WoW Blacksmithing Guide

• Important notice: As you see, this is a blacksmithing guide. If you need a 1-80 leveling guide, visit these two guides: Team Idemise Guide and Zygor Guides
• If you need a gold making guide, the best guides are: Warcraft Gold Secrets Guide and Warcraft Millionaire
• If you need a class guide, this is what you need: World of Warcraft Class Guides

Blacksmithing allows you to create armor, weapons, and other items out of metals. It is also one of the most expensive primary professions in the World of Warcraft. Because of this, if you really want to become a grand master blacksmith, you’re going to need a WoW blacksmithing guide. Otherwise, you will end up spending a lot of gold and resources on crafting items that you don’t necessarily need to make.

Who Should Take Up Blacksmithing?
Blacksmithing is a good profession for anyone who can wear mail or plate armor, especially tank classes like warriors and paladins. Many classes can use at least some of the weapons blacksmiths can make, though, and there are even some that are useful for the caster classes. The ability to add sockets to your bracers and gloves or use skeleton keys to unlock locked doors and chests are also useful.

Companion Profession
Because blacksmithing is a primary profession, a character who trains in it will only be able to take up one other primary profession. The most obvious choice is mining. Blacksmiths will need a lot of metal to progress through the craft, and it would be very expensive to buy it all. Of course, if you have other characters who mine, you can always have them supply your blacksmith with metal. In that case, blacksmiths can take up just about any other profession, although doing alchemy, leatherworking, or inscription may be difficult without other characters gathering materials.

Necessary Items for Blacksmithing
Almost all blacksmithing items require a blacksmithing hammer. Blacksmiths also have to find anvils to use to make items. These anvils are available in many cities. A few items, however, don’t require either of these, such as the various sharpening stones.

Rising Through the Ranks
When you speak to a blacksmith trainer, you will learn the apprentice blacksmithing skill. This allows you to create some very basic armor, weapons, and items. For each item you create, you’ll gain a skill point if that item is challenging for you to make. You’ll notice your blacksmithing plans are different colors. Plans that are red are too high for you to create, while orange plans are challenging enough to always give you a skill point. Yellow plans will give you a skill point 50% of the time, while green plans provide skill ups about 25% of the time. Grey plans will never give you skill ups.

Once you’ve reached 75 skill points, you won’t be able to advance any further until you see a blacksmithing trainer and become a journeyman blacksmith. You also have to be at least level 10. Journeyman level allows you to reach 150 skill points. Following that, you’ll train as an expert (225 skill points), artisan (300), master (375), and finally, grand master (450).

Specializing – WoW Blacksmithing Guide
There are two different specializations for blacksmiths. When you reach skill level 200 and your character is level 40, you can become either a Weaponsmith or an Armorsmith. Weaponsmiths can specialize even further, becoming hammersmiths, axesmiths, or swordsmiths.

Armorsmiths can create very strong pieces of armor. To become an armorsmith, you must travel to either Ironforge (Alliance) or Orgrimmar (Horde) and speak to the correct trainer. They will give you a quest that starts a fairly long chain of different quests, many of which teach you new blacksmithing plans. Once you have completed all of these quests, you will be an armorsmith.

Weaponsmithing, likewise, requires players to complete a quest. There is only one quest for weaponsmithing, unlike the armorsmith chain, but it does require you to create several different items, and the materials can be costly. Once you’ve become a weaponsmith, you can visit the city of Everlook in the Winterspring zone to specialize in hammers, axes, or swords. All you have to do is speak to the appropriate trainer—there is no quest or even any cost involved.

If you want to change your specialization at any point, however, there is a cost. Between level 40 and 50, it is 25 gold; between 51 and 65, the cost is 50 gold. Finally, between levels 66 and 80, the charge is 100 gold.

Blacksmithing Exclusive Items
While most of the weapons and armor you make can be traded, there are a few other items that blacksmiths can make that only they can use. When you reach skill level 400, you can add sockets to your own gloves and bracers. These allow you to add one more gemstone to each. If you drop blacksmithing at any point, however, these sockets will become useless.

Skeleton keys are also only usable by the blacksmith. These keys have various ranks, but they are all used the same way: to open anything that’s locked. This includes doors, chests, and lockboxes. If you don’t know any rogues or don’t want to go tracking one down, these keys make a great alternative.

Making Money with Blacksmithing
It is possible to make money with blacksmithing, especially if you have your skill maxed out at 450 and know many different plans. The Eternal Belt Buckle, an item that allows anyone to add a socket to their belt, is fairly popular and sells pretty well. Blacksmiths are also the only ones who can create the various rods that enchanters must have to cast some of their enchantments, so there’s money to be made there, too.

While making some of the higher level weapons and armor specifically to sell on the auction house can be a gamble financially, advertising your services in trade chat can pay off in commissions. You can expect a tip from the other player in return for your services, and you may want to charge them a fee if you have to provide any of the materials.

Expenses
Getting to 450 in blacksmithing requires a huge amount of gold or a large time investment. This is because many of the plans that can give you skill points require titansteel, which often runs around 200 gold a bar. They also require Runed Orbs or Crusader Orbs. Crusader Orbs sometimes sell for as much as 1,000 gold. A lot of these higher level plans are also only available as a drop for bosses in Ulduar or Trial of the Crusader. Just follow this WoW blacksmithing guide and you will achieve success.