I admit, I'm not, which is new. When BC came along, while I leveled to 70, I always stopped to mine the Fel Iron nodes. Even on my initial tramp from 1-60 on my characters, I usually stop every few levels to make sure their chosen tradeskill is up to date. But this time, on my Death Knight, I'm not stopping for a thing.

It's a weird feeling. I'm conscientious about making sure my characters are well-rounded, making sure they have the skills to pay the bills, so to speak, first aid and cooking in addition to a set of well maintained trade skills, but on my Death Knight, I just can't bring myself to let up on the questing and grinding for professions, even if it means leaving piles of dead, unskinned Bog Lords in my wake.

Admittedly, this may have something to do with the fact that his trade skills start at level 1 while he's level 55. In the end, I'd rather level in Hellfire Peninsula instead of picking daisies in Elwynn. Can you blame me? Still, I promise at level 80 that I will make time to level up his Inscription.

While I have asked about this before, I thought I'd see if the responses were any different now that Wrath is underway. Are you taking breaks on the road to 80 to level your tradeskills? Why or why not?

The days of choosing a profession and maximizing it solely based on a few purples at the very end are no more. Not only will many more crafted epics be bind on equip, they will be available earlier than the maximum rank.

Instead, the incentive to choose between the available professions will be based more on fun and personal preference. Each profession is getting its own 'goody bag' of items that are fun and promote individual customization.

Intrigued? Here's an overview of what you can expect to see:

Over the past few weeks, the WoW Insider team has been working diligently to provide Wrath content, including galleries, guides, preparations, new items, and more.

Professions is an issue that affects every player, so in case you missed any of the tradeskill goodies, here's a round-up to give you something to read before the expansion goes live.

• Dan O' posted several galleries showing many of the new crafting recipes.
• Allison summarized the amount of money you are going to need in order to acquire all of your profession training.
• Did you know that crafted bind on pick-up items will become largely a thing of the past? Eliah dishes on the details, the reasoning behind the change, and what we're going to get instead.
• Stones and oils are disappearing in Wrath. While you will still be able to make them, they will not work on items above level 70!
• Alex Z. answered reader questions about professions in the expansion in one day's Ask a Beta Tester. In addition, alchemists got their own article!
  
• Insider Trader has been helping you cheaply and efficiently level your inscription, first from 0 to 100 and then from 100 to 200. Stay tuned for guides taking you all the way to 450!
• Your gathering professions come with nifty abilities, which will continue to scale in the expansion.
• Check out our tailoring preview!

One of the first things on your mind after stepping into Northrend will undoubtedly be the most convenient location of your profession trainers.

You gatherers are going to need the know-how to start hoarding items for fun and profit, and craftspeople will want to see what new items can soon be constructed. Besides, you won't want to be left behind in the server-wide race to the new level cap, 450.

This information might affect which starting zone you choose to explore first, so pass through the break to see what stops you should be making before you venture out to quest and conquer.

Professions have undergone a lot of changes since WoW began. Most recently, in Burning Crusade, crafting professions were typically a good way to obtain surprisingly high-quality items that you couldn't get any other way, such as Stormherald or the Frozen Shadoweave set. So far we haven't seen any evidence of directly parallel itemization in Wrath of the Lich King, and according to a couple of recent posts by Verimonde, we're not going to.

Specifically, Verimonde said that "There will not be a Stormherald type weapon 'high level crafter only,'" although there are, for instance, several BoE epic smithed weapons in Wrath. In his second post he explains the reasoning a little more: Blizzard didn't like that many people were picking professions based on what would make them the most powerful, as opposed to what they enjoyed.

ahmed ahmed asked...

Have you heard anything about ghosts being able to go through mountains in WotLK, so they can reach their destinations faster? My friend told me that is what is going to happen, and I hope that it will go live!

Nope, that's not the case, sorry. However, in some zones (Icecrown, Storm Peaks) you get to ride a ghostly gryphon when you're dead, so you can fly to your corpse. Both of those zones have a huge emphasis on mountainside base camps and tall cliffs and places you can only get by flying, so the gryphon is very nice. No running through mountains though.

We're a little late on the notice this time around (two whole days!), but if you haven't done so yet, get yourself out to Nagrand and pick up your free gems from the Consortium! They're not exactly worth much on most servers now, since people are throwing everything they own on the auction house to get rid of it before Wrath, and thus tanking the prices on everything, but free is free. You might as well pick them up, even if you just use them as skipping stones at the lakefront.

If you've never done this before, let me break it down: Once you reach Friendly with the Consortium, Gezhe at Aeris Landing will have some free gems for you at the beginning of each month. As you gain higher levels of reputation, you'll get more gems. Not necessarily better gems, just more of them. Don't know where Aeris Landing is? It's directly north of that freaky diamond mountain spaceship with the Naaru in it, Oshu'gun.

There were a lot of profession changes in the latest LK beta build (8962). You've already seen what Inscription got, and if you're anything like me, you've salivated over the new Engineered motorcycles. But what else in this build is particularly interesting, for the other professions?

• Tailoring got some new flying carpets added, though I'm pretty sure the Ebonweave/Mooncloth/Spellfire are just cosmetic variants. No word yet on what they look like.
• Leatherworking got a ton of new BoE epics and blues. It looks like they're really trying to make it profitable to be a leatherworker, which will be nice to see.
• Each of the armor-crafting professions (tailoring, LW, blacksmithing) got some high-stamina frost-resist sets. Previously, similar (and similarly-named) sets were used for the Sapphiron fight in the old Naxxramas; I wonder if something similar will be going on in the new Naxx. I hope not, because kitting out your whole raid for one fight is an annoying gimmick.
• A few of the professions got recipes specifically to help them discover more recipes, like Northrend Alchemy Research and Northrend Inscription Research. An interesting approach to making the discovery system less frustrating.
• A new epic fishing pole! Still not quite as much +fishing as the Arcanite Fishing Pole, but nice for those who have trouble winning the contest, and the underwater breathing will be convenient.

There are also a bunch of new enchants and elixirs, but it's just your typical +AP, +crit, +int, etc.; hardly fascinating. I'm particularly excited about all the stuff LW is getting. That skill needed some love. See MMO-Champion for full listings of all the recipes; there's just too much for me to list here.

I can't remember if we've posted about the WoW Gem Finder or not, but the last gem list I posted about has gone missing, so if you've never heard of this one, it's new to you. WoW Gem Finder is a quick web tool that you can to quickly find exactly the gem you're looking for -- just choose the colors, attributes, and/or abilities you want from the checklist on the side, and it'll narrow down exactly the gem you want and where to get it. And all the gems link to Wowhead anyway, so even if the little description isn't enough for you, you can go searching for it elsewhere as well.

Pretty great resource for anyone (like me) just starting to pick up epic gear on their latest character and looking into where the gems are coming from. One thing players might still need help with is when to put which gems on which gear (most people wouldn't throw epic gems in gear you get at 61, I'd think, and I personally usually don't bother with anything but vendor gems until I get an actual epic), but that may be all outside the ken of this finder. As a tool to help you find exactly the gem you want, it's a good one.

WoW's crafting system has always been relatively straightforward. Collect mats, press button, receive item. This lies in contrast to crafting systems from other games, which may contain mini-games, convoluted learning systems, or varying levels of success in production. In WoW, you can't even fail at making something; if you can make it at all, every attempt will result in an item, and they're all the same (aside from some recipes with random enchants. This fits in with WoW being on the simple side for MMOs (simple to learn, that is; often difficult to master).

Jewelcrafting in LK is going to shake that up a little bit. There will be a quest available to jewelcrafters that gives them a chance to craft a "perfect" version of an uncommon-quality gem when cutting it. For the first time, it's possible to have a critical success from crafting in WoW. It looks like the perfect versions of gems are positioned precisely between the uncommon and rare versions of a cut, in terms of stats. For instance:

• Delicate Bloodstone: +12 agility
• Perfect Delicate Bloodstone: +14 agility
• Delicate Scarlet Ruby: +16 agility
• Delicate Cardinal Ruby: +20 agility

So far, Gem Perfection appears to work only on uncommon-level gems, not on rares or epics. I also don't know what the chance is of cutting a perfect gem instead of a regular one. It's a nice change, and a little something extra for cutting those buckets of green gems on the way from 375 to 450. Would you like to see more critical successes in other crafting professions?

Recently, a reader wrote in with a question that everyone ponders from time to time. When trying to make money from a profession, it can be difficult to determine what to sell, what to convert, and what to avoid doing all together. Here's what she asked:

Hello,

When making gold from Mining, is it better to Prospect the Ore? Or is it better to just sell the Ores and Bars?

Thank you!

Regards,
Kristy.

Taking a break from the faction recipe series to shake things up a bit, let's take a look at how this breaks down.

If you tend to be a strictly weekend-centric WoW Insider reader, you may have missed some of the best stuff to come out of the Wrath beta thus far: the eye candy! Class updates, mechanics changes, pfft, who needs that stuff? No no my friends, me, I'm all about the shinies. Okay, and I like all of that other stuff, too. Luckily, we have a little bit of everything, and in case you did miss our eye candy, let's take a look back at some of it, shall we? Be warned, however, that most of these galleries contain some minor spoilers. If you don't want to be spoiled, be careful!

	The Borean Tundra The Borean Tundra, accessed from either the Orgrimmar zeppelin tower or the Stormwind Harbor, is one of two starter zones in Northrend. The Tundra houses Valiance Keep, Warsong Hold, D.E.H.T.A. the Coldarra (home of the Blue Dragonflight) and much more.
	The Howling Fjord The Howling Fjord is the second of the two Northrend starter zones, accessed via Menethil Harbor or the Tirisfal zeppelin towers. The Howling Fjord is home to Valgarde, the Forsaken's Vengeance Landing, the Vrykul fortress Utgarde, and the Ember Clutch.

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

For the past several weeks, Insider Trader has been examining the recipes that craftsmen can acquire from factions by earning reputation with them.

So far, we've covered:

• Designs for jewelcrafters, part one.
• Plans for blacksmiths.
• Recipes for alchemists.
• Patterns for leatherworkers.
• Patterns for tailors.

Last week, we covered several factions that offer jewelcrafting recipes, but because of the sheer number available, are continuing with the last five factions this week.

The first five factions listed here can be viewed by checking out last week's edition of Insider Trader, while the last five factions, in bold text, will be covered today.

• Violet Eye, honored. (Karazhan)
• Thrallmar or Honor Hold, revered.
• Lower City, revered.
• Aldor or Scryers, revered.
• Sha'tar, revered.
• Keepers of Time, revered.
• Scale of the Sands, revered. (Mount Hyjal)
• Cenarion Expedition, exalted.
• Consortium, exalted.
• Shattered Sun Offensive, exalted.

Tonight's Wrath of the Lich King beta patch brought us a small batch of new Jewelcrafting recipes. This push included a few trinkets, a new gem cut, and some jewelry that is quite incomplete. Incomplete as in they have no stats, even after crafting them. Oh, and some funky laser pointer things. They don't do anything of substance, but they're laser pointers!

I've heard from more than a few people that the new trinkets are quite a bit underpowered for the level they're supposed to be, and I'm inclined to agree. 100 spell power for 20 seconds every 5 minutes from a trinket at level 80 doesn't impress me much, especially considering its level 70 equivalent, the Living Ruby Serpent. The new trinkets will be greatly improved sooner or later, I'm sure. Personally, I found the new gemcut pretty cool. The Enchanted Tear is flat +6 to all stats in the form of a unique-equipped, any-color gem. Not too bad. I'm willing to bet almost everyone will take advantage of that and use the one they're allowed.

We've stuck pictures of the new recipes (the one with stats at least) in our Wrath of the Lich King Jewelcrafting gallery for your perusal.

Edited an item description for clarity.

The debate over whether Death Knights should get a free hand up on their primary professions continues to rage, but what actually interests me most are some of the arguments put forth by those opposed to Death Knights getting "free" tradeskills. Some of them are saying that it doesn't matter that Death Knights have to wait, because people should wait until max level to deal with professions anyway.

This is a completely alien concept to me. On any new character, the first thing I do upon hitting level 6 is run to the nearest profession trainers to learn my chosen professions. I like being able to doing something about those herbs and mineral nodes I see while I'm leveling. I can go do some tradeskilling if I start getting bored of leveling, and I can use the final product for my own leveling process, or sell the raw materials on the AH for a nice chunk of change.

I can't really fathom waiting for maximum level before I started a profession in earnest. Why go back to Elwynn forest to harvest bushels of Peacebloom at level 70 when you could have done it from level 1-11 while you were there?

So here's something that may be considered somewhat of a companion question to yesterday's profession question: Do you level your professions while you level up, or do you leave them until after you've leveled up?