Beginner's Profession Guide

Introduction:

As a new or low lvl player, choosing a profession can be hard. When choosing a profession, bear in mind what items you can make. Can your class use them? Engineering and Enchanting fits all classes. Blacksmithing is of little use to any other classes than the Warrior and the paladin. A mage or priest may want to make clothes with tailoring, a druid, Rogue, shaman or hunter may want leatherworking. Gathering professions may get you a lot of money by selling what you gather at the Auction House in Ironforge, Orgrimmar or Gadgetzan, or give you resources to make things with another profession. Bear in mind that the ingredients often sell better than what you make, but you can still make a profit from items you make, equip yourself AND get closer to making those nice high lvl items! (Remember that you only can learn two of these professions!)


Overview

Here is a brief briefing of some tricks for the professions:

Mining:
Mining is a gatherer profession. You mine for ore and gems in veins and deposits. You can smelt the ore and sell it for a nice profit, or you can learn Engineering or Blacksmithing to make things from the ore.


Herbalism:
Basically the same as mining, you gather herbs from herbs growing around. There is a slightly smaller market for herbs at some servers, as they mostly only supply alchemy.


Skinning:
This is also a gatherer profession, but unlike the others, you dont collect from nodes, but beasts you kill! This makes it a lot easier to get large quantities of leather and grind at the same time, and leather is needed in very many professions! This can make you a good profit, or you may learn to be a leatherworker.


Engineering:
This is no big moneymaking profession. Engineering will probably spend more than it gains, but in return, you get some REALLY nice equipment and gadgets, especially at higher lvls. It fits good for all classes, especially those that use guns, as you may make AND upgrade guns! Paladins may also like engineering, as it gives paladins their ONLY way to get ranged attacks! (Exept some lvl 40 spell that only can be used as enemies that would die very soon anyway.) Engineering can make you bombs, guns, cool glasses and gadgets that can revive you, shrink enemies, give underwater breathing, and so on. In addition you can make yourself some cool companions, exploding sheep, squirrels, fighter robots and fighting dragons. Its a good rule to always have mining in addition to Engineering, as you`ll be needing MUCH ore!


Tailoring:
Arguably the easiest profession, as the ingredients mostly drop from humanoids, making you some experience AND fast gathering. They are also pretty cheap at the Auction. Tailoring is making cloth armor and bags, and is, of course, most useful to cloth wearing classes. With this profession, you also make things you actually will use before the higher lvls! You will also need thread and dyes from vendors and leather from skinners. You wont need any other professions to gather the most important ingredients for Tailoring.


Leatherworking:
Like tailoring, an very easy profession. You will need more ingredients to gain a high skill, but they are easier to gather. Leatherworking fits leather-wearing classes like Hunter, Rogue, Druid and Shaman. When getting higher skill, you can choose among three types of leatherworking: Tribal, elemental and dragonscale. Dragonscale ables you to make mail armour, so classes that can use mail at lvl 40 still has use for leatherworking. Choose skinning with leatherworking, as skinning supplies most of what you need for leatherworking! With leatherworking, you can make equipment you will use all from the start! You will need thread and some other stuff from the vendor, as well as some things from other players and monsters.


Enchanting:
This is supposed to be the hardest profession in the games, fit for only the high lvls. I think that it is possible for a low lvl to be a decent enchanter! As an enchanter you will have to destroy items of green quality or higher to get ingredients. This means gaining less money... Wrong! As soon as you get those beastslaying and +damage enchants for weapons around lvl 90 you make big bucks! Choose tailoring beside enchanting to get enough high quality items for free, then disenchant what you make. Then you sell your weapon enchants in some crowded place. I made around 1g per beastslaying enchant at my lvl 14 priest, giving me a good fortune! Some runs in the Deadmines will give you MANY disenchantable items!


Blacksmithing:
This is an profession that will need many different ingredients. I advise choosing mining as your second profession, as mining gets you most of what you need. Dont expect to either need or manage to make money on what you make before you learn the silvered and green iron stuff at lvl 130 or so. You will need some vendor bought equipment, leather and leatherworking goods in addition to what you get from mining. A good way to lvl is to buy ore for all your money at the Auction at buyout, make items off all you bought and sell what you make at the Vendor. Then you use what you gained for more ingredients. Continue until you're satisfied or got very little money. This is not advised before you have some gold in your pocket and lvl 100 or higher in blacksmithing.


Alchemy:
A profession i have little experience with, but i know that potions are VERY handy! Alchemy makes potions. You need herbs gathered with herbalism and vials from the vendor to make potions. Potions can give you health and mana while fighting, especially handy for mages and healers, that may run out of mana in the crucial moment. Non-healers will need the health potions when not backed up by a healer or when the healer has died. As an alchemist, you can also make potions that give you better stats, more damaged, bonuses like faster running and such.


SECONDARY PROFESSIONS:
These are professions that does not count towards your two professions limit, meaning you can safely learn all of them.

Fishing:
This is all about fishing. Equip a fishing rod and trow the line in a body of water. When a fish is hooked, loot the blubber like a corpse! If you're fast enough you will get a fish! At higher lvls you can get
treasures, quests in bottles and such things. A good fisher can even win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza!


Cooking:
A useful professions for non-healers, but in the late-game, food can be good for everyone! Make food over a fire or oven by using things you get from beasts and fishing! Good food can even give spirit and stamina increases! Food replenishes healt, and sometimes mana.

First-Aid:
Good for all classes in the late-game, but in the beginning, its best for non-healers. It uses mostly the same ingredients as tailoring. (Linen, Wool, Silk, Mageweave, and so on.) Bandages heal you for an amount of health.
Bandages can be used in combat and at other players, but after being bandaged, you`ll have to wait for a short duration until the next time.
Bandages can also cure poisoning.


Useful Addons:

Gatherer: Notes where you have found herbs and veins. Useful for more efficient gathering. You can search for the nearest resources. Gatherer also notes where you find chests.

GathererShare: Gives you info from where other Gatherer users have found herbs, veins and chests.

Mapnotes: Notes at your world map where you have found veins, herbs and treasures. Very handy! Easier than Gatherer, i use both.
You can also note your own notes at the map, vedors, drops, NPCs and such.

Enchantrix: If you are an enchanter, get this! It tells what things will disenchant into when you move your mouse pointer over the item.
I use this a lot!

All these are found at CurseGaming.com

Have fun playing WoW!