TRADES

Herbs, dust and hides

the zones of the 20s / level 15 to 30 / herbs, enchanting dust, hides / alone

I spent a wet week in the Wetlands picking everything that grew out of the mud. I dislike rain and I dislike mud, and the Wetlands are made of both. When I sold the lot in Ironforge, the Kingsblood had paid for the week and the Peacebloom I'd picked in Loch Modan on the way had paid for the beer.

Why it pays

Forever added hundreds of recipes, and they decide what sells. Up to skill 225, Kingsblood goes into nine of the new ones, more than any other herb, all nine for alchemists. On the beta one Kingsblood fetched more than a stack of Silverleaf.

Enchanting turns the green items you loot into dust and essences. No vendor pays a copper for them, so all of it goes to the auction house, and the new recipes ask most often for Greater Astral Essence, in twenty-five of them, eighteen for the tailors' new cloth sets.

Skinning gives leather and now and then a hide. No new recipe takes a raw hide, but 113 of them take a cured one, and leatherworkers cure their own. On the beta a Medium Hide sold for two or three times what a Medium Leather did.

What you need

Herbalism and Skinning you have from the page before. Journeyman at skill 50 costs 5 silver and Expert at 125 costs 50, and the two take you to 225. Enchanting would be a third profession, so it goes on an alt or replaces a gatherer later. Few trainers teach Expert Enchanting. In the data they are Kitta Firewind in Elwynn and Hgarth in Stonetalon.

Where

Kingsblood and Wild Steelbloom grow all over the zones of the 20s, in the Wetlands, Hillsbrad, Ashenvale, Stonetalon, Duskwood and the Barrens. Liferoot grows mostly in the Wetlands, Hillsbrad and Ashenvale. Below level 20 the herbs are only worth picking when they stand in your way.

How

1. Level with Herbalism and Skinning through the zones of the 20s.
2. Keep the hides apart from the leather and sell them as they are.
3. Put the green items you loot in the bank instead of selling them to a vendor. Mail them to an enchanter later.
4. Sell the herbs of the 20s as you go. The low ones keep, and a new alchemist will want them for skill.
5. When cloth is cheap, the travellers buy it, make something from it, disenchant that and sell the dust. Do the sums at the auction house before you try it.

What can go wrong

Dust has no vendor price, so on a quiet day it sits in your bank. Herb prices follow the alchemists, and every other herbalist in the zone is after the same Kingsblood. The shuffle only works while the cloth costs less than the dust it turns into, and both prices move fast on a new server. The travellers also advise against Enchanting at the start, except to make yourself a wand, because it costs money to level.

BASTIAN'S VERDICT Herbalism paid me best of the three. Enchanting I'll leave to an alt with more patience than I have.