Monday, August 11, 2014

Warlords Professions So Far

Fairly overlooked in a lot of the news about Warlords of Draenor is the new way that professions are being approached. It's actually the most radical change to the system since vanilla, though in most ways, professions as a game mechanic will still be recognizable.

When you get to Draenor and you start questing (and this might not happen until you've done the Tanaan Jungle intro and established your garrison,) you'll start finding scrolls off random enemies that will allow you to train your "Draenor Master" level in a given gathering profession or secondary skill, but not production professions.

These scrolls can be used with a skill level of 1. They do not instantly level you to the maximum skill, but they do effectively give you the "Draenor Master" level, meaning that your skill cap will go straight to 700. And yes, this is the first expansion where professions are going up by 100 points, rather than 75.

I don't think these are all complete (the mining one doesn't teach you to smelt True Iron or Blackrock ore, though for all I know they might be getting rid of the whole "smelting" thing... or it's just not complete,) but I got the First Aid one, and this instantly gave me four recipes. My Paladin (the toon I was playing on when I found this) has never had much First Aid, as I've always relied on my healing spells instead of bandages (before Prot/Ret mana regeneration was kicked up to insane levels, it might have been good to do First Aid, but oh well, it's moot now.) Upon using the scroll, you get recipes for a new bandage, plus what looks like a health potion (are alchemists going to be angry about that?) as well as two new items that cleanse diseases and poisons.

These all provide 5 skill points per production, which is good, but it'll still take you a long time to level your professions from scratch this way, so I'd still recommend working on those profs if you want to use them.

Meanwhile, the headliner production professions (Alchemy, Enchanting, Tailoring, Inscription, Leatherworking, Engineering, Blacksmithing, and Jewelcrafting,) are a little more involved. After completing an early quest chain (basically the first thing you do after establishing your garrison,) you'll get a cache from the Frostwolves or the Draenei (depending on faction, of course) that will contain an item that begins a quest. There is then a quest for each production profession that you'll be sent to complete somewhere in the zone. Completing that quest will give you the profession scroll for your given profession as well as the blueprint for your profession's garrison building.

Now here's where the Not Yet Implemented part makes my job a little hard. For instance, I did not get any new recipes for Engineering when I used the scroll, though I got 600/700. You'll get a quest when you return to your garrison that asks you to build your profession building.

Your profession building will then have a couple of NPCs, for example, an Engineer and an Engineer's assistant. The Engineer will give you a quest that explains how to do work orders, which will then allow you to produce materials for that given profession. And if I understand correctly, the Engineer will serve a different function depending on what professions you have. If you are an engineer yourself, they will basically function as a trainer - though rather than training you in the traditional way, they'll just sell you recipes/schematics, etc. If you don't have the profession, though, you can talk to them and, if you have the right materials (I believe that this will always take at least one of the reagents created via the corresponding building's work orders,) you can have them craft things for you from a limited selection of that profession.

Essentially, you'll want to have your profession's buildings in your small plots. You can have a maximum of three, though, which gives you some flexibility. You should be able to create those rare reagents that are produced through the work orders on your own if you have the corresponding profession, though, so if you've made everything you need, you should be able to switch the building over without any horrible consequences.

Also, Miners and Herbalists don't have to worry, because the Mine and Herb Garden are guaranteed buildings - they don't take up a plot and are available to everyone (after completing a quick and simple quest.) This also applies to Fishing and a Pet Battle menagerie. Skinners I'm not entirely sure about. You can put the Barn up as one of your medium-sized buildings (you get two such plots at the max level,) but I am not entirely sure what you get out of that yet.

The major question that I have about this is what non-questers will do. I know some people just like to chain-run dungeons to level up, and at least so far, it looks like the only method for getting these profession scrolls is by doing those quests. Then again, there do appear to be profession trainers in the Ashran hubs, so perhaps you only need to go there. And for the questing-averse, I should also point out that you get your special profession quests pretty early in each of the starting zones.

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