THIS HAS BEEN FIXED AND THANKFULLY NO LONGER WORKS. Dropping your professions will no longer let you do multiple weeklies!
I recently realized that there is a method you can use to significantly boost your knowledge gains. It’s expensive, but incredibly strong, and you get a lot of Artisan’s mettle from it.
Utilize first crafts and profession quests
The idea is pretty simple. You level each profession to level 50, and then you complete the profession quests for that profession. You can do as many first craft bonuses as you can be bothered with for mettle. By doing this on every profession you can accelerate your artisan’s consortium rep, and you get a ton of mettle.
Why does it matter?
With a ton of mettle and higher artisan’s consortium rep you can unlock more of the +10 knowledge purchases from Rabul. One extra rep level for +10 knowledge is obviously massive this early, and will be a huge difference maker. This can be the difference between consistent q3 or not.
How do you do it?
You just do first craft bonuses until you hit skill 50 as the main benefit we are looking for is doing the profession quest for rep, but more mettle can also be very valuable as it will guarantee you can get all of the rare profession tools as well as purchasing the expensive knowledge items.
Should you do it?
If you can afford to then the answer is a big fat yes. Getting the extra knowledge early is absolutely invaluable. For many professions it is the difference between huge profits and not. I was late on this and I’ve already sunk too much gold into leveling most of my professions, so I won’t be doing it much, but if you can then I would strongly suggest doing so.
Then what?
You can actually farm knowledge without a cap (except for your sanity) right now. Dragon Shards of Knowledge do not have a cap, and can be farmed. The easiest way would be doing the dig sites you unlock with Dragonscale Expedition. Based on this reddit post you can expect about 1 knowledge per hour. It also gives you a ton of mettle, so it’s pretty good.
Knowledge is power
The first days of the expansion have really highlighted the extreme value of knowledge, so go out and get some. There’s still plenty of time to make gold in this expansion, so good luck and have fun!