How professions work
Professions are trade skills that you learn and level up to gather, make or improve items. You train them with profession trainers for a small fee and push them further with special recipes. Any character can learn any profession, whatever its faction, race or class, although some racial traits give a bonus to one.
Crafting professions start with a few simple recipes that raise your skill, and better recipes open as you advance. Gathering professions need no recipes: you level them just by harvesting nodes in the world.
Primary professions
A character can have at most two primary professions, and none is required. You can drop one to learn another, but you lose its recipes and skill and must start from zero if you take it again. Profession specializations you earned are kept and come back if you relearn it.
| profession | Type | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Alchemy | Crafting | Potions, elixirs, flasks and oils; high-level alchemists can transmute. |
| Blacksmithing | Crafting | Melee weapons, mail and plate armor, and stones that briefly boost weapons. |
| Enchanting | Service, crafting | Enchants gear using materials from disenchanted magic items; also weapon oils. |
| Engineering | Crafting | Trinkets, guns, goggles, explosives and mechanical pets. |
| Herbalism | Gathering | Picks herbs from nodes and from some creatures; herbs show on the minimap. |
| Inscription | Service, crafting | Glyphs, scrolls, staves and vellums; Milling turns herbs into pigments. |
| Jewelcrafting | Crafting | Cuts gems for gear; Prospecting sifts ore for raw gems. |
| Leatherworking | Crafting | Leather and mail armor, armor kits, large bags, drums and riding crops. |
| Mining | Gathering | Mines ore, stone and gems; includes Smelting to make metal bars at a forge. |
| Skinning | Gathering | Takes hides, leather and scales from certain creatures. |
| Tailoring | Crafting | Cloth armor, bags, flying carpets, magic threads and bandages. |
Each crafting profession has its own page, for example Alchemy and Inscription. The three gathering skills are covered in Gathering Professions.
Secondary professions
Every character can learn the secondary professions next to its two primary ones. There is no limit on how many you have, so they cannot be unlearned.
- Cooking: turns ingredients into food that restores health and mana and gives short buffs; also lets you make campfires.
- Fishing: catch anything from grey junk to epic treasures and even mounts. Every catch raises the skill.
- Archaeology: dig up and rebuild artifacts from Azeroth and beyond with the Survey ability.
Good profession pairs
Players often pair a crafting profession with the gathering one that supplies its materials, so they rely less on the Auction House. If you do not want to craft, two gathering professions are a way to earn gold while you play.
| Crafting profession | Usual partner |
|---|---|
| Alchemy | Herbalism |
| Blacksmithing | Mining |
| Engineering | Mining |
| Jewelcrafting | Mining |
| Inscription | Herbalism |
| Leatherworking | Skinning |
| Enchanting | Tailoring |
Skill levels by expansion
Since Battle for Azeroth every expansion has its own skill bar, so you do not need to grind old content before the current one. The old ranks such as Apprentice and Artisan are grouped under Classic.
| Skill tier | Minimum level | Max skill |
|---|---|---|
| Classic | — | 300 |
| Outland | 10 | 75 |
| Northrend | 10 | 75 |
| Pandaria | 10 | 75 |
| Draenor | 10 | 100 |
| Battle for Azeroth | 10 | 175 |
| Shadowlands | 10 | 150 |
| Dragon Isles | 10 | 150 |
| Khaz Algar | 68 | 100 |
| Midnight | 80 | 100 |
Specializations, tools and crafting orders
- Specializations: once your skill is high enough, spend Knowledge points from many activities to permanently improve parts of your profession.
- Profession equipment (since Dragonflight): most professions have one tool slot and two accessory slots that add crafting or gathering stats.
- Crafting Orders (since Dragonflight, patch 10.0.2): ask other players to craft almost any recipe through an Auction House-style window. Orders can be public, guild-only or personal, can include optional reagents, and pay the crafter a commission.
- Place orders with the clerk NPC in Valdrakken, Dornogal or Silvermoon City; crafters fill them at their profession's crafting station.
Sources
Game pictures: © Blizzard Entertainment · worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com
