Gathering Professions

The three gathering professions are primary Professions, so each one takes one of your two primary slots. A common choice is to pair a crafting profession with the gathering profession that feeds it, which saves gold on materials, though gathering takes time and may not cover every reagent.

Each one gives a tracking ability that shows nearby nodes or targets on the minimap. Nodes and creatures are color-coded like crafting recipes: red means your skill is too low, orange always gives a skill point, yellow probably does, green probably does not, and gray never does. Since patch 3.1.0 a gathering attempt can no longer fail, and since patch 4.0.1 gathering herbs and ore also gives experience (less as your level rises).

Since patch 8.0.1 every expansion has its own skill bar, and since Dragonflight you can wear profession equipment for extra gathering stats.

Herbalists pick herbs from plant nodes found all over the world; no tool is needed, you just right-click the herb. Find Herbs, learned with Apprentice Herbalism, marks herbs on the minimap. Most herbs go to Alchemy and Inscription, though some are used by other crafts.

• Picking an herb dismounts you, unless you are a druid or use a mount such as the Sky Golem.
• Tauren have the racial trait Cultivation: +5 Herbalism skill and 25% faster gathering.
• Some herbs give a short buff when picked, and herb nodes in some older zones can hold elemental materials such as Volatile Life (Cataclysm).
• Herb bags hold only herbs (and a few related items) but are bigger than normal bags of the same level.

Miners take ore, stone and raw gems from mineral nodes and some minable creatures. Find Minerals marks nodes on the minimap, and Smelting turns ore into metal bars at a forge. Mining feeds the metal-based crafts: Blacksmithing, Engineering and Jewelcrafting. A mining pick has not been required since patch 5.0.4, and since patch 4.0.1 only one player can tap a node at a time.

• Rare spawns: some common veins can appear as a rarer metal instead, for example Tin as Silver, Iron as Gold, Mithril as Truesilver and Saronite as Titanium.
• Rich nodes are bigger and shinier and give more ore. Seams, added in Legion, are long nodes usually found in caves that also give more ore.
• You can also level Mining by smelting ore into bars, but it is slow at some skill ranges.

Skinners take leather, hides and scales from beasts, dragonkin, silithid and some nerubians, though not every creature of these types can be skinned. You need a Skinning Knife, which can be equipped in the Professions tab to save bag space. A corpse must be fully looted first, and you may skin creatures that other players killed.

• Leather can be used right away by Leatherworking; the leather type usually matches the creature's level.
• Hides drop less often and must be cured with Leatherworking before use.
• Scales, for example from dragonkin, are used to make mail armor.
• Leather also appears in some Blacksmithing, Engineering and Tailoring recipes. Worgen have the racial trait Flayer (+5 Skinning skill and more Deftness).

Each expansion has its own skill track. The table shows the ranges listed for each profession; the sources do not give them for the newest expansions.