Shadowlands Goldmaking: Optimal profession combinations in 9.1

Players are always looking for the best profession combinations, at least if you are not already established on your realm. With 9.1 out for a while It’s time to take stock again and see how things are looking currently!

Why do you pair professions?

There are two general reasons to pair two specific professions in my mind. One is related to the materials needed. If professions share materials or one profession crafts an intermediate material for another one that is a very good reason to share them. The other reason would typically be because they have recipes from the same sources, perhaps from the same reputations so you can save time unlocking recipes.

In Shadowlands we also have the consideration of optional reagents like Vestiges and Crafter’s marks that are all shared between the armor professions. Having the two cheapest sources of vestiges and marks spread out is definitely optimal.

Recipe sources do not matter

In Shadowlands the recipe sources are barely worth thinking about. Generally most recipes are from things you will be doing regardless of professions so you will gradually be unlocking them anyway, such as Crafter’s mark of the Chained Isle from The Archivist Codex. The recipes that are locked behind specific rep gates that you are unlikely to go for are not too important in the grand scheme of things, so this consideration is not really relevant at all in Shadowlands.

Legendary professions

We’ll tackle the four legendary professions first as they are the most important ones from a goldmaking perspective. Right off the bat we know that blacksmithing and jewelcrafting share materials in multiple ways. Both use ores and the Shadowghast Ingots from Blacksmithing is used by jewelcrafters. Pairing these two is a no-brainer just based on that. On top of that blacksmithing is usually the cheapest source of vestiges, while jewelcrafting can provide very cheap Chained Isle Crafter’s marks.

Leatherworking and Tailoring have no synergy, but with tailoring being the most expensive 9.1 marks and vestiges on most realms and leatherworking being relatively cheap this is still in my opinion the best combination.

Armor crafting tips

My general approach on my blacksmith/jewelcrafter is to craft vestiges with blacksmithing and crafter’s marks with jewelcrafting. I prospect quite a bit for essences for legendaries, which leaves me with a massive stockpile of gems that I can turn into Crafter’s mark 3 and Crafter’s mark of the Chained Isle.

For my tailor leatherworker it’s even simpler as leatherworking is cheaper for every type of optional reagent in the game, so I just craft those from Leatherworking and use them for both professions.

Herbs

Off the remaining professions two of them use herbs as their materials and there is no other reason to split these up. I would suggest pairing them off for efficiency as you can then just dump all your herbs to the same crafter and process them into pigments and inks or potions and flasks as needed.

The rest

Enchanting and Engineering are the two left over. Engineering does share materials with Blacksmithing and jewelcrafting, but the goldmaking potential is so low there is no point in combining this with anything. Enchanting is also pretty much only relevant due to the enchanting materials for legendaries. I just have it on a level 50 crafter, as you don’t need level 60 for any of the enchanting recipes. You honestly don’t even need to bother leveling engineering unless you really care about it, but enchanting is well worth it for the enchanted materials.

Summing up

My personal suggestion for crafters are as follows:

  • Blacksmithing/Jewelcrafting
  • Tailoring/Leatherworking
  • Alchemy/Inscription
  • Enchanting/Engineering

This is also my priority list of which professions to prioritize, with the one extra point that if you plan to do legendaries you probably need a maxed enchanter as well asap.

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One thought on “Shadowlands Goldmaking: Optimal profession combinations in 9.1

  1. I have a leatherworker/engineer char who crafts my iLvl 200/230 leather/mail stuff. Somehow TSM always suggests to craft the marks of engi for the leatherworking crafts later. Is it profitable to do so? I tried it some times, but the randomness factor for crafting engi parts and the sheer confusion TSM has making lists to collect makes it a bit difficult to check it.

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