WoW: Crafting becomes complex in Dragonflight – but also really strong

The professions in World of Warcraft are relevant with Dragonflight – and rightly so. But the whole system is also much more complicated.

For many years, World of Warcraft has repeatedly emphasized that they wanted to “make the professions relevant again” – but that never lasted particularly long in the expansions. With the upcoming Dragonflight expansion, however, WoW seems to be serious about this and is bringing the biggest changes to the profession system that have ever existed. At first glance, the system is quite complex and also obscure. We try to bring you closer to the most important innovations and to explain what it is all about.

The essentials in brief:

• Crafting professions are gaining massive importance in Dragonflight.
• Players can craft Mythic Raid level gear.
• Tiers of quality improve equipment even further.
• All professions can specialize in very specific aspects.
• With crafting orders you can get soulbound equipment from other professions.

The introduction of quality

Probably the biggest and (at least at first glance) most complex change is the introduction of quality levels.

Crafted equipment has 5 different quality levels, each of which can be identified by a small icon on the item.

• Tier 1: Bronze Icon
• Tier 2: Silver Icon
• Tier 3: Gold Icon
• Tier 4: Diamond Icon
• Tier 5: Legendary Icon

However, some crafting materials and consumables such as potions only have 3 quality levels. On the other hand, materials that can be collected by all players (cloth, fish or meat) have no quality levels.

When crafting equipment, the quality provides a small boost in item level. As an example, Blizzard gave an item that should have item level 270 on the lowest quality and item level 280 on the highest quality.

The rationale behind this is that it should always be worth aiming for high quality, but never so powerful that the inferior variants have no value at all.

For consumables, higher quality means more charges, a longer duration, or a stronger effect – it depends on the item.

The “lower quality” potions will probably be sold much cheaper and could become a “budget variant” for consumables, so that you can throw in a potion in dungeons or simpler fights without regretting a small fortune.

Profession specializations are making a return

Earlier in World of Warcraft, some professions – such as alchemy, leatherworking, or blacksmithing – had the ability to specialize in certain areas of their profession. At that time, this went hand in hand with special recipes that only these specialists could produce.

In Dragonflight, these specializations return, for both crafting and gathering professions.

With the specialization you stand out from other craftsmen of the same profession and are particularly well versed in a certain area. For this you can earn specialization points and spend them to increase individual aspects of your profession.

This directly increases the quality of the items you can craft.

How do you get the best quality?

Reaching the highest quality level in crafted items is not meant to be easy. Blizzard wants, quite literally, that “only the very best can make these items of the highest quality, and only using whatever tools are available.” [ihnen] be available.”

All items have a crafting difficulty. This difficulty is compared to your profession skill and specialization – if your skill is higher than the difficulty, you are crafting the item at a high quality level. However, optional components can drastically increase this difficulty.

This in turn is then rewarded with exquisite items if successful. Those who get the most out of their profession can, for example, produce some armor parts that are at the quality level of mythical raids – the best that you can somehow earn in the game. According to Blizzard, however, this means conditions such as:

• You have to specialize in exactly this type of equipment.
• One must use materials of the highest quality, including optional reagents (which can only be crafted by experienced collectors and crafters).
• You have to use the best professional gear you can find.

Professions should extend the progression as significantly and become a mainstay for solid equipment. However, to keep players from relying solely on professions, there will be some restrictions in Dragonflight on the most powerful craftable gear:

• Players can carry up to 5 pieces of crafted gear on their body (two-handed weapons count double).
• All these items are at least on the item level of items on normal raid level. With optional reagents and higher quality, the level increases up to heroic or even mythical raids.
• All of these items are soulbound. So you have to craft them yourself or get them through crafting orders.

Crafters get their own stats

It was already mentioned in the Dragonflight announcement that professions will have their own equipment that affects their production. There are a total of 4 new values ​​that are only interesting for craftsmen and have different effects. These are:

• Crafting Speed: Increases the speed at which you craft items. This is especially worthwhile for those who often make large batches (e.g. potions) to speed up the process.
• Inspiration: This value is a kind of “luck factor” and increases the chance that you will craft items with a higher skill than your actual specialization or skill would allow.
• ingenuity: Your character has a percentage chance to use fewer tradable reagents when crafting, increasing your profit margin.
• Multiple Crafting: Your character has a percentage chance of crafting multiple items at once when crafting stackable items (potions, vials, etc.).

Above all, the “Inspiration” value caused criticism in advance, as it is a clear “RNG element” in crafting. Blizzard emphasizes here that inspiration is only an option. If you want to produce the best equipment at the highest quality level, you are never dependent on inspiration (i.e. luck), but can achieve it in a targeted manner – without this value. Inspiration should simply provide a few happy moments in which you produce items of higher quality than originally planned.

Crafting Orders – The path to great gold

Also new is the “Craft Orders” system. They’re pretty awesome and allow for a lot of interaction between players to keep the gold flowing.

You can place crafting orders with a new NPC. You choose what item you would like another player to craft and what you are willing to pay for it. You can already contribute resources yourself – even soul-bound ones – and thus lower the price. If resources are missing, then these must be provided additionally by the actual craftsman.

Further settings allow you to set the minimum quality in which you want to receive the item.

Note, however, that you also have to offer a fair price. If the craftsmen don’t like your asking price, then the job will be left undone – in that case they will get back the materials and gold you invested (minus a small fee).

The highlight of the matter: You can also use crafting orders to have items made by professions that are actually already bound when you pick them up. For example, if you are keen on epic shoes from a blacksmith, but your warrior is an alchemist and herbalist, you can simply visit the crafting orders NPC and order the shoes there. If crafting succeeds by finding a Forgemaster, you’ll get the Soulbound Boots!

By the way, you can also restrict crafting orders. You can either release the orders for all players, only for members of your guild or for a very specific character.

If you build up such a large customer base, are friendly and specialize in one area, you will hardly be able to save yourself from orders and will always receive inquiries.

So it pays to reestablish a reputation as a skilled craftsman, known across the realm.

What are the consequences of the new profession system?

It is difficult to foresee the exact consequences of the new system. However, one can already make some justified speculations and estimate the positive and negative consequences.

On the one hand, there is no question that professions are becoming significantly more complex. The reintroduction of specializations alone, four attributes for craftsmen, quality levels, equipment for professions and numerous optional crafting components ensure a level of complexity that certainly does not make it easier to get started. Anyone who is already overwhelmed with the professions in World of Warcraft will have little fun with this aspect of Dragonflight.

At the same time, the new system also offers many opportunities to close gaps in equipment or to earn items that are at mythical raid level. For example, if you’re always “unlucky to drop” and never get a weapon from dungeons and raids, you can just have one made at mythical raid level if you can find the materials and a suitably skilled craftsman. This should reduce frustration and encourage players to carry more gear they actually want.

The crafting orders are also a good way to “make a name” on your own realm again. It will be more common again for people to say “Bettevere is the best alchemist for intelligence vials” or “Aoihbheann can make the strongest leather gloves”. Anyone who has established market dominance with specialization here should be able to gain a loyal customer base throughout the expansion.

Last but not least, the different quality levels should ensure that a variety of potions are offered at reasonable prices and that these potions can then be used with less hesitation – similar to what happened at the end of Legion with the “Potion of Extended Power”. , which you could almost always throw in because it was so cheap.

Dragonflight will definitely shake up the profession system. Time will tell whether it will make the game better and make the professions useful again in the long term.

You can find everything about Dragonflight in our large overview article on the expansion.