LW 1-375 with no fuzz

[Ankh]

I asked a couple of times citizens on these forum pages on the challenges of levelling LW, but never found a clear answer.

Nevertheless, two days ago I decided to skip my herbalism and powerlevel LW. This is not a guide - sufficiently good guides can be found by googling for them. But I wanted to just give this forum the numbers I was after initially. Two days, 7 hours total playing time, and 3100 G it took me to get to skill 375. Well, include some swearing when my yellow recipe did not give me a skill-up ;-). I still have 6 Riding Crops unsold, so the net cost will be roughly 2500 G, which is remarkably low! My budget for this was 5-6000 G. My guess is that 6k G would not be sufficient for neither Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting or Enchanting.

All I used was standard recipes. Though I bought the recipe for 'Raiding Crop' at AH and collected my recipe rep rewards at The Consortium and Cenarion Expedition (only Honored required). Nothing else.

No cooldowns slowed my skilling speed, and there was no need for epic recipes gained from instances or exalted rep rewards. The only obstacle was that the market (AH) was out of mats from time to time (Because of me...).

I have only been able to make 2 epic items from the Primalstrike set because I did not have enough Primal Nethers (yet). The total price for the 3 part epic set is about 2000 G in mats on my server (in addition you need 3 Primal Nethers).

Ok, that's the information I wanted to share. LW might be the easiest non-gathering profession to level.

When I have my full epic set, I might level up Engineering to get the epic goggles. Does anyone know how hard that would be (cooldowns, gold)?

[Aerath]

It'd be the second most easy profession to level - Alchemy is easier than Leatherworking I feel.

Engineering is very rough and very very costly. I would expect to spend about as much as on Blacksmithing. And, to make things worse - it's nearly impossible to sell any of it back for some cash return.

[Leonavice]

I find Tailoring easier than LW for leveling, particularly from 350 onwards. LW requires quite a bit of primals, whereas tailoring is just cloth, arcane dust and netherweb silk.

[bhroam]

Jewel crafting isn't hard persay... just requires lots of mining. There are recipes which are easy enough to level.. The only really slow point was between 350-365. There were no trainable/buyable recipes between that point. With 2.1, purified shadow pearl is at 350 to help with that gap.

The pain with LW is the farming for 365+. All the recipes my guildies leveled on required huge amounts of clefthoof leather. That requires lots of farming in nagrand and BeM.

I'd have to go with Leon about tailoring. It definitely will be slower due to cooldowns getting in the way, but it requires much less mats.

The scary thing... Alchemy will make you the most money and is the easiest to level.

[Leonavice]

I'd have to go with Leon about tailoring. It definitely will be slower due to cooldowns getting in the way, but it requires much less mats.


If you don't even bother about cooldowns, you can get to 375 with just netherweave cloth, netherweb silk and arcane dust. Just keep making Imbued netherweave robe.

The thing is, it doesn't require any primals, it doesn't require you to kill stuff or farm stuff, the mats are so common it's flooding the AH anyway (the netherweb silk maybe not, but all the spiders in Terrokar are just sitting there waiting to be farmed.)

But you are right about Alchemy. Simply buy out stacks of herbs from AH and keep making elixirs. Heck, you can even list them again on the AH because there are demands for them on raids. The new stuff like Major Fortitude and Draenic Wisdom are pretty good stuff and only requires 1 quantity of 2 herbs.

[clevins]

ankh,

So i just started levelling LW for the primalstrike set... it seems that the 1-300 stuff will be easy and reasonably cheap. Did you find a good guide for the 301-375 slog? Or did you just get recipes and make stuff that was orange and yellow and try to be efficient with mats=?

[Aerath]

It's all pretty straight forward from 300-350.

Only 1-2 orange items all the time.

After that, it's just a matter of getting an ungodly amount of mats.

[bhroam]

Well actually depending on how many factions you are exalted with, high level leather working can be easier. The Drums recipes are for sale from vendors for being exalted (Sha'tar and Keepers of Time for sure... not sure which others). They require a small amount of mats - 1 primal and 2 knothide leather (maybe heavy knothide, don't recall).

My wife painfully leveled leather working through Clefthoof Bull genocide... it would have been a lot easier now since she's exalted with Sha'tar and KoT.

One thing she complains bitterly about is that leatherworkers get their epic set patterns at 375. Tailors get their first piece at 365. You spend all this time leveling LW and getting the hellish mats for your epic set... and don't even get a point for it.

[Ankh]

ankh,
So i just started levelling LW for the primalstrike set... it seems that the 1-300 stuff will be easy and reasonably cheap. Did you find a good guide for the 301-375 slog? Or did you just get recipes and make stuff that was orange and yellow and try to be efficient with mats=?

Yes, the levelling to 300 is incredibly cheap. Less than 300 G, if I remember correctly. I checked out various guides, but you don't really need them. It is straightforward. But I tapped the yellow recipes a bit more than the guides recommend. I levelled a lot on yellow, not just on orange ones. The only useful hint I got was to get my honored (no exalted rep. reward recipes are needed) rep. reward recipes for the Consortium and Cenarion expedition. Clefthoof leather I bought. No grinding necessary (everything is easily obtainable with pure money ;-)). Clefthoof leather is quite expensive, but you don't need very huge amounts of it (compared to knothide).

Good luck!

[clevins]

Ok... 225 and <100g spent... much less net (i've auctioned some of the white items, DE'ed the greens)

thanks for the tip on rep... I'm honored with Consortium and Cenarion Exp... time to go find recipes...