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Professions Updates

Alchemy
Blacksmithing
Enchanting
Engineering
Jewelcrafting
Leatherworking
Tailoring

Cooking
First Aid
Fishing

Herbalism
Mining
Skinning

Professions

Professions provide another way to customize your character, adding to the richness of the WoW experience. Exploited properly, they also add to the richness of your character, since professions can produce money-making goods and services.

Secondary skills are unlimited. At the current time, there are three secondary skills, and characters may take all three. The secondary skills are cooking, first aid, and fishing.

Primary professions include production and gathering skills. Production skills (sometimes called crafting skills) create or modify items. Gathering skills provide raw materials to support production skills. Characters may have a total of two primary skills. Production skills include alchemy, blacksmithing, enchanting, engineering, jewelcrafting, leatherworking, and tailoring. Gathering skills include herbalism, mining, and skinning.

Learning Skills

Trainers in the major cities and most new character starting areas can start you on your way. The one exception is Darnassus, which has neither mining nor blacksmithing trainers; on Kalimdor, you will have to make your way to Darkshore if you want to work metal. Ask any guard in the starting areas or capital cities, and they will be happy to direct you to the nearest trainer. Starting jewelcrafting trainers are only available in Silvermoon City (Horde) or The Exodar (Alliance).

Note that primary gathering skills have no character level requirement, so you can reach Artisan Skinning (for instance) before making L35.

Master Trainers may train up to 300 skill. Beyond that, you will need to seek out the Grand Master Trainers in Outland. Normally, you may train for the next level when within 25 levels of the top (so at 125 skill level, you may train for Expert skill). For the secondary skills, you purchase books to become Expert or Master, while a quest is required to become an Artisan (given at level 35 when your skill has reached 225). Gnomes have a special knack for engineering and can exceed the top of the range by 15 levels - so a gnome Expert engineer can have skill up to level 240 and an gnome Artisan engineer maxes out at 315. Tauren have a similar gift for Herbalism, the Blood Elves for Enchanting, and the Draenei for Jewelcrafting.

Many crafting professions have either specialty trainers or skill specialization that provide recipes that regular trainers do not have. Tailors, for instance, have Shadoweave trainers who train in the creation of Shadoweave garments. Engineers may choose to specialize in either Gnomish or Goblin engineering, with a different selection of recipes depending on their choice. Skill specialization is limited - you can only choose one specialty at a time. Changing specialization is difficult, and you lose access to recipes that belong to the specialty you're abandoning. For many of the specialties, there are sets of Bind on Pickup items which require that specialty to equip/use.

Unlearning Skills

If you want to learn a new primary skill and you already have two, you must unlearn one to free up a slot. Open the character view and select the skills tab. Browse to the skill you want to unlearn and click on it. In the bottom pane of the skill view, you will see a bar indicating the skill level for that skill. Next to the bar will be a small red button. Click on the button to unlearn the skill and free up the slot.

Random Enchantments

Several crafted items (Wild Leather items, Green Lens, etc.) are listed as having a "Random Enchantment." When crafted, the name of the item will have a "of the..." added which indicates the type of enchantment. These enchantments add to one or two character stats or to spell damage. An enchantment that adds to a single stat (e.g., "of Agility") usually adds about 1.5x the points of one that adds to two stats. Possible enchantments include:

Professions and Reputation

Many high-end recipes are not available as drops - they may only be purchased from vendors of other factions. In most cases, it is necessary to gain reputation with the other factions in order to purchase these because they are Bind on Pickup and won't show up at the AH. The following is a chart of which factions should be targeted for each profession.