Professions – The Climb #650

Thursday 3^rd December 2020

My plan with professions in Shadowlands has always been quite straightforward.

The first step was to get all the professions across a number of characters, including some bonus dual gathers where it made sense.

The second step was to get all those characters through The Maw intro so they could learn the Shadowlands profession upgrade and begin to progress through the new expansion’s recipes.

Rather than buy items, I would send what I loot on characters as I level, back to the relevant profession.

The second stage was completed at the weekend but I’ve not had time to really level any of the professions, save for gathering on my main.

But today’s task was to take all those looted goods and distribute them. Then each of my professions would level up as much as they could with the resources they had.

Save items like thread you can only get from the profession vendor and recipes, I spent no money. And yes, it was complicated, shuffling off food to one character, cloth to another, ore to yet another. This was further complicated as a lot of my alts had picked up items on the way through The Maw. Only a piece of cloth here or there, but when you multiply that by 18, it soon mounts up.

Enough, indeed, that just using my looted cloth, my tailor got to 99/100. Likewise my Blacksmith is in the mid 70s. Given that this is better than most of their BFA professions, today has been a major win.

Of course, there’s still further professions to do, and I need to gather more mats, but I still have 16 characters I need to level, so I’ll get to them all soon enough.

Of course, I wish I could level them all up but we’re in week 2 of the expansion and I’m proud I already have proper professions.

I do get a bit disheartened as some players are making loads of gold on the auction house by skillfully buying materials and then selling the crafted items for a profit. Maybe if I had another 24 hours in the day. With raiding starting next week, all I can think of is how I should have my alchemist leveled. I already feel I am missing out on opportunities on my Horde Inscriptionist.

But I’ve always said my plan is the long game. I need to find my feet with professions. Up until now I’ve really only been doing raw gold and I can’t expect to jump right into the market. My gold making plans this expansion is to get to a stage where I have goods to sell and over the course of the expansion achieve steady sales.

Having professions leveled – let alone at the start of an expansion – is a massive start.

I’ve made a start on some herb routes so that my alliance character can max out their inscription, but like my Tailor and Blacksmith, they’ve already made good progress and are near max level.

With a load of gearing still to do as well as a number of story quests yet to complete, I’m not at that stage where I feel on top of everything and have time to spare. I don’t want to lose sight of professions but as I remind myself, if I wanted to have them leveled by now I could always have bought materials.