Kaliope - Get Max Cataclysm Professions Quickly

Posted by Markco at 8:00 AM

One of the few blogs on my personal feed reader. Add it to yours!

Kaliope is one of my favorite bloggers because of her great personality (I'm not implying you're ugly though Kaliope!). On her blog, Crafter's Tome, she discusses primarily professions in world of warcraft. She's not as focused on gold making as this site is but she does do a thorough job of discussing how all the professions work and has done a great job so far putting her Beta key to use in Cataclysm. Also, Kaliope was the first person to accept a guest post from me besides Tobold, so I owe a lot of my early success to both these bloggers. Even if my predictions on dream shards in those posts were dead wrong lol. Sigh unpredictable patches!

Here's what Kaliope wrote for the wow gold Blogging Carnival, unfortunately she was unable to submit it in time but the post was very good so I decided to feature it today. My turn to send a link your way :) Also, Kaliope, get on the JMTC profession forums and do some chatting, you may even find some things you'd like to blog about and could find out what information people are looking for in cataclysm.

PS: Tobold, you may be next >:) Send me a guest post!

"Markco invited me to participate in his blogging Carnival and I’m happy to oblige.  I think it’s nice for him to stir up some community love at a time when we’re all bored.  I’ve been struggling with a proper topic though, for a couple of reasons.  One - I don’t do professions to get rich.  I simply enjoy them and gold is just a perk.  Two - my best tips are basically dead now.  We’re in the pre-expansion lull and no one is really upgrading or spending much, at least on my server.  I see no reason to encourage you guys to do something that’s probably pointless. 

As I’ve been saying for weeks in my posts, I think the best use of this down time is to prepare for Cataclysm.  This can be whatever goals you’ve chosen to tackle before the whole world changes, not necessarily money related.  Achievements, old quest chains, faction grinds, dungeon runs -- we all want to complete some type of content before it disappears.

Much as some folks poo-poo’d my race to the server first achievement for Jewelcrafting, I did learn something during that process.  I learned that most people don’t bother with professions in the early days of an expansion.  They’re too busy seeing new zones, running new dungeons and madly leveling for the new raids.  To me this is a golden opportunity.  If you don’t care about being the first 85 DK or Troll, you might consider diverting some time into professions during the first week or two of Cataclysm.

Think about it, few people focus on crafting the first few weeks.  So how much competition will there be against you and your goodies?  Not much.  If you manage to be the first Leatherworker on your server, you’re the only one selling the best crafted items.  If you cap your gathering profession on the first day, you’re the only person selling the ore and herbs that everyone else needs to skill up.

Bear in mind that if you want to max a manufacturing profession in the first days/week, you need to have the proper gathering profession.  If you don’t, you’ll have trouble finding materials on the Auction House.  This is because other gatherers are mostly hoarding what little mats they’ve found for their own leveling needs.  I repeatedly checked the AH on my way to 450 JC and never was able to buy any of the items I needed.  People are just too busy playing to post.  So if your toon is a dual-producer, you probably can’t level quickly unless you have a gatherer that you’re willing to use as a supplier.

A nice benefit of making a concerted effort to jump ahead of the curve on gathering is that you end up getting the better nodes all to yourself.  I learned this while leveling mining in Sholazar Basin.  Once you get ahead of the pack, the world is your oyster!  No one bothered me or competed for nodes that first day.  I had the saronite and titanium all to myself. 

My tip for reaching 525 as quickly as possible (pending confirmation in the beta) would be to put on your +5 mining/herb gloves and head for Icecrown or Sholazar.  Mine some nodes there to rack up 10-20 skillpoints, then go to the new zones.  With all the crowding that goes on during the early days, the level 80 zones will be swamped with players and you probably won’t find any nodes of anything.  That’s ok, you should be able to skip over that and hit the next set of zones (82-85).  Odds are pretty good no one will be gathering there and you’ll have the place to yourself.  This was how I got server first in mining, I mined Cobalt in Grizzly Hills.  No one went there because the quests were locked to them.  As long as you avoid the crowds you’re set.  Then you just keep migrating up the zone list until you cap.

Once you’re done collecting, you can sell the gathered materials and charge out the wazoo because no one else is selling.  Or you can funnel your mats into your other professions and level them up.  On the first day of WotLK I had mining and herbalism both at 450.  I capped Jewelcrafting and leveled Alchemy to 440.  Few players made the effort I did to level their profession that quickly, most of them were too busy questing.  Which means if you craft items that are appealing and appropriate to levelers, you should be able to sell your wares with minimal competition.

I think the best professions for this will be gear-heavy professions such as Blacksmithing and Tailoring.  Stick with DPS gear, weapons are better since it’s often harder to get a good weapon as a quest reward.  Avoid healing/tanking items, they are tougher to sell.  Most players who level by healing and tanking are getting dungeon drops and won’t need crafted gear.

Bear in mind that eventually other crafters will catch up to you.  And since most people power level professions, they tend to dump all their goodies on the Auction at once, flooding the market.  My suggestion is to focus on quality items, not the cheapest leveling points.  Everyone is going to make the bracers that only take five bars, you should make the gloves that take six.  As soon as you can, move up to rare items and avoid cheap greens.  They’re always harder to sell than a good blue someone can use for a while.  I leveled my Smithing with the Tempered Saronite armor and the Honed Cobalt Cleaver and I was happy to do it.  Every single one of those items sold for a good price that covered mats plus a reasonable profit.  I doubt I can say the same for the people who made a bazillion crappy greens and sold them for half the value of the mats.

Some of you may think that this is a waste of time and you should enjoy your early Cataclysm days by leveling.  But the raids aren’t going anywhere, you’ll be sick of them eventually.  The window for selling crafted gear to leveling players is small by comparison.  By the end of the first month the main wave of levelers is probably gone.  After seeing how lax people were about leveling their professions in the first weeks of WotLK, I plan to take advantage this time around :)"