Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.With news of new recipes and crafting tweaks in patch 2.4 flooding in, it's hard not to get excited about what Wrath of the Lich King might hold for our favorite professions. The trades in WoW aren't currently necessarily aging very gracefully, yet fresh directions seem perfectly attainable with a little design effort.
In the meantime, plenty of new players (and new characters) set off on the trade road every day. Many of them naively believe that a trade that complements their chosen class will provide them the gear and cash they need for the road to 70 and beyond. But with today's accelerated leveling curve slingshotting players past Old World content into gear that's positively steroidal compared to crafted options, crafters often don't see any significant return on their investment until the end game.
So why pick up a trade? We've got three good reasons, immediately ahead.
Crafting for income
While it's absolutely possible to carve out a profitable niche with trades, professions are no longer generally considered the best or easiest way to make money. For significant success, you need target a unique need on your particular realm and become the best at filling it. Some players really love the analysis and execution of such a strategy – others, not so much.
The days of making a regular paycheck off the meat and potatoes of your recipe book are over. In today's era of speed-injected leveling, players generally outlevel crafted gear and items before they recoup the investment of time and materials necessary to make them. (Want to nominate a lower-level item that you think has stand-out value? Shoot a news tip to the attention of Insider Trader, and we'll feature it in an upcoming column.)
Crafting for the BoPs
Today's professions are all about the BoP items you can make for yourself as a master crafter. Some of these items are nice little bonuses, while others are considered almost mandatory for some classes and specs. All of them require a high skill in your profession to make, equip and use. (Some crafted items, like Tailoring's Whitemend Wisdom set, are BoE and can be made by any tailor who has the skill and the pattern – but to get the set bonus from wearing it, you must have a Tailoring skill of at least 350.)
Let's hit the highlights of the most attractive profession BoPs:
- Alchemy Mad Alchemist Potions, Alchemist's Stone
- Blacksmithing BoP plate armor and weapons
- Enchanting Ring enchants
- Engineering BoP armor, special mounts and most other gizmos
- Jewelcrafting BoP unique gems, BoP necklaces, new items for patch 2.4
- Leatherworking BoP armor, drums
- Tailoring BoP armor, nets
Then there's the whole separate issue of crafting for the fun of it. While Engineering probably gets the most mentions for the sheer entertainment value of the items made, finding a profession you enjoy is definitely a case of "different strokes for different folks."
WoW Insider's own Ryan Carter recently shared some thoughts on his own choices: "I do enchanting, another very looked-down upon profession, and I love it, for a few reasons: You can always DE everything you don't need or use (gear drops) for money or mats. You can help guildies out a ton by enchanting their stuff. It is fun to DE stuff and see what you'll get. It is partly good for those with megalomaniacal tendencies who like to destroy stuff. ... Yeah, that's it."
I think he definitely gets it. Yeah, that's it.
Insider Trader's Lisa Poisso is a big fan of the <Made By> tag and enjoys trades where she can produce things that others will actually use for a long time.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-15-2008 @ 2:19PM
Rob said...
Well, pretty much everyone knows the pitfalls of crafting professions, but to me its annoying to grind through something like LW and a) discover that the stuff i'm making was useful 10-20 levels ago but not now, b) almost require another prof (skin) to level, c) can't sell the stuff on AH at all for any price (exception being hillmans' cloak). Enchanting is a great prof for you, but nobody want to spend 20g on a single enchant for an item that's gonna be obsolete in a week.
To fix this, they should introduce more BOP items throughout the leveling grind to make it worth it (like teh 225 LW stuff), add a few blue BOE item recipes during the grind that you could actually sell and have the stuff useful to others (gasp) or yourself at the level range you are likely to be able to use the item (ie if you are level 30 have an item req. medium leather which is what you are likely to see around that level.
I think the enchant stuff is okay, if you were to grind it out as you level and not in a day or two it probably won't cost an arm and a leg and your firstborn, plus enchants are absolutely manditory at the end game, so at least your enchants are useful at that stage.
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2-15-2008 @ 4:24PM
Tim O said...
Not all true, I have just about 60,000g and that has come from mostly crafting
I have ;
Lvl 70 Jewelcrafter/Tailor
In order to be successful you need to buy LOTS of ore, you can�t mine the quantity that you really need. Many time I�ll buy out the AH just to keep the price high so other JC�s can�t get any. I don�t sell cuts, and I don�t have all patterns, only ones that gems sell for the highest. I buy primal earth to use with the dust from the adam ore and make a blue item (cost about 8g per) that I send to my disenchanter, then sell LPS 25g. Tailoring.. I have a few epic patterns I sell� very cheap for me to make primal might.. and 2 shadow 1 fire 1 primal moon cloth every 4 days
Lvl 70 Alchemist/Tailor
Buy out AH for Fel Lotus and Mana thisle, again you can farm the quantities you need to be successful and keep AH prices high. After buying the matts it cost me about 34g-39g per flask and I only make flasks 40 at a time, for 40 flask I get about 15-18 free.. 15 x 45g (avg) = 675g FREE.. NOT including if I make a small profit from the 40 I make
I have a friend Pot master that I have my mana and health pots, make primal might � only make when I have over 300, and I usely get 60+ free and 170g FREE. Tailoring Primal Mooncloth spec. I make 4 primal mooncloth total every 4 days with may alts to make Primal Mooncloth bag = 360g every 4 days. Other misc cloth I make items and send to disenchanter.
Lvl 70 Miner/Tailor
Don�t really mine on this toon, shaowcloth tailor so with all my tailors.. 4 shadow 2 fire 4 mooncloth every 4 days
Lvl 70 Miner/Herbing � raiding toon � cloth farmer
Only mine if I happen to fly past it , most of the herbs I pick are Tero and Nightmare, Netherweed for flask and others as I happed to fly past it
Lvl 70 Miner/Herbing
Perma parked in Winterspring, this is the only toon that I really farm mining, I can hit 8 rich thorium mines in 20 min and the respawn is 60min I hit black lotus once a day and farm Mountain Silversage for flask of power.
Lvl 60 Alchemist/Disenchanter
Make Primal might and ZA rep pots, disenchant ALL, I get about 30 stacks of dust every two weeks about 1000g plus all the lvl essences from lvl 40-65 items my tailors make.
Lvl 60 Miner/Herbing
Perma camped in Un'Guro Crater, can hit about 4 rich Thorium mines per 20min run (more clustered together better then EPL) 20min run in Winterspring, then 20min run in Un'Guro Crater = 12 rich thorium per hour, and pick up Mountain Silversage along the way. I wait OR I buy all the thorium ore at AH to make the price go about 22g-24g then I unload mine.
So as you can see most of my income does comes from crafting/disenchanting� then gathering a close second.
2-15-2008 @ 4:39PM
p-diddy said...
Tim, Jeebus man, go outside!!
:-)
2-16-2008 @ 6:49AM
Zarzuur said...
@ Tim O:
Hey that's great but you can use your alts to significantly reduce costs by making more stuff yourself instead of buying it from the AH ..
What about most single characters who will just have 1 gathering profession and 1 "money sink" profession each?
2-15-2008 @ 2:21PM
turkeyspit said...
Outside of Alchemy, all Crafting Trades are a complete joke, except for BoP items.
Outside of BoP's. its easier to take Mining and Herbalism/Skinning, and just buy what you need from the AH or other crafters.
If there isn't a BoP item down the road that you want, be it Goggles, Mote Extractors or Stormherald, you are wasting time, effort and money leveling up your crafting.
I'm glad that Nethers and Vortexs 'might' become BoE instead of BoP, but the fact is that LV70 crafting is all about Primals and Cooldowns, and I expect Blizzard to adopt and equally stupid system for WoTLK.
And btw, thanks alot for those BoE plans that cost 1.5k gold in the AH, but craft a BoP Item. How thoughtfull!
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2-15-2008 @ 2:21PM
Dave said...
If you're looking to make tons of money, crafting isn't the way to go.
If you're looking to SAVE tons of money, crafting fits that bill. (the two are not the same concept).
making your own flasks is good, trying to sell flasks might net you a 5g/flask profit, which will take you a long time to really make significant money. Even then, you may get undercut on a regular basis on the AH and wind up making barely anything over what you'd fetch for the mats. Sometimes less if you get a significant jackass who proc'ed his elixir mastery on a flask and got 5 for 1, so he thinks it's a great idea to undercut everyone by enough that if anyone were to match his prices... they'd in essence lose money.
People in this game are really really dumb when it comes to making money and maintaining a consistent price for thing such that everyone can make good money (it's not zero sum!).
I bascially have a druid that farms herbs/ore for the rest of my characters and go double tradeskills on my other characters. BS/Eng is nice for my warrior, Alch/Tailor is good for my mage, and any new alts I make I think I'll just start enchanting+skin/herb/mine and save the mats and powerlevel the tradeskills once I hit 70. They're all useless until you hit 70 anyway.
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2-15-2008 @ 3:51PM
Roboticus said...
Undercutting like that probably is annoying, but to me, it might well be good business sense. If someone has a large inventory, they could use it to undercut everyone's prices, run at a profit loss for several weeks, and hope that eventually all their competitors switch to selling their herbs instead of their potions. After their competition dwindles, they then jack the price up to higher than the normal level and reap big rewards.
This reminds me of what Walmart does when it goes to a new location.
2-15-2008 @ 2:23PM
Tridus said...
Old-world crafting is a real mess right now. Blacksmithing in particular is completely out of whack with levelling speed, requiring more time to farm materials then the time it takes to actually level. The reward for that is pretty well nothing, since the vast majority of what you can make in Blacksmithing before 60 is useless.
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2-15-2008 @ 2:25PM
briker said...
I would love to see non-enchanting item enhancement (armor kits, weapon chains, etc) stack with enchanting. It could really open up the profit lines for those other professions - Tailoring, Leatherworking, and Blacksmithing. Heck, maybe even Engineering. As it is right now, most people opt for the Enchanting buff to their gear, rather than the armor kits, etc. Shouldn't be a competition, should be a synergy.
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2-15-2008 @ 2:36PM
blackwolf675 said...
What bothers me is that there are very few caster-friendly blacksmithing items.
The only caster dagger that is craftable is a world-drop epic pattern that doesn't require a Mastery to produce.
While this is good in some aspects, it does bring up the point that the Mastery weapons are melee oriented.
I don't begrudge the effort it takes to max out professions - but by the same token as Tier gear: there should be options for each spec type (melee, healer, caster).
I took Swordsmithing with my shaman to help my guild and for the off-chance that mixed in with the BoP swords, there would be a dagger that I could use.
No joy.
I've since changed her spec to Axesmith, but as an Elemental - it doesn't help much.
I've refused to drop BSmithing outright because I know that as soon as I do, Bliz will pop up with something and I'd be forced to bleed metal again.
The Thorium Brotherhood can kiss my sexy troll butt.
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2-15-2008 @ 2:36PM
Krick said...
All of my toons dropped their gathering profession and switched to enchanting as a secondary profession as soon as they hit outlands...
Engineering/Enchanting
Jewelcrafting/Enchanting
Tailoring/Enchanting
...the amount of money you lose by vendoring outlands quest reward gear instead of disenchanting it is staggering.
I have a few alts that I'm leveling just for farming...
Hunter with Mining/Skinning
Druid with Herbalism/Skinning
... so I can feed my other toons.
...
Krick
http://www.tankadin.com
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2-15-2008 @ 2:57PM
Milktub said...
Wanna talk low-level crafting items that make money?
Deviate Scale Belt.
Twinks love it. Twinks have money.
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2-15-2008 @ 3:43PM
Andrew White said...
My alts both stick to the gathering professions, but my main is well on her way to leveling up leatherworking. While it would be nice to have some gear for her before endgame, its kind of fun equipping my alts. I've really enjoyed crafting, and wish there was a bit more depth to it. When I hit 40 on my main (this weekend, fingers crossed), I plan on tooling about on my mount, collecting some cooking patterns I've missed.
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2-15-2008 @ 4:41PM
Tim O said...
"Undercutting like that probably is annoying, but to me, it might well be good business sense. If someone has a large inventory, they could use it to undercut everyone's prices, run at a profit loss for several weeks, and hope that eventually all their competitors switch to selling their herbs instead of their potions. After their competition dwindles, they then jack the price up to higher than the normal level and reap big rewards."
that is EXACTLY what I do... I have been is so AH price wars it is funny... I just keep wearing and wearing them down and when they want to stop losing money... I buy up all their ore/herbs cheap and make even more money I also look lvl'ing items and buy them all out and reselling for much highter... expl for about 3 weeks I was selling silk cloth for about 9-11g a stack until I got board with it... same with mageweave
2-15-2008 @ 5:32PM
sheepe said...
You can actually make some decent moeny with enchanting just by disenchanting all those blue items you get from high level quests into LPSs which sell for about 25g each on my server.
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2-15-2008 @ 11:07PM
Cat said...
Any time I have some spare LW mats I do one of two things: craft some armor kits, or craft some blues and pass them to a guildy chanter to DE. The kits always sell (or are useful for guildies) and the DE stuff is handy for getting my endgame enchants.
As far as the actual LW items being useful? Unless you have lower level guildies and alts, you're unlikely to find a market for your greens.
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2-16-2008 @ 1:51AM
Thander said...
The only reason Blizzard changed the crafting system the way they did for BC was to combat the gold farmers. The more stuff that's BoP the better. Really, since BC came out all you need gold for is the epic mount. Once you got that, you have little need for gold besides the weekly stuff you may need for raids.
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4-30-2008 @ 3:30PM
Lenny said...
Just ignore this, I'm testing something
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