Yes. There is a catch-up system.
I started a skinning/leatherworker way late in the game. Whoosh, it was so much faster than the guys that I started with (engineering, alchemy etc). Skinning got maxed in, what felt like, no time at all.
And I had the benefit of knowing where to find the free stuff and I was on top of renown already and could visit the quartermasters and I had a ton of mats. AND, to go on, I leveled from 70 to 72 at the crafters table. Starting off with so many KP was great.
I have never seen the 1kp items for catch up. what is the name of this “item” so I research?
Mining is the Null Sliver.
Enchanting is Shimmering Dust.
Herbalism is Deepgrove Roots.
Enchanting is treated as a gathering profession when it comes to getting knowledge points, so it comes from disenchanting when you’ve finished your other weekly sources the same way it works for mining/skinning/herbalism.
They will only drop once you have exhausted all weekly sources, including your quest and treatise.
Gathering has the easiest catchup. All you have to do is put in time.
Crafting catchup for knowledge points can be very expensive. I haven’t bothered much. One of my crafters is 300 points behind and I know I am never closing that gap.
I never do the treatise on my gatherers and always am able to get catchup items if I need them.
So what kind of catchup “SHOULD” there be?
Getting all “missing” KPs in mail?
Getting 100 patron orders with all mats included in one day?
We didnt have any catchup in DF, they gave one in TWW and still not good enough.
Old xpacs need a pay/ to learn everything.
IMO that is not a quick catch up.
Quick is relative.
On a good day you could get 50 KP per hour. On a bad day maybe 5-10 KP per hour.
But it still allows you to move from zero to effectively finished with Herbalism in a few days if you put in the time Herbing.
wont matter if u have blacksmithing. any of the catch up will be behind spark crafts that want you to invest thousands of gold for 1 knowledge
Yes? And DF had a catch up system too, people just tantrumed that it was grindy. It actually had more than a catch up system, dragon skill shards could be farmed to cap your profession months before the lazier types could and corner the market.
For gathering professions, you can ‘catch up’ in a single day of grinding right now.
For non-gathering, every week you get two types of knowledge point patron orders. The 2 kp ones, which are what you’re supposed to do every week (along with pick up dirt piles for 2-4 kp from those depending on profession), along with the weekly quest and inscription books. But if for some reason you have fallen behind, it starts throwing 1 kp work orders at you, the frequency of which is dependent on how far behind you are.
Absolutely catching up with a non-gathering profession probably isn’t possible, since it tapers off, but functionally you should be able to be very close to cutting edge after a few months of routinely clearing your work orders.
This can be true, but I think people blow that out of proportion. I started a warrior alt toward middle of season 1, and was VERY frugal, I rarely crafted anything that cost more than 1000 gold to craft (about average for most professions aside from enchanting) for 1 kp. I went out and farmed dirt piles every week, and used the inscription booklet. He’s currently fully specced out in armor, which is all I was trying to accomplish, for those sweet sweet free repairs.
feels like Peregrin Took logic
Incorrect. There was no catch-up system in DF. At all. The dragon skill shards were a low chance rng bonus that was available to everyone and was in no way impacted by character progression. Which by definition disqualifies it as a catch-up.
Based on the responses here, it would seem that while there is some marginal additional KP source from patron orders (something DF also didn’t have), their impact is in no way a true catchup system either. There also seems to be disagreement over the gathering skill drops and whether they effectively become uncapped on non-cought up characters.
It is unfortunate that there does not appear to be any form of true and clear KP catchup system once again this expansion.
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There is no disagreement. As Solaria explained, once you’ve done the weekly quest, you can catch up with 1 KP drops when gathering (herbalism, mining, skinning, and enchanting). It gives you 100% of the KP you would have got with weekly tasks throughout the season (other than treatises).
For crafting you catch up at a rate of roughly 2x the rate of those that did things at the start. (It is slightly different between professions) So, if it took 28 weeks for a player to complete a tree starting on the first day of the expansion, it would take a new player 14 weeks to complete that same tree if they started now. The new player would also have the benefit of lower prices for materials.
The further behind you are, the more patron orders you get.
What is it you are unable to make?
They shoulda just made the Treatises sellable on the AH but limit the amount you can use in a given week.
would give Scribes something to make money from.
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That on average requires THOUSANDS of gold just for one order! It’s more like just another “gold sink” for those poor souls who are late to the party and funny thing is, any new or returning players probably won’t have enough spare gold to waste on all this “catch-up” system 
Not to mention if you are behind then you DON’T have enough KPs to unlock and learn all the recipes anyway. Which means, you won’t even be able to do some of those patron orders.
It is a HORRIBLE catch 22 system at it’s core. 
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