Basics

Professions are crafts or tradeskills that player characters may learn regardless of their primary character class. Professions are divided into two types; primary and secondary.

You may only train in 2 primary professions at any time. You may 'forget' a profession and start a new one but this sets your level in the forgotten profession to 0 and you get a skill of 1 in the new one and you have to train up from the start from there.

You may take all the Secondary professions if you wish.

See also:

• Draznar's Ultimate Profession FAQ & Links to other FAQs

Professions Listed by type

Primary Professions

You may train in only 2 primary professions.

• Alchemy
• Blacksmithing
• Enchanting
• Engineering
• Herbalism
• Leatherworking
• Mining
• Skinning
• Tailoring
• Jewelcrafting (coming in expansion)

Secondary Professions

You may train as many of these secondary professions as you want.

• Cooking
• First aid
• Fishing

Note: Gathering, Cooking & First Aid Professions have level 35 requirement to train past 225. (Patch 1.8 change)

Class Professions

A profession usable by only a specific class.

• Poisons (Rogue only): Debilitating, damaging, and debuffing substances to apply to a Rogue's weapons.

Proficiency Levels

Professions can be trained to 4 levels of proficiency.

Apprentice

• You must be level 5.
• This gives you 1 skill in the profession.
• You may progress to 75 skill in the profession.
• Cost to train is Template:C for Primary professions and 1 for Secondary professions.

Journeyman

• You must be level 10.
• You may train this anytime you have 50 or more skill in the profession.
• You may progress to 150 skill in the profession.
• Cost to train is 5.

Expert (primary professions)

• You must be level 20.
• You may train this anytime you have 125 or more skill in the profession.
• You may progress to 225 skill in the profession.
• Cost to train is 50.

Expert (secondary professions)

• There is no level requirement
• You may train this anytime you have 125 or more skill in the profession.
• You may progress to 225 skill in the profession.
• To train, you need to purchase a book (respective Expert book of your profession).
• The book sells from vendors at 1 before faction discount.

Artisan (primary professions)

• You must be level 35.
• You may train this anytime you have 200 or more skill in the profession.
• You need to find a unique special trainer which is usually found in out of the way locals (not in cities).
• You may progress to 300 skill in the profession.
• Cost to train is 5.

Artisan (secondary professions)

• You must be level 35.
• You may train this only when you reach 225 skill in the profession.
• You may progess to 300 skill in the profession.
• You will need to talk to a trainer, who will give you a quest.
• Completion of this quest will teach you Artisan level as a quest reward.
• There is no direct cost associated with the training. Some of the skills, especially gathering and secondary skills, do not have character level requirements for some levels. All require level 5 to get apprentice. All the primary, building skills have the level requirements. All the secondary skills have a quest which is given only at or above the level requirement for Artisan.

Bonus to skill

All of the skills have reduced cost to train if you are Honored with the faction to which the trainer belongs. Since you can have generally 1 honored reputation by 20th level pretty easily, selecting where to train will save you 5. This is also true for all recipies for the building professions.

Certain races recieve a racial trait skill bonus.

• Gnomes get +15 Engineering.
• Tauren get +15 Herbalism.

Certain enchants give you + profession effects.

• Enchant Gloves - Fishing adds +2 to Fishing skill.
• Enchant Gloves - Herbalism adds +2 to Herbalism skill.
• Enchant Gloves - Mining adds +2 to Mining skill.
• Enchant Gloves - Skinning adds +5 to Skinning skill.
• Enchant Gloves - Advanced Mining adds +5 to Mining skill.
• Enchant Gloves - Advanced Herbalism adds +5 to Herbalism skill.

If you take a profession for which you have a racial bonus, you start with 16 skill and can get to 90 as Apprentice. Also, you can still train Journeyman at 50 which lets you get up to 165 skill, and so on with the other levels. Moreover, you will be able to reach 315/315 in this profession, which may or may not matter.

• For Engineering, there are no known schematics that require over 300 in the skill.
• For Herbalism, there are no known herbs requiring over 300 skill to gather; however, few higher-level herbs are still orange at 300, and as such their gathering sometimes results in failure. Having 315/315 may reduce the failure rate.

See Profession trainers by skill for a list of where to train each profession at each level of proficiency.

Trainers

A good list of profession trainers can be found at WoW Allakhazam. =Professions Listed by role=

Most professions fall into one of four categories:

Gathering

Users of this profession mostly gather or harvest items from resources throughout the game world to increase their proficiency.

• Fishing: Requires a  [Fishing Pole] and a body of water with Fish.
• Herbalism: Harvest herbs scattered throughout the world.
• Mining: Requires a  [Mining Pick] to mine protruding mineral veins or deposits for gems, ore and stone. Use a Forge to smelt the ore you find into bars of metal.
• Skinning: Requires a  [Skinning Knife] to skin corpses marked as Skinnable for leather, hides and scales.

Crafting

Users of these professions mostly make items from other ingredient items (herbs, bars, meats, etcs.) taken from the gathering professions or created by building professions. [Blizzard] calls these Production professions. Most folks in game call them crafting or building.

• Alchemy: Combine herbs and other reagents into elixirs, oils, potions and other useful (usually liquid) substances. Most recipes require various types of vials.
• Blacksmithing: Make metal weapons for all and armor for Mail and Plate-wearing classes. Also create items from stone to buff weapons.
• Cooking: Cook raw ingredient items and combine them with various spices to produce better Food. Requires a Cooking Fire.
• Engineering: Engineer all sorts of useful and not so useful gadgets from mostly metal and stone.
• Leatherworking: Create all sorts of leather goods (mostly armor) from leather, hides, and various other ingredients. Also produce armor kits usable on some types of armor. Usually requires various types of thread to make finished items.
• Tailoring: Sew all sorts of cloth goods including many types of clothing and most importantly, bags for carrying other items. Also weave raw cloth items (linen, wool, silk, mageweave, etc.) into bolts of that type of cloth. Usually requires various types of thread to make finished items.

Service

Really the "other" category, but generally covers professions that primarily provide a service over producing equippable items or consumable buffing items.

• Enchanting: Extract (disenchant) magical dusts and essences for use to enchant various attributes, powers, and properties to all sorts of equippable items. You can also make wands.
• First Aid: Make various ingredients into bandages and various aiding items (anti-venoms, etc.).

Additional Information

• Use the {{professions}} template (creates a sidebar as seen on the right) in articles about or referring to professions, if you want a nice quick reference to all the professions.

• Farming is a term used to describe the act of gathering reagents/materials to make Profession items - usually referring to hard-to-find ingredients. See the Places to Farm article for more details.

• For a large list of Tradeskill Recipes, see the Goblin Workshop site.

For additional info on any one recipie, use ThottBot.

• For new Night Elf players who wish to learn Enchanting, see Enchanting for Elves

• See also this common sense professions-for-money guide.