With only a week left until the Burning Crusade hits, your professions probably are not the top thing on your WoW agenda. Leveling, PVP, your guild status -- those are more pressing concerns than "Dear God, how am I going to level up my Engineering?" But if you're one of those rare people who absolutely delights in their professions, as I am, you might be interested in the new "discovery" system.

Discoveries are a new twist on the profession system. Basically, when making profession items, you can "discover" new recipes. The discoveries appear to be totally random, and so far have only been seen in Alchemy. It's not clear whether Alchemy is the only profession that gets these, or whether the rate of discoveries are so low that only alchemists making mass amounts of potions have been able to uncover them.

So far, adept alchemists have discovered two transmutes (Primal Life to Primal Earth and vice versa) and five flasks. The Flask of Mighty Restoration increases mana regeneration by 70/5 sec, the Flask of Fortification is an upgraded Flask of Titans, the Flasks of Arcane and Shadow Fortification increase resistance to Arcane/Shadow spells by 75 and health regeneration by 40/5 seconds, and the Flask of Relentless Assault increases attack power by 360. All the flasks last two hours and persist through death.

Do you think the discovery recipes are a neat addition, or does it make farming for flasks and transmutes too random?

Filed under: Alchemy, The Burning Crusade