by Fox Van Allen

When I was leveling my shadow priest, I wasn’t thinking much about the end game. I grabbed a pair of professions as soon as the game would let me: Tailoring and Enchanting. They served me well through leveling. But a few months into level 80, I got to thinking — did I make the right choice?

I’m not gold capped, I’ll never be gold capped, and I have no desire to be a Warcraft billionaire. A lot of people take professions just to make money, but I’m more than happy with keeping enough cash on hand to pay for my repairs, buy some gems or potions when I need to, and buy cold weather flying for all my alts.

When I choose professions, it’s for the leveling and end-game benefit. A little cash along the way is always great (and really, you can make a little bit of cash with most of your professions regardless), but many professions will actually wind up increasing your end-game DPS. And really, isn’t that what us shadow priests really care about in the end?

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by Basil Berntsen

Enchanting mats are a strange business. They are in constant massive demand, and can be made in a variety of ways. Every Tuesday, thousands of guilds get thousands of upgrades that need to be enchanted, every day, hundreds of thousands of players run PUG and PvP content that gives them upgrades they want to enchant, and every day, thousands of players buy things like Bolts of Imbued Frostweave, which require enchanting mats to make.

The more things change

Recently, Blizzard added the ability to disenchant easily with the need before greed loot system, and created a massively popular random 5 man dungeon system. There’s no overhead, just automatic mats appearing in everyone’s bags. This created a huge source of supply for enchanting mats. Also, the amount of Infinite Dust created with each disenchant was recently raised significantly, altering the balance of dust to Greater Cosmic Essence available.

The demand for enchanting mats is not fixed. In fact, there is no market in WoW that has static demand. As things get cheaper, more people find them affordable and that increases demand. While high end raiders wouldn’t dream of entering a guild instance without the best enchants on all their gear, many people don’t run that type of content. They put the enchants they can afford onto their gear they have. As infinite dust became more and more affordable, people started enchanting more gear with better enchants, and this served to increase demand for greater cosmic essences.

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by Messiah @ tentonhammer

The Quick and Simple Bonuses That Professions Give

There are two main types of primary professions: crafting and gathering.  The best current combination of professions for end game bonuses are dual crafting professions.  This generally means getting to the end game and then switching to be dual crafting professions, while having an alt or two that can supply mats to you for these abilities.  What are the best bonuses though?  That’s what we look at here.

Crafting Professions

Alchemy

Alchemists gain a bonus called Mixology that grants them extra bonuses when using any flask that they can create.  This bonus works out to either +37 Spell Power, +64 Attack Power, +13 Mana per 5, or 320 Health based on the flask.  This is a nice bonus if you raid since you will be using flasks all the time.  Better yet as an Alchemist your flasks will last twice as long.  Also as an alchemist you can make a significant amount of gold by creating flasks.

Best Classes: Any
Worst Classes: None

To really make the most out of Alchemy you really need to be an herbalist as well, which  limits its appeal.  Other combinations work out to be better overall bonuses and if you raid may be better options.  This is a great option though for an alt.

Blacksmithing

Blacksmiths get the ability to add two extra gem sockets to their equipment, one to their gloves and one to their bracers.  This means that they can further customize their gear as required.  This works out to a bonus of +46 Spell Power, +40 Strength, or +60 Stamina due to the extra slots.  You could put any number of other bonuses into the slots instead.

Best Classes: Plate wearing classes
Worst Classes: Cloth and Leather wearing classes

Blacksmithing offers a lot of customization since you can pick the bonuses that you want.  It also allows you to craft items that can be of use if you are a plate wearer.  Because of the bonuses that the extra two slots grant you this is a good profession for any class, but the items you create will not be of any use to you.
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Due to the fact that Mining is a gathering skill, which feeds other professions materials for recipes (Blacksmithing, Engineering &Jewelcrafting), nearly all gathered material can provide a profit. There are some minerals which have a higher demand than others, therefore providing a speedy and consistent profit. Though, a higher demand often means more competition. Hopefully, this guide will help you determine which minerals to gather and sell based on time restrictions and possible profitability.

Northrend Minerals

All Northrend Minerals can help you profit, though it takes strategic Auction House placement as well as patience to profit this way. You should take advantage of using a 280%+ flying mount when farming in Northrend. If you do not have a flying mount, it is highly recommended that once you start bringing in a profit, you make your first purchase that of Artisan Riding and Cold Weather Flying (will cost you up to 6000g if you have Expert Riding). Having the ability to fly increases your profitability, making all gathering 280% quicker. 

Timing Your Gathering

Farming throughout Northrend will be difficult when done at peak server times, this is when the highest population is active and a higher number of players are collecting minerals. Ideally, you will want to gather herbs during off-peak times: 2am to 2pm server time, during weekdays; weekends are the worst times to farm due to a more active population (weekend players, those not working or at school).

Profitable Product

Titanium Ore - Is Northrend’s most profitable mineral. Highly sought by Jewelcrafters trying to obtain Epic Gems through Prospecting. Also high in demand smelted in to Titanium Bars, Titanium Bars are used to make Titansteel Bars, which are used in all high-end dropped  recipes (Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader).

Saronite Ore - Whether smelted or raw, Saronite is the prime ingredient used for leveling Blacksmithing,Engineering and Jewelcrafting in Wrath of the Lich King. Jewelcrafters require the Ore, which will be prospected for gems. Engineers and Blacksmiths will require the Ore smelted in to Bars.

Cobalt Ore - While the bars are used to craft various Engineering parts, Cobalt is the mineral with the least demand. The one plus side, is that it requires only a single piece of ore to make a bar, instead of two ore like other Northrend minerals. Selling this Ore in its smelted form will fetch the greatest profit.

Auction Placement

Timing is everything when you are trying to make maximum profit. When it comes to raw goods such as ore/bars, you want to make sure you catch people when they are leveing their professions. Most minerals that will be bought are likely to be used for leveling professions, therefore people usually stock up in the evenings during the week and on weekends. Be sure to place your auctions between 2pm and 9pm server time, Tuesday through Friday. It is also a good idea to place them for the minimum duration available (12 hours), so that you can update the pricing if you so happen to gain any competition in that time. Weekends are great times to profit due to the increase in active population, but you will have more competition, so place your auctions with caution. 

Almost always, it is very difficult to gain a maximum profit on Sundays. Weekend players have gathered minerals and placed them by this day, there will be a mass amount of minerals, and many people will be undercutting, avoid placing auctions on Sundays.

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i will learn you how to create a route with many nodes in just a couple of minutes with three addons. Also, some people may alredy use this, but i know lot of people is not. *I’m sorry if my english isn’t the best*

We will need 3 addons for this:
Routes – Routes – Addons – Curse
GatherMate – GatherMate – Addons – Curse
Gathermate_Data – GatherMate_Data – Addons – Curse

Check so that these three addons are enabled when you login into the game.

Now it’s time for us to setup Gathermate and import some data.
Type “/gathermate” in the gamechat.

Since this is the first time we are using Gathermate, we will need to import some data.

Press “GatherMateData” and this this will apear:

Choose wich data you want to import. I did only import Mining in this example since i just want to include ore’s in my route. When you’ve choosed what data you want to import press the “Import GatherMateData” button.
If you did do everything right, you should see this in your chatlog:

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Legend:<

LB – Lichbloom
IT – Ice Thorn
GC – Gold Clover
SN – Saronite Node
TN – Titanium Node

Leveling

Leveling Mining and Herbalism at the same time is fairly simple actually. I will discuss macros that will allow for easy switching of tracking nodes. For now we will assume that you read that section and continue with the guide.

1-125 Barrens (Peace Bloom, Silver Leaf, Copper, Tin, Silver, Mageroyal, Bruiseweed, Kingsblood)

125-175 Thousand Needles (Silver, Gold, Iron, Mithril)

175-250 Tanaris (Mithril, Iron, Gold, Silver)

250-300 Un’Goro Crater and/or Silithus (Thorium, Rich Thorium)

The relative closeness, placement of both herbs and minerals, and the lack of people farming make these areas suitable for simultaneous leveling of mining and herbalism.

300-350 Hellfire Peninsula (Fel Iron, Adamantite) *Remember at this time you can use the addons listed in the addon section to optimize your routes*

350-400 Howling Fjord

400-450 Sholoazar Basin

Addons

OK there are two addons that I use religiously. They are Gathermate data and Routes. These two addons are designed to import large amount of node data for treasure, herbs, fish, minerals, and gas clouds. Routes, an addon designed to to optimize your route in a specific zone. Some of the features of routes are:

*A friggin line on your hud and/or minimap !!! BONUS !!1
*You can chose to only display node icons while tracking or not at all
* Color coordinate your routes to make them easily visible to to assist you with remember what route your on
*Automatic route updates based on node availability and number of drops

In order to set these up first you need to open GatherMate and import data. You can do this by typing /gathermate in your chat box and hitting enter. Once there, open the import tab, click the drop down menu and select wotlk and click import data. Next open routes, select add route. In order for you to create a route you need to name the route first. For this example we are going to use Scholozar Basin. In the Field type Happy Monkey Butt in the name field (notice the okay button that appears next to it) click the okay button to add the route to the list and open up the create route buttons. Once you have named it select what nodes you are looking for where ever you may see them. For this example we will be using Saronite and Titanium. Once your nodes are selected hit “Create Route”. On the left hand side, select the routes option. Under this the zones will be displayed. Click the plus sign next to the zone to bring up Happy Monkey Butt. Click Happy Monkey Butt do display a series of options for this tab. I am only going to go over the ones you need to know for more advanced look into these addons please visit the author’s site. Click “Optimize Route” out of the list of tabs. There are two buttons to click here, Cluster and Foreground. This will cluster nodes with in 60 yards so your not bouncing to every node 2 secs away from each other. And Foreground will make your route not all screwed up looking. This concludes the addon section of this guide hope you enjoyed.

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Cobalt Ore is the new Saronite Ore

Well, this is my first post here.
Like the title says, I*ll focus on Cobalt Ore’s in this guide.

First off, What you need:

Mining, 350+

And I would recommend Epic Flying mount.

So, moving on.
On my realm Saronite Ores cost 12-14g/stack while Cobalt Ores goes for 30-37g /stack, how come?

Well, it’s obviously easier to farm Saronite. Which means alot of Miners will farm Saronite nodes, they’re too lazy to move on and farm Cobalt.
But hopefully you’re not!

Here are the two routes I use which gives me 1-2 stacks each round:

I usually do them in order, first route 1, then 2 and so on. You can, however, stick to only one route.

You won’t notice alot of competition here, I’ve never met a farmer yet on any of these routes.
And when you’ve farmed for a while, sell the Ores in the AH or the Trade channel.

Good Luck, I hope this helps

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Req:
1. 450 mining
2. Time
3. I recommend having a flying mount.

Hey guys, as most of you are aware they have enabled flying mounts to be used in Wintergrasp when the battle is not active, i have recently been using this to my advantage by mining all the ores there!

The Wintergrasp territory consists of three different types of rocks,

1. Saronite Deposit
2. Rich Saronite Deposit
3. Titanium Vein

They are listed in order of least rare to rare.

Saronite Ore is worth about 15g a stack on my server. And titanium, due to the mass need of the new leetz gemz is worth around 450g a stack on my realm..

Knowing this, this is how i manage to pull in a crap load of gold every hour.

First, i start at the WG alliance base (when not having control of WG) and fly (Epic Mount) over this nice little route i have made from my experience mining.

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So .. new server? .. Perhaps you rolled a DK? ..

I just rolled a DK on a PVP server, and gold is definitely an issue atm. However I have come to save the day ..

/run if not THO then local f,t,c=CreateFrame(“Frame”,”THO”),1,0 f:SetScript(“OnUpdate”, function(_, e) c=c+e if c>3 then c=0 SetTracking(t) if t==1 then t=2 else t=1 end end end) THO:Hide() end
/run if THO:IsVisible() then THO:Hide() else THO:Show() end

Make that Macro and your tracking will automatically cycle between Mining/Herbing on a 3 second timer. (You can also have it cycle Hunter tracking as well. but I am too lazy, and this is for farming.) I went fro 0/0 Miner/Herbalist to 300/300 in about 5′ish hours.

Press once to start. Press it again to make it stop, and in no time you will be well on your way to riches beyond your wildest dreams

** Bonus Tip ** Never .. EVER, go to the AH on your leveling toon. ALWAYS send everything to your AH/Bank Alt. You would be surprised how much time you spend in there.

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