Month: February 2026

I’ve been rereading some of my old posts, from before The War Within launched. Man, I was so excited. I’m looking forward to Midnight, but I’m not as excited as I was for TWW. Gosh, I wonder if that has anything to do with the Great Blizzard Bank Heist? Nahhhhhhhhhh… 😂

That said, I have always done better with that whole “preparation” thing if I forced myself to write stuff down or blog about it. Like there were several times in the past where I would wonder about X or Y and would pose that as a question to myself in a blog post and then test it out or look it up. And so that’s sort of where we’re at today.

Professions

All right. Looking back at my prep for The War Within, I was, shall we say, a little overzealous and perhaps more than a little ambitious.

This time, it’s a little less so. I think.

Maybe.

First of all, even though I rolled a goblin shaman for TWW (for the discounts), I hardly touched that character. She’s still 73. So whatever. I’m not dealing with her. So the Baby Shaman is out.

This brings me down to 10 characters. This is still a Lot, but I don’t plan to level most of them until way later. The primary reason I have them is because I want all the professions, and I’ll explain why in a bit.

I do, in fact, have them all covered, Herbalism and Mining (x4), Alchemy (x3), Inscription (x2), then Skinning, Leatherworking, Jewelcrafting, Tailoring, Enchanting and Engineering (all x1). Plus Kurn regularly levels up Cooking and Fishing. My shaman can also fish since he’s generally out in the world, collecting All the Herbs and Ores, so why not also fish as needed?

So why the focus on professions? Well, last time around, it was because of Profession Accessories and Profession Equipment. So that’s still a valid reason. With all my toons, I can make virtually any base-level equipment or accessory for any other profession. Here’s a spreadsheet showing what can make what for whom.

(The spreadsheet did not take an inconsequential amount of time. Eesh. But I know I’ll be referring to it come Thursday night!)

The other reason, of course, is Decor.

Listen, I’m not a huge Housing person. It’s fine. I just don’t care that much. It’s almost like pet battling — I don’t participate, but I sure as heck will use other people’s interest in it to make gold. The difference is I have a house and I have decorated a tiny bit, but I don’t ever pet battle or level pets or any of that. I will farm a rare pet, but I don’t do anything else.

Anyway, I’m doing quite a bit more with regards to Decor.

Many of my characters have had their professions for years. Decades, even. Madrana has never dropped Alchemy (from her day 1 in Vanilla) and has never dropped Jewelcrafting (from the first day of Burning Crusade — I spent wayyyyyyyy too long suffering in Exodar to ever drop it). Kurn is the same with Leatherworking, but Skinning has been a yo-yo affair with mining, or it used to be. I think it was when you could level via picking herbs and mining (Cataclysm?) that I got my shaman going with Herbalism and Mining and endeavoured to keep Kurn a Skinner. Anyway, despite some of that longevity on some of my older characters, some of my characters have either new professions or only have professions for a specific expansion or two.

Let’s look at my warlock. My warlock has Classic through War Within Engineering (barring Shadowlands, which I did not play). This is because, when I boosted him, you still had to go through all the hundreds of levels from 1 in Classic up through whatever in other expansions. You could do it through just using Ghost Iron Ore, but I was also levelling Blacksmithing on him. So it was worth it to farm the old school mats. Which meant a lot of farming.

But I don’t like playing a warlock very much, so I dropped Blacksmithing and picked up Mining on him, so I can level by gathering without doing too much incinerating or whatever I’m supposed to be doing.

As a result, my grandbaby paladin (so not Madrana, not the paladin on Skywall, but the one I rolled in Pandaria remix) has Mining and Blacksmithing. But he’s a new character. Well, new-ish.

So he doesn’t have Classic Blacksmithing. Or Outland. Northrend. Etc. Or he didn’t. He does now. (And I’m working through Battle for Azeroth now, while still doing secrets of Blacksmithing for Legion…?)

Why on earth am I levelling Blacksmithing? For Decor. Every single main profession has at least a couple of Decor items they can craft in each expansion. Vanilla, BC, Wrath, Cata, etc, etc, etc.

But because this character did not get to level Blacksmithing outside of Dragonflight and TWW, I’m having to go back, because I want the ability to craft virtually every piece of craftable Decor. (I put my foot down at levelling all my professions in Shadowlands. At least for now.)

The rush on Decor in this pre-patch period has astonished me. Not only have so many people pre-purchased the expansion, but they are dropping serious amounts of gold on Decor.

In the last two weeks, I’ve made almost 260k gold. Some of that is old-school mats (I’ll get to those in a sec!), but a lot of it is just simple crafts from various expansions. I sold some Suramar Fences today. I sold something from Classic Blacksmithing the other day. Every single day, I sell something. Here’s what I’ve been selling.

So that is almost 260k in 14 days and while I do check my auctions a couple times a day, they generally just go, eventually. (You will see some old school stuff in there. Like I said, we’ll talk about that in a sec.)

Ultimately, my goals are as follows:

• level Blacksmithing (and Inscription) to the point where I can get Decor recipes for those two in the vast majority of WoW expansions prior to early access (BS is almost done, working harder on Inscription)
• be able to craft profession equipment and accessories fast for me, my alts and, of course, Ye Olde Auction House
• make money in the expansion with profession equipment/accessories and Decor

Old School Stuff: Money & Nostalgia

Folks.

Levelling crafting professions in Burning Crusade is, no shit, my hand to God, the fucking worst. I remember it not being great, but oh my god, trying to power-level Blacksmithing through Burning Crusade content nearly caused me to throw my computer out the window.

There’s just like a sort of dead zone in the middle of it where nothing was orange to me and I didn’t have the rep (THE REP!) to buy certain recipes that would get me through it. I ended up running MAGISTER’S TERRACE multiple times to try to get a drop from Kael! It was awful.

The ignonimy of not having the rep was insulting. INSULTING. Madrana is so far into Exalted with all of those factions, any of them would fall over themselves trying to give her the recipes.

Eventually I ended up getting Friendly with the Scryers and bought a limited-number recipe in Zangarmarsh and it worked out, but…

… I had to sit there on Elemental Plateau and farm Motes of Fire.

Friends, I have spent a lot of time in my life on Elemental Plateau, farming Motes of Fire, Motes of Air, fishing up Motes of Water, but holy crap, when Primal Fire is 700-800g EACH, you gotta do what you gotta do. (Fun fact: transmuting Air to Fire is a possibility, but it still has a once per day cooldown! The expansion came out over 19 years ago and that transmute still has a cooldown!?)

I made it out of Burning Crusade content on the grandbaby paladin in the end, swearing I never want to set foot there again, although I need to do so for my scribe, now.

But as if that weren’t bad enough, after Burning Crusade comes Wrath!

Folks, Cobalt deposits feel like they hardly exist. At all. I’d go farming for an hour and come back with like, 30 Cobalt. 30! And I’m flying around the starting zones and Zul’Drak and and and nothing. I can only assume other people have the same bright idea I do.

I finally, finally managed to get out of Wrath and things were way better for Cata and Pandaria.

The Zandalari Warbringers and Zandalari Warscouts are godsends for all kinds of materials from that era. They’re all one-shottable by me in my crappy gear and all I do is turn on RareScanner and it makes the noise and there we go, I kill the things. Can’t complain about those mobs at all. It’s fun to camp them or fly around from spawn to spawn and see if I can kill multiples in a row.

Draenor, OTOH, is a piece of shit. Actually, so is Legion. But Draenor requires me to build a whole other garrison and then have secrets of blacksmithing to do this nonsense to buy the stuff. That’s a major pain. (I am not looking forward to Inscription here.)

But Legion! LEGION! Just to get to level 80 Blacksmithing, I had to learn Demonsteel! And what a pain in the ass that was! I even had to do a dungeon I’d literally never done before! Super rude. And of course, when I’m one point away from 80 (which is when I can learn the Decor patterns), I had to go through thirty crafts of Demonsteel Bars. Do you know what that is? That’s 30 Leystone Ore and 60 Felslate Ore!

Anyway, while it was a lot easier to get from point A to point B without crafting 10834 greens without getting a single skill point, it was gated in other ways. I don’t mind the talents for Dragonflight, The War Within and Midnight. That’s an interesting way to gate things off. But oh man, it’s been a rough few days for my poor grandbaby paladin.

All of that said, go farm Motes of Fire in Burning Crusade content. They are worth a fortune right now.

Also, it’s very helpful to have to be in older zones because you can collect a crapton of lumber. Do it on a druid if you can. Flight form FTW.

In terms of nostalgia, it was interesting. I know Nagrand like the back of my hand. I know most of Outlands really well. Same with Wrath content. (I did spend a bit of my mining time just keeping an eye out for a certain proto-drake.) But as I moved into Draenor and Legion, I moved from rock-solid knowledge of things to wondering wtf was going on. How did I get a garrison? Where are my trainers? What FREAKING PORTAL do I even take out of Stormwind?!

And then I’d come across a spot where I remember farming for leather, or doing laps for herbs and ore. I’d remember chasing that damn moose all over the place. I’d smile as I remembered collecting large groups of basilisks and AOEing them down on my hunter and then skinning them all.

It’s been an interesting, if unintended, trip down memory lane over the last week or so.

Oh.

And this is possibly the most hilarious thing of them all. While I was levelling the grandbaby pally’s Classic Blacksmithing (it was a slog, but it wasn’t too bad), I found myself needing to learn how to smelt Dark Iron Ore. And in order to smelt one bar, you need eight ore. So I went to BRD, I went to Searing Gorge, and I went to Molten Core.

Now, I didn’t want to kill any bosses in MC so I could reset the instance.

Got past Lucifron and Magmadar (and got some ore from behind the doggy), crept past Gehennas and Garr and into Geddon’s chamber. Geddon has quite the quick patrol, so I mined some ore here, ran over there, and then made the mistake of hitting Blade of Justice which leaves a Consecration on the ground behind it. I don’t even know what talent does that, but I was like, okay, yeah, I should have 8 seconds before Geddon comes up this hill in his patrol.

Friends, does this Consecration last the 8 seconds I’m used to?

No.

It burns, BURNS, with righteousness, for like 13 seconds.

Geddon got the last tick of it and I was trying to bubble/hearth, but I have some damn thing that reflects damage on me and Geddon died.

I sighed and rolled my eyes and said, out loud to myself, hah, watch him drop the bindings.

AND THEN HE DID.

(Garr did not, when I went back to kill him.)

I have spent enough time in Molten Core in my life that I have seen a lot of shit happen. I’ve seen a warrior challenging shout all the Rag adds and fall through the floor, killing himself and the adds. I’ve seen what’s out the window. Like I know the instance, okay?

I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever seen either of the bindings drop.

Wild. Just wild. This game, dumb as it sometimes, never fails to amaze me. Whether it’s ludicrous prices on Primal Fires, dead spots in levelling professions, the worst-ever RNG, the most random of drops, I am always legitimately amazed by this game on a regular basis.

What are your plans for Midnight? Or what’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen in the game? Let me know down below.