Ho Spooner!
Bill here again, and I took your advice on tanking professions…I went with blacksmithing and I’ve managed to get up to 360, where I’ve hit the oh so wonderful extreme end of the available recipes to max my skill at 375. Before I go and buy or start farming 70 primal fires and 100 primal waters, I wanted to ask you about yet another rumor I’ve heard concerning WoTLK: Is it true that Blizzard has made leveling from 350 onward much easier in the new expansion? Should I just save my time and money now and then spend 1/100th of the time and resources to get the same 25 points in the expansion?
Thanks bro!
Bill
Bill is awesome, I love getting feedback and questions from this guy because he asks questions I don’t think to answer.
Alright so you took Blacksmithing, good man. As for your rumor, honestly I have never heard of it. As far as gethering professions they did speed up mining at least where smelting ore into bars yields a lot of skill ups which made bulling through engineering so freaking easy for me. But crafting? Uhm, not so sure.
The best way to check this sort of thing would be by going to http://wotlk.wowhead.com and looking up the profession itself. Let’s use yours for example (also my warrior is a 375 blacksmith so I know your pain with the felsteel nightmare)
At Lv. 360 you hit a very big wall with blacksmithing. You could piss away A LOT of gold right now (bad) on mats just to level it throguh resist gear that probably won’t sell in the AH and will net you a loss at a vendor, or you could get the felsteel set. You don’t even need the entire set, just getting the pattern for the gloves will get you to 375 on the cheap. Now I say cheap assuming that you have a metric shit ton of fel iron bars and eternium bars or Felsteel bars already saved up. You’ll need a lot but you can sell the remainder on the AH for your investment back.
Felsteel Gloves drop in Auchenai Crypts off the monks. Going in with good gear on normal difficulty. Thye drop A LOT. It’s a not a rare drop at all. I spent all of 45 minutes in there with a group of 3 (me, warlock, and paladin healer) and pretty much just right up and jacked the place. It dropped twice, once for me and once for the paladin. It takes 6 felsteel bars to make and will stay yellow until 375. It goes grey at 390 but that’s wrath and by then you’re making Cobalt gear also very much on the cheap.
I hope this helped, enjoy your new maxed blacksmithing.
The rumor is true as most Wrath crafting starts their recipes off at 350 which means all the materials needed to craft them are going to be found in the wrath starting zones. I’d sit tight and put your craft grinding on pause for the next 48 days unless you haven’t reached 350 yet.
Ahh! I found it! There ARE cobalt patterns for blacksmithing. Making rods and the likes at 360ish. So you’re right you can get your professions up using Northrend materials at 350, now comes the question are you willing to start eating up the new resources for leveling now or after 375?
If you are looking to prepare for Inscription, definitely start saving herbs now. I am currently running a character to 70, and have about 1,000 herbs saved up. The AH prices for herbs on my server seems to be nutty (crazy $$$), and it will only get worse (unless suddenly everyone goes herbalist and wants to clear out their skill-up leftovers… not likely to happen tho).
Stock up on items now that you won’t want to bother collecting when you could be exploring Northrend.