Alchemy Worth it`?

[schlange]

I am wonder if leveling alchemy on an alt is worth it for the money and the items I can make? I have the following so far:

Main - Mining and Herb
Clone1: Enchanting and ???
Clone2: Skinning and LW
Clone3: Tailor and ???
Clone4: Tailor and ???

I took tailoring for the money, but I am not sure what a good second profession would be for all my cliones

[Thomas]

Alc can be good. If you have like 5 70's and there all xmute masters it can add up to a lot of xtra gold quick.

Sort of depends what you want. If you pve and have a dedicated healer that alc stone is pretty awesome for a healer.

[Fuzzyboy]

Transmute mastery is a pretty long-term investment. You'll have to do a lot of transmute to pay for the initial cost (primal mights). That being said, I usually think a tradeskill is worth it if you use the items you can make, and potions are nice to have when doing the later instances (especially heroics).

On my first team I had jewelcrafting, skinning, herbalism, mining, tailoring and alchemy. Mostly I used the herbalism to make potions and sold those I didn't need (occasionally I sold the herbs since they would sometimes bring in more than the potions). Leather I just sold on AH, but I think it's more profitable to use LW to turn them into greens/blues and DE them. Same goes for tailoring - use your looted cloth to make greens, DE and sell the mats.

[Naysayer]

I see you have most of your bases covered, but you don't have a jewel crafter yet. Jewel crafting is a huge moneymaker, but with dailies these days and us boxing I see no point in taking up professions for the money. Jewel crafting would make sure that none of your characters are wearing green gems. Only the best :). Alchemy would help your entire group with potions, but the only real item it produces is the trinket, and even though the trinket is great, it's not game breaking great. You could also throw alchemy on your clone1 enchanter.

My suggestion is to hold off on professions for those last guys. There will be new professions come Wrath of the lich king, inscription i believe is the only new one so far, but I also hear inscription is a game breaking must have. I'm not sure if it will count against our 2 main professions limit though, so that's something you might want to look into as well.

From what I've gathered, inscription will be somewhat like the system Elder Scroll on the console uses, in which you can adjust the strength and mana cost of your spells. For example, increase the damage of chain lightning by 200 more damage, but at the cost of increasing it's mana cost by 400. Something like the mage deep arcane talent empowered arcane missles, but without the cost of talent points.

I might be well off on this, since I haven't paid attention to future professions in quite a while, but I do know there will be new ones come WoTLK, and it would really suck to drop something as expensive to level as alchemy if you can avoid it.

[Mercurio]

it would really suck to drop something as expensive to level as alchemy if you can avoid it.

I thought alchemy was the cheapest profession to level by a good margin.

In fact, I was thinking about getting that on all my toons that had an open slot simply b/c it is so cheap and I could ditch it later for something better and not feel bad.

Edit: So cheap being around 800g or so, as opposed to 2500g for engineering or LW, for example.

[Naysayer]

it would really suck to drop something as expensive to level as alchemy if you can avoid it.

I thought alchemy was the cheapest profession to level by a good margin.

In fact, I was thinking about getting that on all my toons that had an open slot simply b/c it is so cheap and I could ditch it later for something better and not feel bad.

Edit: So cheap being around 800g or so, as opposed to 2500g for engineering or LW, for example.Yes, alchemy is cheaper than most crafting professions. I must be poor because I wouldn't spend the 500ish to level it unless it had some really good benefits and was sure I wouldn't need that profession space for something better. Jewel crafting on the other hand would benefit my 5 box team tenfold imo. If you raid though, alchemy is really really good.

I respec so often I bet I could supply an entire raid with epic flyer mounts. :( Reduce the respec cost Blizzard!!!!

[Skrimshaw]

I thought about picking up alchy on my guys just for the 63 dmg trinket. The transmuting would be a nice bonus, but that trinket is pretty nice.

[Anozireth]

Just a note about transmute spec. You can first pick one of the other specializations that are FAR cheaper to obtain, and then spend the 150g to unlearn it and pick up transmute spec at no cost. Total cost is probably less than a single primal might these days if you do it that way.

[schlange]

How do you make money with alchemy? Do you buy stuff on AH and transmute? What transmutes sell the best?

What spec would you level with to 375 and then respecing to?

[Stormweasel]

How do you make money with alchemy? Do you buy stuff on AH and transmute? What transmutes sell the best?

What spec would you level with to 375 and then respecing to?

Depends on how lucky you get with discoveries really, that´s kind of the big unknown. I was an elixir master on my mage and the morning the discovery patch went in I did my usual production run as soon as the server went back up and hit 4 x flask discoveries - bam bam bam bam. Was a happy bunny that morning. I don´t know if the discovery rate was high in the first few hours to get the new potions "out there" or what but I never got another one.

So, I liked Elixirs simply because I was raiding and any bonus procs went towards my own personal use. My general rule of thumb was that if the finished product on the AH was selling for X amount and you could buy the herbs and containers for X amount or less, then make them. The procs you get are your profit in the worst case scenario.

I never tried Transmute or Potions so can´t comment but my toon shat money from Elixirs. Again, take my discovery luck into account before making a decision. It was a big slice of good luck.

[pinotnoir]

Cheapest way to become a transmute master is become a potion master. Then drop potion master and pay 150g to become a transmute master. Dont waste 5 primal mights to become a transmute master.

[Schwarz]

I didn't realize that it was only ~800g to powerlevel. This makes me really happy. When I first started boxing I kept thinking that I would have 5 leatherworkers. I made one leather worker and it was just a pain. I have been thinking about making 5 of them Alchemists for a long time. The +spell damage trinket is one of the bests out there. And wouldn't it be nice to log in and transmute 5 primal earths into 5 primal water every day. The 800g doesn't seem like a big problem to me as I can farm that in sessions of dailies on the isle. I think the major problem for me is going to be getting my aldor rep to exalted.

[Drizzit]

I just power lvled my 4 shams to 300 alchemy last night (well 3 to 300 and 1 to 281 the ah didn't have the 8 herbs i needed to get to 285 but have herbs to get to 285-300). The mats price on the AH was about 800g-900g for all 4 toons to power lvl (granted that i did have some mats already, but only like 1/4 of them), but the thing i did was i took my time buying the mats, like a month. What i found out is if there is a herb out there, let say peacebloom, and someone has 1 out there for 1g and there are no others out there, the next person to post one will post it at 80s (makes sense because you will pay that price), but if you bought that 1 peace at 1g the next person couldn't see the price of the 1g so they would post the peace at the web price or lower (around 2-3s) so sometimes it is better to buy the high ones so when people post then don't just go under the other one. I did this a lot with high lvl herbs, spent a lot on a couple but saved a ton on the others. 300 -350 shouldn't be that hard to get because my guys are 62 so i will be picking up the herbs when i quest and grind. There is no need to do 350-375 making pots, the reason is that at 350 you get your transmutes and transmuting every day will easily get you to 375. What you want to do is transmute primal earth (was 3g on my server but the last 2 months it increased to 5-9g... stupid patch made all the primals go up) to primal water which now goes for 30-40g. What you do is buy primal earth lets say 5g and turn it into water and put it up for 28g (did that yesterday for 5 of them and within 4 minutes they where sold) so that is a 20g profit (5g for earth and ah cut). I will have 6 transmutes (only 1 is a master, cause the other are not high enough to become masters... i was getting procs every other day 2 months ago but sense the patch i get 1 a month), so that is 20 x 6 = 120g a day for doing nothing. People say cloth is a better money maker but i think transmuting is better. So by the time both my teams are 70 i might have enough for the epic flyers (that is breaming, but will have enough for the normal flyers).

[Turenn]

I have Alch on 4 of my toons, I transmute 4 Primal Earth (2,50-4g each) into 4+ Primal Water and sell them for 22-30g each.

[Drizzit]

I forgot to add... don't sell primal mights. It isn't worth it. They only go for at most 150g each. It costs a lot for the mats primal earth 5g, fire 35g, air 35g, water 30g, and mana 20g = 125g for only a 25g minus ah so about 22g... mights don't sell too often it seems (i never tried but don't think it is worth to try), cause a lot people just find other people to make mights for them. Here is the good thing if you proc when you make a might that is 150g profit (i proc and got 3 mights before). Water sells quick it seems.

[Schwarz]

So what herbs should I be looking to horde for myself drizzit? I am thinking I won't be able to make the push to powerlevel alchemy *4 for a couple weeks so it should allow me plenty of time to get stuff together. Also can you link me to a site for powerleveling alchemy. I think the last time I did it I used a crappy version from the wow forums. It made me very angry when I ended up 1 or 2 points away from being at the next level then had to scounge up more mats. Thanks

[Drizzit]

I used this post:
http://www.blizzardguides.com/wow_alchemy_guide.html

It is a little outdated (you don't have to buy Superior Mana Potion and Major Healing Potion cause they are from vendors now), but for 1-300 i followed it 90% of the time. It does say this but says it like on the third page (if you print it out) from 105-110 make Elixir of Wisdom. Also all the herbs that you don't use save them until WotLK comes out. The new skill seems to be using herbs. So on the release date or the day before put all the herbs on the AH double or triple the price because people will pay for it. Specially the herbs from the starting area (peacebloom and silverleaf) cause they will probably need a lot of them to get to 1-60 (alchemy you need 60 of each) so you can probably sell a 4s peacebloom for 50s - 1g those days. If you are going to collect them then there isn't a problem yet (as soon as it hits people will be farming or about 1 month before the release). That is why i powered my guys now, cause i know the price will go up huge. Also when the expansion comes out probably 2 months later transmuting primal will not have a cool down, like most of the old world stuff. Blizzard will probably do this because not that many people will be farming the mats so they will go up in price. I will be dumping all my low lvl herbs that day.

[Ken]

Cheapest way to become a transmute master is become a potion master. Then drop potion master and pay 150g to become a transmute master. Dont waste 5 primal mights to become a transmute master.

Thanks for making me realize that! I just made my first primal might to become transmute master, but now I will do it your way :D