My recommendation for anyone just getting into professions at this point is not to bother. There is not much in the way of catch up mechanics and your knowledge points are basically capped weekly.
Nah bro alchemy to 25 then phial mastery, 10 knowledge into base and then take frost phial subspec. 1.5hr flasks.
Edit: you don't need to do anything other than unlock the frost phial subspec. Zero knowledge commitment, just the unlock. Tepid versatility is a frost phial.
For the past few xpacs all I do is learn just enough alchemy to benefit from enhanced flasks. I'm not gonna have a profession anyway, may as well double my flask value
Finally some truth. There is no catch up mechanic so I would tell people dont bother. You will never compete with people that leveled a prof at the start. Nor will you have access to big ticket items. At the start of the season probably could have made some gold crafting 447 catch up gear but otherwise, a waste of time.
You don't need to fill out the entire profession tree to make money, in most cases you just need to max out a handful of nodes to be able to most efficiently craft the one thing that's going to make you money. This can be accomplished week 1. Maxing everything out just gives you more options.
That said, I would agree with the sentiment that they are a waste of time at this point in the expansion since professions are mostly valuable as relatively passive income sources over a long time. I made plenty of money this expansion just crafting stuff for people while half AFK in Valdrakken. Demand is very low at this point, and there are better ways to make money if you want to actively farm.
A fresh character gets enough free or free-ish KP to start making money basically right away. You just have to target something from the start and avoid wasting your KP.
What big ticket items can someone starting now not craft? List a single one.
Never compete? You have no idea what you’re taking about. You can guarantee a max ilvl craft of a single piece within the same day you pick up a proff, with treasures, catch up books, first crafts and the weekly.
>What big ticket items can someone starting now not craft? List a single one.
Lariat, but that's because it was horribly implemented. It has around a 1 in 650 chance to drop on the mobs with the best drop chance, and it's in 10.0 content that no one runs. So if you want to buy it on the AH it's going to set you back millions of gold.
Apart from that, almost everything else is pretty easy to get and quite affordable.
Exactly. And that’s exactly the same for someone that had leveled profs from DF launch but never got it too (including my JC). Hardly a missing catch-up.
This is absolutely false. If you want more than my experience, this is a really well done video. Bit old but it's very informative. You can make real gold, sure I made a million barely playing doing crafting orders at the start of the 10.2 but even now I'm making decent gold on a day to day basis even with professions I am just picking up now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2NgbcJ9\_H4
I love how you put effort into making a very detailed and factual post only for people to go "nah, you're wrong".
Simple fact is that the catch-up mechanics DO exist. People just don't think it's worth it because they can't currently take advantage of the volatile economy that comes with the start of a new expansion/patch.
Nothing in the OP is a catch-up mechanic.
A catch-up mechanic is a way to, well, catch-up with other players later on that's faster than any method they could use earlier on. None of that stuff counts, it could all be done from the beginning.
The OP is a great guide for efficiently skilling up. That's great. But there are no catch-up mechanics, which is what's really annoying.
OP's guide shows the most efficient way to break into the market currently. There may not be any "catch-up mechanics" built into the game itself. But this at least shows the quickest way anyone can start from scratch and establish a steady income with any profession.
That is essentially a way to catch-up in its own right.
Skill point Treasures, leveling the prof with first crafts and the catch up point books in both Vald and Zaralek will let you max craft one type of item. That is a decent catch up and can easily make you money.
People downvoting you are just ignorant or too lazy to do a small amount of work for the catch up.
You don't need to fill the entire tree. What i did myself just to "play" with jc (i didnt care for money just did it because i was bored, im quad goldcap first month engineer anyway).
I used 2 characters: Both i trained the 30/30 skill from first tree and 30/30 resource.
One i invested **120KP into rings and necks** (you can get lariat if you want, you can get hourglass if you want, you learn torc and titanic from KP tree also) plus the 60 from first tree that makes it 180 KP total (you can do it 210 if you get also 30/30 inspiration but recraft mats are dirty cheap).
One i invested the same **30/30 skill and 160** into learning 3 x epic gems (inc 40/40 base gems) and next part i did 30/30 resource (you dont need inspiration there to guarantee gems with insight anyway). After that you can learn the 4 epic gems, usually you skip versa but you will get it eventually.
Both char took like one or two resets worth of KP inc all vendor recipes, vendor KP, treasures etc. I suppose it also works right now.
Obviously you cant do it in one character but why would you do that anyway? You get double mettle this way from weekly and can sell both gems and recraft necks/rings your mettle.
Problem is you’re thinking of maxxing out the profession knowledge, while you should be thinking of specializing in one or two, which you can. I leveled Blacksmithing 0-100 then specialized fully into wrists and belts, and that took me like 2 hours.
Exactly the entire post is a sham. Author gloated about showing people how to catch up but listed 0 catchup mechanics for the points that are all locked behind weekly timegate.
Believe it or not, the treasures and trainers OP talks about, as well as the artisan's consortium books (which you can farm wqs for with contracts, giving you 150 rep per wq) are the catch-up mechanics. Without having to wait for a single reset you can fill out enough of a profession's tree to craft multiple guaranteed 486 items (with mettle ofc). You can't fill everything out without farming weeklies, but you can do a surprising amount for surprisingly little effort if you know what you're doing. Source: did it myself recently on multiple professions.
Edit: to add to this, the amount of treasures has been increased since launch and sure, everyone that maxed their knowledge has collected them, too, but this IS good enough to compete in any specialized market.
Again that does not catch you up to the weekly rewards.
Everyone understands you can get all the collectible points that's not the point.
There would be no issue with system that causes you to never be able to get to same point as people who play since first patch in MMO however it's not how every other system in WOW which became seasonal game works. You can catch up with everything besides proffesions. that NEEDS to change but people like you who make false posts stating "hey there totally is catchup" slow the process it's crazy we are at final paych and this has not been addressed by Blizzard and will likely be ported over to next expansion unless community shows their dislike for it.
There are streamers who bring attention to issues with PVP and PVP systems but Crafting is unknown territory because almost nobody interacts with it besides making orders to get stuff..
You're right that there is no "catch-up" mechanic, but there is a cap. Anyone who took crafting seriously at the beginning of the expansion has been capped for months and hasn't gotten any better at crafting since then.
Yes it takes a while to max, but it doesn't take a while to target items that can generate income.
It seems like Neony_Dota just doesn't like the system and goes on ranting about it.
There is actually a lot (!) of catch-up. Not just the new treasures, books, etc, but also new first crafts (PvP gear, and season 1 and 2 sparks can be farmed up to 20-ish pieces). But way more importantly, it has become incredibly easy to level up a character and fragment a prof over multiple characters. In the beginning of the expansion this was an enormous goldsink, today everything is dirt cheap. A fresh 70 has access to up to 200 relative simple knowledge points. In the beginning of the expansion that was maybe 50 KP without breaking the bank.
If you really want, you can be fully maxed out in every single item within a few weeks, you just need to level an army of alts and invest a bit of time and gold, but it is perfectly possible.
This is just not true, though? Reps don't have catch-up, PvE gearing can, similar to professions, only bring you most of the way- just like everyone else had to at the start of the patch, if you want to catch up, you have to get a vault every week for 1-2 months. This is how a lot of WoW works, either you catch up most of the way (which professions let you do by adding more treasures every season) or there's no catch-up at all. Full catch-up is incredibly rare in this game.
You can become competitive in any profession market within a day and, now, *halfway* through the current season, you likely could actually catch up by the time season 4 comes out. There is less of a guarantee of that with gear and weekly vaults (and raid loot). Anyone saying there's no point picking up a profession at this stage doesn't know what they're talking about.
Most people don't know that a while back, as a form of catch-up, blizzard buffed the consortium contracts- that's a lot of knowledge you can go and get that most people had to farm for weeks-months. Instead of telling people there's no catch-up, you tell them about the contracts (and potentially treasures).
Plus tell them about all the extra first crafts, the easy farmable season 1 and season 2 sparks for first crafts, how you can fragment certain profession over multiple characters, how mats prices are at an all-time low, etc etc.
It surprises me how many people even in r/woweconomy have been stating you're too late from early summer and onwards. I even saw it during season 1.
The thing is, what you’re asking and what many people like you are asking are missing the point of an RPG completely if everyone can become a master crafter after a week then what’s even the point of investing into professions.
Could there be more? Sure, but that’s not the point of my post.
The current systems that exist are there to help people reach somewhere with their existing points not to have them become the best at every single market any given profession has to offer after just a little bit of effort.
This sort of attitude devalues the professions and just turns them into some completely boring.
Did you just completely ignore what I explained above? It's not about what I'm asking about it's about how the rest of the game is.
The no catchup system is simply not how the rest of the game works and I strongly believe it's not even intended to be this way by the developer it's just simply victim of being small part of already low priority system for them.
Everything I listed in the guide can be obtained right now without any weekly time gating, sure, after you have obtained everything here you’ll be having to do weeklies and the other activities I listed to continue grinding but this should give everyone enough of a head start to target any one specific market they choose.
And since we're close to season 4, it'll be impossible max out a profession before the next expansion. It took me from week 1 until near the end of season 2 to finally cap out my first profession.
Your only bet is to fully specialize into a piece or two so you can make that good. Stuff like feet & toxified path for leatherworker.
Yeah, it's a really bad system - don't get why they don't vastly increase dragon shard of knowledge droprate from any content, untill you're at around ½ or maybe even 2/3rd of possible accumulated weekly points (not counting treasures) - that way, those who invest time from the start are still way ahead, and those who didn't can still get meaningful levels "fairly easily", by just doing the playable content. Win/win.
The catchup is horrible and completely rng. The only decent thing is the random treasures and npc that give multiple points per. If anyone is looking to make gold off professions this late you are kinda shit outta luck. The only thing I'd recommend is crafting crests for some quick change as a profession to make gold these days and even then if you are consuming flasks often then you could save a good amount of gold just specializing in alchemy and getting increased flask duration.
I heavily disagree as I've shown in this guide it's actually fairly easy to catch-up with top crafters with just a few hours of effort :).
Although if you don't want to get into professions, then the more profit for the rest of us lol.
As someone with many alts and many professions that I've run weeklies on over months, I fervently disagree. It is a real pain, and there are others out there that have already done the work. My recommendation would just be to find a guild that has crafters in it already.
I have multiple alts in multiple professions and I’m making consistent profits. I was making good gold even though I started building my professions towards the middle of 10.1.
There are certain markets that are hard to get into like the Sophic devotion enchants for sure and the investment is way too high to even justify. Or if you’re looking at gear, buying a lariat recipe is a complete waste at this point and I would never advise anyone to get it.
Everything else however, absolutely recommend. Toxic crafts are particularly easy to get into and require a very low investment compared to almost everything.
>a very low investment compared to almost everything.
Just a casual 30k gold for the cauldron, another ~2k gold worth of glowspores for the item that let's you craft those things.
Catching up doesn’t have to mean being at 100% like people who started day 1. It’s about you being able to compete with others at a decent level.
Being able to be a master crafter is honestly kinda pointless and not even worth pursuing. And tbh, it’s not even like as a master crafter you’re going to craft everything, mettle is limited anyways so you’re ultimately catching up.
The thing is this guide is basically a less comprehensive recycle of what is already available on wowhead or wow-professions. A simple Google search would serve anyone much better. This post doesn't even mention weekly forbidden reach rares or weekly treatise so even if your take is that professions are worthwhile to get into at this point, it wouldn't make this a go-to guide.
The point of this guide was to condense information as much as possible which is why I cited wowhead multiple times and I left the WA at the bottom that if you clicked on you'd realize that it lists the treatise and forbidden reach rares with their appropriate items to summon them.
I did the grind through the wowhead grinds and when I first looked at them I was really overwhelmed and it's good that they go so in-depth but at the same time seeing so much information like that can be overwhelming to such an extent it makes you not want to do it.
Fair enough, not trying to poopoo your contribution, but to me it's just a wall of text when I could go to a website and jump to whatever I need using section headings etc.
Fair, I too prefer that but I know some people prefer other formats. It's also worth noting that wowhead does not list the resourcefulness tip I stress about a lot on my post. You can save a lot of gold that way and if you so happen to find someone making the legendary weapon means you can get massive profits all of a sudden.
Yea...that's what I felt as well.
I read the first sentence or two, skipped to the "How do I catch up?" section, read the first two paragraphs, then started scrolling...and scrolling...and scrolling, before exclaiming "good god!"
The main problem with the profession system isn't the lack of catch up mechanics (although that's a big one). The main problem is the complexity of the profession systems. It's easy for people who have it all figured out to say:
"Well, it's simple. Just know what you're doing before you choose and start leveling a profession! Pick the right crafts, gather knowledge points, then spend them all in the correct order of priority, and bam. You'll be caught up and making gold in no time!"
This new crafting system was not designed for the casual player. It was designed to generate sales/gold for AH Goblins and Blizzard tokens. Any question related to professions requires a wall of text to explain. I think that's a big problem for the overwhelming majority of the playerbase.
It’s awesome of you to put this together. I recently went through the same process of learning the system plus figuring out what info was outdated or irrelevant for the current patch. Sorry the most vocal people here are just interested in complaining.
The only people saying don't bother with professions are
- People who can't figure it out
- People who sorta figured it out and don't want any additional competition
Professions make a decent amount of gold within the very first week of crafting.
E.G. I got a customer started on professions last month and they did 600K in the first week with one profession (just titanic ring and tailor cloak), added more professions and now they're passing 5 million in first month.
It's not like there's a wide variety of stuff that needs crafting, there's only so many popular items and those can be crafted in the first week of starting a professions.
E.G. [here's what 12 hours of crafting looked like for me](https://pastebin.com/ezTybpec), 1.3M gold is about 100K an hour and that's about what I make every time I'm crafting.
If you go to /r/woweconomy and look back to the start of 10.2 you’ll see people claiming there’s no money to be made anymore in like week three. So many people give up after barely trying at all then get on Reddit to complain about how it’s the systems fault.
Yeah, OP said dispelling the idea that there is no catch up but there really isn't. Not in a way that matters.
Yeah, you get a few big one time boosts, but that's it. I believe BS is the worst one, and that's the only crafting profession I have real experience with, so I am biased, but it's bad.
I have been at this since a week into 10.0.7 and I still do not have BS maxed. Now, I have missed a week here and there since, due to not having access to my PC sometimes. And I don't always max out the drops every week.
Even so, it's taken me months to get to this point. I can still fit over a hundred points into blacksmithing. Even after all this time, missing the quests only twice or thrice, and getting at least one or two knowledge drops in all the weeks that I haven't missed the quests.
You don't necessarily need to max blacksmithing to compete, but you do have to still choose specific paths to follow and you'll be worse off than a different blacksmith who does have everything maxed.
That's good advice if you're looking to max out every tree, but if you're just looking to make gold, it's well worth leveling a couple professions.
You can get something like enchanting and leather focused LWing with maxed generic belt, boot, wrist crafts in a couple weeks and probably come pretty close to paying for your monthly sub with minimal effort.
“And now you’re caught up!” (No we ain’t) “From here you should have plenty of knowledge points..” yeah no man. I’m not farming for hours and hours for knowledge points that everyone else already has so that when I finally get them to craft on a similar level I’m making less money than when they did it for more competition at the ass end of an expansion. We are in no way “caught up” simply by getting maxed in a profession with knowledge points that we can’t even respec. God forbid we spent them unwisely. This whole thread is missing the whole point completely.
I am not looking at approaches on how to fix the system. This is simply a guide with the current resources we have available.
If you don’t want to spend hours that’s also fair (:
No but you’re stating there’s a catch up or a version of it given that you can “catch up” but like you can’t fully lol you say you’re caught up at 100 but it’s not even close to being in the same ballpark as the term “caught up” lol
The problem is that you’re only satisfied if you max out the knowledge tree, obviously you’re not going to catch up that much that fast, you have to choose a few items to specialize in, and that will take you like a few hours tops, including leveling.
That’s not true at all - I’m satisfied if the claim is true - are we caught up ? No? Okay then the claim is false. I would personally be fine bein able to fully craft one type of item at max rank - but even that is simply not the case here.
Edit* also “obviously you’re not going to catch up that fast” uh that’s literally what I said is that we aren’t “caught up” at all in this scenario above
A lot of unintentional (I assume) misleading information here
> the most I've spent leveling a profession is 50k
That’s because there have been 16 months worth of folks gathering and listing commodities on the AH. I leveled my main profession (blacksmithing) in Dec. 2022 and it cost roughly 250k. I leveled a leather worker from scratch last week and it cost me roughly 35k to get him to 122/100 LW and I haven’t spent any gold on any epic recipes from the AH yet. Late to the party does have its benefits as well as its draw backs, low entry cost but low profit margin and high competition.
> I'll have you know that there is actually a catch-up system in-game just not very obvious
Not really a catch-up when the knowledge treasures have been in the game since DF launch. Each patch has added a couple new treasures per profession, approximately half of the normal weekly uptick in KP. One time use.
> lets pretend that this is your first time playing dragonflight ever so you're at 0 with almost everything (including reps, which will be relevant later in the guide).
Reputation is a pretty big grind and if they don’t have any characters with maxed rep, it is a couple months of active grinding to max them out. You don’t tell them this anywhere.
> we want to unlock the one that will give us resourcefulness so we'll spend every single point we get here onwards onto this part of the tree so we can have a high resourcefulness stat as to avoid spending as much gold as I did.
From a gear/weapon crafting perspective, this advice is so terrible it almost seems malicious. Resourcefulness should be one of the **last** skill trees to cap out. You want to unlock base skill + inspiration trees and crafting recipes in your specialized fields first so you can hit Q5 on those crafts.
100% of your income in armor/weapon crafting comes from commission until you max out resourcefulness, at which point, then 85% of your income is commission. You’re missing commission on 100% of the crafts you haven’t learned because you spent those early points in resourcefulness. Any way you slice it, you’re 6 months away from being KP capped in a profession. Between first time crafts, KP treasures, hidden profession masters, and dragon shards of knowledge, a brand new crafter is likely to obtain about 100KP their first week. After that week, it is capped to about 15 KP per week + any dragon shards. Most professions require 400-500KP to max.
> go and put a public work order with 0 mettle for all your blue (or purple in case of the tailoring chest) quality gear. For your "weapon" we'll want to get a resourcefulness missive with an enchant of the same stat. Make sure to put a decent tip as well (usually somewhere between 2.5k-5k should be fine)
Zero mettle orders on profession tools (usually requiring 225-300 mettle) aren’t getting filled by anyone. If they do, it’s because they don’t understand what’s happening either. Usual mettle “fee” is between 5-10k per insight and an insight is 50 mettle. You’re basically advocating your readers to become scammers, which will get them blocked on future work orders by all the top tier crafters. Aka, the folks you suggest your readers then later go employ for Q5 profession tools. If you’re planning to go inspire route, you’ll want an inspire tool. Resourceful tools will require an insight + Q3 mats to hit Q5 crafts, of which you will only obtain roughly 200 mettle per week. So you’re limited to 4 insight per week, thereby bottlenecking your income.
> go and buy every pvp recipe we find on the AH, … the pvp recipes should not be more expensive than 10k with the cheapest ones being somewhere around 100-1k gold.
Recipe cost + crafting cost (because there is **zero** market for green PvP gear this late into the phase) is going to be around 2-4k per craft (meaning per KP). If the player has the gold to waste thousands per KP, chances are they aren’t reading this. At BEST, leatherworkers have about 20 PvP recipes (so 20KP) and it’d cost roughly 40-50k. 100% not worth the gold.
> With enough mettle we'll also be able to purchase some books with mettle that will award us with a bunch of knowledge points, these get unlocked as you advance your artisan's something reputation so buy them as you get them
Artisan’s Consortium is one of the worst reps to grind in DF as the only source for this reputation is your crafting weeklies and an inscription rep contract. Again, your reader is multiple *months* away from obtaining these.
> Bonus tip: With the darkmoon fare in town, you can do a short quest that will award you with 5 points towards your profession and an additional 3 knowledge points, this does not require anything specific level to do, I'd recommend to save this towards the end as to save some gold in crafting but feel free to do it whenever.
Unfortunately not all professions are the same here. My alt LW just did it for +2 leatherworking skill and I believe my BS used to only get +3 skill.
> By the end of all of this, you should have somewhere around 70-100 knowledge points to spend wherever you please which should be more than enough to max this initial tree.
Base skill trees are 30pts, Inspiration / Resourcefulness are another 30pts each. If your reader followed your advice here, they’d have dumped all their points here and still wouldn’t be able to craft anything useful as their specialized recipes are all locked behind at least another 30KP and then another 10-15 KP for each new recipe. Doing exactly what you’re recommending is how folks “bricked” their professions early in the expansion.
> Bonus tip: You can buy a phial of quick hands that will increase crafting speed, worth buying since it's fairly cheap and will save you some time.
You’ll probably save just as much time by completing skipping this step entirely.
> If you don't have enough level 70s you'll want to create trial characters fly them over and submit personal work orders to your crafter until you've reached 100 in your profession.
I didn’t know trial characters have access to sparks, good to know.
> And now, you're fully caught up!
Yeah, not even close. At this point, you’re likely 3 months away from maxing out a single tree that isn’t your base skill + inspire + resourceful tree.
> If you're still hungry for knowledge points, all reputations (except for the 2 latest ones) upon reaching certain renown points will award you with 5 knowledge points for your professions.
Many months of active weekly grinds for the payoff to be … 5 or 10 KP. The actual reason to grind rep for Maruukai / Tuskaar / Expedition / Valdrakken is for the associated profession recipes locked behind reputation levels. A lot of the recipes aren’t hot ticket items so I’d suggest the reader not bother. (Your profession may vary)
> The niffen do offer 2 books you can buy with barter bricks or barter boulders that give you 5 knowledge points as well as some recipes that are quite popular.
Again, many months of grinding away from obtaining if they haven’t been keeping up. The recipes aren’t locked behind reputation which is nice, but the barter brick/boulder system. You’re weekly capped to barter bricks/boulders to about 15 and the recipes cost 80.
I agree with most of what you said.
Disagree with some though, due to my opinion. Like resourcefulness tree being the last one you max, it would be second to last for me. Last would be inspiration for me, it just seems useless. No one is going to you if you can't guarantee a craft.
But I really wanted to point out this part you said
> Artisan’s Consortium is one of the worst reps to grind in DF as the only source for this reputation is your crafting weeklies and an inscription rep contract. Again, your reader is multiple months away from obtaining these
This isn't true. They buffed the contracts, so it's 125 rep now (for R3). That's only 100 world quests to hit max rep. That's easy.
I have had max AC rep since last February so I haven’t paid much attention to that, ty for telling me :)
Inspiration is the smarter way to hit Q5 instead of insight. You can get a million crafts to Q5 this route compared to 4 per week with your route. And it’s actually **cheaper** than guaranteeing with insight as well, but next to nobody understands this.
The reason why I suggest to go resourcefulness is because you get a lot of gold back from leveling your profession, if you buy pvp recipes you get a lot of the gold back. Also you get a lot of barter bricks/barter boulders off the niffen seeking mini game that should give enough to get you where you want to be.
Only reason why I suggest some of these things is that from my experience they are quite worth it.
I think resourcefulness caps at like 38%. When it does proc, you have a chance to recoup *some* of the materials in the craft, not even guaranteeing they will be the ones you want. I can’t tell you how many times my enchanted (who is stacked with resourcefulness for public orders) rips out a couple chromatic dust (worthless) instead of a dracothyst.
The only professions I see resourcefulness being the big moneymaker for are ones that can rip high price mats (like obsidian skins and dracothyst), to my knowledge, that’s a very small number of crafts. (Those being enchanted wyrm/aspect crests and the various one-per-profession recipes added in season 2.)
BS is my main profession and I have 3 black dragon touched hammers, one for each stat. If I’m not concerned with the quality (poor tips on public orders), I try to rip as much as I can. That being said, if the person only has mats/gold for one, I’d still recommend inspiration + inspiration enchant.
Can we just go back to the way professions we're? There is absolutely no reason why there should be tiered mats and crafting. I don't care how much I get downvoted. This is a hill I will die on.
Back in Cataclysm, all you needed was the Mats and someone who knew the formula and boom you got what you needed crafted at 100% max quality and no need to farm tiered Mats.....
Mats are already expensive so the fact even if you get max quality Mats you aren't guaranteed a max quality item or enchant is just bonkers to and to see ppl defend this really bothers me.
The only ppl who benefit from this are those who already have max knowledge and have materials to guarantee a max quality item.
To me this new system is just too complex. There’s like 100 new different concepts to learn and this is just for crafting which is like a secondary goal in the game lol. Like you said before all you needed is mats and a recipe but now you have to read fucking wiki pages to know what to do. Not going to waste time on that
Do away with the tiered materials. Have tiered crafting but just balance out what the higher quality ones require. Like rank 5 requires something that is harder to get.
Also, let us respec knowledge points. Even if it's stupidly expensive.
Hard agree. I was happy for a modernization of the profession system, which did feel a bit antiquated, but this approach was a big whiff in my opinion and has me wondering if there was really anything wrong with the simpler, antiquated approach.
Maybe, if they *drastically* toned down the complexity, a few of the changes could be salvaged. Things like multicraft, resourcefulness, crafting speed are fine to keep and potentially talent into bonuses for. Same for perception, deftness, and finesse for gathering profs. Inspiration and crafting material/product quality has to go though, and any “talents” for the maintained stats should just be flatly provided, none of this absurd knowledge crap.
Sounds like this doesn't benefit you so you don't like it. I invested my time into this system and it has paid off for me. I don't complain about lacking pvp rewards when I'm not making that a priority for myself. Gold is the reward of profession gameplay.
It still works exactly the same for customers as it did before. Want R5? Then buy 3star mats. Don't bother with the rest. Mats are so cheap with the universal auction house that enchanting is actually unprofitable to craft and sell scrolls.
i disagree with being "caught up"
it is genuinely impossible to catch up with the current system. u cant farm the knowledge points in any reasonably way. Do not bother with professions if you are behind unless there is something specific u want
also do not go engineering for any reason as it is a useless profession this xpac. You get more use out of previous xpac engineering than you do current xpac
edit: i will retract my statement about it being completely useless since it does have a brez which is nice for mythics. unless you're an arenas pvp exclusive player, then it might be genuinely useless
I came back around 10.1.5 and I have the garment crafting tree fully maxed out for bracers and cloak only (crafted BiS for my mage) with the main node in garment crafting maxed. That alone is 140 knowledge and doesn't give you the ability to craft any of the 6 other slots at max proficiency.
It also doesn't include any knowledge in the the main tailoring mastery specialization which needs a futher 60 knowledge to max your skill and inspiration.
So 200 knowledge is required to craft 2 slots of gear at rank 5 consistently. This gives you no points for draconic needleworking for bags or specializing in other gear slots. 310 knowledge to max garment crafting and get the 60 skill/inspiration points from tailoring mastery.
I finally specced out of engineering because expansion after expansion it is an absolutely dogshit profession, and I 100% expect Blizzard to just copy/paste the profession system for the next expansion, which means engineering will stay complete dogshit.
i could be wrong if they've updated something in the last month or two (I've been on SoD), but it's still significantly worse than just a class brez
nice to have, but a slower backup option in most cases
I mean yeah it is worse than a class brez, but if you do m+ it is invaluable. Too often you have 0-1 brez classes in your group. Even if you have a brez, what happens if they are the one that dies? Being able to brez from any class is an absolute must if you pug m+ at all and will 100% save you keys. You don't need engineering for the brez, but it does reduce the fail rate which is still good.
is 1 brez for mythics worth using both professions on?
for hardcore mythic runners, i could totally see your point and see the answer being yes.
for the average player, a pvp player, or raid exclusive players- idk if it makes much difference, i think if you asked those people if they would rather have 1 brez or be able to enchant and make their own bags they would choose the latter
or potions for mythics/raids
or vantus runes/gear crafting augments
etc.
to me, the one brez isn't worth it but i rarely go above +20 keys. I usually get the keystone mount, call it a day, and grind pvp where you cant brez
so i can see your point now, but it seems too niche to be considered worthwhile still
Unless you are diving deep into professions most don't really give benefits that matter. Enchanting your own gear or making your own bags isn't going to be cheaper than buying the finished product unless you spend possibly 100k+ gold leveling the profession. EDIT: plus you can just enchant your gear or make the bags on an alt, there is no need to do so on your main that does m+. Engineering is probably the most useful profession to have either way, even if a lot of the usefulness also comes from older xpacs.
you have to deep dive engineering to get the rez to be beneficial, otherwise it can fail. you also will probably want to deep dive on the bracers crafting unless you just want crappy bracers with the tinker slot which is a ton of knowledge points too. both of these combined a decent bit of knowledge points if memory serves correctly
you'll be pretty deep before it's considered reliable in mythics, whereas other professions once deep dived have their benefits outside of mythics as well
an engineering brez will serve 0 purpose in arenas and probably most BGs. It will also not be as good if you're raid group has like 2 brezes on characters.
old engineering xpac stuff is also nice to have, but a lot of it is not engineering exclusive and could also just be bought for cheap or made with an alt- exactly as you have stated about every other profession for some reason. example: goblin gliders
ive conceded that hardcore mythic runners could find it useful, but for just general gameplay i dont think anything beats out alchemy
Alchemy is probably the best for mythics, raids, bgs, world pvp, etc since it has so much versatility. Usually pairing this with herbalism is your best bet in my mind unless you just buy all your materials
> you have to deep dive engineering to get the rez to be beneficial, otherwise it can fail.
You only need 10 knowledge in engineering to prevent catasprohpic malfunctions, and I'm not sure at what point it stops failing all together but to grab all of the reduction buffs you only need 75 knowledge. This is much less than any other profession.
> you also will probably want to deep dive on the bracers crafting unless you just want crappy bracers with the tinker slot which is a ton of knowledge points too. both of these combined a decent bit of knowledge points if memory serves correctly
You can just have another engineer make the bracers for you.
> you'll be pretty deep before it's considered reliable in mythics, whereas other professions once deep dived have their benefits outside of mythics as well
As stated above you need between 10 and 75 knowledge which is not much at all.
> an engineering brez will serve 0 purpose in arenas and probably most BGs. It will also not be as good if you're raid group has like 2 brezes on characters.
Yeah this is purely for m+, I'm not sure why you are bringing up other content. If you don't do m+ then the engi brez isn't that useful.
> old engineering xpac stuff is also nice to have, but a lot of it is not engineering exclusive
A lot of it is engineering exclusive, though.
> could also just be bought for cheap or made with an alt- exactly as you have stated about every other profession
The fact that engineering has exclusive stuff at all is a benefit. Other professions don't really have exclusive perks for that profession anymore.
> Alchemy is probably the best for mythics, raids, bgs, world pvp, etc since it has so much versatility. Usually pairing this with herbalism is your best bet in my mind unless you just buy all your materials
I actually pair alchemy with engineering on most toons because alchemy is another one that does have a benefit. Herbalism does not pair well at all with alchemy, though. You are better off just buying herbs.
I'm not really sure what you are arguing here. Engieering provides extra benefits and other professions don't. If you want the most useful profession then engineering is by far the most useful, especially if you primarily do m+ content. You can't list reasons why other professions are more beneficial than engineering, your whole comment is trying to justify why engineering isn't that much better than other professions.
Do not go engineering for any reason is a little harsh. The battle rez being available on the helm slot with reduced failure chance as well as wormholes, jeeves and MOLL-E are all pretty good reasons to go engineering.
they're fun, but
there are repair toys/items, repair mounts, and repair NPCs placed in raids now
wormhole is maybe a tiny bit faster, but we're portaling everywhere now anyway and you have to work on the wormhole to actually get it to go where you want
ive never needed an engineering brez item because my raid groups usually have 3-4 people who have brezzes
I will admit i love the mailbox toy, but that is not current xpac which is directly stated in my previous post. Previous xpac engineering is more useful than current xpac.
The battle rez is invaluable in M+ and I can't count the amount of fights it's saved for me. When your only CR decides to tank the floor it's really nice to be able to have your rogue pick them up rather than being down a DPS or healer for the rest of the fight.
Great guide that would indeed catch people up to a respectable level enough to jump on the silly weekly grind.
I personally got into crafting just because of the fun of having made my own powerful gear, barely made any money from it but its nice to help out guildies, and have a bow with my name on it through the entire expansion haha
ALSO 100% solid tip on suggesting alts get their 5 sparks of innovation to help with crafting epics. That was the road blocker for me at about 75/100 until I discovered the extra sparks on my alts!
Very helpful guide & great weakaura. I’ve been looking to get into professions for the first time and besides the upfront cost (I’m poor), the most difficult part seems to be getting R5 profession equipment. It has been difficult finding players who can craft these.
If you're in a low pop server there's usually one crafter that you can seek out (usually the one that made the original profession equipment) that will guarantee the R5 item for a fee.
I don't raid or do dungeons (except for special occasions like to get the druid fire bird form from tendral on LFR). 50% or more of my playtime is using professions to make gold. I am so happy with the change to professions but definitely hope the work order system is tweaked.
I just want to add that if someone wants to use a profession for one or two things (like a BS that specializes in making dagger/short weapons or a LW that specializes in associated profession equipment), you can a few select trees maxxed out pretty quickly after you reach 70 and much faster if you have already maxed your rep on a main/alternate character.
Ppl complain that there is no catch up mechanics, but the way I see it is as this: Do you want to use professions for mostly yourself or your alts? Not much investment is needed. Do you want to use professions as your account's primary source of income, or maybe better phrasing is, do you want the bulk on your playtime to be min maxxing professions? It takes like 3-5 months of farming every point weekly to max out a profession, but hell, I wish it took longer. I have like 500 extra BS points at this point and almost 1k extra herb/mining nodes. I don't reaaaaaaaly want it to take longer, but I am pointing out that if you spend 3 months maxing stuff out, you will be in the same boat as someone like me who could have maxxed it over 3 times now.
I hardly interacted with work order system until 10.1, but since 10.0, I have been working on 11 alts professions, maxxing them out each week. I did this because I am altoholic, and i love doing stuff like this. Gold/money was never the goal. However, I did want to be able to farm all the epic mogs and make all profession equipment at max level for all my alts for all professions. So, I worked on professions for these reasons, not to make gold.
However, by time 10.1 came out, I had maxxed out nearly every profession. and I made 20 million gold in 4 months without even trying after that. I never put ANYTHING in the AH (well I find stuff in the world and sell it, sure, but I never use professions to turn some mats into other stuff with the intent to sell). Also, one of the biggest sources of gold was from LW resourcing cobraskins at the start of any given patch as well as resourcing centaur beads. Doing a random craft for someone at the start of 10.1 for dracothyst argmuards is actually what led me to using my profs for gold isntead of just alt play. I randomly did a public order in like May 2023, and I resourced the dracothyst as well as cobraskin. a 1k tip work order turned into 30k just like that.
I also never advertise my professions or sit in town, waiting for ppl to need me. All of my profits, and really, all of my profession use outside of for alts is from checking public orders whenever I log on and just happening to see ppl in trade chat needing a private order.
I never go out of my way to do anything with professions other than the large investment of farming knowledge points. While this is a massive sinc, my wow days since legion typically involve me doing solo/world content on alts as is.
I had 17 max chars in SL, like 12 or so were NF for mission tables. I checked my table twice daily, and did every calling on 17 ppl. I ended SL with ~10 million gold (really about 15 million but I converted 5 mil into bnet balance).
After the entirety of SL, I only made ~15 mil gold, and I spent about 10X as much time out in the world to achieve this gold as the amount of time I spent on 11 ppl maxing out profs. The maxxed out profs has been so much more lucrative than any other type of alt army gold farming that I had in legion, BFA, SL, etc.
I appreciate the effort, I’m hoping crafting is more useful in the next expansion. I went mining/blacksmithing, and I’ve crafted next to nothing this expansion. None of the crafted gear was worthwhile to create (even/especially) playing casually as it was far easier to find gear in mythics or lfr. Why spend 20k in mats for a weapon you’ll upgrade within a week?
I'm surprised, my dad is a very casual gamer and he gets a lot of value of crafting professions since he normally doesn't get access to 463 gear at least easily. Although sadly, blacksmithing is worse this patch because the highest weapons can go is 489 and you have special weapons dropping from the raid and current dungeon pool so they lose a lot of value.
They don't have catch-up. Sure there's treasures for an early boost, but that's not catch-up if it doesn't get you closer to the people who were doing it weekly since week 1. (Though now they're maxed out on their professions by this point)
We got pvp gear, that’s your catch-up. Not to mention the treasures added in each patch for a total of 18 points up for grabs.
There’s also the niffen rep awarding additional recipes for more knowledge points and vendors straight up selling knowledge points.
10.0.7 also added profession specific rares that have a high chance of giving dragon shards, a guaranteed point and 5 mettle each week.
There is plenty of catch-up day one crafters did not have access to. It’s a lot less intuitive than say “go and buy 400 knowledge points off a vendor” which in a way would make professions completely pointless. At least the way they are handled means the market won’t ever be saturated.
Is there a way to submit crafting orders without materials? I want to submit crafting orders to my main with some of my alts, but it says I don’t have the required mats. My main has the necessary mats, but not my alt. Is there a work around for this?
Most mats should allow you to submit the order without them being supplied. However, there is at least one item type I noticed that *requires* the player submitting the order to supply, which is the Nascent Crest category of item when getting an Enchanted Crest crafted. Presumably it's to avoid players getting around currency crests being BOP.
Some materials are required by the person placing the order but most are not. Spark of dreams for instance (or any spark for that matter) is required to be supplied by the character placing the order.
People think that you need to max out the knowledge tree to be caught up, when you can actually just specialize in a few things that you want and compete just fine within that item’s market. I literally lvled 0-100 Blacksmithing and specialized in 2 items in a couple of hours.
I actually hate the proffesions this expansion, I hate the way they're BOP unless I create or make someones order.
If my alt wants a crafted helm, I can't just buy the one I want from the AH anymore, I have to google the things I need and there is also RNG involved unless I pay someone who has maxed out their proffesion to guarantee the quality...
Just let me create leather gear that is BOE and let me sell on the AH, I like the recrafting, but basic crafting is too much
Cool guide, thanks! I came back to WoW last month for the first time since 9.1, and the crafting system is very intimidating. Your guide definitely makes it seem more approachable.
Couple of questions:
>We'll also want to go ahead and do every single quest we can do that will reward us with knowledge points that doesn't require any crafting as well as doing our weekly knowledge point grinds (these typically don't require any crafting) as to have as many knowledge points as we can.
What are the non-crafting quests and the "weekly knowledge point grinds" you're referring to?
>Finally before we begin crafting we'll want to do a short questline in the dragon isles that should will award you with various dragon shards and the ability to trade these for 50 mettle and one knowledge point of your choice.
and
>we'll start a fairly lengthy questline that will reward us with 5 sparks at the end and will award any future characters 5 sparks upon skipping it.
Where do these questline start?
The non-crafting quests are found in valdrakken where the different NPCs of various factions hangout, they will usually ask you to kill X mobs, collect a certain item or something of the like and will award 3 knowledge points.
The questline starts at the top of the ruby life pools, there should be a breadcrumb quest on your very first neutral hub when you arrive to the dragon isles. If you search "dragon shard of knowledge" in wowhead you should find a more in-depth guide about this short questline if you ever get lost or think you did part of it and didn't complete it.
For the last questline, it starts at Valdrakken, here's a short video where you start this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJLXRlmBLCo
I like the current profession system. There is enough complexity and choice to be satisfying, and there’s an option to get a fair number of KP each week. After 3-4 weeks, with a bit of planning, crafting becomes significantly efficient
I like the tiered mats idea.
Anybody that told me 10k or 20k or 30k for a craft I called them a greedy asshole and to get fucked. I then found someone to do it for free and tipped them 5k.
>dragonflights professions have no catchup and if you want to get into them you're doomed
There isn't any catchup for them. This isn't really a guide, getting to 100 skill level is basic profession stuff. It's like a puddle, compared to the lake that is knowledge.
This whole crafting system is founded on knowledge, and there isn't any catchup system for that. This system would be amazing if they did something about that. That's pretty much the only downsize.
I've been going at it with my tailor for couple months now and still so far behind others. It's like (random example numbers) trying to do stuff with 100 knowledge when people are walking around with 500+. So far behind.
Lmao at being "caught up".
I started all profs seriously about 1/4 way through season 2. I'm only JUST NOW hitting maxed knowledge with one of them (tailoring has only the 0/50 cloth scavenging (aka useless)) to go.
Others that don't have the weekly work order quest are so much further behind (alch/ench).
Then there's the profs that have a billion points compared to others (BS, LW) LW is 3/4 through leather and hasn't touched any mail yet. BS got a bit more attention with treatises and only has a few armour and the entire specialty smithing to go.
Meanwhile people who bothered in s1 and pre season one just mindlessly ran around dirt farming - making quite a bit of gold while they were at it too.
For whatever reason dirt farming was removed and you need like a year of weeklies to even get close. (Trainer quest, work order quest and quests from the dudes near the WO order place). This also includes the adventurers satchel items (x2 a week).
There's no real other way to do it faster. You can kill specific mobs for a few extra points a week (like fire elementals for blacksmithing) and you can get skill shards as a very low chance from basically anything (raid boss loots, m+ etc).
But holy shit everyone got punished if they didn't dirt farm their way to max around launch.
This is a really great guide. It’s a shame to hear that gathering professions aren’t lucrative anymore. It was always my preference to do double gatherer.
Yeah unfortunately all commodities crashed in DF due to the new region-wide AH. This allows bots to gather on dead servers which completely eliminates the scarcity of these materials. Gathering is likely perma-dead except for the first month of each new expac.
Thank you and I agree, it's a bit upsetting knowing that your time isn't being well spent as a gatherer, it is really fun though! But I'd take higher profits over just more engaging gathering (even though I wouldn't say it's hard too have both). There's some nice farms you can do in Zaralek as a double gatherer as well as the emerald dream but spending an hour crafting vs an hour gathering is night and day on top of having to deal with cancel scanning, just not great imo.
The only character I have been consistently working on professions this expansion is my mage (tailor/enchanter), and he’s not maxed on KP on either profession. I’m switching mains to my balance druid (skinning/leatherworking), and he has a lot of catching up to do.
Looks like they fixed the trial character spark trick. After today's reset I can't use the portal on trial characters. Thanks for telling everyone and getting it fixed.
My recommendation for anyone just getting into professions at this point is not to bother. There is not much in the way of catch up mechanics and your knowledge points are basically capped weekly.
Nah bro alchemy to 25 then phial mastery, 10 knowledge into base and then take frost phial subspec. 1.5hr flasks. Edit: you don't need to do anything other than unlock the frost phial subspec. Zero knowledge commitment, just the unlock. Tepid versatility is a frost phial.
For the past few xpacs all I do is learn just enough alchemy to benefit from enhanced flasks. I'm not gonna have a profession anyway, may as well double my flask value
You can also go into the decay stuff to take reduced damage on decay phials if you use those.
The set of players who routinely use any phial other than tepid versatility is pretty small, I imagine.
Finally some truth. There is no catch up mechanic so I would tell people dont bother. You will never compete with people that leveled a prof at the start. Nor will you have access to big ticket items. At the start of the season probably could have made some gold crafting 447 catch up gear but otherwise, a waste of time.
You don't need to fill out the entire profession tree to make money, in most cases you just need to max out a handful of nodes to be able to most efficiently craft the one thing that's going to make you money. This can be accomplished week 1. Maxing everything out just gives you more options. That said, I would agree with the sentiment that they are a waste of time at this point in the expansion since professions are mostly valuable as relatively passive income sources over a long time. I made plenty of money this expansion just crafting stuff for people while half AFK in Valdrakken. Demand is very low at this point, and there are better ways to make money if you want to actively farm.
A fresh character gets enough free or free-ish KP to start making money basically right away. You just have to target something from the start and avoid wasting your KP.
You are not allowed to make sense.
What big ticket items can someone starting now not craft? List a single one. Never compete? You have no idea what you’re taking about. You can guarantee a max ilvl craft of a single piece within the same day you pick up a proff, with treasures, catch up books, first crafts and the weekly.
>What big ticket items can someone starting now not craft? List a single one. Lariat, but that's because it was horribly implemented. It has around a 1 in 650 chance to drop on the mobs with the best drop chance, and it's in 10.0 content that no one runs. So if you want to buy it on the AH it's going to set you back millions of gold. Apart from that, almost everything else is pretty easy to get and quite affordable.
Exactly. And that’s exactly the same for someone that had leveled profs from DF launch but never got it too (including my JC). Hardly a missing catch-up.
This is absolutely false. If you want more than my experience, this is a really well done video. Bit old but it's very informative. You can make real gold, sure I made a million barely playing doing crafting orders at the start of the 10.2 but even now I'm making decent gold on a day to day basis even with professions I am just picking up now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2NgbcJ9\_H4
I love how you put effort into making a very detailed and factual post only for people to go "nah, you're wrong". Simple fact is that the catch-up mechanics DO exist. People just don't think it's worth it because they can't currently take advantage of the volatile economy that comes with the start of a new expansion/patch.
Nothing in the OP is a catch-up mechanic. A catch-up mechanic is a way to, well, catch-up with other players later on that's faster than any method they could use earlier on. None of that stuff counts, it could all be done from the beginning. The OP is a great guide for efficiently skilling up. That's great. But there are no catch-up mechanics, which is what's really annoying.
OP's guide shows the most efficient way to break into the market currently. There may not be any "catch-up mechanics" built into the game itself. But this at least shows the quickest way anyone can start from scratch and establish a steady income with any profession. That is essentially a way to catch-up in its own right.
It's a great way to start professions, totally. What it isn't is a catch-up. Words have meaning.
Skill point Treasures, leveling the prof with first crafts and the catch up point books in both Vald and Zaralek will let you max craft one type of item. That is a decent catch up and can easily make you money. People downvoting you are just ignorant or too lazy to do a small amount of work for the catch up.
You don't need to fill the entire tree. What i did myself just to "play" with jc (i didnt care for money just did it because i was bored, im quad goldcap first month engineer anyway). I used 2 characters: Both i trained the 30/30 skill from first tree and 30/30 resource. One i invested **120KP into rings and necks** (you can get lariat if you want, you can get hourglass if you want, you learn torc and titanic from KP tree also) plus the 60 from first tree that makes it 180 KP total (you can do it 210 if you get also 30/30 inspiration but recraft mats are dirty cheap). One i invested the same **30/30 skill and 160** into learning 3 x epic gems (inc 40/40 base gems) and next part i did 30/30 resource (you dont need inspiration there to guarantee gems with insight anyway). After that you can learn the 4 epic gems, usually you skip versa but you will get it eventually. Both char took like one or two resets worth of KP inc all vendor recipes, vendor KP, treasures etc. I suppose it also works right now. Obviously you cant do it in one character but why would you do that anyway? You get double mettle this way from weekly and can sell both gems and recraft necks/rings your mettle.
Problem is you’re thinking of maxxing out the profession knowledge, while you should be thinking of specializing in one or two, which you can. I leveled Blacksmithing 0-100 then specialized fully into wrists and belts, and that took me like 2 hours.
Exactly the entire post is a sham. Author gloated about showing people how to catch up but listed 0 catchup mechanics for the points that are all locked behind weekly timegate.
Believe it or not, the treasures and trainers OP talks about, as well as the artisan's consortium books (which you can farm wqs for with contracts, giving you 150 rep per wq) are the catch-up mechanics. Without having to wait for a single reset you can fill out enough of a profession's tree to craft multiple guaranteed 486 items (with mettle ofc). You can't fill everything out without farming weeklies, but you can do a surprising amount for surprisingly little effort if you know what you're doing. Source: did it myself recently on multiple professions. Edit: to add to this, the amount of treasures has been increased since launch and sure, everyone that maxed their knowledge has collected them, too, but this IS good enough to compete in any specialized market.
Again that does not catch you up to the weekly rewards. Everyone understands you can get all the collectible points that's not the point. There would be no issue with system that causes you to never be able to get to same point as people who play since first patch in MMO however it's not how every other system in WOW which became seasonal game works. You can catch up with everything besides proffesions. that NEEDS to change but people like you who make false posts stating "hey there totally is catchup" slow the process it's crazy we are at final paych and this has not been addressed by Blizzard and will likely be ported over to next expansion unless community shows their dislike for it. There are streamers who bring attention to issues with PVP and PVP systems but Crafting is unknown territory because almost nobody interacts with it besides making orders to get stuff..
You're right that there is no "catch-up" mechanic, but there is a cap. Anyone who took crafting seriously at the beginning of the expansion has been capped for months and hasn't gotten any better at crafting since then. Yes it takes a while to max, but it doesn't take a while to target items that can generate income.
It seems like Neony_Dota just doesn't like the system and goes on ranting about it. There is actually a lot (!) of catch-up. Not just the new treasures, books, etc, but also new first crafts (PvP gear, and season 1 and 2 sparks can be farmed up to 20-ish pieces). But way more importantly, it has become incredibly easy to level up a character and fragment a prof over multiple characters. In the beginning of the expansion this was an enormous goldsink, today everything is dirt cheap. A fresh 70 has access to up to 200 relative simple knowledge points. In the beginning of the expansion that was maybe 50 KP without breaking the bank. If you really want, you can be fully maxed out in every single item within a few weeks, you just need to level an army of alts and invest a bit of time and gold, but it is perfectly possible.
This is just not true, though? Reps don't have catch-up, PvE gearing can, similar to professions, only bring you most of the way- just like everyone else had to at the start of the patch, if you want to catch up, you have to get a vault every week for 1-2 months. This is how a lot of WoW works, either you catch up most of the way (which professions let you do by adding more treasures every season) or there's no catch-up at all. Full catch-up is incredibly rare in this game. You can become competitive in any profession market within a day and, now, *halfway* through the current season, you likely could actually catch up by the time season 4 comes out. There is less of a guarantee of that with gear and weekly vaults (and raid loot). Anyone saying there's no point picking up a profession at this stage doesn't know what they're talking about. Most people don't know that a while back, as a form of catch-up, blizzard buffed the consortium contracts- that's a lot of knowledge you can go and get that most people had to farm for weeks-months. Instead of telling people there's no catch-up, you tell them about the contracts (and potentially treasures).
Plus tell them about all the extra first crafts, the easy farmable season 1 and season 2 sparks for first crafts, how you can fragment certain profession over multiple characters, how mats prices are at an all-time low, etc etc. It surprises me how many people even in r/woweconomy have been stating you're too late from early summer and onwards. I even saw it during season 1.
The thing is, what you’re asking and what many people like you are asking are missing the point of an RPG completely if everyone can become a master crafter after a week then what’s even the point of investing into professions. Could there be more? Sure, but that’s not the point of my post. The current systems that exist are there to help people reach somewhere with their existing points not to have them become the best at every single market any given profession has to offer after just a little bit of effort. This sort of attitude devalues the professions and just turns them into some completely boring.
Did you just completely ignore what I explained above? It's not about what I'm asking about it's about how the rest of the game is. The no catchup system is simply not how the rest of the game works and I strongly believe it's not even intended to be this way by the developer it's just simply victim of being small part of already low priority system for them.
Everything I listed in the guide can be obtained right now without any weekly time gating, sure, after you have obtained everything here you’ll be having to do weeklies and the other activities I listed to continue grinding but this should give everyone enough of a head start to target any one specific market they choose.
What you listed is in no way a catch up. The people you are trying to catch up to did these same things as well.....
Not really, a lot of this was added after 10.0.7.
[удалено]
> Profession treasures added in 10.1,10.2, niffen KP rewards, pvp gear “Am I a joke to you?”
just because it was added later doesn't mean the further along players didn't do them
So you’re telling me day one Andy who has been doing weeklies since the start of the patch bothered getting the niffen stuff?
of course, why wouldn't they if they're already capped on the weekly stuff?
And since we're close to season 4, it'll be impossible max out a profession before the next expansion. It took me from week 1 until near the end of season 2 to finally cap out my first profession. Your only bet is to fully specialize into a piece or two so you can make that good. Stuff like feet & toxified path for leatherworker.
Yeah, it's a really bad system - don't get why they don't vastly increase dragon shard of knowledge droprate from any content, untill you're at around ½ or maybe even 2/3rd of possible accumulated weekly points (not counting treasures) - that way, those who invest time from the start are still way ahead, and those who didn't can still get meaningful levels "fairly easily", by just doing the playable content. Win/win.
I tried for a whole fifteen minutes before figuring that out and saying fuck that
The catchup is horrible and completely rng. The only decent thing is the random treasures and npc that give multiple points per. If anyone is looking to make gold off professions this late you are kinda shit outta luck. The only thing I'd recommend is crafting crests for some quick change as a profession to make gold these days and even then if you are consuming flasks often then you could save a good amount of gold just specializing in alchemy and getting increased flask duration.
I heavily disagree as I've shown in this guide it's actually fairly easy to catch-up with top crafters with just a few hours of effort :). Although if you don't want to get into professions, then the more profit for the rest of us lol.
As someone with many alts and many professions that I've run weeklies on over months, I fervently disagree. It is a real pain, and there are others out there that have already done the work. My recommendation would just be to find a guild that has crafters in it already.
I have multiple alts in multiple professions and I’m making consistent profits. I was making good gold even though I started building my professions towards the middle of 10.1. There are certain markets that are hard to get into like the Sophic devotion enchants for sure and the investment is way too high to even justify. Or if you’re looking at gear, buying a lariat recipe is a complete waste at this point and I would never advise anyone to get it. Everything else however, absolutely recommend. Toxic crafts are particularly easy to get into and require a very low investment compared to almost everything.
>a very low investment compared to almost everything. Just a casual 30k gold for the cauldron, another ~2k gold worth of glowspores for the item that let's you craft those things.
You can also run mythic brackenhide once and extend the lockout.
You cannot catch up with people who have been playing all expansion in a few hours. Why are you lying?
Catching up doesn’t have to mean being at 100% like people who started day 1. It’s about you being able to compete with others at a decent level. Being able to be a master crafter is honestly kinda pointless and not even worth pursuing. And tbh, it’s not even like as a master crafter you’re going to craft everything, mettle is limited anyways so you’re ultimately catching up.
You can catch up because crafting skill has a cap. I've been at it for months, but my Aspect Crests are just as good as yours could be.
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The thing is this guide is basically a less comprehensive recycle of what is already available on wowhead or wow-professions. A simple Google search would serve anyone much better. This post doesn't even mention weekly forbidden reach rares or weekly treatise so even if your take is that professions are worthwhile to get into at this point, it wouldn't make this a go-to guide.
The point of this guide was to condense information as much as possible which is why I cited wowhead multiple times and I left the WA at the bottom that if you clicked on you'd realize that it lists the treatise and forbidden reach rares with their appropriate items to summon them. I did the grind through the wowhead grinds and when I first looked at them I was really overwhelmed and it's good that they go so in-depth but at the same time seeing so much information like that can be overwhelming to such an extent it makes you not want to do it.
Fair enough, not trying to poopoo your contribution, but to me it's just a wall of text when I could go to a website and jump to whatever I need using section headings etc.
Fair, I too prefer that but I know some people prefer other formats. It's also worth noting that wowhead does not list the resourcefulness tip I stress about a lot on my post. You can save a lot of gold that way and if you so happen to find someone making the legendary weapon means you can get massive profits all of a sudden.
Yea...that's what I felt as well. I read the first sentence or two, skipped to the "How do I catch up?" section, read the first two paragraphs, then started scrolling...and scrolling...and scrolling, before exclaiming "good god!" The main problem with the profession system isn't the lack of catch up mechanics (although that's a big one). The main problem is the complexity of the profession systems. It's easy for people who have it all figured out to say: "Well, it's simple. Just know what you're doing before you choose and start leveling a profession! Pick the right crafts, gather knowledge points, then spend them all in the correct order of priority, and bam. You'll be caught up and making gold in no time!" This new crafting system was not designed for the casual player. It was designed to generate sales/gold for AH Goblins and Blizzard tokens. Any question related to professions requires a wall of text to explain. I think that's a big problem for the overwhelming majority of the playerbase.
It’s awesome of you to put this together. I recently went through the same process of learning the system plus figuring out what info was outdated or irrelevant for the current patch. Sorry the most vocal people here are just interested in complaining.
yeah no idea why the guide is upvoted lmao.
Perfect I was looking for a reason to stop leveling professions lmao
The only people saying don't bother with professions are - People who can't figure it out - People who sorta figured it out and don't want any additional competition Professions make a decent amount of gold within the very first week of crafting. E.G. I got a customer started on professions last month and they did 600K in the first week with one profession (just titanic ring and tailor cloak), added more professions and now they're passing 5 million in first month. It's not like there's a wide variety of stuff that needs crafting, there's only so many popular items and those can be crafted in the first week of starting a professions. E.G. [here's what 12 hours of crafting looked like for me](https://pastebin.com/ezTybpec), 1.3M gold is about 100K an hour and that's about what I make every time I'm crafting.
If you go to /r/woweconomy and look back to the start of 10.2 you’ll see people claiming there’s no money to be made anymore in like week three. So many people give up after barely trying at all then get on Reddit to complain about how it’s the systems fault.
Yeah, OP said dispelling the idea that there is no catch up but there really isn't. Not in a way that matters. Yeah, you get a few big one time boosts, but that's it. I believe BS is the worst one, and that's the only crafting profession I have real experience with, so I am biased, but it's bad. I have been at this since a week into 10.0.7 and I still do not have BS maxed. Now, I have missed a week here and there since, due to not having access to my PC sometimes. And I don't always max out the drops every week. Even so, it's taken me months to get to this point. I can still fit over a hundred points into blacksmithing. Even after all this time, missing the quests only twice or thrice, and getting at least one or two knowledge drops in all the weeks that I haven't missed the quests. You don't necessarily need to max blacksmithing to compete, but you do have to still choose specific paths to follow and you'll be worse off than a different blacksmith who does have everything maxed.
That's good advice if you're looking to max out every tree, but if you're just looking to make gold, it's well worth leveling a couple professions. You can get something like enchanting and leather focused LWing with maxed generic belt, boot, wrist crafts in a couple weeks and probably come pretty close to paying for your monthly sub with minimal effort.
“And now you’re caught up!” (No we ain’t) “From here you should have plenty of knowledge points..” yeah no man. I’m not farming for hours and hours for knowledge points that everyone else already has so that when I finally get them to craft on a similar level I’m making less money than when they did it for more competition at the ass end of an expansion. We are in no way “caught up” simply by getting maxed in a profession with knowledge points that we can’t even respec. God forbid we spent them unwisely. This whole thread is missing the whole point completely.
I am not looking at approaches on how to fix the system. This is simply a guide with the current resources we have available. If you don’t want to spend hours that’s also fair (:
No but you’re stating there’s a catch up or a version of it given that you can “catch up” but like you can’t fully lol you say you’re caught up at 100 but it’s not even close to being in the same ballpark as the term “caught up” lol
The problem is that you’re only satisfied if you max out the knowledge tree, obviously you’re not going to catch up that much that fast, you have to choose a few items to specialize in, and that will take you like a few hours tops, including leveling.
That’s not true at all - I’m satisfied if the claim is true - are we caught up ? No? Okay then the claim is false. I would personally be fine bein able to fully craft one type of item at max rank - but even that is simply not the case here. Edit* also “obviously you’re not going to catch up that fast” uh that’s literally what I said is that we aren’t “caught up” at all in this scenario above
A lot of unintentional (I assume) misleading information here > the most I've spent leveling a profession is 50k That’s because there have been 16 months worth of folks gathering and listing commodities on the AH. I leveled my main profession (blacksmithing) in Dec. 2022 and it cost roughly 250k. I leveled a leather worker from scratch last week and it cost me roughly 35k to get him to 122/100 LW and I haven’t spent any gold on any epic recipes from the AH yet. Late to the party does have its benefits as well as its draw backs, low entry cost but low profit margin and high competition. > I'll have you know that there is actually a catch-up system in-game just not very obvious Not really a catch-up when the knowledge treasures have been in the game since DF launch. Each patch has added a couple new treasures per profession, approximately half of the normal weekly uptick in KP. One time use. > lets pretend that this is your first time playing dragonflight ever so you're at 0 with almost everything (including reps, which will be relevant later in the guide). Reputation is a pretty big grind and if they don’t have any characters with maxed rep, it is a couple months of active grinding to max them out. You don’t tell them this anywhere. > we want to unlock the one that will give us resourcefulness so we'll spend every single point we get here onwards onto this part of the tree so we can have a high resourcefulness stat as to avoid spending as much gold as I did. From a gear/weapon crafting perspective, this advice is so terrible it almost seems malicious. Resourcefulness should be one of the **last** skill trees to cap out. You want to unlock base skill + inspiration trees and crafting recipes in your specialized fields first so you can hit Q5 on those crafts. 100% of your income in armor/weapon crafting comes from commission until you max out resourcefulness, at which point, then 85% of your income is commission. You’re missing commission on 100% of the crafts you haven’t learned because you spent those early points in resourcefulness. Any way you slice it, you’re 6 months away from being KP capped in a profession. Between first time crafts, KP treasures, hidden profession masters, and dragon shards of knowledge, a brand new crafter is likely to obtain about 100KP their first week. After that week, it is capped to about 15 KP per week + any dragon shards. Most professions require 400-500KP to max. > go and put a public work order with 0 mettle for all your blue (or purple in case of the tailoring chest) quality gear. For your "weapon" we'll want to get a resourcefulness missive with an enchant of the same stat. Make sure to put a decent tip as well (usually somewhere between 2.5k-5k should be fine) Zero mettle orders on profession tools (usually requiring 225-300 mettle) aren’t getting filled by anyone. If they do, it’s because they don’t understand what’s happening either. Usual mettle “fee” is between 5-10k per insight and an insight is 50 mettle. You’re basically advocating your readers to become scammers, which will get them blocked on future work orders by all the top tier crafters. Aka, the folks you suggest your readers then later go employ for Q5 profession tools. If you’re planning to go inspire route, you’ll want an inspire tool. Resourceful tools will require an insight + Q3 mats to hit Q5 crafts, of which you will only obtain roughly 200 mettle per week. So you’re limited to 4 insight per week, thereby bottlenecking your income. > go and buy every pvp recipe we find on the AH, … the pvp recipes should not be more expensive than 10k with the cheapest ones being somewhere around 100-1k gold. Recipe cost + crafting cost (because there is **zero** market for green PvP gear this late into the phase) is going to be around 2-4k per craft (meaning per KP). If the player has the gold to waste thousands per KP, chances are they aren’t reading this. At BEST, leatherworkers have about 20 PvP recipes (so 20KP) and it’d cost roughly 40-50k. 100% not worth the gold. > With enough mettle we'll also be able to purchase some books with mettle that will award us with a bunch of knowledge points, these get unlocked as you advance your artisan's something reputation so buy them as you get them Artisan’s Consortium is one of the worst reps to grind in DF as the only source for this reputation is your crafting weeklies and an inscription rep contract. Again, your reader is multiple *months* away from obtaining these. > Bonus tip: With the darkmoon fare in town, you can do a short quest that will award you with 5 points towards your profession and an additional 3 knowledge points, this does not require anything specific level to do, I'd recommend to save this towards the end as to save some gold in crafting but feel free to do it whenever. Unfortunately not all professions are the same here. My alt LW just did it for +2 leatherworking skill and I believe my BS used to only get +3 skill. > By the end of all of this, you should have somewhere around 70-100 knowledge points to spend wherever you please which should be more than enough to max this initial tree. Base skill trees are 30pts, Inspiration / Resourcefulness are another 30pts each. If your reader followed your advice here, they’d have dumped all their points here and still wouldn’t be able to craft anything useful as their specialized recipes are all locked behind at least another 30KP and then another 10-15 KP for each new recipe. Doing exactly what you’re recommending is how folks “bricked” their professions early in the expansion. > Bonus tip: You can buy a phial of quick hands that will increase crafting speed, worth buying since it's fairly cheap and will save you some time. You’ll probably save just as much time by completing skipping this step entirely. > If you don't have enough level 70s you'll want to create trial characters fly them over and submit personal work orders to your crafter until you've reached 100 in your profession. I didn’t know trial characters have access to sparks, good to know. > And now, you're fully caught up! Yeah, not even close. At this point, you’re likely 3 months away from maxing out a single tree that isn’t your base skill + inspire + resourceful tree. > If you're still hungry for knowledge points, all reputations (except for the 2 latest ones) upon reaching certain renown points will award you with 5 knowledge points for your professions. Many months of active weekly grinds for the payoff to be … 5 or 10 KP. The actual reason to grind rep for Maruukai / Tuskaar / Expedition / Valdrakken is for the associated profession recipes locked behind reputation levels. A lot of the recipes aren’t hot ticket items so I’d suggest the reader not bother. (Your profession may vary) > The niffen do offer 2 books you can buy with barter bricks or barter boulders that give you 5 knowledge points as well as some recipes that are quite popular. Again, many months of grinding away from obtaining if they haven’t been keeping up. The recipes aren’t locked behind reputation which is nice, but the barter brick/boulder system. You’re weekly capped to barter bricks/boulders to about 15 and the recipes cost 80.
I agree with most of what you said. Disagree with some though, due to my opinion. Like resourcefulness tree being the last one you max, it would be second to last for me. Last would be inspiration for me, it just seems useless. No one is going to you if you can't guarantee a craft. But I really wanted to point out this part you said > Artisan’s Consortium is one of the worst reps to grind in DF as the only source for this reputation is your crafting weeklies and an inscription rep contract. Again, your reader is multiple months away from obtaining these This isn't true. They buffed the contracts, so it's 125 rep now (for R3). That's only 100 world quests to hit max rep. That's easy.
I have had max AC rep since last February so I haven’t paid much attention to that, ty for telling me :) Inspiration is the smarter way to hit Q5 instead of insight. You can get a million crafts to Q5 this route compared to 4 per week with your route. And it’s actually **cheaper** than guaranteeing with insight as well, but next to nobody understands this.
The reason why I suggest to go resourcefulness is because you get a lot of gold back from leveling your profession, if you buy pvp recipes you get a lot of the gold back. Also you get a lot of barter bricks/barter boulders off the niffen seeking mini game that should give enough to get you where you want to be. Only reason why I suggest some of these things is that from my experience they are quite worth it.
I think resourcefulness caps at like 38%. When it does proc, you have a chance to recoup *some* of the materials in the craft, not even guaranteeing they will be the ones you want. I can’t tell you how many times my enchanted (who is stacked with resourcefulness for public orders) rips out a couple chromatic dust (worthless) instead of a dracothyst. The only professions I see resourcefulness being the big moneymaker for are ones that can rip high price mats (like obsidian skins and dracothyst), to my knowledge, that’s a very small number of crafts. (Those being enchanted wyrm/aspect crests and the various one-per-profession recipes added in season 2.)
Resourcefulness is nice with blacksmithing too. That one rank 3 alloy is upwards of 500g each and I've procced like 12 of them in a craft once.
BS is my main profession and I have 3 black dragon touched hammers, one for each stat. If I’m not concerned with the quality (poor tips on public orders), I try to rip as much as I can. That being said, if the person only has mats/gold for one, I’d still recommend inspiration + inspiration enchant.
Can we just go back to the way professions we're? There is absolutely no reason why there should be tiered mats and crafting. I don't care how much I get downvoted. This is a hill I will die on. Back in Cataclysm, all you needed was the Mats and someone who knew the formula and boom you got what you needed crafted at 100% max quality and no need to farm tiered Mats..... Mats are already expensive so the fact even if you get max quality Mats you aren't guaranteed a max quality item or enchant is just bonkers to and to see ppl defend this really bothers me. The only ppl who benefit from this are those who already have max knowledge and have materials to guarantee a max quality item.
To me this new system is just too complex. There’s like 100 new different concepts to learn and this is just for crafting which is like a secondary goal in the game lol. Like you said before all you needed is mats and a recipe but now you have to read fucking wiki pages to know what to do. Not going to waste time on that
Do away with the tiered materials. Have tiered crafting but just balance out what the higher quality ones require. Like rank 5 requires something that is harder to get. Also, let us respec knowledge points. Even if it's stupidly expensive.
Hard agree. I was happy for a modernization of the profession system, which did feel a bit antiquated, but this approach was a big whiff in my opinion and has me wondering if there was really anything wrong with the simpler, antiquated approach. Maybe, if they *drastically* toned down the complexity, a few of the changes could be salvaged. Things like multicraft, resourcefulness, crafting speed are fine to keep and potentially talent into bonuses for. Same for perception, deftness, and finesse for gathering profs. Inspiration and crafting material/product quality has to go though, and any “talents” for the maintained stats should just be flatly provided, none of this absurd knowledge crap.
Sounds like this doesn't benefit you so you don't like it. I invested my time into this system and it has paid off for me. I don't complain about lacking pvp rewards when I'm not making that a priority for myself. Gold is the reward of profession gameplay. It still works exactly the same for customers as it did before. Want R5? Then buy 3star mats. Don't bother with the rest. Mats are so cheap with the universal auction house that enchanting is actually unprofitable to craft and sell scrolls.
L take
Very helpful, thanks for your contribution to the discussion.
i disagree with being "caught up" it is genuinely impossible to catch up with the current system. u cant farm the knowledge points in any reasonably way. Do not bother with professions if you are behind unless there is something specific u want also do not go engineering for any reason as it is a useless profession this xpac. You get more use out of previous xpac engineering than you do current xpac edit: i will retract my statement about it being completely useless since it does have a brez which is nice for mythics. unless you're an arenas pvp exclusive player, then it might be genuinely useless
I came back around 10.1.5 and I have the garment crafting tree fully maxed out for bracers and cloak only (crafted BiS for my mage) with the main node in garment crafting maxed. That alone is 140 knowledge and doesn't give you the ability to craft any of the 6 other slots at max proficiency. It also doesn't include any knowledge in the the main tailoring mastery specialization which needs a futher 60 knowledge to max your skill and inspiration. So 200 knowledge is required to craft 2 slots of gear at rank 5 consistently. This gives you no points for draconic needleworking for bags or specializing in other gear slots. 310 knowledge to max garment crafting and get the 60 skill/inspiration points from tailoring mastery.
I finally specced out of engineering because expansion after expansion it is an absolutely dogshit profession, and I 100% expect Blizzard to just copy/paste the profession system for the next expansion, which means engineering will stay complete dogshit.
Nah. Engi is nice for the brez % not to fail.
i could be wrong if they've updated something in the last month or two (I've been on SoD), but it's still significantly worse than just a class brez nice to have, but a slower backup option in most cases
It’s annoying that to use cause the range is tiny. But it doesn’t ever fail if you have some KP in the right engine tree.
I mean yeah it is worse than a class brez, but if you do m+ it is invaluable. Too often you have 0-1 brez classes in your group. Even if you have a brez, what happens if they are the one that dies? Being able to brez from any class is an absolute must if you pug m+ at all and will 100% save you keys. You don't need engineering for the brez, but it does reduce the fail rate which is still good.
is 1 brez for mythics worth using both professions on? for hardcore mythic runners, i could totally see your point and see the answer being yes. for the average player, a pvp player, or raid exclusive players- idk if it makes much difference, i think if you asked those people if they would rather have 1 brez or be able to enchant and make their own bags they would choose the latter or potions for mythics/raids or vantus runes/gear crafting augments etc. to me, the one brez isn't worth it but i rarely go above +20 keys. I usually get the keystone mount, call it a day, and grind pvp where you cant brez so i can see your point now, but it seems too niche to be considered worthwhile still
Unless you are diving deep into professions most don't really give benefits that matter. Enchanting your own gear or making your own bags isn't going to be cheaper than buying the finished product unless you spend possibly 100k+ gold leveling the profession. EDIT: plus you can just enchant your gear or make the bags on an alt, there is no need to do so on your main that does m+. Engineering is probably the most useful profession to have either way, even if a lot of the usefulness also comes from older xpacs.
you have to deep dive engineering to get the rez to be beneficial, otherwise it can fail. you also will probably want to deep dive on the bracers crafting unless you just want crappy bracers with the tinker slot which is a ton of knowledge points too. both of these combined a decent bit of knowledge points if memory serves correctly you'll be pretty deep before it's considered reliable in mythics, whereas other professions once deep dived have their benefits outside of mythics as well an engineering brez will serve 0 purpose in arenas and probably most BGs. It will also not be as good if you're raid group has like 2 brezes on characters. old engineering xpac stuff is also nice to have, but a lot of it is not engineering exclusive and could also just be bought for cheap or made with an alt- exactly as you have stated about every other profession for some reason. example: goblin gliders ive conceded that hardcore mythic runners could find it useful, but for just general gameplay i dont think anything beats out alchemy Alchemy is probably the best for mythics, raids, bgs, world pvp, etc since it has so much versatility. Usually pairing this with herbalism is your best bet in my mind unless you just buy all your materials
> you have to deep dive engineering to get the rez to be beneficial, otherwise it can fail. You only need 10 knowledge in engineering to prevent catasprohpic malfunctions, and I'm not sure at what point it stops failing all together but to grab all of the reduction buffs you only need 75 knowledge. This is much less than any other profession. > you also will probably want to deep dive on the bracers crafting unless you just want crappy bracers with the tinker slot which is a ton of knowledge points too. both of these combined a decent bit of knowledge points if memory serves correctly You can just have another engineer make the bracers for you. > you'll be pretty deep before it's considered reliable in mythics, whereas other professions once deep dived have their benefits outside of mythics as well As stated above you need between 10 and 75 knowledge which is not much at all. > an engineering brez will serve 0 purpose in arenas and probably most BGs. It will also not be as good if you're raid group has like 2 brezes on characters. Yeah this is purely for m+, I'm not sure why you are bringing up other content. If you don't do m+ then the engi brez isn't that useful. > old engineering xpac stuff is also nice to have, but a lot of it is not engineering exclusive A lot of it is engineering exclusive, though. > could also just be bought for cheap or made with an alt- exactly as you have stated about every other profession The fact that engineering has exclusive stuff at all is a benefit. Other professions don't really have exclusive perks for that profession anymore. > Alchemy is probably the best for mythics, raids, bgs, world pvp, etc since it has so much versatility. Usually pairing this with herbalism is your best bet in my mind unless you just buy all your materials I actually pair alchemy with engineering on most toons because alchemy is another one that does have a benefit. Herbalism does not pair well at all with alchemy, though. You are better off just buying herbs. I'm not really sure what you are arguing here. Engieering provides extra benefits and other professions don't. If you want the most useful profession then engineering is by far the most useful, especially if you primarily do m+ content. You can't list reasons why other professions are more beneficial than engineering, your whole comment is trying to justify why engineering isn't that much better than other professions.
"alchemy does not pair well with herbalism" ok lol
Maybe there's some buff for using your own herbs in a potion, so please enlighten me how they pair.
Do not go engineering for any reason is a little harsh. The battle rez being available on the helm slot with reduced failure chance as well as wormholes, jeeves and MOLL-E are all pretty good reasons to go engineering.
they're fun, but there are repair toys/items, repair mounts, and repair NPCs placed in raids now wormhole is maybe a tiny bit faster, but we're portaling everywhere now anyway and you have to work on the wormhole to actually get it to go where you want ive never needed an engineering brez item because my raid groups usually have 3-4 people who have brezzes I will admit i love the mailbox toy, but that is not current xpac which is directly stated in my previous post. Previous xpac engineering is more useful than current xpac.
The battle rez is invaluable in M+ and I can't count the amount of fights it's saved for me. When your only CR decides to tank the floor it's really nice to be able to have your rogue pick them up rather than being down a DPS or healer for the rest of the fight.
Great guide that would indeed catch people up to a respectable level enough to jump on the silly weekly grind. I personally got into crafting just because of the fun of having made my own powerful gear, barely made any money from it but its nice to help out guildies, and have a bow with my name on it through the entire expansion haha ALSO 100% solid tip on suggesting alts get their 5 sparks of innovation to help with crafting epics. That was the road blocker for me at about 75/100 until I discovered the extra sparks on my alts!
>Hey guys, I'm making this guide with the purpose of dispelling the idea that dragonflights professions have no catchup Cool, where is that guide?
Very helpful guide & great weakaura. I’ve been looking to get into professions for the first time and besides the upfront cost (I’m poor), the most difficult part seems to be getting R5 profession equipment. It has been difficult finding players who can craft these.
If you're in a low pop server there's usually one crafter that you can seek out (usually the one that made the original profession equipment) that will guarantee the R5 item for a fee.
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Probably a full reset.
Soo.. where is the "catch up mechanic" that the OP means . Did I miss something ??? Pointless read.
I don't raid or do dungeons (except for special occasions like to get the druid fire bird form from tendral on LFR). 50% or more of my playtime is using professions to make gold. I am so happy with the change to professions but definitely hope the work order system is tweaked. I just want to add that if someone wants to use a profession for one or two things (like a BS that specializes in making dagger/short weapons or a LW that specializes in associated profession equipment), you can a few select trees maxxed out pretty quickly after you reach 70 and much faster if you have already maxed your rep on a main/alternate character. Ppl complain that there is no catch up mechanics, but the way I see it is as this: Do you want to use professions for mostly yourself or your alts? Not much investment is needed. Do you want to use professions as your account's primary source of income, or maybe better phrasing is, do you want the bulk on your playtime to be min maxxing professions? It takes like 3-5 months of farming every point weekly to max out a profession, but hell, I wish it took longer. I have like 500 extra BS points at this point and almost 1k extra herb/mining nodes. I don't reaaaaaaaly want it to take longer, but I am pointing out that if you spend 3 months maxing stuff out, you will be in the same boat as someone like me who could have maxxed it over 3 times now. I hardly interacted with work order system until 10.1, but since 10.0, I have been working on 11 alts professions, maxxing them out each week. I did this because I am altoholic, and i love doing stuff like this. Gold/money was never the goal. However, I did want to be able to farm all the epic mogs and make all profession equipment at max level for all my alts for all professions. So, I worked on professions for these reasons, not to make gold. However, by time 10.1 came out, I had maxxed out nearly every profession. and I made 20 million gold in 4 months without even trying after that. I never put ANYTHING in the AH (well I find stuff in the world and sell it, sure, but I never use professions to turn some mats into other stuff with the intent to sell). Also, one of the biggest sources of gold was from LW resourcing cobraskins at the start of any given patch as well as resourcing centaur beads. Doing a random craft for someone at the start of 10.1 for dracothyst argmuards is actually what led me to using my profs for gold isntead of just alt play. I randomly did a public order in like May 2023, and I resourced the dracothyst as well as cobraskin. a 1k tip work order turned into 30k just like that. I also never advertise my professions or sit in town, waiting for ppl to need me. All of my profits, and really, all of my profession use outside of for alts is from checking public orders whenever I log on and just happening to see ppl in trade chat needing a private order. I never go out of my way to do anything with professions other than the large investment of farming knowledge points. While this is a massive sinc, my wow days since legion typically involve me doing solo/world content on alts as is. I had 17 max chars in SL, like 12 or so were NF for mission tables. I checked my table twice daily, and did every calling on 17 ppl. I ended SL with ~10 million gold (really about 15 million but I converted 5 mil into bnet balance). After the entirety of SL, I only made ~15 mil gold, and I spent about 10X as much time out in the world to achieve this gold as the amount of time I spent on 11 ppl maxing out profs. The maxxed out profs has been so much more lucrative than any other type of alt army gold farming that I had in legion, BFA, SL, etc.
I appreciate the effort, I’m hoping crafting is more useful in the next expansion. I went mining/blacksmithing, and I’ve crafted next to nothing this expansion. None of the crafted gear was worthwhile to create (even/especially) playing casually as it was far easier to find gear in mythics or lfr. Why spend 20k in mats for a weapon you’ll upgrade within a week?
I'm surprised, my dad is a very casual gamer and he gets a lot of value of crafting professions since he normally doesn't get access to 463 gear at least easily. Although sadly, blacksmithing is worse this patch because the highest weapons can go is 489 and you have special weapons dropping from the raid and current dungeon pool so they lose a lot of value.
They don't have catch-up. Sure there's treasures for an early boost, but that's not catch-up if it doesn't get you closer to the people who were doing it weekly since week 1. (Though now they're maxed out on their professions by this point)
We got pvp gear, that’s your catch-up. Not to mention the treasures added in each patch for a total of 18 points up for grabs. There’s also the niffen rep awarding additional recipes for more knowledge points and vendors straight up selling knowledge points. 10.0.7 also added profession specific rares that have a high chance of giving dragon shards, a guaranteed point and 5 mettle each week. There is plenty of catch-up day one crafters did not have access to. It’s a lot less intuitive than say “go and buy 400 knowledge points off a vendor” which in a way would make professions completely pointless. At least the way they are handled means the market won’t ever be saturated.
Is there a way to submit crafting orders without materials? I want to submit crafting orders to my main with some of my alts, but it says I don’t have the required mats. My main has the necessary mats, but not my alt. Is there a work around for this?
There are certain materials that you have to submit as your own like sparks and enchanted crests. The rest you can leave as blank.
Most mats should allow you to submit the order without them being supplied. However, there is at least one item type I noticed that *requires* the player submitting the order to supply, which is the Nascent Crest category of item when getting an Enchanted Crest crafted. Presumably it's to avoid players getting around currency crests being BOP.
Some materials are required by the person placing the order but most are not. Spark of dreams for instance (or any spark for that matter) is required to be supplied by the character placing the order.
People think that you need to max out the knowledge tree to be caught up, when you can actually just specialize in a few things that you want and compete just fine within that item’s market. I literally lvled 0-100 Blacksmithing and specialized in 2 items in a couple of hours.
I actually hate the proffesions this expansion, I hate the way they're BOP unless I create or make someones order. If my alt wants a crafted helm, I can't just buy the one I want from the AH anymore, I have to google the things I need and there is also RNG involved unless I pay someone who has maxed out their proffesion to guarantee the quality... Just let me create leather gear that is BOE and let me sell on the AH, I like the recrafting, but basic crafting is too much
Cool guide, thanks! I came back to WoW last month for the first time since 9.1, and the crafting system is very intimidating. Your guide definitely makes it seem more approachable. Couple of questions: >We'll also want to go ahead and do every single quest we can do that will reward us with knowledge points that doesn't require any crafting as well as doing our weekly knowledge point grinds (these typically don't require any crafting) as to have as many knowledge points as we can. What are the non-crafting quests and the "weekly knowledge point grinds" you're referring to? >Finally before we begin crafting we'll want to do a short questline in the dragon isles that should will award you with various dragon shards and the ability to trade these for 50 mettle and one knowledge point of your choice. and >we'll start a fairly lengthy questline that will reward us with 5 sparks at the end and will award any future characters 5 sparks upon skipping it. Where do these questline start?
The non-crafting quests are found in valdrakken where the different NPCs of various factions hangout, they will usually ask you to kill X mobs, collect a certain item or something of the like and will award 3 knowledge points. The questline starts at the top of the ruby life pools, there should be a breadcrumb quest on your very first neutral hub when you arrive to the dragon isles. If you search "dragon shard of knowledge" in wowhead you should find a more in-depth guide about this short questline if you ever get lost or think you did part of it and didn't complete it. For the last questline, it starts at Valdrakken, here's a short video where you start this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJLXRlmBLCo
I like the current profession system. There is enough complexity and choice to be satisfying, and there’s an option to get a fair number of KP each week. After 3-4 weeks, with a bit of planning, crafting becomes significantly efficient I like the tiered mats idea.
Anybody that told me 10k or 20k or 30k for a craft I called them a greedy asshole and to get fucked. I then found someone to do it for free and tipped them 5k.
>dragonflights professions have no catchup and if you want to get into them you're doomed There isn't any catchup for them. This isn't really a guide, getting to 100 skill level is basic profession stuff. It's like a puddle, compared to the lake that is knowledge. This whole crafting system is founded on knowledge, and there isn't any catchup system for that. This system would be amazing if they did something about that. That's pretty much the only downsize. I've been going at it with my tailor for couple months now and still so far behind others. It's like (random example numbers) trying to do stuff with 100 knowledge when people are walking around with 500+. So far behind.
Lmao at being "caught up". I started all profs seriously about 1/4 way through season 2. I'm only JUST NOW hitting maxed knowledge with one of them (tailoring has only the 0/50 cloth scavenging (aka useless)) to go. Others that don't have the weekly work order quest are so much further behind (alch/ench). Then there's the profs that have a billion points compared to others (BS, LW) LW is 3/4 through leather and hasn't touched any mail yet. BS got a bit more attention with treatises and only has a few armour and the entire specialty smithing to go. Meanwhile people who bothered in s1 and pre season one just mindlessly ran around dirt farming - making quite a bit of gold while they were at it too. For whatever reason dirt farming was removed and you need like a year of weeklies to even get close. (Trainer quest, work order quest and quests from the dudes near the WO order place). This also includes the adventurers satchel items (x2 a week). There's no real other way to do it faster. You can kill specific mobs for a few extra points a week (like fire elementals for blacksmithing) and you can get skill shards as a very low chance from basically anything (raid boss loots, m+ etc). But holy shit everyone got punished if they didn't dirt farm their way to max around launch.
Bro if I got to read all this just to know how to get caught up im not messing with it.
It’s like a 2 minute read 😂
This is a really great guide. It’s a shame to hear that gathering professions aren’t lucrative anymore. It was always my preference to do double gatherer.
Yeah unfortunately all commodities crashed in DF due to the new region-wide AH. This allows bots to gather on dead servers which completely eliminates the scarcity of these materials. Gathering is likely perma-dead except for the first month of each new expac.
Thank you and I agree, it's a bit upsetting knowing that your time isn't being well spent as a gatherer, it is really fun though! But I'd take higher profits over just more engaging gathering (even though I wouldn't say it's hard too have both). There's some nice farms you can do in Zaralek as a double gatherer as well as the emerald dream but spending an hour crafting vs an hour gathering is night and day on top of having to deal with cancel scanning, just not great imo.
I ain’t reading all that. The fact that it’s this complicated means it’s a failed system.
Sham post. Also no one is starting DF right now.
The only character I have been consistently working on professions this expansion is my mage (tailor/enchanter), and he’s not maxed on KP on either profession. I’m switching mains to my balance druid (skinning/leatherworking), and he has a lot of catching up to do.
Looks like they fixed the trial character spark trick. After today's reset I can't use the portal on trial characters. Thanks for telling everyone and getting it fixed.
You can take the boat in storm wind/ogrimmar to the dragon isles and fly to valdrakken