Profession Updates after Early Access

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to my blog, where I previously said a whole bunch of things were “Future!Kurn’s” problem, and I am now regretting it… 😅

Okay, so let’s talk about The War Within, in general, and then, more specifically, professions.

The War Within

There is just so much to do. I want to clone myself — not my toons, but my actual, physical self, because there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do.

That said, I did take the time afforded me in early access and I dinged 80 on Kurn at some point on Saturday.

Oh, apparently at 8:14pm ET. 😂

I decided to prioritize getting Kurn to 80 because that would allow me to skip the intro on other characters. By Saturday, I’d already brought over my shaman (double gatherer), and like, look, it’s a great intro, loving the story overall, but I did not need to do it, uh, 11 times on 11 separate toons. So I did it once on Kurn and then on the shammy and then I pushed to get Kurn to 80 and all that jazz so I could enable the skips.

That said, I feel like I mostly took my time in levelling? I did a lot of sidequests in a bunch of places and so was very nearly 80 when I finished the campaign. I felt as though the Isle of Dorn and the Ringing Deeps (which, btw, has been SUCH a lagfest pretty consistently that I can hardly stand to be in the zone) were very slow — in a good way. I got to explore places, pick up side quests, skin things, all that jazz. And then as soon as I got to Hallowfall it felt like it was just GO GO GO GO. And I’m not complaining about it, either. It was really, really cool. I was exhausted afterwards, but it was totally worth it.

As to Azj-Kahet, I really haven’t done a lot there apart from the alliance thing and all that jazz. Literally just the campaign stuff, so there’s a lot left for me to explore.

I have done exactly one delve, the Earthcrawl Mine, which I’d done once on Beta, and now once on live. I want to do more delves, but there’s so much to do! So delves can wait a bit.

I really like the story, too. Do I occasionally want to smack Anduin? Yes, but we have to remember (or those of us who didn’t play Shadowlands have to understand) that he’s been through some severe trauma. So it’s okay. As we have to give ourselves grace when we’re going through a difficult time, we have to give others grace. So Anduin gets a pass from me for now.

I’m really enjoying the story. I want to unlock the Earthen (there are a number of quests to do that which I have yet to do) and learn more about them. I’m looking forward to seeing what our involvement in Azj-Kahet will mean. It’s very promising from a story point of view, IMHO.

Professions and Such

I have to admit, I did not expect the profession treasures to be so numerous and so easily found. There are two for each profession in each zone and each treasure gives you 3 points in that profession. So that’s 24 points alone from treasures. As a result of this, if we look back at my blog post and see that when it comes to going past 40 points in Leatherworking, “that’s a problem for Future!Kurn”. Well, the future is now and I still don’t really know what to pick. 😅

Leatherworking

I did put 10 into Flawless Fortes and then 30 into Epic Ensembles… and then I started putting points into Learned Leatherworker. I’m not at 5 points there yet, so I’m not 100% sure if I’ll go into the resourcefulness, multicraft or concentration specs. If I’ll be crafting a lot of reagents and intermediate-type crafts, multicraft seems like the place to go, otherwise resourcefulness to save mats, right? Concentration is tempting at this stage in the expansion because I have not been careful on it. It’s hard when you’re at a rank 4 thing and you can make it a 5, you know? That’s several thousand gold difference in terms of profession equipment at this early stage.

Basically, Epic Ensembles has been a good choice for me and with some rank 2 mats, I can guarantee a rank 5. I’ll call that a win, especially because as my own equipment gets better, I’ll be able to do it with rank 1 mats.

Skinning

Tanning is going well. I decided to go to 20 in Tanning and then start putting points into the specific leathers. Waiting an hour between charges of Sharpen Your Knife was just annoying. Also, they just hotfixed (on Monday) the fact that LWs could waste their SYK skin action on “trivial creatures”, so that’s good. I’ve wasted three of those cooldowns on “trivial creatures” who, honestly, didn’t seem all that trivial to me!

Blacksmithing

Good lord, everything takes a bloody Core Alloy! Thankfully, they’re not that hard to make and you can also find them in chests and stuff like that. But good lord, I go through Bismuth awfully quick.

I’ve hit level 50-something as a blacksmith and I’ve put in 10 into Means of Production, then 10 into Tools of the Trade and I’ve just got a couple points in Trade Tools right now. What I really need to do is go treasure hunting on all my toons for all their professions. Still, I can reliably make rank 3 things with crappy mats. Also, are Null Stones hard to find OR WHAT? I’ve picked a ton of Null Lotus, and some imperfect null stones, but not nearly as many as the herbs. And things in BS require Null Stones. So rude. Anyway, getting there, making money, it’s all good.

Engineering

Engineering is such shit that I may actually drop it.

… I won’t, and I know I won’t, but oh MAN, it sucks. You have to do the Invent process daily. This requires 25 Pile of Rusted Scrap, which can randomly drop from TWW mobs, but also can be in chests, and I’ve found like 15 of them in an ore node at one point. But this is such a pain in the ass because I’m on my warlock and I hate playing my warlock.

Oh, and that’s not even the half of it! Once you invent, you can then basically “deconstruct” or whatever the “invention” and then get some notes. If you get 15 pages of notes, you can make them into an organized pack of notes and THAT is what you learn new schematics from. It took me three days to learn my first thing, basically, and it wasn’t even a piece of profession equipment.

I am so not impressed. Should I have read more about this or tested it on beta? Yes. Did I? No. Do I regret that now? Yes. But I will continue to complain about it because hi, I’m Kurn, and I drink red haterade.

Jewelcrafting

Not doing great here, honestly, just because I have a lack of mats. All my Bismuth is going to Blacksmithing and such, so while I’ve accumulated a bunch of points, I haven’t spent any because I’m not even 25 in JC yet. Fail, but that’s my bad.

Enchanting

I’m going for the mana oils. Not much to report yet because everything is so expensive, good lord. I disenchanted most of my greens and sold 100 (?) Storm Dust for like 10k or something on Saturday? I regret it a bit.

Tailoring

Yep, Textile Treasures it is, but I haven’t had much of a chance to get out there into the world and see how much cloth drops. I’ve made some cash on low-rank profession items, though.

Inscription

The evoker, who makes Treatises, has almost discovered them all.

What I, the person playing, have discovered, is that holy shit, ink is hard to make and so is Boundless Cipher. To make one Treatise, I need 2 of the Apricate Ink, which makes the Cipher, along with 5 Arathor’s Spear. THEN I need to make either two more Apricate Ink or two Shadow Ink. Oh, and then 2 of various other reagents, leyline residue, crystalline powder and… something else like viridescent spores? Or something? All of that to make ONE of these suckers.

Also, I’d made a couple earlier on Monday and couldn’t use them… and then was informed in Trade that you could use them later on. We must have been blocked in using them until worldwide launch. So that’s going okay, even if it’s expensive. It’ll pay off.

As to my other scribe, I’ve barely touched my druid because Darkmoon Cards are flooding the market right now. You can put together a full deck for under 2k, possible even under 1k. I am saddened by this and will need to rethink my druid.

Alchemy

Slow going, friends, slow going. Madrana’s getting there. She needs to get the points in ominous, but is at the point where she could craft a Blasphemite if, you know, she had the 80 transmutagens. My other alchemists are nowhere near this level of progress… and that’s okay.

Mining

This is going swimmingly. My double-gatherer has 10/40 in Plethora of Ore and then is 45/45 in Bismuth! This means I can, theoretically, mine a full Null Stone from a Bismuth node. But, more importantly, I can refine the ore from rank 1 to rank 2 and to rank 3. That’s only for Bismuth, but that’s okay. My other two miners are making (slow) progress with Ironclaw and Aqirite.

But, there are also camouflaged ore and herb nodes!

So yeah, good progress, and I’m feeling good about this.

Herbalism

Having even just the Botany spec unlocked makes farming so much easier. Love it.

That said, most of my herbalists are starting out with Bountiful Harvests and one is already 40/40, I think. The others are going 5/40 and each focusing on a separate herb for now.

Gold

I’ve made about 300k gold since Thursday night. Well, my warband bank has increased by that amount. Each character started with 5k gold on them and some have dipped back into the bank and some haven’t. Regardless, it’s been a pretty decent weekend and I expect this week and next weekend to be booming as well.

I also picked up a Spinner’s Amulet of the Harmonious that was like a 3/8 or something? 561 or 564? It was BOE and blue and I sold that sucker for 58,999 gold. Gotta love those drops. :)

What about you?

So, have you jumped into The War Within? What’s your priority? Tell me about it! :)