Guide: How to Make Gold #5 - Learn Gathering Professions

World of Warcraft lets you learn 2 main professions. There are two kinds of professions: gathering and crafting. Gathering will allow you to... well... gather items from the world: you can skin beasts, mine veins and gather herbs. Crafting professions allow you to create items other players can buy from you (or you can use yourself) such as armor or weapons. While some items can be sold for a lot of gold (we once sold Barbaric Bracers for 17 gold coins), these items will require a lot of time to level up to the required level. Gathering professions takes time leveling too but don’t require you to occupy bank slots, purchase other goods or learn new recipes. You just mine and level. Of course you do have to upgrade your skill once in a while (see table) but you only have to do it when you’re hitting the top of your current knowledge.

Profession Skill	Upgreadable at	Maximum Potential Skill
Apprentice	50	75
Journeyman	125	150
Expert	200	225
Artisan	275	300
Grand Master	-	450

The 3 gathering professions are Herbalism, Leatherworking and Mining. Herbalism and Mining allows you to detect herbs and veins on your minimap. You can only detect one thing at a time though so if you’re currently detecting herbs, you won’t be able to detect veins and vice-versa. Of course you can still see them (everyone does) but you won’t be able to detect them from a distance by spotting them in your minimap.

Herbs and veins are not too common either – you’ll find a lot but not as many as beasts – so if you’re going with gathering professions I would recommend combining any of them with Leatherworking. That way you can focus on searching for herbs or veins in your minimap while checking the horizon for beasts. Also, you’ll kill a lot of beasts throughout your adventuring so you’ll have plenty of skinning to do.

Stack them out nicely (usually in 10 or 20 items stacks) and put them in the AH. Eventually they will sell and you’ll have some money sitting for you in your mailbox. You can always learn what stack size can be handy for other professions.

Learn the value of the items you sell and undercut slightly against the cheapest seller. Again, addons can help you by doing your dirty work.