World of Warcraft: Enchanting Guide

Enchanting in WoW can be a difficult profession to level. The materials can be extremely expensive at the Auction House and this can be prohibitive if you don’t have much time to spend on gathering materials yourself. However, if you are leveling it alongside a crafting profession, you have lots of time to spend on it, and/or you are at the character level cap already, Enchanting can actually be really simple to level. We will explain the basics here. If you are really looking to master enchanting, and all the professions, you should check out Dugi's Professions guide. It is the best out there.

The best profession to take with Enchanting is probably Tailoring. This is because neither Enchanting nor Tailoring have an associated gathering profession such as Mining or Skinning. This means that you can quite happily just go and farm cloth from Humanoid monsters and make it into cloth armor for skills in Tailoring, and then you can disenchant the armor afterwards for enchanting materials. Other than that if you are higher level, it may be possible to farm low level instances much of the time for green and blue quality items that can also be disenchanted for supplies.

As with other professions, Enchanting has a maximum skill level in Wrath of the Lich King of 450. To get to maximum level you must work through all of the lower levels first. Each level has a particular range of skill, after which you can train the next level. You can usually train the next level a little before the cap, however, and this can sometimes work out easier at the higher levels. For example, Apprentice Enchanting (the first bracket) goes from 1-75 skill, but you can train in Journeyman Enchanting (the second bracket) once you reach 50. While leveling Enchanting, it is important to check at all the vendors you can to see if there is an enchanting formula that requires less materials at the same skill than the ones you know already. This can save a fortune in the long term. To find these recipes, you should use a database website such as www.wowhead.com to search for all Enchanting formulas available from source Vendor.

The first bracket of skill to level is Apprentice Enchanting, which can take you up to 75 skill points. This is the easiest of all brackets to level through as it can mostly be done by disenchanting. Up until you reach 50 skill points at least, each time you disenchant a green item you will gain a skill-up. You should try making a lot of cloth armor to disenchant if you have tailoring, or run through Deadmines and disenchant everything you get in there that is uncommon (green) quality or higher. All the materials you gain from this should be saved as you will need all those and more to level enchanting effectively. You will also need to make a Runed Copper Rod in order to actually begin enchanting items.

After you learn Journeyman level Enchanting, you can start putting all those materials to good use. You should have a nice supply of Strange Dust and Lesser/Greater Magic Essence to be used up. It is important to know that essences can be changed between lesser and greater varieties for the different enchants that require them. If you have three lesser essence you can turn them into a single greater and vice-versa. You should be able to reach 100 skill points simply by using Enchant Bracer: Minor Health and then Enchant Bracer: Minor Stamina. It is possible to keep using the Minor Stamina enchanting formula up to 120 skill points if you are short on essences. At this point you will need to make higher items from Tailoring or visit a slightly higher level dungeon in order to get Astral Essence and Soul Dust which will be needed at skill 120+. You will also need a Runed Silver Rod in order to move past this point.

If you carry on following this basic progression you will soon reach at least the 400 mark. If you are using Tailoring for the materials then you will probably want to install an addon such as Enchantrix which will add information to item tooltips in game showing you what materials you will get from disenchanting something. This can really help in a bind when you need essence or dust for a particular enchant and don’t know what to make to get it. If you are running instances, you will probably need to just test each level bracket of dungeon to see what materials you get or possibly check the disenchanting tab on wowhead.com for the information that Enchantrix provides. From 400 skill points onwards you will probably need to run heroic Northrend dungeons for Dream Shards unless you have the money to buy them. Dream Shards and Infinite Dust will take you the rest of the way. Abyss Crystals are also needed for the highest level enchants, but these are not necessary to reach the skill cap.