How professions work in WoW: Dragonflight
The overhaul of professions was long overdue.
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World of Warcraft’s professions have had a pretty major overhaul in Dragonflight, bringing changes to how they work. While the core system will stay the same, profession stats, crafting orders, and item quality are just some of the things that you’ll need to familiarise yourself with if you want to make the most of crafting in the new expansion.
Don’t be put off, though—the new profession system isn’t as confusing as it might appear and I’ll explain everything you need to know. If you’re ready to get to work, here’s what’s new with professions in Dragonflight.
WoW Dragonflight professions: How they work
The new crafting UI might look confusing at first, but it’s pretty straightforward once you know what you’re looking at. There’s a whole mess of numbers and percentages in the screenshots below, but I’ll go over what each of them means.
You’ve got your standard recipe list on the left and in the main window you’ll see the materials needed to craft the item using the selected recipe. There’s also room for optional reagents, which will let you increase the quality of the item you’re crafting. Just be aware that doing so will increase the recipe’s difficulty, which you can see over to the right.
Neither concept is new to professions; they’re just presented differently in Dragonflight. Profession stats, on the other hand, could do with more of an explanation.
Profession stats and gear
Profession stats and what they do
One of the biggest changes coming to professions in Dragonflight is the addition of specialized stats for crafting and gathering. These stats will offer new ways to make your crafting more efficient, and you’ll be able to equip gear to gain their bonuses.
Profession stats look a little different for gatherers:
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Crafting gear
Yes, that’scraftinggear, notcraftedgear. Crafting gear is also new to Dragonflight and will be the primary source of your profession-specific stats. The crafting UI has three slots for each profession and you’ll be able to equipa tool and two accessories, all of which will boost these stats. Don’t expect to be able to craft all of your own crafting gear, though: you might need to enlist the help of other professions to get a full set.
Once you have your crafting gear equipped in those three slots, the gear will automatically be equipped by your character whenever you open the crafting window. For gatherers, you’ll switch to the gear as soon as you start harvesting.
Quality
Crafting Quality
Dragonflight leveling:Get to 70 fastDragonflight talents:New trees explainedDracthyr Evokers:The new race and classDragonriding:Take to the skiesDragon Glyphs:Upgrade your dragonridingDragonflight professions:What’s new
Many resources and materials have quality levels in Dragonflight and this will directly impact the resulting quality of the item you’re crafting. For gear, the higher the quality, the better the item level. For consumables, it might mean they last longer or have more charges.
A few things will impact the quality of any item you craft. Your skill level, the quality of the materials you’re using, and optional reagents can all affect the outcome. Luckily, the quality progress bar on the UI means you will see the quality of the item you’re planning to craft so you can decide if you want to go ahead.
For resources like ore or herbs, the higher your gathering skill level, the higher chance you have of gathering high-quality materials. You can also choose specializations that help you produce better-quality resources.
Another great addition to professions in Dragonflight is the ability torecraftitems. This basically means you won’t need to wait for better quality materials or a higher skill stat if you need the item now. Crafting it early won’t waste materials because you’ll be able to recraft it later to get a better outcome.
Specializations
Profession specializations
Crafting specializations aren’t new to World of Warcraft but they’ve been revamped and re-added to professions in Dragonflight. This is how they work: Each crafting profession has several different specializations, allowing you to excel in a certain area. So if you take Blacksmithing, for example, you could choose to specialize in Weaponsmithing which opens up a mini talent tree offering bonuses and perks when crafting weapons. Once you’ve chosen a specialization, you’ll needProfession Knowledgeto unlock the nodes on the talent tree.
Specializations become available after you’ve unlocked 25 skill points in that profession, with each subsequent unlock coming available at 50, 75, and so on. So while it is possible to unlock all the specializations for your chosen profession eventually, you should figure out which you want to focus on first and go from there.
How to earn Profession Knowledge
While you still use traditional skill points to level up your professions, you’ll also need Profession Knowledge in Dragonflight to upgrade the various nodes on your specialization tree. Each point of Profession Knowledge you spend will also go towards your overall skill level for that profession. As you can imagine, you’ll need quite a bit of it and there are various ways you can gain this knowledge.
The most reliable way of getting Profession Knowledge is by doingdaily questsoffered by profession trainers in Valdrakken. You’ll also gain Knowledge thefirst time you craft a new recipebut not for subsequent crafts of the same item. This means you should consider crafting each new recipe you learn at least once, even if you have no use for the item you’re crafting. Gatherers will have a chance to gain Profession Knowledge whenever theymine a node or harvest a herb.
Crafting Orders
Crafting Orders
Crafting Orders will let you place orders for any craftable item in an auction house-like interface. You can customize an item to your liking with the reagents you choose but get someone else to craft it for you and it also works for Bind on Pickup items. If you don’t have all the materials needed, you can request that the crafter supply them for you, though this will obviously cost extra gold. You can leave a note for the crafter, plus a commission if you choose.
Crafters that pick up these orders will get a small tip for their work and skill points from crafting the item.
Sarah started as a freelance writer in 2018, writing for PCGamesN, TechRadar, GamingBible, Red Bull Gaming and more. In 2021, she was offered a full-time position on the PC Gamer team where she takes every possible opportunity to talk about World of Warcraft and Elden Ring. When not writing guides, most of her spare time is spent in Azeroth—though she’s quite partial to JRPGs too. One of her fondest hopes is to one day play through the ending of Final Fantasy X without breaking down into a sobbing heap. She probably has more wolves in Valheim than you.
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