So I finally finished some leveling sessions on beta to test out a couple of early level setups to refine my plans.

Nothing big changed for me

My testing has not changed my overall thoughts on what optimal professions are long term, in fact if anything I am even more certain double crafting will be good quite early, but I have changed around the pathway a little bit, and there are some considerations depending on how important you think the BoP gear is to you.

The testing

The main test I wanted to do was to figure out how many materials you would generate naturally from gathering up to level 15. why level 15 you ask? That’s when the first crafted BoP gear becomes available. This makes it an important milestone if you want to keep up with these recipes. This is the latest you want to pick up a crafting profession for your main armour type if you want to go for these.

I’ve leveled two characters to 15, one with just mining and one with skinning and herbalism, to see where you are at. I only did nodes that were not a significant detour. Anything that required killing multiple non quest mobs I skipped as the focus should primarily be on leveling in my opinion.

Nodes are plentiful

There are a lot of nodes in the starter zones, and you will be able to gather a lot if you want to. I skipped MANY due to prioritizing xp. This makes it a lot easier to keep up with skill levels than back in actual classic, where you would often be underleveled leaving the level 10 zone without dedicated gathering.

Is it enough for the gear?

I have gathered the materials shown in the table below. As we can see I am quite far off from skill level 150, but I have more than enough materials to level professions to 35 for the first level 10 craftables. That being said I am pretty close to getting skill level 80 with all professions, which would be enough for the level 15 crafted gear. Now I would absolutely not be able to craft all the level 10, 12 and 15 items, so if you want to do that, you need to farm or buy materials.

Blacksmithing is expensive

What stood out to me is that on the current beta prices blacksmithing is very expensive. This likely means mining is a good option for early leveling. Mining was also quite profitable in terms of how many resources I got. Overall herbalism was the best, but a very large portion of the value was in the Frilled Lichen, which is a low percentage drop from higher level herbs. Overall both are good, and seem better than skinning overall.

Large gold variance

One thing I noticed is that in terms of raw gold at level 15 there was a massive difference. My undead paladin has 70 silver at level 15 after buying all skills, whereas my shaman has just around 20 silver. I’m not sure if this is due to difference in quest rewards (undead zones vs. durotar), difference in number of abilities or just drop luck, but the difference was stark. This even includes spending a good chunk of gold on woolen bags for the paladin.

Important break points

One big tip is for herbalism. At skill 15 you can gather earthroot, which starts appearing as soon as you leave the level 5 sub area. Therefore you should gather to level 15 herbalism in the starter are, but no higher. The starter area nodes only give 1 herb, so outside of the 15 skill points they are a waste of time relative to later nodes. For mining and skinning there’s no skill threshold, so for these I would only do any nodes I absolutely run across in the level 5 area.

Get double gathering in the starter zone

Getting double gathering very early is the optimal play to generate starter gold. I would suggest going for skinning+herbalism or skinning+mining ASAP regardless of long term plans. All the starting zones have junior trainers for gathering, so you should pick up two professions in the starter zone as soon as possible.

But don’t necessarily keep them long

Personally I will be looking to ditch at least one at level 10, depending on my resource situation. The reason is simple, at 10 I can get to alchemy 150, and start crafting the intermediate materials. I expect these to do really well, so I want to get into them as soon as humanly possible. I am also expecting to be level 10 quite behind the bleeding edge curve, so there will be a significant market of players looking to get the BoP gear by then. Both disenchanting shuffles and intermediate material crafting should hopefully yield some nice profits by then.

Getting the gear requires farming

If you want to be self sufficient for the level 15 gear you need to do dedicated farming. Personally I prefer to not do that, so I will be looking to invest gold in something that can make me gold first, and then scale my armor crafting a little later, where gear lasts longer. That’s why I will prioritize the enchanting shuffle and alchemy first for my two characters. Then I will eventually level my crafting profession for my armour type, but this is less of a priority. I will end up keeping whichever of herbalism and skinning has the highest profit for a little while longer, but I’m leaning towards herbalism as the likely contender as I expect more people to go the self-sufficiency routes. In the little testing I did I also made most gold from herbalism, with the frilled Lichen being particularly valuable.