Filed under: Leatherworking

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

In the World of Warcraft, there are three types of craftspeople: those that gather, those that enhance, and those that create gear. They are not mutually exclusive. For example, Scribes can create off-hand weaponry in addition to glyphs and Jewelcrafters can prospect gems from raw materials.

Gathering professions are known to be money-makers, and in addition, when asked, many players will also list the enhancement professions as well:

• Inscription, although it is currently suffering from a lack of demand created by the introduction of dual-specs with patch 3.1.
• Jewelcrafting is on the list, not because of its ability to create gear such as rings, but mainly because of the Prospecting and gems, cut or raw.
• Enchanting is often stated, not only because of the enchants that can be created and even auctioned, but also because of the Disenchanting ability.

To balance this out, one would assume that the gear-crafting professions of Leatherworking, Tailoring and Blacksmithing must be incredibly useful, if not lucrative. Unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case. This week, Insider Trader will be discussing the state of these professions. For a similar assessment of Engineering, check out The state of Engineering in 3.1.

I am especially interested in reader input and brainstorming, so don't forget to read through the comments section at the end of the article!

Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).

A character's bank is a special place meant to store gear, consumables, novelty items and a whole mess of other things (and I do mean mess!). Because of this, many players have at least one "bank alt" which is an additional character created primarily to house and auction items.

The value of your banker's ability to store things should not be underestimated. Today, I will walk you through the steps to and costs of purchasing bank space, and show you an example of how it can be utilized to help you make gold.

Banking Costs: Guild vs. Personal
Every bank alt should purchase the first four bag slots within their own personal banks. This will cost you a total of 36g10s, and require that you purchase actual bags to place in those slots. The more slots the bags can hold, the more storage you will have.

Each week Arcane Brilliance brings you a column about Mages and all things Mage-related. That's right, Arcane Brilliance is nothing if not consistent. You won't find any server instability here. We're never down, we're always up, and you can always enter our instanced content. And the best part? Arcane Brilliance doesn't charge you 15 bucks a month. Although, donations are totally welcome.

So how's everything? Did you make it through patch day unscathed? Did you log in, like me, and find that your Mage's face, forearms, and feet were gone, and there was a hole through his chest (pro tip: upgrade your video card drivers more than once every three years)? Are you running out of mana at an outrageous clip? Are your crit numbers from Molten Armor up or down? Did your guild manage to make it into Ulduar yet, and if so, did you manage to snag any phat loot? Did you dual spec your Mage so he can now both DPS and DPS? I went Frostfire/Firefrost, myself. When triple-specs hit, I'm taking a Frarcano-fire spec. Mark my words.

All in all, I'd say 3.1 wasn't too bad. We have some new glyphs to play with, the Argent Tournament is good, clean fun, our mounts can swim, and we have a whole new batch of loot-pinatas to blow up. Our DPS seems to be down a bit, but we're still beating Warlocks, so I'm not going to mail any angry, expletive-laced letters to Blizzard just yet. I've written them--rest assured--but I'm not yet prepared to actually invest in stamps for them. Those things are like a buck apiece these days.

So now we turn to the third and final installment in our guide to professions for Mages. If you missed them, the first two parts can be found here and here. This week we'll investigate the merits of Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Engineering. As an added bonus, we'll take a quick peek at the three secondary professions and enumerate the reasons for investing in them. Yes, even though you can conjure Strudel from the very air around you with but a word and a snap of your fingers, you still need to learn how to cook

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

This week Insider Trader will be discussing everything craftspeople need to know about patch 3.1. By the end of this article, you will know what you should be doing to prepare for patch day, what will be changing, and how the community is reacting to these changes.

I have been covering these topics to the best of my abilities as information has been released and altered over the weeks, but as we draw closer to patch day, the post-patch scene is becoming increasingly easy to visualize.

We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• Foofy's Cupcake Factory has posted the fourth installment of their Moonkin Raiding basics video series. This installment covers the pros and cons of Solar Eclipse Moonkin spell rotation.
• The AddOn creator Tekkub has written idHitThat, a new mod that will show you in-game what your attack and defense values are against an opponent three levels higher than you. (via Swiftmend)
• Warcraft Econ has a lesson in money making concerning Leatherworking Leg Armor Kits.
• Twenty-five man raiding gets all the love, but Spinksville enjoys non-Heroic raids just as much and lists 11 Reasons to run 10-Mans.
• The Tanking Tips blog thinks it's time to go back to basics and whips up a Tanking Stats 101 guide.

Submit a guide, post, podcast or resource for inclusion in TDQ and we'll consider it for a future post.

Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly look at the world of the Death Knight, hosted by Daniel Whitcomb.

So here you are, Death Knight. Maybe you've just stepped through the Portal on your way to the Throne of King Wrynn or Thrall, or maybe you've just uncovered the truth behind Loken as you dinged 80, but either way, you're looking at the profession section of your skills tab, and you can't help but notice that it looks pretty sparse.

Of course, as a Death Knight, you're starting from zero with no shortcuts. You'll have to grind everything up from scratch, so you'll want to make sure it's worth it. Of course, you could go for the old standby: Skinning combined with Herbalism or Mining. That's not a bad idea these days, really. You get some buffs, and you can sell off the raw materials to pay for your motorcycle fund. Still, the production tradeskills have their own good bonuses. So today, we're going to look at those bonuses and see which ones just might be worth making the tradeskill grind on your Death Knight.

Mania's got an excellent, if longer-than-usual post up about an issue I'm dealing with as well: the need to play, but confusion about just what to do in the game. I've pretty much done everything I want to do on my Hunter -- after a very lucky night the other week, I'm decked out in all the gear I want, I've topped off my professions, and while I do have some reps to grind out yet (I still want a few rep mounts), most everything I want just depends on dailies, and those I can finish in just a few minutes a day. But just like Mania I've still got that itch to play, to explore and advance and progress, with nowhere to go.

For Mania, the answer turned out to be going to a Death Knight -- she may discover that she's opened up a whole new world in choosing to level with a completely different class. An alt was also the answer for me, but I have a few different reasons, the first of which is Engineering -- I thought for a while, after hitting 450 Leatherworking on my (also Skinning) Hunter that I would switch to Engie and just buy all the mats, but I think it'll be more fun (and profitable) leveling up a Mining/Engineering alt. And he can always make the BoE chopper for any of my characters as well.

But while an alt is sometimes the answer, there are lots of things you can dive into to find a completely new area in the game -- try Arenas for the first time, do a Wintergrasp grind, seek out an old world reputation or title that you've always wanted. We're very lucky, in a game like this, to have lots and lots of new things to try even when it seems like we've done everything we want.

Ishh over at Twinkinfo has some pretty big news for lower-level players: the enchants, librams, and even jewelcrafting trinkets that used to work for almost everybody ingame have gained a few level requirements on the PTR. Twinks especially love these items, as they can be used to give big buffs to even low-level players, but Blizzard isn't down with that any more, apparently. Even applied enchants and Leatherworking leg armor will apparently stop working if this change goes out to the live realms -- they have pictures, as you can see, of enchanted stats turning red due to level requirements.

Most of the time, when Blizzard makes changes like this, they aren't actually targeted at twinks -- they're just designed to keep the game from becoming extremely easy at a given level (I'm still bummed that my Leatherworking drums have no effect after level 70). But obviously twinks are affected by these changes, and as you can see from the comments on that post, they're not very happy with having even more limits placed on how they can buff up.

But then again, as I said a little while ago, twinks have always dealt just fine with limits. Twinkinfo has a poll up on what twinks will do if these changes go live, and the majority of votes say that they'll just keep twinking. They've gone around level restrictions before -- a few more won't be the end of the world.

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

Patch 3.1 is looming ever closer, and things are about to change in a big way. Today I'll be discussing how the patch is going to affect your professions, and how you can take advantage of this by maximizing your profits on the Auction House.

Players have become increasingly bored with raiding because the content that was released with the expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, was too quickly conquered. Across the board, players are showing up to raids on an inconsistent basis, and many people now spend much of their time on the Public Test Realm playing through Ulduar.

This has contributed to falling prices on the Auction House for raiding materials and consumables, because not only have many people stopped raiding, many others have decided to save their gold and raid without being buffed to the gills.

What should you do in these tight times? Aside from the things for which you are currently saving, the patch will bring with it a 1000g bill to learn how to dual spec, costs to fund raid wipes, bring new consumables, and enchant and gem new gear.

By learning what to sell and purchase and when, you can minimize your post-patch costs and make some gold while you're at it.

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

Although patch 3.1 is still a few months from going live, it is already shaping up to be a positive force on the professions front. So far, we've been made aware of the following changes:

• Two new Engineering enchants (attn: tanks and spell power users).
  
• An engineered bind on equip blue trinket.
• A +hit elixir for the level 19 twink community.
  
• A deliciously ridiculous number of new glyphs, along with glyph changes.
  
• New Blacksmithing bind on equip epics covering spell plate, dps plate and tanking plate, as well as a spell dagger.
  
• New juicy, expensive enchants.
• Finally, a productive use for Black Diamonds.
• A new Jewelcrafting trinket.
• Lots of new Leatherworking goodies.
• Several Tailoring items, including a 32-slot herbing bag.
• Many current recipes, including Old World and Outland ones, are being rebalanced and updated.

For details and analysis, follow me through the break. Keep in mind that these are subject to change, and that we will likely see even more developments in the future.

Here is still more patch 3.1 information unearthed by the sleuths at MMO-Champion. These are some new profession recipes, including epic belts and boots for all. The epic recipes call for Runed Orbs, which presumably will drop in Ulduar, much like Nether Vortices of BC. I wouldn't be surprised if they were purchaseable with badges of some sort -- maybe Emblems of Valor. Edit: This is obviously not the full extent of new recipes, so please don't say "that's it?" (I'm looking at you, engineers.)

• Alchemy - Elixir of Minor Accuracy
• Blacksmithing - Battlelord's Plate Boots, Belt of the Titans, Indestructible Plate Girdle, Plate Girdle of Righteousness, Spiked Deathdealers, Titansteel Spellblade, Treads of Destiny
• Enchanting - Enchant Boots - Lesser Accuracy, Enchant Staff - Greater Spellpower, Enchant Staff - Spellpower
• Engineering - High-Powered Flashlight
• Jewelcrafting - Amulet of True Sight, Prismatic Black Diamond
• Leatherworking - Belt of Arctic Life, Belt of Dragons, Blue Belt of Chaos, Boots of Living Scale, Boots of Wintry Endurance, Death-warmed Belt, Footpads of Silence, Lightning Grounded Boots
• Tailoring - Cord of White Dawn, Sash of Ancient Power, Savior's Slippers, Spellslinger's Slippers, Spidersilk Drape

---

Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

Alex is out loading up his backpacks with all his gear, hopping on his Traveler's Tundra Mammoth and walking across Azeroth for a couple days. So until he's back to us full time I'm going to take a few more days this week of "Da Queue." Be sure to leave us your questions as a comment, or if you want to remain anonymous (because really, besides "Why can't Paladins tank?" there is no such thing as a dumb question) you can send us a tip on our tip line. Enough talk! Let us Queue!

Ava asked...

"Any word on when they're going to make engineers not useless in 3.1..."

Fresh on the heels of last week's gemming guide, we have an enchanting guide. Like gemming, enchanting is an easy way to go the extra mile to get your gear the best it can be so you can properly keep aggro without dying and/or top the damage meters in your next Naxxramas raid. Since there's so few enchants available, it's a lot less complicated than gemming too. DPS will just want hit to the cap and attack power (Sorry, there's not many strength enchants), while tanks will want defense to 540 and stamina.

It's also worth noting that almost every slot with an enchant has a weaker version and a more powerful version. Although it's usually frowned upon to go weak when can go strong, in the case of enchants, it's probably okay at the entry level to go with the weaker version of an enchant. The more powerful ones generally take Abyss Crystals and the like, and may be a bit steep. In addition, there's a few other quirks and special enchantments to watch out for. Let's take a look, by slot, at some of the best choices for enchanting for both DPS and Tanking.

Love will soon be in the air, and it's time you worked out your game plan. Chances are that it won't be just the city guards and leaders that will catch your eye (or eye socket).

Whether you're looking to reel someone in, set up a romantic excursion, or send an enemy a delicious surprise, you'll find that preparation is the key. This year, crafted items are the hot new trend. What better to say, "Darling, I can't get enough of the way your eyes puss" than with handmade?

First, you have to look the part. For all of you gents out there, I recommend seeking out a tailor for your very own Tuxedo Jacket, Tuxedo Pants, and coordinating Tuxedo Shirt. Alternatively, a Festival Suit will have you standing apart from the crowd, while a Colorful Kilt will set up some easy access to um, cultural traditions.

For the gals, we have the lovely and sophisticated Festival Dress, or the elaborate and vaguely desperate White Wedding Dress. If you want to attract a different sort of attention, then try the Red Winter Clothes on for size! They aren't just for Winter Veil, and are snazzier than anything Victoria keeps secret.

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

In the World of Warcraft, as in life, we are constantly being faced with morally significant choices. Some players try their best to listen to the Angel on their shoulder, while others will do whatever suits them at the time. Proper etiquette is always in debate.

Of course, as this is a virtual world, the moral implications of our actions are on a much smaller scale. Hitting someone for being annoying could cause many problems in my personal and professional lives, yet blasting someone similar off of a cliff in-game can be almost therapeutic.

When it comes to gathering and crafting, greed crops up. There are many ways to get what you want, often at the expense of others. This week, Insider Trader will discuss the underhanded side of the professional world.