Now more than ever, there are innumerable ways to make gold in World of Warcraft, and the recent Shadowlands expansion is no exception. Nearly every single profession in the game is necessary for some form or other, catered for the arena, raiding, battlegrounds, and dungeons.
If your sole interest lay in gold farming and optimizing the process to be as quick and efficient as possible, here is our comprehensive guide to Shadowlands’s highest paying professions in 9.2.
1. Herbalism and Mining
The two most valuable professions in the game are both in the gathering category, as they offer critical resources for many others. Herbs and ores are typically sold on the auction house in bulk for quite the pretty penny in accordance with your server’s current market rates.
Of course, they are combined with all manners of other professions to make tons of gold. Hop on an alt to tinker with Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting, and Engineering for ore, with Leatherworking, Alchemy, and Inscription to make use of herbs.
Gathering is equally necessary for legacy content farming as well. The herbs and ore from prior expansions such as Titanium, Dark Iron, and Elementium for mining, and Gromsblood, Fadeleaf, and Heartbloom, sell extremely fast on the auction house.
Pick Herbalism and Mining if…
- You enjoy the simplicity of gathering
- You like traveling across routes repeatedly
- You don’t want complexity in your gold farming
2. Alchemy
In a similar fashion to the two primary gathering professions, Alchemy offers a stable source of gold income. Avid raiders and dungeoneers will always require potions and flasks. For raid nights, in particular, the profession always makes bank.
Potions that enhance Agility, Strength, Intellect, and Stamina along with flasks that provide buffs lasting over an hour will always be in great demand. Likewise, oils such as Embalmer’s Oil assisting healers and Shadowcore Oil benefitting ranged DPS are incredibly valuable as well.
Pick Alchemy if…
- You don’t want to buy Flasks and Pots on the Auction House
- You have limited gold
- You are also equipped with Herbalism
3. Inscription
An incredibly underrated farming technique in WoW, the profession known as Inscription is in fact designed to cater to nearly every kind of endgame content.
Contracts provide reputation boosts to important factions like the Court of Harvesters, The Ascended, The Wild Hunt, and The Undying Army work are extremely helpful when completing world quests.
Missives are essential reagents needed to craft Legendary items, and other items like Darkmoon cards are traded for powerful trinkets and are also very lucrative.
Pick Inscription if…
- You enjoy a creative, more complex profession
- You don’t want to buy items for Legendaries
- You need to farm reputation
- You plan to swap out Legendaries regularly as the meta changes
4. Enchanting
Raiders and dungeoneers demand enchants for their weapon, chest, globe, ring, cloak, bracer, and boot slots on a regular basis. Despite this, it’s actually the art of disenchanting that makes this profession ascend to incomparable levels.
When utilized in tandem with Tailoring, the profession of Enchanting is incredibly profitable. Purchasing stacks of cloth at the auction house or acquiring them in the open world, repeatedly crafting bracers or cuffs, and then disenchanting them is an outstanding tool for gold farming.
Pick Enchanting if…
- You’re a cloth wearer
- You also equipped with Tailoring
- You regularly consume content that drops greens and blues
5. Skinning and Leatherworking
Players that desire to either change or upgrade their existing Legendaries to meld with the meta, increase the price of all base goods. For such a reason, skinning is extremely sought after in the auction house.
Pick Skinning and Leatherworking if…
- You wear leather
- You enjoy the simplicity of gathering
- You’d rather farm enemies than loot nodes scattered all over the world
New materials in 9.2:
You can only gather the below items from Zereth Mortis, the new zone:
- First Flower: Herbalism
- Progenium Ore: Mining
- Protogenic Pelt: Skinning
- Precursor Placoderm: Fishing
The new meat to farm includes Protoflesh, and the new cloth to farm is Silken Protofiber. The good news about both of these items is that they drop for all players, regardless of your current profession.
Upgrading Legendaries
In 9.2, Legendaries can be upgraded to item level 291, or rank 7.
Similar to 9.1, players will not find new recipes for the base items and their new ranks. Rather, it’s possible to utilize Vestige of the Eternal, the new reagent, to add up to 3 ranks to a base legendary.
The recipe for Vestige of the Eternal can be acquired by Tome of the Eternal, a reward for the completion of the 9.2 campaign’s Chapter 5.
New recipes
Outside of reagents, there are only several new recipes included with the current patch.
Alchemy
There is a brand new potion for healing that restores up to 20,000 HP.
Cosmic Healing Potion: 2x First Flower and 1x Rune Etched Vital.
Cooking
A new recipe for feasts is sold by the NPC, Olea Manu, known as Empty Kettle of Stone Soup. This feast differs from previous cookbook entries in that one player places down the soup that becomes an object with which other players are able to interact.
Through interaction, an interface will appear that allows the donation of ingredients to complete the mix. Every donation contributes up to 10% and upon filling the bar, everyone can eat and get the Well Fed raid food buff.
Inscription
A new contract has been added for Inscription entitled Technique: Contract: The Enlightened. This requires a Revered reputation with the faction of The Enlightened to purchase from Vilo.
Through interaction, an interface will appear that allows the donation of ingredients to complete the mix. Every donation contributes up to 10% and upon filling the bar, everyone can eat and get the Well Fed raid food buff.
