Professions in DF: a gold makers perspective

Gameplay Professions
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Hello,

I have been playing WoW since the later half of BC and I have been a very successful gold goblin for many years now. I want to give gold maker’s perspective, and a slight raider/M+ perspective, of how I thought DF professions unfolded. A lot of what I have to say is positive and is mostly a post of things I personally would like to see continue, or slightly changed, into the next expansion(s). Some of these ‘things’ being: removed from the game patterns returning, embellishments (specifically the Alchemical Flavor Pocket), and how I personally thought DF professions played out/felt. The only Negative things I have to say is about the region wide AH and the alter of decay.

I absolutely LOVED that in DF there were many ‘removed from the game patterns/appearances’ finally added back! I love how removed patterns dropped from mobs they used to drop from (or drop on a different mob but still close to the original mob location if those mobs where also removed from the game) and/or patterns dropping in the same zone (in both open world and in instances). I like how it uses that expansions materials and locations and re added old materials (like from ZG and naxx). I haven’t seen many people talk about this and I feel this is one of the most underappreciated additions to DF and while I am biased, I wanted to highlight it.
I know there is a finite amount of stuff that can be re added back but even making new tints/color schemes of old and/or cool looking crafted items (could even use the same input materials) would be great for gold makers and definitely give the whole player base more xmogs to mix and match.

Before talking about DF profession as a whole, I wanted to hone in on embellishments. I think embellishments have been successful and I like how they add something passive and purely positive for interacting and using the professions/work order system. Being able to chose from variety of small 1-2% increase in damage or healing feels nice however I personally would like to chose 1 embellishment rather than 2 (because of the -3 ilevels of max ilevel crafted items) but if it stayed at 2 that would be perfectly fine. I also wanted to quickly shine a spotlight on my personal favorite embellishment the Alchemical Flavor Pocket. I love how this embellishment does not count towards the embellishment count (this is great for M+ and for raiding), the fact that it doubles food duration AND a player can’t lose the food buff on death, and I even like the acquisition of the embellishment (its expensive of the start of every patch, its a random low drop so it gives the general player base a way get a lot of gold fast if they get the drop, and the players that pay a premium on it earlier get the mileage out of it. I pray Blizzard just copy and pastes that item into every expansion going forward, great item/embellishment.

And now my thoughts on DF professions as a whole. Overall pretty good, I liked how there were many more craftable toys and such added in this expansion scattered across many of the professions (my personal favorite being “primal fire illusion”) compared to previous xpacs and I hope this continues. I wished I saw more craftable mounts (from ENG or BS/LW) as those are always good gold makers and just generally a cool thing.

I think the work order system is a fantastic system for raiders, pvpers, and M+'s but I do think this system is pretty bad for gold makers and as a gold maker I am perfectly fine with that. The point of this system is to offer a bit of bad luck protection where if a player can’t get a certain item slot to drop after doing enough content craft the slot they need and/or to help fine tune a characters gear with hand picked stats. Unfortunately, the only time this xpac I made some serious gold through work orders was at the start of the xpac with the elemental lariat where it was pretty much every class/spec BiS neck/embellishment. The implementation of Blizzard kinda ‘forcing’ the general WoW population to interact with work order system to get lariat crafted was fine I just wish the embellishment wasn’t hard lock to the neck becuase it felt weird seeing necks drop in M+ or even in mythic raids and even first week players vendoring +20-30 ilevel neck upgrade because “lariat hard BiS”. If it was just an expensive embellishment that could be applied to many slots at the start would of been better and I think blizzard learned this lesson with the “shadowflame patch” and I think all parties preferred this (but next time make it craftable on ring/neck as well as all armor slots plz lol)

Also I think players should earn more knowledge points faster. It felt very slow (and I know that was the point of this system to be slower so there would be “that dagger maker or that cloth crafter person on each server” but it still just felt too slow IMO. At DF launch I went very hard leveling up many characters to cover as much surface area as I could to be able to 5 star all crafts in all professions and I got very close. However since crafting and 5 starring items wasn’t worth the upstart time I put in (most players doing 500g-1k and the occasional 5k after the first month of the xpac) I only see myself trying to get the “lariat/shadowflame patch” patterns of each patch and follow the norm of tip some rando 500g to craft stuff.

Now about the region wide auction house. Simply put if its on the region wide AH, there is practically not a shred of profit to be made. It completely killed gold making potential with enchanting, alchemy, inscription glyphs, and cooking. I think consumables/raw materials being on the region wide AH is a good thing for a majority of the player base but maybe if its not current expansion consumable those items can return to server specific?

Okay ill be blunt, there is nothing I like about the alter of decay. NOTHING. I like the thunderforge for blacksmithing in MOP, I like the moonwells for tailoring in classic, open world stuff like that which is also fast to access in 2024, stuff like gets a player to engage with the world, is cool/interesting and A-okay. Even if I already cleared brackenhide it would take me around 3 min to go from the start of the dungeon to the alter, EVERYTIME. And that was if my character was already parked outside of BH, most of the time my characters were in valdraken so flying over there took even longer! The portable alter of decay had 3 uses, 3! Maybe it would of been tolerable if it had 25 or 50 charges and even then I would say my next sentence regardless. Blizzard please implement something like thunderforgers/moonwells or just make it so my crafters could of unlocked a perma “alter of decay in valdraken” by doing “x,y, and z”.

Thank you for reading and I hope this is helpful to someone haha

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It all depends on what you mean by decent goldmaking. Some think decent as having enough for consumables, some for buying token a month, some for millions per week.

I made some nice profits with enchanting, but only on few recipes, others didnt worth it to cancelscan. I didnt bother with alchemy, competition is just too fierce, profits too thin for engagement needed.
Altar of decay is inconvenient for steady crafting, but that is the beauty of it - less competition, higher margins.
Overall, DF professions are 9/10 for me.

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I’ve made 30x more gold this expansion than I have in any previous expansion, and I’ve had to deal with the ah 1/10th as much. The best part is that it’s largely a time investment now, whereas before it was an investment of gold in order to make more gold. As far as I’m concerned it’s the best expansion for professions by a couple orders of magnitude.

This always baffles me when people say this, because it’s almost always right after they say “I can’t make any gold this expansion.” You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have a world where everyone can do everything instantly at the same time as everyone being able to charge a premium for services or items. The lower the barrier to entry, the more crafters, the less profit. There has to be a barrier to entry to create value, otherwise you end up with professions like they are on classic (specifically sod) where margins are razor thin and enchanters can only work for tips. The upside to the current system is that it’s a time/effort based barrier, whereas before it was a gold based barrier.

Personally, I love the altar of decay, but this is one of the points where I can see the other side, especially since all the other special places aren’t inside instances.

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I made around 400m+ profit from legendries alone in SL (this number is not even close the highest i have seen from profit of leggos in SL either) so if you made 12 billion gold this expansion then all power to you and ill eat my words. I have no problem linking you my TSM as proof.

When comparing SL to DF its not even close in terms of gold making from comparing current expansion vs. current expansion in this case being SL professions to DF professions. Even (gold making)/ (time invested) isn’t even close SL vs DF (for me personally), and i’m not asking for craftable leggos to come back, I would even argue against that even tho i benefitted heavily from it. I was inputting my thoughts that the DF professions is honestly a 9.5/10 as a whole and making the craftable items with hand picked stats is better for the game that its not “heavily profit driven” to make it more accessible and eaiser for the avg player to play the game with what they think the best gear is. That was more of my opinion in saying “I do think this system is pretty bad for gold makers and as a gold maker I am perfectly fine with that”

even compared to my daily AH activities with all other expansions patterns VS DF patterns/work orders again my daily AH activities >>> DF patterns/work orders. This is a good thing cuz if DF patterns/work orders did outweigh 15+ years of patterns i think that is inherently flawed.

and the knowledge point thing, its a personal preference I thought it felt slow to me but you are right making something exclusive does inherently make it have value. The reason why I said the point acquisition should be faster is because in my eyes there isn’t much profit to be made regardless. 7ish months to fill out every node in the profession trees (LW or BS trees as an example) feels to long IMO. But again its personal preference

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The point of that wasn’t to compare each other, but to point out that there are other avenues of goldmaking now by comparing my current self to my past self. I didn’t even come into the expansion trying to use them to make gold. I came in with 1 account and the mindset of “well, blizzard is changing them and they’re important for gearing, so worst case I can just make my own gear”

Shadowlands legendaries were definitely an aberration, similar in scope to garrisons with the amount of damage they did to the economy imo. Given that so much of the protesting comes from people who primarily made gold with the AH, I’d venture to say that the regionwide AH is a larger culprit than any dragonflight specific changes. Outside of shadowlands legendaries, the regionwide AH would have had a pretty similar effect in basically every expansion before. Especially with cross realm trading enabled now, and the ability to spread around BOE gear that isn’t technically region wide.

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