i finally got around to seriously considering last night (whilst trying to go to sleep!) giving up my LW and getting skinning.

the cost of mats seems to make having a crafting profession about redundant !

or its a case of if you raid and are in a big guild for mat swapping it is perhaps worth it ?

for me in such a small guild with limited time i fail to see i will ever make anything thats going to make me money.

with just 1 high level char i suffer from only being able to have 2 profs.

so atm i am not a skinner and on our AH borean is around 25-30g a stack, heavy goes for 200g+. Arctic Fur is 60-80g (where does this come from ? is it skinned ? or is it a drop?) I've bought a few stacks sub 20g and got my LW to about 405. But i dont see i am going to get it to a high level easily or cheaply - esp given comments on here.

so i think i'll be better off dropping LW - which i've had since Day 1 of WoW /cry and going skinning and making money from skinning.

cos it seems much easier to find a few people you know-ish who can make the good items for say 10-20g tip !!

i've never really felt the professions workthat well in Wow.

I would seriously consider leveling a 'gathering b!tch' alt slowly (all we have is time, right :P ), as the benefits of a pure tradeskill (considered you have already leveled it to 375, and probably spent a good amount of time / gold on it are nice. 90 stam on your bracers or 120 ap on your bracers from 'Fur Lining' are pretty nice. Not to mention the ability to sew in various +resist fur linings making getting resist capped for various encounters that much easier. Giving up LW to get skinning seems kinda backwards. Whats your other trade skill?

For me, crafting professions have always been about the personal buff, whereas gathering have been about making money.

I just powerleveled both herb and skinning 0-375 on Sunday on my DK for this purpose. Got my first Arctic Fur from skinning in Fjord last night :) Didn't even know what it was till I linked it in guild and someone said "nice, those are going for 75g on the AH right now". Should be able to have my DK his epic skeletal gryphon by the time I hit 77 ^^

If you're worried about money, there will be most likeley a TON of quests still available at 80 when you ding that you can do for gold. And there will be dailies again. And what do you need gold for anyway - you have your epic flyer, and 1kg is super easy to get from quests to unlock it in Northrend?

I have a little alt that I just have hang out in one area and make a 25-30 minute mining run a couple of times a week. On my server copper ore is going for 5-7g a stack and it's easy for my little druid to get 2-3 stacks per run, along with about a stack of tin (another 5-7g).

I'm a NE, but I'm sure there's a lowbie area on the Horde side that you can do that with. =)

BTW, my money maker is skinning & mining =)

Clar : i'm a herby with LW as i decided that herby in BC was going to make me money which it has and does. also it was handy for getting people to them make me pots for doing heroics.

without skinning though Clar i'm having to buy all leather / fur etc whereas if i can skin stuff i can then find people to make items.

although i take your point about items only i can use on my own gear.

i'm at 406 ish LW now. and until prices come down i'm probably not going to go much further.

and no, tbh I do not have time to level an alt - hence these issues with only 1 high level char (and my mage having been stuck at 58 for about a yr!). I am going to try for a DK in early new year. and he will be a skinner and alchy i think.

and although i can do daily's for money (and rep?) its usually a case of time for either dailys OR heroic.....and soon it will be DK or heroic on Druid or daily's on Druid.

i'm 78 now and got my cold wind flying as soon as i dinged 77.

I heard that the grind from 405+ in any profession right now is pretty tough without a serious time / money investment. I think blizzard did this to challenge the people that wanted to seriously powerlevel their professions for realm firsts, or whatever reason.

I think that they'll probably introduce some recipies or something that make leveling them a little bit easier in a patch or two from rep or something. Not sure though.

*edit: also, commodity prices will drop as time goes on.

But if you're leveling it just to make yourself nice gear, might be better to take up skinning. Though you'll eventually replace that gear with heroic stuff.

Totally up to you. /shrug

i'm going to stick with LW and wait til i level a DK for skinning.

i'm not bothered about levelling LW fast so will wait til prices drop a bit.

i know people with some nice epic patterns so they will be making stuff for me at 80.

My personal choice is to stick with either two gathering professions as it's generally easier to get stuff made if you have [most of] the mats, or a paired crafting/gathering skill.

If you've got the time, inclination, and something like Auctioneer, you can always go down the route of finding an item that can be sold for much more than the cost of it's mats. On our server the 28 slot mining bag goes for 100+ gold despite only needing 8 heavy Borean leather, though I suspect that at the moment that's due the relative scarcity of crafters as it's a rep pattern.

Arctic Leather is basically Fel Lotus for skinners although some areas seem to be more inclined to drop it than others and it is definitely worth hanging onto, especially if you want your resident guild LW to knock you up some of the higher level patches. I can make em, but you'll have to supply the artic fur as I'm struggling to keep enough coming in for my own needs.

well i did keep LW and i'm levelling it slowly as leather AH prices come down. got to about 430 now !

i sell most of my herbs to keep the money rolling in and now i'm 80 i'm finding the money from dailys is helping me to.

i'm still of the opinion that the professions have never worked as one would hope. mats just seem to go for stupid money meaning that most of the time professions seem to struggle to justify themselves. people dont wanna pay 1000's gold for one item and the number of items i keep seeing on the AH from the same person at about or just less than the previous price they had it up for it shocking.

i'm still of the opinion that the professions have never worked as one would hope. mats just seem to go for stupid money meaning that most of the time professions seem to struggle to justify themselves.

That's assuming that the sole purpose of a profession is to make gold.

Some would argue that professions are for the BoP benefits (many of which they removed from LK, which is a separate gripe).

people dont wanna pay 1000's gold for one item and the number of items i keep seeing on the AH from the same person at about or just less than the previous price they had it up for it shocking.

the way it currently is you have the option to a) grind gold to buy an item or b) grind mats to have said item made. Many people find grinding mats to be more entertaining, so they do that. Some find playing the AH entertaining, and are flush with gold from buying low selling high / market manipulating without ever leaving Org, and can easily drop 1-2k on an item. Nice thing having options to do whatever has the highest entertainment value.

To make the most gold and benefit yourself, take up JC! The 3x Dragon's Eye gems + the special Trinket will more than pay for the cost of leveling it. Also, 300g a day for the daily isn't too bad either!

Yep, JC is rockin right now, and will for some time.

indeed it is /grrrrrr

I use to have herb/mining. I dropped mining for inscription. I wish I had not. It is easy to have 2 gathering skills and it makes you a butt load of money with almost no effort. I'd drop inscription again for mining, but I dread the hours it takes to grind from 200-300 mining. Ugh that really sucks.

I did hear in the next patch(?) mining nodes will be a single click. No more 3-4 tappers. Just one tap and you get all the ore.

IF that is true, epic flightform + mining will be legendary!!! You will be farming stacks and stacks of ore with little effort.

IF that is true, epic flightform + mining will be legendary!!! You will be farming stacks and stacks of ore with little effort.You still pop out of flight form, but now it just takes 1 swing of the pick not 2-4 to clear a node.


FWIW, every druid should have herbalism, we are purpose built to collect followers.

I dread the hours it takes to grind from 200-300 mining. Ugh that really sucks.

I did hear in the next patch(?) mining nodes will be a single click. No more 3-4 tappers. Just one tap and you get all the ore.

God that grind on Rich Thorium or whatever was painful. Oh man bad memories of that demon area in south winterspring.

And yeah, nice that we don't have to sit and tap a node tons of times.

I just might re-grind mining after I make my own Darkmoon card. Single tapping will make it a bit less painful, though not by much. I'm just not cut out to have a crafting profession. They seem to be just a money sink with minor benefits. And with my brief time playing, I'd rather work on something new/fun rather than wasting money/time grinding up a profession.

Is there any money in skinning? I could grind that quite a bit faster than mining....

There is a bit of money in skinning, but not much. Its too easy to level, so everyone has an alt that does it. So the markets are flooded with the mats. I was making very good money skinning early in WotLK, but now, the leathers aren't even worth the bag space.

If you want to level a tradeskill like LW, then I would reccomend, but not as a money generator. Mining/Herb seems to be the most consistent money makers. JC is the most profitable now, but depending on how Blizz handles it, its likely to suffer the same fate as skinning. Once the market is flooded with "Dragon's Eye" it will be less profitable.

borean still goes for around 15g a stack so not to bad for making money. sometimes i pick it up for less and some people are still trying for 20g + a stack.

herby is good money. lichbloom especially.

Beware the DK when you're planning tradeskills -- actually, skinning wasn't bad. I just ran around Mulgore for half an hour, then progressed to a couple slightly higher intermediate zones, and I was popping 300 before I knew it.

The absolute killer was mining. Mining's not so bad to skill up as you're mining. I rerolled my hunter as horde recently, and went herb/mining to get another gatherer... and while my mining's consistently behind my herb skill, it's well ahead of my (5 x level) marker ... I think I'm 38 with a 240ish mining skill now. But trying to go back to smaller zones and just grind mining? I threw some money at it, to try to buy ore and then sell the bars to smelt through as much of it as I could... and it helped some, but it was still outlandishly painful.

Now, once I caught up... no sweat. The DK's now 67 and tooling around Outland with a 365 or so mining skill, so it'll be no sweat to knock 375 before I move him over to Northrend. But that 200s was awful.

In fact, the only worse grind I recall for a tradeskill was the upper 200s for Jewelcrafting. The gems just plain were not available anywhere. It was an ugly, expensive, irritating grind to 300. Past that, no sweat, they replace the skill issue with the pain of obtaining recipes.

I also rerolled a warlock recently, and on a whim, made it a herb/inscriber, and I'm kind of digging inscription, at least for a caster. They can make some nice offhand book items, and the scrolls of recall are tasty. I had a bunch of low-mid level herbs banked from my other herbalists, so plowing through to about 200 skill was no sweat, either.