World of Warcraft/Professions/Blacksmithing

World of Warcraft is a virtual reality, massively-multiplayer online role-playing game that owes part of its complexity to players having many professions to choose from. These professions are distinguished from other skills (such utility abilities, combat skills, and spells) by their connection and contribution to the virtual economy of the game. They represent skills that provide goods and services to other players from players. There are ten primary professions from which a character can select. Every character is allowed to learn up to two of these main or primary professions and all of the three available secondary professions.

These professions can all be categorized into subsections of gathering, service, and crafting (Blizzard calls them production) professions. The gathering, primary professions are herbalism, mining, and skinning. Fishing is the only secondary gathering profession. The only service professions are enchanting and inscription. The crafting, primary professions are alchemy, blacksmithing, engineering, leatherworking, tailoring, jewelcrafting. Cooking and first aid are both crafting, secondary professions.

The proficiency in a profession is based on the number of points or skill levels in the profession. The first release (World of Warcraft) allowed ranges from 1 to 300, with the first expansion (The Burning Crusade) increasing the maximum to 375, and the second expansion (Wrath of the Lich King) further increasing the maximum to 450.

The amount of expertise is also divided into steps that limit the maximum skill you can gain before having to train again. They have the following titles: Apprentice (1 - 75), Journeyman (76 - 150), Expert (151 - 225), Artisan (226 - 300), Master (301 - 375), and Grand Master (376 - 450). Usually a the appropriate trainer will allow you to increase your maximum before training again at 25 points before you hit your limit up to Expert (225 max). To go from Artisan to Master you need to be 300 and to go from Master to Grand Master you need to be 375.

Herbalism
In herbalism, a character gathers all different kinds of herbs from kelp to flowers. Herbs are used in the Alchemy and Inscription professions. Alchemy is the profession in which potions are created through the use of herbs. It is cost-efficient to choose herbalism and alchemy together as a character’s primary professions, because then the player does not have to buy the herbs on the auction house for the alchemy profession, they need only collect the materials.

The Inscription profession also makes use of the herbs gathered by herbalism. The herbs are converted (using Milling) to various types of pigment in much the same way the Jewelcrafting profession prospects ore for gems. From the pigments, ink can be produced which is a primary ingredient for most Inscription products.

Mining
In mining, a character mines some common real-world type ores such as copper, tin, silver and gold, but also other mythical ores in the World of Warcraft. The miner can also gather gems that are very valuable and types of stone. These precious materials can be mined in most metal resource nodes (also known as deposits or veins). A miner also learns how to smelt the ore (Smelting subskill), which they collect into pure bars of whichever metal they smelted. The miner can sell these goods, for some of the highest prices of any raw materials in the World of Warcraft. The complementary professions for mining are blacksmithing, engineering, and jewelcrafting. You will need to buy a Mining Pick to mine, and you will need to carry it with you all time. Those three crafting professions all use the raw materials gathered by miners.

Before the Burning Crusade and the Jewelcrafting subskill of Prospecting, mining was the only profession source of gems, but since Prospecting has a much higher return rate of gems it has become the primary source of gems with mining mostly just supplying the ore used by Prospecting.

Skinning
In skinning, a character does not have to go out of their way to gather raw materials—thus making it a very time-efficient gathering profession. The skinner can skin most monsters that they kill, as long as the monster is animal-like and not, for instance, a giant lava elemental. Unfortunately, corpses of monsters that have not been looted completely cannot be skinned. Most skinnable creatures produce leather raw materials or sometimes fur, hides, or scales. A quirk of the game sometimes allow skinning of unusual creatures that yield items other than leather or hides. Despite the ease of obtaining the leather, the raw materials gathered by a skinner are still quite valuable. The complementary profession for skinning is leatherworking. The leatherworkers require various leather, fur, hides, and scales to make their crafts.

Fishing
Anyone can learn fishing if they have a fishing pole. Most bodies of water in the game can be fished, but require varying minimum fishing expertise to catch fish from. Lures can be applied to fishing poles to provide short term fishing bonuses. The player just casts their fishing line, waits for their bobber to signal activity and reels in to see if something was caught. Most of the fish caught in the game can be used in cooking recipes. Some fish have various other uses for alchemy or even as weapons.

Every sunday a fishing contest occurs that gives players access to special fish and the opportunity to win special fishing-related items.

Blacksmithing
In blacksmithing, a character creates weapons and armor from smelted bars of metal and in some cases the item that the blacksmith makes will also require gems or diamonds of some sort. Being a blacksmith is especially useful for a warrior or some other heavy armor wearing character. By being a blacksmith that character is able to make all their own armor and weapons. There would be nearly no practical use for a mage to be a blacksmith—since they can only wear cloth armor—except if they were to sell the products at the auction house. That is not always possible either, because certain items that a blacksmith makes in the higher levels of their craft are soulbound, meaning he cannot sell them at the auction house.

Tailoring
In tailoring, a player crafts many different things using cloth. Such things include bolts of that specific cloth, which takes a bundle of a type of cloth and compacts it into one bolt, spell thread that can be applied to a pair of leggings to improve spell power and stamina, and pieces of armor, which increase in quality as the profession skill is upgraded. The material that a tailor primarily needs is cloth. There is a wide variety of cloth to be found in the World of Warcraft. Cloth is obtained by killing many varieties of enemy npc's (non-player characters). The type of cloth depends on the level of the character’s foe. Such classes that benefit from this profession include: Mage, Warlock, Priest. These classes are only able to wear cloth armor, whereas all other classes can wear leather or better. Linen, Wool, Silk, Mageweave and Runecloth are all acquired in Azeroth, which consists of the Eastern Plaguelands and Kalimdor. Netherweave cloth can be acquired from the Outlands, released in The Burning Crusade expansion set. With the newly added continent of Northrend, released in the expansion set Wrath of the Lich King, players acquire Frostweave, which is used to level the tailoring profession from 375 to 450. Players become able to fly in Northrend when they reach level 77, and are able to craft the newly added flying mount for tailors: Magnificient Flying Carpet. This mount can be crafted after a player skills up their tailoring to 425.