Basics

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

You can only have 2 primary professions at any time, but you are not required to take any at all. You may 'forget' a profession and start a new one but this removes the chosen profession and if you were to learn it again you would have to start leveling it from a skill level of 1 again. The new profession you choose to replace it also starts with a skill of 1. You can forget a profession from your skills tab, click on the appropriate profession, and in the bottom part of the panel is a tiny icon that when moused over will tell you it lets you unlearn your profession.

You may take as little as none or as many as all of the Secondary professions.

The first recipes you get are useful for gearing up low level characters (assuming a higher level character is not helping to support you). Some contend that as soon as you start running instances, the drops will usually be better than most crafted items from the same level, but this is not always the case. Quite often crafted items will provide comparable stats or utility benefit that is quite useful for characters of all levels. The most benefit to your character comes from trying to keep your professions leveled up as you progress through the game. High end crafting, including specializations, can be extremely useful and lucrative, especially from patterns that come from end game faction grinding or drop in high level instances (some of which Bind on Pickup. There are also several quests which require crafted items for completion.

Many good recipes are sold by the factions. Faction grinding keeps many crafters busy for several weeks and can often be very expensive if you are not backed by a guild. It is not uncommon for a crafter to start out with two collecting professions (usually Skinning/Mining or Skinning/Herbalism), later learn the first production craft, and in the end learn a second production craft to maximize benefit from the faction.

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 (specialize: Weaponsmith (Swordsmith, Axesmith, or Hammersmith) or Armorsmith)
• Enchanting
• Engineering (specialize: Goblin or Gnomish)
• Herbalism
• Leatherworking (specialize: Tribal, Elemental or Dragonscale)
• 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 for the primary professions.
• 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 to train Journeyman level in building tradeskills.
• 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 to train Expert level in building tradeskills.
• 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)

• You need to be level 20 to use the books to get expert level in most secoundary tradeskill professions.
• 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 to train Artisan level in building tradeskills.
• 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. High Level Alchemists can also transmute essences and metals into other essences and metals.
• 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, oven, flame or similar.
• Engineering: Engineer all sorts of useful and not so useful gadgets from mostly metal, gems and stone.
• Leatherworking: Create all sorts of leather goods (mostly armor) from leather, hides, and various other ingredients. Also produce armor kits usable on pants, boots, gloves, and chest pieces of all armor types. Usually requires various types of thread to make finished items. Leatherworkers can also make cloth capes and a few sets of mail armor.
• 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.  [Mooncloth] can only be made by a tailor.

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, essences and shards 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

• 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.