Professions in the 80s, Knowledge in the hundreds. Feel like I'm wasting my time. =(

Gameplay Professions
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Sorry in advance for the rant.

I’ve loved professions forever. Happily trekking to Uldaman in Vanilla to visit the Enchanting Trainer. Dutifully doing my Jewelcrafting dailies in Wrath, Cataclysm and beyond to learn every single gem cut…even though I knew I’d never actually use them. Grinding out reputation and treasures to learn more and more patterns, to be the best crafter I could be. Then doing it all over again on alt after alt to fully master every profession through skill and recipes. Not many people understood why I found this fun, or why I even cared about the “________ Master of All” achievements, etc. I find collecting things and being able to craft things for guildies and alts really fun.

Then comes Dragonflight professions. Before release I watched so many videos, read so many guides, had so many notebooks full of notes and plans and and and. Obviously, I was hyped. While there are still a LOT of things about the profession system I’d change…I still find it fun and engaging for the most part.

EXCEPT leveling it up.

I feel like I’m wasting my time.

I have spent so much time over the months dutifully making sure to earn all of my Profession Knowledge each week, on all 5 of my crafter alts, to be the best crafter I can be. I do my weekly quests. I do my work orders (usually sent from my own alts, but that’s another issue for another thread). I gather dirt and treasures, I kill specific mobs, and now I even summon the profession rares on the Forbidden Reach. All to earn my Knowledge every week. I even made sure to max out my rep with the Artisan’s Consortium before buying patterns and knowledge became unlocked account wide, so I could get that extra Mettle and Knowledge. I still make sure to farm renown with the appropriate factions to earn Knowledge and recipes from them, since of course those aren’t unlocked account wide yet.

All of this, so I can be the best crafter I can be. So I have the knowledge and recipes to make the best gear and profession equipment that can be made.

And yet I’m still stuck in the 80s in most of my professions.

After I do all of my weekly profession chores, I sit in trade and beg people to let me make them things. Offering to pay for ALL non-soulbound materials and even pay more gold on top of that for the use of someone’s Sparks and Chaos. It’s not like I’m offering to make crappy gear, either, since I have enough knowledge to add Infusions and Embellishments to just about everything across all the professions.

At this point, I think the only option is to level up more alts just to get the 5 free Sparks in Valdrakken at level 60, and craft them level 70 gear that they can’t even use yet just to get some skill points.

It just feels so awful, you know? To put in all of this time and effort and not have anything to show for it, on top of needing to stay in town begging in Trade Chat when I’d rather be out actually playing the game or something. I mean heck, I can’t even advertise that I’m paying folks to let me craft things for them while I’m out farming my weekly knowledge, because the only way to do that is to stay in town, standing around the tables.

Again, sorry for the rant, I’m just so frustrated!

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It doesn’t seem like you internalized those, or did any post launch research. Pretty much every profession except LW has a spammable way to get to 100. Enchanting is the only spammable that’s somewhat expensive

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I spend less then 1 night farming a weekly profession drops (not counting gathering stuff) and I wouldn’t bother with the gathering, except for the mettle. And this is while nabbing all the gold WQs which is going to pay better than some customers anyways.

After that, it easy to sit in town and wait for someone to post looking for the initial craft (that’s where the skill ups are) at which point I promise them it WILL be max rank for a price (and then I kept hitting the recraft button with my own mats until my promise was kept) and hope I made gold instead of lose gold.

If you got the skill ups and you have the right trees maxed, time to put your foot out there.

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I completely agree with you. I’m not afraid of farming or spending time doing things, but the profession system in Dragonflight is horrible and feels mostly punishing, not rewarding. I just want to get to 100 in each profession, but I’m stuck on several professions because you basically have to use 40 Sparks of Ingenuity, but I only have about 6 on each of my alts.

For me, the biggest problem is the crafting orders system, which apparently we are supposed to be using to level our professions. This expansion has been out months and guess how many crafting orders I have fulfilled thus far? That’s right, EXACTLY ZERO. 95% of the time there are zero orders available, and when I actually see one up, it requires the soulbound Spark of Ingenuity. The only way for me to max some of these professions would be to level 4-8 alts for each of them. Absolutely insane.

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I agree with nearly everything the OP posted. I’ve enjoyed professions for a long time, and in general I really like the revamp. EXCEPT for the fact that the only way to get to 100 skill points is to craft at least 10 items which require Sparks of Ingenuity. That was fairly easy for my Jewelcrafter by doing public orders, but on my Scribe I’m still at 97 skill points. And even on my JC, I really felt bad for the poor sap who included a 1000 gold tip and I made him a rank 3 item.

TL;DR - we really need some recipes that allow a crafter to skill up to 100 without relying solely on public orders.

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Every gear crafting profession except LW has a spammable no spark or mettle required recipe that can get you to 100

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I do agree that professions as an expansion feature has failed. The only success stories that I’ve read have been on high pop servers and our solution to the problem should not be “transfer, dude”.

The design has us earning knowledge points by crafting orders; players want our stuff that we can make. We earn that recipe at, say, 50 and you get points for making it but no one wants it. Even in the gold-making forums I read that the solution for them was spamming refresh on the crafting orders to be first.

On the other hand, the economy is pretty good – we don’t have players soaking us for needed goods because of the competition. There are no great and easy ways to make gold but we are not being drained either.

Knowing immediately that the design for professions was meant to take a long time to finish up was something that I liked, but it has been five months-ish since launch and there has been no real payoff for the time played.

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Condescension aside, could you please share with the rest of the class then? The profession streamers/youtubers that I watch all still don’t have any tips or guides for most professions past the 60s-70s other than “craft a lot of stuff via work orders”. Even wowhead guides and wow-professions guides pretty much say “good luck” after that too.

For example, Engineering has 17 crafts total that give any skill at all above 75. All but three of those require 225-300 Mettle or a Spark/Chaos. Of those three, two require you to specialize into bombs and are on a 20-hour cooldown per craft, and the third is for the Khaz’gorite Fisherfriend. It goes yellow at 90 and green at 95, but for only 1.5-2k per pop I guess I could spam and give those away for free to spam some skill.

Same for Inscription, but even worse. There’s only one pattern post 75 skill that doesn’t need Mettle or Sparks: the Chef’s Splendid Rolling Pin. Needing 12 Runed Writhebark and some ore it’s not nearly as cheap as the Fisherfriend, nor nearly as in-demand. But sure, it only goes green at 95 too, so I could spam those I suppose and just vendor them.

Tailoring isn’t as bad as those, since it’s one non-gray recipe past 75 is the Fishing Hat which is super cheap to make, so I guess not having that one at 100 yet is on me. My bad.

And then Leatherworking. Like, as you said, doesn’t have any option that doesn’t need hundreds of mettle or a spark or two.

So yeah, I’m not sure why you felt the need to attack me for “not internalizing” any of the information, but regardless of that. How is any of the above contrary to anything I said in my original post? I have knowledge, I have rep, I have patterns, and still my only option is to beg for sparks or spam craft green difficulty recipes costing me thousands of gold each (for some professions, not all) just to vendor or destroy them?

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Yes :slight_smile: Two things though, first I never said they would all be cheap, and 2nd, spec shouldn’t matter since you have a lot of knowledge.

Blacksmithing has the master’s hammer

Engineering has the fisherfriend

Inscription has the rolling pin

JC has that glassware thing, and will have epic gems in a few weeks when chaos is removed

Tailoring has the hat

Enchanting has the weapon enchants and illusions

I guess alchemy is kinda in the same boat as LW, but experimentations are something you’ll want to do anyway so over a long enough time-scale it’s good enough.

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Ah, so just what I described above. :dracthyr_crylaugh: At least there isn’t some super secret method I was missing LOL.

So it seems my point still stands. Despite all of the time and effort I’ve put into professions – leveling them up to near-max, farming knowledge for recipes and all the other bonuses, farming renown on every alt for even more recipes and knowledge – I’m still at the mercy of spamming trade and begging other players to let me pay for their sparks and/or all materials just to get skillpoints…or else spend a few thousand gold per craft to make soulbound items I don’t need, that go green at 95 of 100 skill, and vendor for a pittance.

Oh, and I spent some time tonight advertising in trade on my Engineer. Making goggles and bracers with infusions and all the bells and whistles, all my mats except soulbound ones, all profession tools at max rank also paying for all mats if they provide their own mettle, and 100% FREE fisherfriends to anyone who sends me an order for one just for skillups. I got one person who sent me an order for a fisherfriend without so much as a whisper – before OR after – and crickets other than that.

How is this not a waste of time?

Again, I LOVE crafting. I LOVE farming for recipes and learning everything I can. I have for years. But how is this good gameplay? No matter how much time and effort you put in, you have to rely on winning the RNG lottery to find someone that needs the craft you have at the exact time you happen to be in town at the same time, or you stand at the crafting table and spam refresh and hope you get something before another crafter does. Either that, or literally throw gold and mats in the trash.

For goodness sake, just let me craft my own recipes without needing Sparks and this problem goes away instantly. Heck, it would give crafters a nice perk and incentive to unlock as many recipes as possible too. Just a random idea, but let us add an optional reagent in place of a Spark that would make the item a Cosmetic instead of a functional piece of gear and viola! Everyone still gets to make their items like normal, earn their First Craft bonuses, potentially gain skill points, and also get an appearance out of it for their trouble.

Heck, do that and I bet all profession tables would be as busy as the Jewelcrafting ones were right after the Unstable Elementium and Onyx Annulets came out.

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All my professions are maxed (I have them all on alts).

Most of the usual ways are mentioned here though not necessarily all the easiest / cheapest ways. And I might have missed some mentioning doing the darkmoon faire profession quests every month is essential for some of the more expensive professions.

For engineering - instead of fisherfriend (which I have and can be an expensive recipe) I used the suspiciously ticking crate (it needs 30 skill points in short fuse (under explosives)) - it has a daily cooldown to craft but gives skill to 100.

The only difficult one was lw - but fortunately my main is a lw and I have 2 alts who use lw so was able to level with them.

I used the cheapest way to get to the low 90s and if there was no cheap way to go further finished off using the darkmoon faire.

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Oh no, you have to spend gold to max professions. What an unprecedented issue.

Edit: just did the math on the leather engi bracers, and even with cheaper capacitors it’s 2200g which is more than the fisherfriend, so good luck with that.

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With the expense of how much gold?!! I understand exactly what he/she is trying to say. It didn’t take so much work and therefore taking all the fun out of leveling professions. And then not only once you finally level it up, guess what that in itself doesn’t even matter, because most of the valuable patterns necessary take your mettle for insights, ughhhh?!! I hate the system, i hope they bring back to what it once was, where making gold was more viable.

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I’ve made vastly more gold in DF than I have in any other expansion because the capital costs are so much lower and create an almost non-existent barrier of entry (except for Lariat/Hourglass). It now largely just takes time/effort/knowledge to make gold, instead of needing to have a lot of gold to make gold, which evens the playing field immensely.

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I personally think the main barrier is that you need to use an alternative system to level your professions like the order system. If you could as before just buy all the materials, you wanted and just spammed to max level a good portion of the problem would go away. But requiring that you spec a certain way to open patterns or having to work on reputation on up to 8 characters to max out all 8 professions with patterns locked behind reputation doesn’t help if you play the game just to craft and help other people out, not for money but just to be helpful.

Personally, I am about even with my professions as far as gold spent. A lot of my crafters have spent a lot of hours farming materials and reputation to unlock stuff. I’ve even started to go back and unlock older expansion reputation on 7 characters to get all the patterns even though they are worth nothing anymore.

Account wide reputation would be nice where you do the campaign / story on one character and other characters would get reward but no reputation. Would severely cut back on grinding the same content over and over and over again. I memorize everything on the 1st pass which makes each attempt after faster but completely mind-numbing boring.

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Unless you’re LW, you don’t.

You can

Professions have always required reputation patterns, and the only profession that “requires” getting rep on an alt is Tailoring, and dragonscale rep is super easy to do.

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You are making this sound a lot easier and more simplistic than it really is.

Leatherworking, as you acknowledge, requires Sparks of Ingenuity, so that alone is a massive barrier. Crafting orders are generally non-existent, so you could make about 6 alts I suppose, which is insane to do, just to level one profession.

Engineering, you can do the bomb boxes (suspiciously ticking/silent crates), but they have 20 hour cooldowns, so I have no clue how you can spam that, as you seem to think you can.

Alchemy isn’t too bad, you can do the potion/phial experiments, but you often get locked to a 4 hour cooldown when doing this. Thus, it is not spammable.

Inscription, you can do the rolling pin, but you are presented with the barrier of needing Artisan’s Consortium to get the recipe. This alone, takes many weeks of doing quests. Additionally, on my server, it costs almost 3,000 gold for the reagents, and you need to craft how many, 50-60? That’s 150,000 gold.

Blacksmithing you can do the Master’s Hammer, but it costs me about 1000 gold per craft, so that’s another 50k+ investment. I’m not sure how many crafts it would take, so that’s an estimate, but clearly 10’s of thousands of gold.

Tailoring wasn’t bad, as I just made the Master’s Wildercloth Fishing Cap. I don’t know how many thousands of gold it cost, but overall not nearly as bad as many of the other professions.

Enchanting I forget exactly, but you basically have to do Illusions or weapon enchants. 10’s of thousands of gold, but at least it is spammable.

Jewelcrafting, I haven’t done yet, but there is the Jeweled Dragon’s Heart now. This has a 1 day cooldown, so it certainly is not spammable.

Of the 8 crafting professions, at least 4 are not spammable. Several require tens if not hundreds of thousands of gold to level. And lastly, many of the professions require a certain amount of profession knowledge in a very specific specialization. This would take many hours/weeks of playing/farming to get to. The crafting order system is just a complete joke, as I still have done exactly zero for others so far. I do them for myself on alts so I can do the profession quests, which is quite inane. Mailing reagents from my alt to my main, so they can put in a request, that I then accept on my alt, and then send back to my main. And each craft has to be individually requests/completed, which requires multiple clicks in different places. Anyway, that’s going a bit off track.

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You have it much easier to level now than it was at first.
First, prices of mats are 4x lower than it was in january, so leveling of last 30 points for inscription with rolling pin cost only 100k gold, while it was almost 400k gold back then.
Besides, Artisan consortium rep is account wide and back then you had to grind Artisan rep for every alt which is huge.
Enchanting- it is nowhere near expensive as before and you can at least sell enchants and get some gold back.
Yes, it is rather simplistic and cheaper than how it used to be few months ago, but true, it is not afk friendly to just spam to max level.

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I actually didn’t know that the Artisan’s Consortium reputation only needed to be done on one character, so that helps a little bit. We can also buy profession knowledge with Artisan’s Mettle, which also speeds up some of the process. Those are two nice additions. It doesn’t help the massive gold cost, but at least it’s something.

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It seems you have a couple misunderstandings on professions.

Mats are regionwide, you will pay the exact same price for a writhebark as every single other player in NA.

That’s kind of the whole point of the profession revamp. To give players ways to differentiate themselves from other crafters. If you could get all 700 knowledge in 1 week, then it’s just functionally the same as crafting before where everyone is the same and there are no niches to fill.

I’ll give you 1 1/2. Engineering is 100% definitely spammable with the fisherfriend recipe. Alchemy is close enough with the liquid courage.

You do not need to have the materials on the character that puts in the order. If your alt has the mats, they do not need to mail them to your main for the order.