WoW Enchanting Supplies
Getting Started with your WoW Enchanting Supplies
Enchanting is one of the most beneficial trade skills for your World of Warcraft character, but there are some important considerations before you think about before you decide to commit one of your two skill spots. Most important, enchanting can be time consuming and expensive to level. Because enchanting is the rare trade skill that provides its own materials (mats) without a separate gathering skill, you will still have the opportunity to learn one other unrelated trade. Many cloth-wearers take Tailoring, since tailored goods can be disenchanted. Others will pick up a gathering skill like mining or herbalism with the knowledge that gathered materials can be sold in order to finance more enchanting mats. Whatever your money-making strategy, understand that enchanting will not bring you much–if any–income while leveling through Azeroth content.
Enchanting is actually two skills: enchanting items to add helpful stats or effects, and disenchanting Uncommon-quality or better wepaons and armor. Disenchanting items is what provides the materials needed to create the helpful enchants. Your first order of business wil be to procure the materials necessary for creating your Runed Copper Rod. See the recipe in your Enchanting skill window. Enchanters must be carrying the appropriate level enchanting rod on their person in order to enchant mateirals, although they do not need it to disenchant magical items.
Feeling Disenchanted?
The best way to gather materials for your newly acquired enchanting skill is to start gathering mass quantities of low-level greens. A few runs through the lowest dungeons will fill your bags with items that disenchant into Strange Dusts, Lesser or Greater Magic Essences, and Lesser or Greater Astral Essences. Understand that greater essences can be “broken” into three lesser essences, and the opposite is also true: right click on a stack of three or more lessers to create one greater essence. The same is not true, however, for most types of shards.
Make sure you have at least two large capacity enchanting bags filling slots in your bank. You’ll be surprised by how much space you need to store all of the materials you gather. Mats not used for leveling your skill can be sold in the auction house, applied to weapon and armor vellums for trade, (make friends with a Scribe, post-haste!) or used to enchant gear for other players for profit. Be aware that most players will not pay for low level enchants. Unfortunately, five years of enchanters giving the goods away for free in order to level have set too much precedent for free chants.
Learning the Trade
There have been great strides made in the expansions and the patches since WoW’s release. Leveling enchanters no longer requires trips through the Badlands dungeon Uldaman for access to the Expert level trainer. Instead, enchanters can visit trainers in all four main faction cities for new recipes as they level. For the Alliance, that’s Stormwind, Ironforge, Darnassus, and Exodar. The Horde will go to Orgrimmar, Undercity, Thunder Bluff, and Silvermoon City.
Once you arrive in Outland, you’ll find an appropriate-level trainer in the first Hellfire Penninsula town, Honor Hold or Thrallmar. Additionally, those neutral or better in reputation with Scyers will find a trainer in that tier in Shattrath City.
Northrend offers a few enchanting trainers for those seeking the Grand Master title; one trainer is in each of the Horde and Alliance towns in both Borean Tundra and in Howling Fjord, and another faction-neutral trainer resides in her shop in Dalaran.
Some Enchanted Evening
Enchanting begins to get more interesting once you reach Northrend. The highest level enchant from your trainer can be obtained at 425, but the skill maxes out at 450. That means that you have 25 levels to reach the skill cap. Additional recipes are not trained, but rather purchased from the shard trader Vanessa Sellers in Dalaran. Each recipe costs a number of Dream Shards or Abyss Crystals, and these recipes will teach you the echants that bring in the gold from other players. Even those toons that provide their own mats can be expected to tip generously for the application of the enchant to their gear. Those who refuse to tip should be politely invited to seek another enchanter; you have a highly marketable skill that has cost you considerable time and money. Don’t be tempted to just give it away, as that hurts you, all other enchanters, and the server economy at large.
Going Old School
Believe it or not, there are still reasons for the Northrend-occupied enchanter to return to vanilla and Burning Crusade content. Many enchanting recipes dropped in the dungeons and raids available at those levels that are still in high demand. Maxing out reputation with Zandalar Trolls will also give you a couple of recipes, and many bosses in Anh’Qiraj have a chance to drop one of several different open-level recipes. Being able to apply spellpower and agility enchants to gloves with no minimal item level is a huge coup in WoW’s enchanting market.
A final thought on procuring enchanting supplies in WoW concerns the hoarding of–or rather, the ability not to hoard–your own outdated gear. While those T4 pants may have a special place in your heart, the crystal you get from disenchanting them will have a bigger place in your virtual gold-wallet.
