Helpful hints for new crafters.Follow

Long time lurking, first time posting so sorry if I babble incoherently. I have been playing WoW for about 8 months now and I have levelled crafting on all of my toons. This game is great for crafting if that is something you enjoy doing in your mmorpgs, nothing like the crafting system in FFXI. I recently dropped Skinning in favor of Leatherworking on my rogue and I have levelled it from 1-340 with about 100G spent. The best thing to do with any profession in this game is watch the server economy. Craft things that sell well or that cost little in terms of materials. For engineering I made all the blasting powder I could and gathered the mithril and thorium I needed with one of my alts. For leatherworking I had skinning and gathered all my materials that way. Crafting doesn't have to be expensive or time consuming, you just have to be smart when you are deciding what to make and when you are going to make it.

If you look at a guide and it says to make one thing make sure thats the best thing you can make for the level, allakhazam, thottbot and wowhead have lists of the crafting recipes by level and they show the maximum level you can get to before something turns grey. Remember that just because something is orange doesn't mean it is the most cost effective thing to make. If you look on the list of recipes that are available and something that is incredibly cheap will get you just as high as something that costs a lot of gold don't waste your money.

If you have the time, make a gathering alt. I have a hunter that does all my gathering for me (skinning/mining) as its a lot cheaper than buying the materials all the time; though I do often buy the materials because I have the gold and get lazy sometimes. Another thing I usually do is mail excess materials to an alt if I am not going to be using them. They stay in the mailboxes for 30 days before being sent back so thats 60 days you could have something floating in limbo and not taking up space in your inventory or bank.

Lastly for now, when you are picking your professions make sure they are something that suit you. If you really want a good piece of boe gear then go for that profession. If you think theres a really cool item that you can make with a certain profession (i.e. world enlarger) and you really want it, take that profession. Its your game, play it how you want and don't let other people tell you what professions you need. I really wanted the cool looking goggles with engineering and the gyrocopter so I selected that profession. Leatherworking had some great armor for me at lower levels and was a decent source of income (at times) at higher levels. Also if anyone wants me to post my personal guide for how to get from level 1-375 with leatherworking, engineering, tailoring or enchanting let me know... I have spent time with all of them on the few characters I have.

In general, I have to agree with this, but I have to quibble a little bit.

Alchemy. I find this to be a really beneficial profession to have while leveling. There is an opportunity cost for using herbs instead of selling them, of course. But, I like the benefits from the elixirs and pots. They're by no means essential, but are nice boost.

/quibble off :-)

The thing is that you can make great gold by treating enchanting as a gathering tradeskill. Selling Enchantments = money loser and time waster. Disenchanting items bought at the AH and selling mats = money maker. The moment you start saying "I'm an enchanter - I must enchant" for any purpose other than leveling Enchanting skill, you are doomed to standing on the AH bridge in IF or the Bank roof in Org spewing out ads for your enchantments on the trade channel. And, more often than not those ads will be answered by idiots wanting to rip you off.

Edited, Oct 31st 2008 8:19pm by ohmikeghod

Enchanting is a money sink. A lot of outland stuff vendors for more than you are going to get from DE'ing it.

Yes, but many items don't. Once you are smart enough to know the difference, you can make lots of gold. Only someone who is totally clueless would think that the most lucrative profession is a money sink.

Enchanting was in no way a money sink for me , i have a level 39 Mage and before the patch and with the old Auctioneer i made well over 6000g , all i was doing was buying stuff that enchantrix said was worth disenchanting , but saying that i was also using it to up my Enchanting and trying to pick out the items that gave me what i needed to advance , it is rather fun to have a low level alt with something like fiery weapon that for me was a free and easy enchant , and makes the character rather hard to kill.

Engineering is not a real gold maker so for new characters i guess not a good idea to do while levelling , but saying that my low alt that has it has so many ways of protecting herself she is almost unstoppable , bombs land mines robots of various types all above her level help her survive on her own in the sometimes harsh environment that is WoW.

My thoughts on the gathering professions say at the moment for me and my non healer alts that Herbalism with its heal ability is about the best change that the King has brought to us , and for my Mage was a welcome find , who would turn down a heal that scales as you level that almost keeps up with your max health, when my Mage had about 375 health i could heal her for 310 i think it was without the use of health pots.

Creative trades are all mostly a gold drain as the easiest and cheapest stuff to create will always be flooding the market , ( enchanters love those that power level trades , hehe i know i do ) and the better stuff which always costs more to create will sometimes sell well but most times it is far better and profitable to sell the ore/herbs and skins , so my advice is always try to gather twice as much as you need and sell the rest .

OK, so you really ARE one of those people who couldn't get a clue if you covered yourself in clue musk and did the clue mating dance during clue mating season.

Clue #1: Enchanting is INexpensive to level. If you are selling mats, you use your extras to level WHILE YOU MAKE GOLD. But of course, being clueless, this will fly right over your head, and you won't get it at all.

Clue #2: Arcane dust and Greater planar essence are NOT the only sellable enchanting mats. They are not even the most profitable. You won't get that one either, since you have to be hit with a clue-by-four to get a clue.

Perhaps you aren't clueless, you could just be an ordinary run-of-the-mill idiot.

I have. It's financed three epic flyers. Only the clueless farm disenchantables in instances, which kinda proves what I said in my previous post.

Enchanting was the first profession I took on my very first toon. I had the gold for my 75 and 150 riding skill by the time I was level 32 (back when the cost was 81/540g respectively). I had the gold for 225 riding skill before I hit Outland. Unfortunately, the enchanting materials market took a nosedive right as I hit Outland so I wound up having to use quest rewards to fund 1/2 of my epic flight, but I managed to get my enchanting to 375 along the way. Compare that to how many "better" options to earn gold that had people still wondering months after they hit 70 how anyone could ever afford to fund epic flight?

Enchanting as a profession for the purposes of income is counter-intuitive to the rest of WoW...it requires a little thought.

I can look at an Outland green drop and decide on the spot if it would be worth more to a vendor or D/E'd. It's not hard but it requires...some thought. Just because you can D/E everything doesn't mean you have to, but when you can take an item that vendors for 3-5g and yoink 8-20g worth of materials out of it on a reliable basis, you'd be sort of silly to suggest that's a poor way to make gold, especially considering there is normally no extra effort required in acquiring the base materials.

What's more, my now-bank alt level 70 hunter with 375 enchanting is already squared away to D/E most (if not all) BoE gear I come across in Northrend...if I need 400/425 enchanting to D/E lvl 80 Northrend blues, I'll get that just from the mats I accumulate shipping the green drops I get from my druid/pally/rogue/(DK?) as I level through Northrend. That doesn't strike me as a poor proposition at all, considering there isn't going to be the surplus of enchanting mats you see now and people are going to be buying what little can be found at very profitable margins for the first couple of months while they get the new enchants and skill up their own enchanting.

Edited, Nov 11th 2008 9:20am by AureliusSir