Wow Herbalism Guide

• Notice: This is a world of warcraft herbalism guide. If you need a 1-80 leveling guide, visit these guides: Team Idemise Guide and Zygor Guides
• If you need a gold guide, the best gold making guides are: Warcraft Gold Secrets Guide and Warcraft Millionaire
• If you want to learn how to best play your character class: WoW Character Classes Guides

Herbalism is one of the primary professions in the World of Warcraft, and it’s one of the three gathering professions along with mining and skinning. Herbalism itself doesn’t lead to creating items. However, the herbs you pick can be used in alchemy and in inscription to make a number of different potions and inks.

The inks are used by scribes to make glyphs. You can also pick herbs simply for the sake of selling them on the auction house. High level and rare herbs can make a player a good amount of money if they watch the supply and demand of their server. This WoW Herbalism Guide can give you tips on how to use herbalism to make gold or drive your other professions.

Racial Ability
The tauren start the game with a +15 bonus to herbalism. This lets them pick higher level herbs before other races of the same level of herbalism.

Compatible Professions
The two most compatible professions to use with herbalism are, of course, alchemy and inscription. Since all three are primary professions and characters can only have two primary professions, you have to choose. Alchemy gives you the ability to create powerful potions, including various levels of health and mana potions. You can also create potions that increase spell power, haste rating, armor, and more.

Scribes use the milling skill to turn herbs into pigment. They can then turn this pigment into ink that allows them to create glyphs, books, cards, and other special items. Glyphs are useful to all classes, and a scribe can make a lot of money if they have the ability to make the rarer glyphs.

If you’re out to make a lot of gold by selling your herbs, you might want to train in either mining or skinning, the other gathering professions. Mining, however, can be somewhat problematic because you can either track herbs or track mining nodes; you can’t track both at the same time. Skinning, though, does not require tracking.

Necessary Tools
You don’t need any special tools to harvest most herbs. However, you will need a Blood Scythe to harvest bloodvine, one of the high level herbs.

Training in Herbalism – WoW Herbalism Guide
To train in herbalism, all you need to do is find an herbalism trainer in one of the major cities. The trainer will teach you apprentice herbalism. You can then pick the most basic herbs such as peacebloom and silver leaf. At first, each herb you pick will give you a skill up in herbalism. As long as the name of the herb appears in orange, it will continue to give you skill ups. When it becomes yellow, it will more than likely give you a skill up. Green herbs won’t give skill ups very often, and grey herbs never will. If you see an herb that has a red name, it means your herbalism skill is not high enough to pick it.

Once you’ve reached level 75 in herbalism, you’ll need to return to a trainer and train in the next level of herbalism. You’ll need to do this periodically as you reach each level’s skill cap.

Finding Herbs
There are two different ways you can look for herbs. The easiest way is to use the Track Herbs ability, which you gain when you train in herbalism. This makes all herbs in the nearby area appear as yellow dots on your mini-map. Moving your mouse pointer over each dot will tell you what kind of herb it is.

The other, harder way is to look for herbs as you move through an area. Herbs will glow and sparkle to those who know herbalism. However, it can be difficult to find herbs in this way; it’s much easier to use the Track Herbs ability.

Picking Herbs
To pick an herb, all you have to do is get close enough to it and right click on it. If you are skilled enough to pick the herb, you will automatically gather between one and three pieces of the herb. If you can skill up off of the herb, you’ll see that message appear in your chat box.

Starting in the Burning Crusade, you will find some enemies that can be what players have termed “herb-skinned.” Once you’ve killed and looted the enemy, you can then right click on them to gather herbs off of their corpse. Some of these enemies only give you grey vender trash items, but some do provide you with useful herbs. You can also skin some motes of life off of these corpses.

Other Ways of Increasing Your Herbalism
In addition to gaining skill points and training in new levels of herbalism, there are a few other ways to increase your skill bonuses. In this WoW herbalism guide I will tell you about them. Herbalist Gloves provide a +5 to herbalism. You can have one of three different enchants also cast on these gloves. Enchant Gloves – Herbalism adds another +2 to herbalism, while Enchant Gloves – Advanced Herbalism adds +5. The Wrath of the Lich King introduced the Enchant Gloves – Gatherer enchantment that gives your gloves a +5 to all gathering professions (herbalism, mining, and skinning).

The Lifeblood Ability
When you’ve reached level 75 in herbalism, you’ll learn the lifeblood ability. Lifeblood is a heal over time ability that costs no mana and has no cast time. Herbalists will learn new ranks of Lifeblood as their herbalism skill and levels advance. At level one, Lifeblood restores 300 health over five seconds. At level six, Lifeblood restores 2000 health over five seconds.

Herb Bags
If you’re going to be gathering many herbs or storing many of them in your bank, you may want to invest in an herb bag. This bag can only carry herbs and a few other things (Motes of Life, for example). There are a number of different herb bags. The first is the Herb Pouch, which is a 12-slot bag. Then there’s the Cenarion Herb Bag, a 20-slot bag made by tailors. Tailors can also make the Satchel of Cenarius (24-slots), Mycah’s Botanical Bag (28-slots), and Emerald Bags (32-slots).