Cheapest Profession 1-525?

Post by wertads

Excluding gathering professions, what is the cheapest profession to level through the AH from 1-525? Curently have 525 LW and am going to drop skinning, so I would be interested to know about Inscription, Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting. I'm fairly geared so Alchemy seem's a little lackluster to me so i'm going to avoid that. Plus I have a maxed alchemist. I primarily pvp (rogue) and avoid pve other than BH if any of that info helps recommending a prof. Thanks in advance.

Post by 581897

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Post by sugarzombie

i disagree. you may have to stop at certain tiers to make enough gold to buy your way thru the more challenging ones, but i've used prospecting and disenchanting to level jewelcrafting and enchanting for a profit (i.e. leveling cost me nothing but time at AH).

Post by GenXCub

Inscription. You actually make good money. The reason behind it is this:

How many other professions create something at skill level 80 that is worth just as much as something at skill level 475? Glyph of Rejuvenation for druids is learned at 80 and has an average value that is the same as most other trainer-learned glyphs (ones that are considered to be viable/BiS glyphs, not joke glyphs like Feint).

Pick up Herbie and Inscription (Herbalism optional if you have gold). It may be worth your while to scrounge for the silverleaf/peacebloom because you're not making glyphs for the first few dozen skill points, depending on AH prices.

Moonglow ink at skill 35 is important. That will be used every day for a couple of months to learn your minor glyphs, so you can make that stuff until it turns gray if you want. It gets made from Silverleaf/Peacebloom/Earthroot.

From 75-80 make Midnight Ink. Midnight Ink is where you will find the best mat cost to AH return ratio because it makes many of the Minor glyphs in the game. Use this as a model for all of your leveling. Also at 75 use one of your Moonglow Inks to do your Minor Inscription Research so you get your first glyph in your books.

1) Check your profession tab for creating Midnight Ink. You'll notice it requires Dusky Pigment.

2) Hover over Dusky Pigment and you'll see which herbs you need to Mill to get it. Mageroyal, Briarthorn, Swiftthistle, Bruiseweed, Stranglekelp.

Short version is, find the cheapest out of those 5 herbs since they'll all make that ink (you'll do the same thing with every other ink afterwards.. .find the cheapest of the 4/5 herbs).
Long Version - Usually 1 or 2 of the herbs on the list will make more pigments than the others and have a better chance at making the green level rare pigments of that type (it's the ones that take higher herbalism to farm). If you feel like going to each of those herbs' pages here on wowhead, you'll get a good idea of which ones make more pigments, and therefore may be better to buy even if they're a bit more expensive. Some herbs do 2-3 pigments and some do 2-4 along with the bigger chance at rare pigments, so the difference isn't a lot.

3) Now you're at skill level 80. You can make 1 minor glyph (learned at random from your research), 3 prime glyphs, and 3 major glyphs. All of them, while they are orange will grant 3 skill points. Once they become yellow, it's only 1 skill point (so only keep making them if they're profitable)

4) Check your auction house for the prices on the new glyphs you can make that are Orange. Rejuvenation, Backstab, Divine Protection, Frost Nova, Misdirection, Power Word: Shield.

Short version - Make whatever will give you more back than What you paid for the 10-15 herbs to make the 3 midnight inks the glyph required.
Long Version - Find out which of these new glyphs are ones that players actually use. Power Word: Shield is on EVERY PvE disc priest in the game (and some PvP too). The problem with glyphs that very few people use (like Divine Protection) is that they show up in the Auction House as looking very profitable. It may be 60g while PW:S is only 20g, but even if you sold DP at 20g, it wouldn't sell. Low Demand sometimes shows up as a high price, but no one's buying it regardless of price. The other side of it is that high demand glyphs that are trainer-learned can also sell for super cheap. You will have to eat a few of these in your skillups, unfortunately. Just make sure you check every skillup option for profit first before you eat glyphs that don't make money.

5) You'll learn new glyphs every 5 or 10 skill points, so lather, rinse, repeat. I wouldn't bother making any off-hand items, but check the value of the Cards and Decks you can create with the rare pigments you'll be picking up. Most of the time, the rare inks sell better than the cards they make, but hey, it will skill you up to make the cards. Some of the low level BoE items that come from those cards make decent gold and will give you rep with Darkmoon Faire when you create them. the Swords Deck learned at skill 125 makes level 20 blue items. I've seen the AGI neck you can choose there go for good prices.

By the time you get to 300, you'll actually have some gold in the bank that you didn't have when you started. You won't see that with BS, JC, LW, and Tailoring.

tl;dr lol I kinda wrote a guide off the cuff. :)

Post by wertads

Thanks for the reply, I was leaning towards inscription from the start as my druid is all 310 flying and 525 herbing which would help out imensly, good info thanks!

Post by 422399

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Post by wertads

In my opinion the problem with questions like that in the OP is that the answer varies widely depending on the economy of the server at the time you choose to level. What is cheaper on one server, or at one point in time, can be much more expensive on a different server or at a different point in time.

I have enough gold to level any profession to 525, I guess my underlying question was more like, if BS is gonna cost me 20k and inscription 15, i'd rather do inscription to save me the additional 5k, as any non gathering profession will beat out skinning when it comes to min/maxing stats, so i don't really care what proff specifically, long as its better than skinning stat wise

Post by Pwntiff

BS only needs 400 for the extra sockets.

Post by 684318

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Post by GenXCub

I just leveled a JC 1-450 for fairly cheap (4.6k gold all told). Not sure if that is in your price range but I have made a ton of money with it since then. The trick I found was to squeeze as many skill-ups as you can out of the stone statues, they exist for every kind of stone and stone is usually very cheap on the AH. since you make all jewelry from until BC you can DE it all and recoup a few G if you know a friendly enchanter.

other than that, genX is right that insc is the cheapest, I am pretty sure I made money leveling that prof back in wrath, even with all AH purchased herbs. The only bummer is that the desirable glyph recipes are only available from the books of glyph mastery that only drop from wrath mobs. you need 35 of them and drop rate is sufficiently low that farming them is not really feasible.

Yeah, I only did Inscription above since it's the cheapest during the leveling process. Long Term, you make a LOT more off Jewelcrafting.

Post by vincistis

easiest to level would be Tailoring, as you can grind the mats fairly easily if you want.

None of them are cheap to level via AH, as old mats are rarer, therefore expensive, and new mats are just expensive.

No! Not Tailoring. That is definitely not the cheapest to level. It is VERY expensive. I know. I'm a tailor.

Post by Jeremypwnz

Post by Pwntiff

I spent around 2k from ~510 to 525, and I already had half the Embersilk.

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Post by lankybrit

If you believe the guys over at Tarou Wow (and I do), the answer is most definitely Leatherworking.

Cheers.

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Post by Yolandryll

If it helps at all, took me about 2 hours to level my Alchemist 450 - 525 and about 3k gold (my Herbalism took longer to level ) and as Transmutation Master making good money in tandem with alt who has JC and Mining.

Post by Xhaosrenac

Although I'm not entirely sure about this expansion I can give you a general feel of the last one as I powerleveled every profession.

Unless otherwise stated this is 1-450

Inscription- Net Loss: 2k
Jewelcrafting- Net Loss: 7k/6k/5k (leveled it 3 times) (This one cost me another 4k to get to 525)
Engineering- Net Loss: 4k/4k/5k/4k/4k
Leatherworking- Net Loss: 4k
Blacksmithing- Net Loss: 9k (This is a low-end approximation, my server was having extreme inflation at the time)(Cost me another 5k to get to 525)
Alchemy- 3K (this one cost me another 3k to get to 525)
Tailoring- 4k (This one cost me more than I think it normally would have due to inflation)
Enchanting- 11k/7k (This profession was depressing to level on my server.)

Hope that helps somewhat. The fastest levelers are probably Inscription and Alchemy. Although JC wasn't bad one of those times as there was a broker on my server who sold 'Leveling Kits' for it. Engineering and Blacksmithing and Jewelcrafting were by far the biggest pains for me, as they require materials that may not always be buyable.

Cheapest Profession 1-525?

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