Base legendaries have been the major goldmaking feature of Shadowlands. Leveling the recipes has been incredibly expensive, but the market has also been incredibly profitable. I get asked all the time if it’s too late to enter. I don’t believe it is, as we have way more information now and the market has been revitalized by 9.0.5.
Leveling recipes is still expensive
There’s no getting around the fact that leveling recipes is still quite expensive. Most prices are much lower than they were at walk, but the total cost is still significant. Currently though you should focus on specific recipes. Luckily we know have the sale rate data that means we can know exactly which recipes have the highest sale rates. So you can actually focus on the highest value recipes.
What ranks sell?
Right now I find that recipes on all 4 ranks can sell. Rank 1s are not always profitable, but for rank 2 and higher they are usually profitable at some point during the week. Base legendaries get reset quite frequently and I often end up selling to reseters. I would suggest trying to sell them all for a profit, but you will likely have to sell rank 1s for a loss.
The best recipes to prioritize
Now that we have actual sales data we can easily look up the region avg daily sold for the various items and get a great idea of which armor and slot combinations are most likely to sell relatively quickly. So let’s go through all the recipes and figure out which ones are worth it!
Blacksmithing
The top recipe in terms of sale rate by far is the greaves and they should be your number one priority. After that pauldrons and breastplate are tied for second. None of the recipes have dramatically low sale rates, but the helmet is the slowest selling one by a significant margin and should be the lowest priority. Overall the sale rate is quite good across all ranks and the AH can run dry for blacksmithing gear every once in a while.
Leather
We will split LW in leather and mail. Overall most of the leather pieces sell roughly equally well. 2 recipes stand out as really bad, and that is the chest piece and the belt and I suggest not leveling those at all. Bracers, helm, treads and gauntlets all sell well and you can pick any of them to start depending on the prices on your realm specifically.
Mail has a lot of effectively dead recipes. It only covers two classes, so overall demand is quite low. Shoulders are by far the best item, followed by helmets and boots. Ignore all the others as they gold sink will not pay itself back, at least not with the current legendary meta for shamans and hunters.
Tailoring
Tailoring is my personal favorite due to the low cost and really high sale rates. Most of these sell incredibly fast. Obviously you want to prioritize the hood and cape, followed by bracers, pants and robes. I would suggest leveling all the tailoring recipes and you will likely sell out consistently at rank 2 and 3 as the base legendaries are so cheap literally everyone upgrades them as they go.
Jewelcrafting
Lastly we have jewelcrafting. There’s only two recipes here, so just level them both. Rings are more expensive, but also sell slightly faster. Both sell well however and you should just get both of them if you have jewelcrafting.
Final thoughts
As long as you avoid the pitfall of most of the mail recipes and the leather belt you should do fine. I am still selling legendaries at a really good clip. I personally don’t bother with rank 1s, but it’s quite possible there may be profits on those for the most popular slots. For rank 2 and up you should be able to sell your items consistently for a profit. Good luck and happy hunting!
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