Gathering trade skills

Gathering stuff

The first ten levels in World of WarCraft go by very quickly. Nothing especially interesting happens, but we’ll give you some tips anyway. For starters, once you hit level 4-6 or so, you’ll be done with quests in your starting area and move to the newbie zone proper. You should take this time to find where the main city in the area is so you can train your professions. If you don’t do so now, you’ll end up doing it somewhat later (usually around level 10-12) and may find yourself spending unnecessary time skilling up your professions rather than doing that as you are leveling. Guards in all the major cities will be able to guide you to your profession trainer, just beware that at the moment at least the Draenei guards give directions in Stormwind rather than the Exodar (though this shouldn’t be a problem as Draenei can’t be Rogues).

There are basically two types of trades: gatherer and finished goods. Gatherers get the raw materials, finished goods use those resources to create the final useful product. Enchanting is perhaps the only exception, as it requires no goods from any of the gathering professions.

So what professions should you choose? That depends. Herbalism used to be a very good choice for rogues since they relied on herbs for components to make Thistle Tea and Blinding Powder, a potion and reagent that were both rather useful. Nowadays Thistle Tea isn’t quite as useful as before and Blinding Powder can be found by unlocking the chests found by pick pocketing humanoid mobs. However, herbalism is still a good way to make money. Definitely take herbalism if you plan on taking alchemy, unless you already have a different character or friend on the same server with the money to buy your materials for you.

Skinning is a safe if unspectacular choice. It provides for a steady flow of money as long as you end up killing mobs that can be skinned (beasts for the most part). However, there are no especially lucrative ways of earning money as a skinner. Those that do exist, like farming Cobra Scales, are lucrative because they’re a pain to do and take time. You should absolutely have skinning if you plan on doing Leatherworking, again, unless you have a source of income to buy your materials for you to skill up the leatherworking skill.

Mining is a lot like herbalism – in fact, if you have mining, you shouldn’t have herbalism and vice-versa. This is because herbalism and mining rely on markers on your minimap to show you where mining nodes or herbs are, and you can only show one or the other. Mining is harder to skill up than herbing, and before The Burning Crusade was released it was not as profitable, but for now it’s probably the more lucrative of the two professions. Mining goes well with the blacksmithing, engineering, and jewelcrafting trades. As always, unless you have an alternate money supply, get mining if you plan on doing any of those.