General Enchanting question

[Weebull]

My main is lvl 60 and I'm considering dropping Engineering and picking up Enchanting. Mainly for making some $$ but also for the benifits of simply having some nice high level enchants on my gear. Here's my simple question.

I've also got quite a few alts. Can enchants be traded or shared or mailed to your alts? Or does the enchanter need to apply the enchants? Thanks for the answer.

[Steamboat]

You have to apply them. Only way to do it for alts would be on BoE's, enchant them and then mail them to your alt.

[brandonh]

Another option for alts is to simply mail them the mats needed for an enchant and then have another enchanter do it. Most enchanters will do enchants for free / tips if you're providing the mats.

My main has enchanting and so does a friend of mine, so we usually just trade enchants back and forth between our alts. :smiley:

[Mavack]

While enchanting at an end game lvl can be very profitable if you have the lucrative enchants.

It costs alot of gold to get enchanting to 300 and then more time/money to get the REP/drop enchants that will actually earn money.

[Icekiss]

While enchanting at an end game lvl can be very profitable if you have the lucrative enchants.

It costs alot of gold to get enchanting to 300 and then more time/money to get the REP/drop enchants that will actually earn money.

Though I'd think at level 60 it would be much easier to get your enchanting up to 300 seing how you can farm most of the instances solo for the armor and weapons to disenchant, no?

Then it will only be a matter of actually getting good enchanting formulas from different reputation factions.

[Loriel]

Enchanting is essentially a "BoP" profession, pretty much like Engineering is. That is, it will almost exclusively benefit the character with the Enchanting skill, and not your alts. The reason is as stated above, i.e. that you can't put enchants on soulbound items. And as the best gear in the game is BoP anyway, this is pretty much a non-starter.

You could use your Enchanter-char to supply mats for your alts' enchants, but note that not all high end Enchanters give the enchants away if you bring the mats. Some of these recipes are either very rare/expensive drops or the result of massive rep grinds, and they usually charge an enchanting fee to cover their investment (and rightly so - I know I would do the same).

Enchanting is imho only profitable if you're able to get hold of one of these enchants and charge said enchanting fee, as it costs a fortune to skill up. Without any rare enchants, you'll struggle hard just to break even.

Enchanting can be useful on your main character, though, as you can shard unwanted BoP items - including T1/T2 epics - when you get replacements for them. Without Enchanting, you would either have to bank them or vendor them, which can be a bit painful. With Enchanting you'll at least get some Nexus Crystals out of it.

IMHO, Jewelcrafting seems to be a better supporting profession - in that your Jewelcrafter can send rings and trinkets (few of which seem to be BoP), and at lvl 60+ you can also provide gems for your alts, i.e. for socketable items.

[rgirty]

Enchanting most likely will not make you money, you will make lots more money by picking herbalism.

I have a 300 alchemy/herbalism as well as 300 tailoring/enchanting.

herbalism/tailoring/alchemy make money for me in that order. Enchanting has simpy been a money sink for me. The major reason is I don't want to stand around in Ironforge spamming the trade channel.

I did some quick math a while ago, if you do an enchant every 5 minutes (a lot) thats 12 enchants an hour, if you get an average of 2gold tip per enchant (not likely) you make 24G an hour.

I take my herb char, and can go to various zones where I can easily clear 30g an hour simply picking herbs not to mention the various mobs I kill as well.

[Oatmealsmurf]

Ditto... Enchanting is one of those professions that is just really nice to have for yourself for the most part. It has the potential to make you money in the very long run when you get some of the rarer enchants. But it will be a while before you see a net profit after the money you dump into it. I'm just getting to the point now that I'll be able to reliably sell enchants now that I have the two major agility enchants for weapons and Mighty Spirit... The really nice sellers are stuff like healing power and spell power.