for these professions is very small so it doesn't create much demand. As a result, skinning is typically the worst gathering skill to have. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't level it. As with everything, supply and demand dictates how much an item is worth. Because it is well known that mining and herbalism usually make more money, there are more people with mining and herbalism than with skinning. You could potentially make more money with skinning because of this, if supply is particularly low on your server.
Please note that you need a Skinning Knife in order to skin animals. Unless you're a Worgen of course. Apparently they skin animals with their claws. Gross.
Skinners also have a chance to loot Strange Bloated Stomach from Cata level mobs. These contain a few random volatiles.
Skinning end game bonuses: Master of Anatomy. A static 80 to Critical strike rating. As with Herbalism, this bonus isn't that good compared to the crafting professions. Primary stats are always better than secondary stats. That's why they are primary.
I would advise against having skinning on any character you plan on raiding with. Q: How does skinning skill work? (LockeColeMA)
A. Your skinning skill determines what level of beast you can skin. The number it works out to is skinning Skill / 5 = Level. So if you have 200 skill, you can skin up to a level 40 beast. Skinning skill does not determine the quality or item you get.
Q: What will I skin? (LockeColeMA with edit for scraps)
A. It depends on the beast. Usually you will get leather; the types of leather generally follow the rule of cloth. However, there is more of a mix-up with what quality you will get; even when I skin level 56 bats in the EPL, I still get Thick Leather (which I can get off level 40 enemies). Also note, the number of leather you get can vary; I usually get two leather off of elites instead of one.
Other items you can skin include hides. These are rarer; generally I get around 1 Hide every 10 pieces of leather. Again, the quality of hide can vary; I can get both Thick Hides and Rugged Hides.
Off certain monsters you will get different items. Turtles, for example, can be skinned for Turtle Scales. Same with Scorpids. Dragonkin, although not beasts, can still be skinned (I loved ST and UBRS!). Dragonkin will also drop Dragon Scales of varying color; it depends on which dragon flight you skinned. These scales are used almost exclusively in Leatherworking; and obviously Dragon Scales are used mostly to make Mail armor. Scales are typically skinned off level 40+ mobs.
Some mobs may drop leather scraps instead of actual leather. Most of the level 1-10 animals you skin will drop Ruined Leather Scraps. Lower level mobs in Outlands, Northrend, and Cata areas will also drop scraps. Don't vendor these. Leatherworkers can use these to make leather, so if you have a LW you can turn them into leather and sell them. If not, you can still them on the AH. You just won't get as much for them as you will standard leather.
Edited, Jun 27th 2011 1:20am by PigtailsOfDoom
Reserved for Archaeology
Reserved for Cooking
Edited, Feb 26th 2011 2:46pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Edited, Feb 26th 2011 2:46pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Reserved for First Aid.
Edited, Feb 26th 2011 2:47pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Edited, Feb 26th 2011 2:47pm by PigtailsOfDoom
Reserved for Fishing
That purplish color you're using is rather hard to read on the WoW Classic skin. The green is a bit better, but still kinda dark.
Are they both too dark? What about the maroon for end game bonuses?
Here's what they all look like.
A thought: I think the colors used for Scholar/Sage/Guru/Admin are the same on both skins, and if so would offer readable versions for both skins of the colors you're using.
Okay, I edited the first few lines in the Alchemy section. Does that look better?
I can read them without major difficulty, so definitely better, IMO.
Okay, tested out a lighter shade of purple (I really like purple. =x )in the classic theme and it looks pretty readable to me. Let me know if you guys have trouble reading it. Also feel free to post comments or critiques on the content of the guides as well.
PigtailsOfDoom wrote:
(I really like purple. =x )
It looks fine to me.
I'd like to have a wiki version of the FAQ as well. You can put it here: Trade Skill FAQ (WOW)
I can also help with the wikification if needed. For the wiki the TOC can be build automatically, my suggestion for this thread is to create each section in a new post so that you can have links. I can nuke in between posts so that it's continuous if needed, although you seem to have enough reserved.
Let me know if you need help with anything.
Edited, Mar 2nd 2011 11:22am by Xsarus
I can also help with the wikification if needed. For the wiki the TOC can be build automatically, my suggestion for this thread is to create each section in a new post so that you can have links. I can nuke in between posts so that it's continuous if needed, although you seem to have enough reserved.
Let me know if you need help with anything.
Edited, Mar 2nd 2011 11:22am by Xsarus
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You'll always be stupid, you'll just be stupid with more information in your brain
Forum FAQ
You'll always be stupid, you'll just be stupid with more information in your brain
Forum FAQ
Need a hand with anything? I can take up Archeology and/or Cooking if you'd like 
Major kudos for doing this, Pigtails!
Major kudos for doing this, Pigtails!
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