Warcraft Elite Guides

Posts Tagged ‘Professions’

As noted previously, the state in which a an item is taken to the auction house can affect the price you can expect.

Over the long term, we found having an Auction house runner in Stormwind or The Undercity with Enchanting skills proved the most efficient way of making more gold.

The items that are LEAST likely to sell for a decent amount are green weapons and armour. A look at the disenchanting yield in the auctioneer tool-tip will tell you that if this happens – then 9 times out of 10  – disenchanting makes you a lot more gold.

Milling, Prospecting and Smelting all have a role to play here as well.

In the rush to get to Illustrious 525 with these professions, don’t forget these vital abilities.

Here are links to the permanent pages dealing with these sub professions.

• Disenchanting
• Smelting Page
• Prospecting Page
• Milling

Click a link above to visit the page.

Some professions have the ability to transform one ingredient into another. This gives you a lot of options.
For example. Metal ores can be smelted to be used primarily by blacksmithing or engineering OR they can be left as ore and prospected by jewelcrafters.

The market will be different for each state. It is not the case that a “processed” item will fetch more at auction. Sometimes you should transform the item..sometimes you shouldn’t.
Material master handles these changes for you, but here we offer a written guide to what items become what. There is some help with calculations in the Material Master spreadsheet. However, disenchanting involves destroying weapons and armor – and no two pieces will have the same Auction House value so it would not be right to try and tabulate value for disenchants – you will have to read that section and work them out for yourself based on what your server market is like.

DISENCHANTING

Using looted or manufactured weapons and armor, you can “disenchant” these items to make the the raw ingredients for Enchanting. Sometimes the Weapon sells for the most..sometimes the enchanting ingredients..and sometimes the enchant itself. You need to know which is which

SMELTING

This is the easiest to describe, with one or two exceptions each ore becomes a bar or half a bar of the same named metal. There are some exotic metals, but trade on those is very low indeed

PROSPECTING

Mining provides the raw ore for prospectors to turn into gems. Each ore has a chance of becoming a certain gem or gems. Sometimes the ore sells for the most, sometimes the gem, and sometimes the finished jewel.

MILLING

Last (and currently least) is milling. Herbalists provide the raw material for Scribes to mill to make the papers and inks for Glyphs. Sometimes the herb is more valuable, sometimes the papers and ink’s..sometimes the Glyphs…at the moment however it is rarely the glyphs.

Disenchanting

When you have weapon or armor of “Uncommon” (Green) value or better, an enchanter has the ability to “Disenchant” and turn the item into enchanting materials.
Of couse the enchanter can then either sell these materials, or use them to make enchants to sell either directly to players, or on scrolls via the auction house. The chances are the Weapon or armor will havea different value to the materials, which in turn will have a different value to any enchant you may be able to make WITH the materials.

What an item disenchants into is dependent in the “i-level” of the item

This screen was captured with “Auctioneer” add-on enabled.

As you can see it does a lot of the hard work for you.
If you have been doing your auction scans daily, then it will give you most of the information you need to make a decision on whether to disenchant an item or sell “as is”

In this vase it recommends Auctioning the item. This is an Epic (purple) item. It is rare to disenchant these.

We know of no better way of calculating the disenchant value than “Auctioneer”

It gives you the approximate disenchant value, and the mean sales value for other items seen at auction of the same or similar I-level. Then tells you which one will be most profitable for you.

You can then decide whether to sell the item, or sell the disenchanted materials.

NOTE

All transformations are based on %age chance. There is a table of items that “could” be disenchanted. You may not get the average amount of items..of course you could get more …

What Items should you concentrate on when starting out?

    We STRONGLY recommend you concentrate on a subset of items that you are familiar with. The Materials Guide lists over 150 items. It covers just about every material required to craft in the game.

    We recommend you specialist. Make a list of a minimum of 12 items – a maximum of around 25 and make these items your "Portfolio". These are the items you will specialist in.
Over time you will instinctively know what is a good price – and what is a bad price on these. But for now – using the material master to help you, updating the data on more than 25 items can be quite time consuming, and will    not give you a good enough return on your time spent.

    Which items should you specialist in ?

    Cloth – all cloth. Cloth of some type is used by everyone at every level, it levels First Aid, it is a "hand in" for reputation quests (in huge quantities in some cases), it makes bandages, it is the staple resource for tailoring.

It’s your choice, but we recommend taking the items on the list above appropriate to your level and adding them to your portfolio (if you are just starting in the game – and have character below level 20 stick to Linen and Wool – move up as you feel comfortable)

Copper Bar
Tin Bar

Peacebloom
Mageroyal

hese are the low level herbalism items. Used by Alchemists and Inscribers. Again very variable rates at AH. There are other low level herbs – but these two tend to sell the best.

Light Leather
Medium Leather

The low level skinning items. There are "Ruined Leather Scraps" however these rely on the buyer having the skill to convert them. By all means have these as well, but the market for your sales may well be lower

      Finally – Whatever you gather…

        Now you did choose at LEAST one gathering profession didn’t you?

We recommend 2 gathering professions – but one is a bare minimum. If your first character or "main" does not gather at all (except cloth as we discussed above) you have lost a very major value stream. Keeping up with the materials you need to advance 2 crafting professions will take an age and add considerably to your levelling time.

        It’s not the end of the world – but you will make so much more money during your normal playing time (levelling, PvP or Instance runs) if you gather while you play.

With your gathering profession/s you should have 10 – 12 starter items in your portfolio.

If you are new to the game, stick to the lower level cloth, leather, herbs and ores. We suggest  sticking with the cloth appropriate to your level all the way through the game.

Note. Every 5 or 10 levels that you progress..or every time you double the gold in your capital, consider moving your portfolio on. Dropping some low level items and replacing with some higher level ones from    the material master

Of course, by dropping we mean "Selling for the best price to clear your stock space"..but you know what we mean.

Now if you become familiar with other items during the course of a game, and you see an absolute bargain outside your normal field of expertise. By all means snap it up. Do your research first (check it’s not about to get nerfed by a patch.

Google the "Level 69 Riding Crop" scandal if you want to see an example of a patch nerf that cost unprepared players a fortune. Blizzard implemented a patch which affected an item that wasn’t usable before level 69 …. would become unusable again at Level 70.

This caught a lot of people out – and the item became pretty valueless – but not before a lot of crafters who had seen the pre-patch notes had unloaded there stock in a largely unsuspecting auction house.

        So if you are confident, and happy (and can afford it) feel free to go outside your portfolio for an obvious bargain – but check first!

There is no other way to put this. "If you don’t understand how the economy on your server works, you will not make money on it – the more you understand the more money you will make"
    So here is a tick list of what you need to know, easy stuff first.

• What can I farm myself at my level ? 
• Important note. Selling materials for other people’s professions is probably THE most solid way of making money., and anyone can farm for cloth for tailoring. We are not fans of going out farming for farmings sake, but if you have a couple of gathering professions, you will always have items to gather during your normal every day leveling and questing 
• Where is the best place to farm appropriate to my skills and level ? 
• How much working capital do I have to start ? 
•   Ok, not all your gold should be thought of as "working capital", but if you have a decent amount of gold  – enough say to buy 4 or 5 new level appropriate "stacks" from the AH – or more – then MOST of it should be working capital.
          Think in terms of putting aside enough for 5 BIG repairs of equipment  – replenish ammo a couple of times and gold to buy enough potions/bandages to last a day or two of normal leveling/PvP or instances.

             The rest of your money is your investment. You could start with as little as 10g. Though the more you have, the quicker you will make it. 

• What sort of time investment am I prepared to make? If you only log on a couple of times a week then you will be looking to trade on single market longer term investments. If you are playing WoW every day, then you will probably make more gold hitting lots of smaller margin short term investments.

Do I have the manpower?

Did you follow the guide and get a character to your own and a neutral Auction House? 
Do you have a second account or a guild friend to “go into business” with?

Yes – great – All options are open to you.

No – No problem,

It rules out cross market trading for now, but until you are confident – and     have a buddy with a character in the opposing faction you can trust, then it’s best to leave it for     now.

    Do I have any relevant professions other than harvesting?

    The most relevant profession for gold making without grinding is Enchanting, (or more specifically disenchanting), Alchemy is next because the key items you make are consumable – and therefore need replenishment often.

    Blacksmithing might be next. Warriors are VERY gear dependent, and to level quickly have to change gear more often than other classes – and Blacksmith’s make some of the best warrior gear.

    However – at Level 75 or better the best for all classes is often from instances. Leatherwork, Tailoring, Jewelcraft and Inscription (in roughly that order) Though jewelcraft really comes into it’s own at high levels.

While it is very possible to make money without farming (once you have a decent starting capital) we have included farming because it will just happen naturally. If you are a skinner, miner of herbalist then it stands to reason you should just take the items presented to you during the normal course of play. This being the case, you need to know where the places are that are right for your level to farm.

However, we re-iterate. Once you have a starting capital (or STAKE) then if you wish, you can stop farming all together. We don’t advise it, but it is a real option.