Blizzard
Updated: June 24
The Shadowlands Alpha now includes Brokers in the Hall of Shapes in Oribos. Brokers are profession trainers and vendors that allow you to craft and test Professions changes coming in Shadowlands. Now, exploring the new zones, you’ll discover zone-specific herbs, ore, and fish, as well as new leathers from the denizens of the Shadowlands.
Professions Supporting Legendary Crafting
In the Shadowlands, you’ll be able to create your own Legendary Armor within the Runecarver’s Chamber, a place of exceptional power locked away in Torghast. Legendary crafting is not currently available for testing yet, but when it is, all players, regardless of their profession(s), will be able to create their own Legendary Armor.
Creating a piece of Legendary Armor requires a Base Item that will be imbued with Legendary powers.
Blacksmiths, Jewelcrafters, Leatherworkers and Tailors will be able to craft the Base Items which will eventually become your Legendary Armor.
- A Base Item is a blank armor template that serves as a vessel for Legendary powers.
- Base Items aren’t soulbound. They can be acquired from other players, your alts, or the Auction House.
- The recipes for the Base Items, like the Chamber itself, are locked away in Torghast. However, once learned, they can be crafted from anywhere.
Optional Reagents
Optional Reagents are a new feature in Shadowlands, allowing players to customize the equipment they create. With Optional Reagents, you’ll increase the item level of the crafted item while also increasing the level required to equip the item. This will be especially useful while leveling up or gearing alts.
You’ll be able to specify which two of the four secondary stats you want the item to give bonuses to, allowing you to customize your character’s power. However, you cannot choose to make the item only have one Secondary Stat. Certain recipes will allow for bonus effects, such as increasing your flask or food buff durations. Optional Reagents will only apply to armor and weapon recipes at the start of Shadowlands.
Additional Updates
Not all Professions are the same, and we’re taking steps to address this by setting different skill bar maximums in Shadowlands. Gathering professions, being fast to level, will have skill bars that are larger than crafting professions, but should require the similar amount of effort to max out.
Star ranks for recipes have been greatly reduced in prominence in Shadowlands.
The Scrapper is a Battle for Azeroth-specific feature and will not be in Shadowlands.
We’re considering some degree of Profession interconnectivity, the concept that certain crafts from Professions are used in recipes for other Professions.
On experiencing the wondrous Shadowlands, Engineers will have a techno-magical breakthrough. Many Engineering devices are more powerful than their Azerothian counterparts, but so much power is difficult to control, and could result in a catastrophic backfire. However, Engineers will be able to reduce the likelihood of a backfire as they gain more skill.
Please use this thread to provide your feedback and discuss any changes related to Professions in Shadowlands. Thank you very much!
This is an incredibly important update for gold makers and I look forward to keeping a close eye on how this develops over the next few months.
Some of the important points here are..
- No Scrapper - Oh yes, thankyou! Scrapping became such a chore in BfA when trying to create mass amounts of Expulsom. Whether this gets replaced by a different mechanic or other BoP reagent necessary for professions remains to be seen. If not BoP, at least perhaps make them account bound.
- Profession Interconnectivity - We have seen some examples of this in the datamined recipes available to each profession and the use of optional reagents. How this all interconnects makes for a much more interesting range of combinations available to players.
- Star ranks reduced - These have usually been locked behind reputations and dungeons, so I wonder how Blizzard will introduce difficulty in collecting recipes? This is an important mechanic in making effort worth the reward and therefore being able to keep prices stable and profitable.
- Legendary Items - This seems to be inclined toward the pinnacle of equipment being locked away in Torghast and is not dependent on players having the actual profession, but they will need the base item crafted. This helps those focused on professions feed those who might be less inclined and want to focus on the end game and best equipment. It's an interesting choice and I wonder how they will work together? How easy will it be to get to this area in Torghast and collect the recipes? Is it just the base item or can other parts of the legendary item be crafted and sold?
What do you think of professions so far? Are you looking forward to using them in Shadowlands or will you bypass it?
The Scrapper situation was discussed on the
/woweconomy subreaddit and
MobileShrineBear came up with some very pertinent points about barriers to entry ..
Barriers to entry are enormously important to suppress excess supply in an mmo. If it's easy to craft, everyone will craft. If everyone crafts, no one is going to buy crafted stuff.
Maxing a crafting profession should be as involved as getting full raid geared. It should be a thing you make a concerted effort to do, not something that just happens.
While the scrapper and BoP reagents were not necessarily the best choice in limiting players, the tedium of mass scrapping did put off many. Perhaps Blizzard can come up with other, more creative ways to make professions difficult to master? It could be more involved to skill up or collect recipes? What would you like to see? Quest chains like the Tools of the Trade? Locked behind raids or dungeons? I'd love to hear your ideas in the comments.
Freehold vs. Atal'Dazar Solo Raw Gold
Komlit has an interesting video cmparing two popular BfA dungeons that can be run solo by a well geared character ...
The key techniques here are to run
Freehold with a Tailor and
Synchronous Thread Tools of the Trade to increase cloth drops and run
Atal'Dazar with a Leatherworker/Skinner and make
Shimmerscale Strikers to vendor. Both popular raw gold farms that can be extended in other ways if you were to introduce selling raw mats or crafted products from the mats after these runs.
These two farms have also been covered by
u/Dracnus and in the thread is some clarification by
u/DeadlyBannana on what item to make with the cloth to vendor...
According to my math (calculations are for Horde)
Bracers: 20 g 28 s. Require 10 TSL and 5 threads so :20g 28 s - 5*48s = 17g 88 s which means about 1 g 88 s profit per linen used.
Pants: 39 g 91 s. Require 17 TSL and 10 threads so: 39 g 91 s - 10*48s = 35 g 11s or 2g 06 s per linen used. This is without taking into account the profit from rare. I believe Freehold comes out on top. Personally I managed to farm around 1.7 mil in 12 days and a big % of my profit has been raw gold from Feehold. The good thing about this farm is that the better your gear and the more you improve the faster the runs and the better g/hour. I always have a character parked in another farm spot so the moment I hit lockout I can switch right away and never stop making gold :).
Edit: pants are even better because not only do they give better gold per linen used, they also consume more linen per craft which means it takes less time to craft them compared to bracers
Preparation for Shadowlands
How do you prepare for the next expansion?
u/Geezusotl proposed it as an interesting question this week ...
Hello everyone. So today I bought my Brutosaur ! I’m excited to dive into older stuff and experience the game some more since I started playing just a few months ago and basically revolved myself around gold once I found out that the Bruto was a thing. While I will be taking some time to try some of the older raids and do other things, I want to be ready for when Shadowlands drops.
answered very succinctly by
u/cathbadh ...
First and foremost I'd prepare by continuing to acquire liquid funds. I'd follow that up by getting additional profession alts leveled, assuming you made your gold via professions. Beyond that I'd wait a bit longer before doing any sort of real preperation. Instead I'd take the time to explore the game. You just started playing! While the goblin game is fun, WoW has so much more to offer. Try current content raids and M+. Try pvp. Do some obscure achievements. Try pet battles. Complete some of the secrets. Farm up some fun mounts. With that said, these are my current plans, which are subject to change as we get closer to SL:
- Get Deep Sea Satin at good prices and stock it. The bags are easy to make and will be cheaper than whatever similar sized bags SL will give us for a long while. New players, returning players, and rerolls will need bags.
- Collect BfA inks and once any changes to glyphs are announced for SL, craft stacks of BfA glyphs and bank them away.
- Craft reputation contracts for BfA. I won't be putting a lot of time or mats into this, however there will be players wanting to complete various reputation achievements who'll want to use them, and BfA herbs will just go up in price.
- Bank a large amount of expulsom and ore on my engineer as well as ore on my blacksmith. The ATV mount will continue to sell next expansion, and I'd rather not be trying to gather the greens to scrap in the future. I also still need to farm up the Mogul mount pattern.
- Bank up drums, tomes, and codices. Much like the bags they'll be replaced by equivalent items made with SL materials, but the SL mats will be incredibly expensive at least for the first raid tier.
- Gear up my better profession alts. In particular my scribe who'll need to be able to get into normal raids quickly to get future Vantus rune patterns and my gatherer who I won't be leveling early on but will want to be able to gather on without dying. This means starting with +10's and graduating into +15's and a few heroic Nya clears. I hate leveling as it is, so I'd like to have it as smooth as possible.
- Consider banking some movement speed and XP gems. The first will be useful for leveling and farming, and is something that might not be recreated in SL. The second will be useful for leveling of alts. Fortunately I have a couple thousand of both sitting in a bank as I prospected a bunch and low quality gems are essentially worthless.
- Bank up an extra amount of older materials. Primarily this means Dreamleaf plus Ghost iron ore/spirits of harmony, but a few other things as well. With new content existing the players who normally farm these things up won't be spending as much time doing so, which means prices will go up. Panthers, shoulder enchants, and the three engineering mounts all still sell for me and I don't want their crafting costs going up. I'd do the same with Sandstone Drake materials if it was profitable on my server.
- Convert a significant portion of my Legion pigments into old school inks. One the glyph changes are finalized (if there are any) I'll convert those inks to glyphs and bank them away so that I don't have to waste time making them in the near term once SL launches.
- Buy tokens. Prices are on the rise right now, but unless Blizzard puts an artificial floor on them they'll drop down this summer/fall as the content drought continues. If I can get them at a good price I'll buy them as I'll use them eventually, whether to buy a mount, pay for a service, or purchase Overwatch 2. May as well get them at a good rate.
- Get non gold things done. This means achieves, mounts, etc, but also means playing other games entirely. Once SL drops I won't be doing any of that stuff for a while. I don't want to get a week into SL and feel Stardew Valley calling my name.
ETA: 12) Craft up some of the mount equipment. A lot of players quit before these existed and even more will want water walking mounts since they won't be flying for a while.
These are some wonderful suggestions and if you are looking to get be prepared, doing some or all of these will set you up nicely. Are there any other things people are doing?
Early Look at Inscription Decks
Some more information has surfaced around
Inscription Decks. There are currently 4 new decks available ..
There is also indication that you can randomly create a
wildcard which will be incredibly handy when filling decks.
These trinkets are incredibly popular at the beginning of an expansion as it is a much needed pair of slots that benefit from an early upgrade. Many players in BfA made a fortune in Decks early on.
Beginner Guide to Goldmaking
u/GrammarNazii has written a very concise and up to date
Guide to Goldmaking for Beginners.This post is targeted for new goblins, but hopefully those who are more experienced can also learn something.
At this point of an expansion, gold is much harder to come by due to the following:
- BFA specific: there is still a large number of people farming for the Brutosaur, so supply is high especially on mats, crafted equipment, etc. which pushes prices and profits down
- BFA specific: this expansion is a "gold sink" expansion (not much ways to make gold + lots of collectibles such as mounts which can be bought with gold), supposedly aimed to correct the influx of gold brought about by WoD garrisons and Legion mission tables
- Less players engaging in end-game activities: most players who wanted to complete a goal (CE, AOTC, Keystone Master, etc.) have already done so, and therefore have less need of gear, flasks, pots, etc.
- Less players in general
- WoW tokens being cheaper than usual encourages gold farmers to farm now and convert them to WoW tokens while prices are low
However, don't feel discouraged by the above. Since gold is harder to get, almost everything that players craft/sell is cheaper as well. Now's the time to buy that Thundering Ruby Cloud Serpent or Mechano-Hog.
You can also choose to invest on evergreen items (things that have proven to sell no matter what/when) such as the Sky Golem or Vial of the Sands (and/or the materials to make them), and then sell them when Shadowlands releases. With less players currently, it also means you have less competition especially in niche markets like transmog or old world mats - you just have to find them.
So don't feel like it's not the time to make gold now. Gold earned now is worth more from a real money perspective, since WoW tokens are cheaper and you can convert your gold to B.net balance or gametime at great rates compared to Q4 last year. If you learn how to make gold when it's difficult, just imagine how much gold you can earn when Shadowlands releases and you have yourself prepared!
The guide then goes on to describe a series of tips around each of the various areas of gold making..
- Raw Gold Farms
- Gathering Materials
- Levelling Alts
- Professions
- Buying Mats
- TSM
- Server Population
If you are interested in these, I highly recommend following the
link to the full article.
Further Reading
Most of this information was discussed and originally posted on the
/r/woweconomy subreddit or in the accompanying
Discord Server. You can also catch me streaming live on
Twitch on Sunday from around 7PM GMT UK Time (2pm Eastern Time) for the WoW Economy Weekly Wrap-up live on Wowhead.com, or you can tweet your feedback/thoughts via Twitter at
@SamadanPlaysWoWI hope you found this useful and If you have any suggestions or feedback, please do say so in the comments below..
Until next time, Happy Goldmaking!
Samadan
