Guides and conventional wisdom (orange herbs grant +1 skill point, yellow may yield +1, greens rarely, greys never) are currently wrong: the only way to level your herbalism from 95-125 is by gathering Stranglekelp (or Grave Moss). This is despite Briarthorn, Mageroyal, and Bruiseweed displaying as ‘orange’ difficulty, which should normally suggest they will grant a skill point.
This doesn’t seem like it was the case previously - either in Cataclysm, or during Mists of Pandaria’s prior launch, which may mean this is a bug. In any case it is at LEAST very inconvenient and misleading and the herbs should either have their difficulty colors updated to reflect the change, or the herbs should be fixed such that they grant a skill-up as they previously had.
I experimented by turning off all my addons, visiting my trainer, referencing guides (new and previous), and asked several times in global channels to make sure this wasn’t an error on my end. The only way to level your herbalism from 95-125 is by gathering Stranglekelp.
MOP Classic Pre-patch, Thursday July 3 2025
(edited to include Grave Moss as a leveling candidate, and to remove Bruiseweed as a candidate with thanks to Bearpeels)
Seems only Kingsblood, Wild Steelbloom, and Grave Moss (+ rarely Stranglekelp) will get you from 125-150, after which you can gather Goldthorn + Fadeleaf + Liferoot, then Khadgar’s Whisker at 160). This slows the early herbalism leveling pretty dramatically. I was able to do this by patrolling the southern coast of Hillsbrad Foothills for Stranglekelp until 125, then moving into Arathi Highlands for Kingsblood and Wild Steelbloom. I can’t endorse or promise that this is the best route though, just how I managed it.
Thanks for the feedback everyone! Can confirm that Bruiseweed is another ‘orange’ herb all the way until around 135, despite it not giving any skill points as it should’ve.
(edited my reply to include Grave Moss which might be the most valuable herb to gather for the 95-125 stretch for purposes of abundance).
Of course it’s bugged. Everything is bugged. The classic dev team is useless, too busy patting each other on the back for their failed patch note explanations of each class, so pathetic.
Also experiencing this issue. It was painfully slow between 75-95 and then it just stopped. Was doing laps around Hillsbrad. Haven’t tried with Stranglekelp yet. Clearly a bug and a strange one at that.
We’re aware of an issue that some gathering nodes are not granting skill ups. We have a fix in the works that will take effect with restarts on Tuesday.
I ended up going down to thousand needles at level 25 just to farm stranglekelp. The node density down there is really high and I kept running into people also farming it in STV.
You’ll have +15 herbalism on any character. Then you only need to be herbalism 100 to start tapping Wild Steelbloom (requires 115 herb) and you can keep leveling more normally.
Otherwise it appears you’re going to be stuck farming stranglekelp until 115 or Tuesday, whichever comes first. The spade was going for a couple of gold on the Faerlina AH when I looked a bit ago for anyone who wants it but doesn’t want to make a panda alt to buy it from the vendor to mail.
Edit: apparently the wowhead info for the spade is incomplete and it’s available on other trade supply vendors outside of the panda starter island.
Inspired by your post, I decided to send a gnomish army knife over to my panda (I already left the island before I found out about the spade) and the +10 to gathering skills on the knife works without having engineering skill, and from what I can tell it does stack with the glove enchant, at least on my character screen it shows +15 with the knife in my inventory and the enchant on my gloves.
Eta: Wowhead only lists vendors for the spade in the Pandaren starting area, but spades are available from trade supply vendors elsewhere.
Why do we have to wait a week for a fix? Why not shut down for maintenance right now on a Wednesday, middle of the week not important day, and fix all the issues. Having the monk 50% daily buff is completely pointless when it just disappears.
Thanks for the info Frogears. My Panda reached 80 herbing in Westfall when it stopped. Orange Mageroyal and Briarthorn are bugged. Bruiseweed still levelled me but its hard to find. The info about the Stranglekelp was the clincher. Got me a +10 army knife and +5 herbing glove enchant. Swim speed and water breathing and the slow farming of stranglekelp to get it to 100 along the Westfall coast. Now off to DMF to get it up via another +5.
Ya pretty wild having to wait till Tuesday for a fix. I wanted to level and do my professions at same time, but literally impossible right now. Ridiculous.
honestly didn’t read the post, just saw that herbs weren’t leveling and in-game I wasn’t getting levels off any herbs I was picking up all day . Still Stanglekelp only is fing ridiculous. Having to go and farm in the waters for a while and not level isn’t the greatest. And I don’t want to have to backtrack and level it all up later after leveling.
edit: Wild Steelbloom is giving skill up as well… Just seems Bruiseweed, Mageroyal, Bristlethorn aren’t giving skill ups.
