WoW Forever Professions: The Full Roster

The roster: all 12 professions

Forever has 9 primary professions, 6 that craft and 3 that gather, plus 3 secondary ones that sit outside the slot limit.

No thirteenth trade comes with the launch: nothing Blizzard has announced adds Jewelcrafting or Inscription.

Slots, ranks and level gates

You get 2 primary slots plus all 3 secondary professions, 5 in total. The first slot often fills itself. Around level 3 or 4, a quest in your starting area offers 3 manuals: Mining for Dummies, Wild Harvest for Herbalism, and Pelt Collecting for Beginners for Skinning. With a slot free, the manual trains the profession on the spot and adds a couple of skill points. A crafting trade still means a walk to a trainer.

Each rank raises your skill cap and asks for a minimum character level. Gathering ranks open sooner, so you can keep harvesting the zones you level through. A fresh character cannot finish a crafting profession, since Artisan waits for level 35.

First Aid takes its own road: Expert comes from a book and Artisan from the Triage quest at level 35, where you save 15 patients before 6 of them die. A primary profession can be dropped at any time, but its skill and recipes go with it. Secondary professions cannot be unlearned.

Profession changes made before launch

Blizzard kept adjusting professions in the test builds right up to the last development notes before launch. These are the changes that touch crafting and gathering, in order.

What each trade adds to a camp

Camping opens around level 5 with a quest called The Great Outdoors. Cooking makes the fire: a Basic Campfire holds 3 objects, the Journeyman Campfire at Cooking 90 holds 5, and the Expert Campfire at 200 holds 10. Each player places 1 object, all objects share a 1-hour cooldown, and anyone who sits or crafts by the fire for 1 minute gets every buff, profession or not.

Every profession has 3 objects: the first at skill 20, the next 2 at 140 and 300 from Blueprints, each keeping the buff of the one it replaces. Camp buffs copy class buffs and do not stack with them, so a Fish Bowl adds nothing on top of Blessing of Kings.

Engineering is the only trade with no buff to give; its objects are services. Cooking adds Cookie's Feast at 140 and an Iron Oven for its top recipes at 300. For a farmer the useful ones are the Repair Bot, which saves a ride to town, and the growers, which produce while you stand still. Blizzard has not said how much a Greenhouse or a Rock Garden yields.

The best profession for your goal

There is no single best profession, and no honest gold-per-hour table can exist before the live economy settles. What you can judge today is fit: pick your main goal, take the pair from the table, and add the 3 secondary trades, which cost no slot.

For gold

Gathering pays first, and it costs nothing to learn. Herbalism has the strongest case at launch: alchemists still want herbs, and now so does every player leveling First Aid. The Icy Veins route to First Aid 150 burns about 180 low-level herbs per character. Skinning lost the group bonus it had in testing, so parties will not flood the market with leather. Mining supplies 2 crafting trades, and its scarce Pitchblende becomes a brand-new bar at the top. Routes, timing and selling habits are covered on our gold farming page.

For leveling

Craft your own armor type: many new recipes make bind-on-pickup pieces nobody else can hand you, such as Sentinel's Sabatons for blacksmiths or Wisdom's Leather Boots for leatherworkers. Cooking adds 5% kill experience at no slot cost, and a leatherworker's Camp Tent banks rested experience for the whole fire.

For raiding

New raids unlock on December 9, and every roster will want flasks and elixirs on the same nights; those still belong to Alchemy. Enchanters sell a service rather than stock, since each new weapon or necklace needs a fresh enchant, and necklace enchants are new in Forever.

For PvP

Engineering stays the PvP trade: explosives and gadgets only engineers may use, plus bind-on-pickup trinkets such as the Emergency Field Cloak, which makes you briefly invisible. Mining keeps it supplied with bars, and First Aid adds potions and an anti-venom that works mid-fight. On the PvP ruleset gold drains into potions and repairs, which is what our PvP bracket page is built around.

For Hardcore

Hardcore opens after the main launch, and with one life, staying alive beats income. Take First Aid to 300 early for your own potions, bandages and cures; Alchemy and Herbalism add elixirs and the potions First Aid does not cover. A Hardcore crafter at 300 also earns Legacy points your other characters can spend. What gold buys on that ruleset is on the Hardcore page.

Leveling a profession

Recipe and node colors still show your odds. Orange always gives a point unless you are at your cap, yellow usually does, green now and then, gray never. Train the next rank before you reach the cap, or your crafts stop counting.

• A crafter cannot pass 225 before level 35, so time the big pushes to your character level.
• Many recipes need an anvil, a forge or a lab; a camp object at skill 300 brings that station into the field.
• Do not lean on vendors. After the cuts to crafted wands and many other crafted items, selling skill-up products to an NPC no longer covers the cost.
• Working Overtime raises your odds of a skill-up, and Dedicated Study adds a point to your lowest profession every 23 hours.
• From the Deadmines, Smelting Pants cut smelting time for copper, tin, bronze and silver by 25%, and Cookie's Stirring Rod speeds Cooking by 25%.
• A +5 Herbalism or Mining bonus from gloves or an enchant opens a node 5 points early.

Racials that touch professions

• Tauren, Cultivation: lets you pick herbs without Herbalism. Since October 15 the cooldown is 15 minutes. Each herb needs a character level equal to its Herbalism requirement divided by 5, and herbs above 300 skill need level 60.
• Dwarf, Find Treasure: now also has a chance to find extra items in most chests.
• Gnome, Engineering Specialization: makes engineering devices more reliable.