How professions work in WoW: Dragonflight

World of Warcraft’s professions have had a pretty major overhaul in Dragonflight, bringing changes to how they work. While the core system will stay the same, profession stats, crafting orders, and item quality are just some of the things that you’ll need to familiarise yourself with if you want to make the most of crafting in the new expansion.

Don’t be put off, though—the new profession system isn’t as confusing as it might appear and I’ll explain everything you need to know. If you’re ready to get to work, here’s what’s new with professions in Dragonflight.

WoW Dragonflight professions: How they work 

The new crafting UI might look confusing at first, but it’s pretty straightforward once you know what you’re looking at. There’s a whole mess of numbers and percentages in the screenshots below, but I’ll go over what each of them means.

You’ve got your standard recipe list on the left and in the main window you’ll see the materials needed to craft the item using the selected recipe. There’s also room for optional reagents, which will let you increase the quality of the item you’re crafting. Just be aware that doing so will increase the recipe’s difficulty, which you can see over to the right.

Recipe Difficulty is the skill level you need to have in your profession to get the best quality version of that crafted item. You can still make that item if you don’t have the recommended skill level, but the quality isn’t going to be as good.Skill is the same as it’s always been—the level of your profession is determined by traditional skill points, which you’ll gain by crafting items. But you can boost your skill level in Dragonflight further by using Profession Knowledge to upgrade nodes in the specialization trees—see more on those below.

Neither concept is new to professions; they’re just presented differently in Dragonflight. Profession stats, on the other hand, could do with more of an explanation. 

Profession stats and gear

Profession stats and what they do 

One of the biggest changes coming to professions in Dragonflight is the addition of specialized stats for crafting and gathering. These stats will offer new ways to make your crafting more efficient, and you’ll be able to equip gear to gain their bonuses. 

Inspiration: You have a chance to be inspired, crafting this recipe with extra skill. This essentially means there’s a chance you could have your profession skill boosted temporarily while crafting, yielding higher-quality items.Resourcefulness: You have a chance to use fewer tradable reagents (such as ore). Not much explanation is needed for this one—you could save gold or farming time by using fewer crafting materials.Crafting Speed: Crafting is x% faster.Multicraft: You have a chance to craft additional items. Only works on recipes for stackable items. This will be especially useful for alchemists as you’ll have the potential to craft multiple items for the cost of one.

Profession stats look a little different for gatherers: 

Finesse: You have a chance to gather more of the primary reagent. The higher this stat, the more chance you have of receiving extra materials.Deftness: Increases your gathering speed. Always handy to cut down on farming times.Perception: Increases your ability to spot rare reagents while gathering. 

(Image credit: Blizzard)

Crafting gear 

Yes, that’s crafting gear, not crafted gear. Crafting gear is also new to Dragonflight and will be the primary source of your profession-specific stats. The crafting UI has three slots for each profession and you’ll be able to equip a tool and two accessories, all of which will boost these stats. Don’t expect to be able to craft all of your own crafting gear, though: you might need to enlist the help of other professions to get a full set.

Once you have your crafting gear equipped in those three slots, the gear will automatically be equipped by your character whenever you open the crafting window. For gatherers, you’ll switch to the gear as soon as you start harvesting.

Quality

(Image credit: Blizzard)

Crafting Quality 

Many resources and materials have quality levels in Dragonflight and this will directly impact the resulting quality of the item you’re crafting. For gear, the higher the quality, the better the item level. For consumables, it might mean they last longer or have more charges.

A few things will impact the quality of any item you craft. Your skill level, the quality of the materials you’re using, and optional reagents can all affect the outcome. Luckily, the quality progress bar on the UI means you will see the quality of the item you’re planning to craft so you can decide if you want to go ahead.

For resources like ore or herbs, the higher your gathering skill level, the higher chance you have of gathering high-quality materials. You can also choose specializations that help you produce better-quality resources.

Another great addition to professions in Dragonflight is the ability to recraft items. This basically means you won’t need to wait for better quality materials or a higher skill stat if you need the item now. Crafting it early won’t waste materials because you’ll be able to recraft it later to get a better outcome.

Specializations

(Image credit: Blizzard)

Profession specializations 

Crafting specializations aren’t new to World of Warcraft but they’ve been revamped and re-added to professions in Dragonflight. This is how they work: Each crafting profession has several different specializations, allowing you to excel in a certain area. So if you take Blacksmithing, for example, you could choose to specialize in Weaponsmithing which opens up a mini talent tree offering bonuses and perks when crafting weapons. Once you’ve chosen a specialization, you’ll need Profession Knowledge to unlock the nodes on the talent tree.

Specializations become available after you’ve unlocked 25 skill points in that profession, with each subsequent unlock coming available at 50, 75, and so on. So while it is possible to unlock all the specializations for your chosen profession eventually, you should figure out which you want to focus on first and go from there.

How to earn Profession Knowledge 

While you still use traditional skill points to level up your professions, you’ll also need Profession Knowledge in Dragonflight to upgrade the various nodes on your specialization tree. Each point of Profession Knowledge you spend will also go towards your overall skill level for that profession. As you can imagine, you’ll need quite a bit of it and there are various ways you can gain this knowledge.

The most reliable way of getting Profession Knowledge is by doing daily quests offered by profession trainers in Valdrakken. You’ll also gain Knowledge the first time you craft a new recipe but not for subsequent crafts of the same item. This means you should consider crafting each new recipe you learn at least once, even if you have no use for the item you’re crafting. Gatherers will have a chance to gain Profession Knowledge whenever they mine a node or harvest a herb. 

Crafting Orders

(Image credit: Blizzard)

Crafting Orders 

Crafting Orders will let you place orders for any craftable item in an auction house-like interface. You can customize an item to your liking with the reagents you choose but get someone else to craft it for you and it also works for Bind on Pickup items. If you don’t have all the materials needed, you can request that the crafter supply them for you, though this will obviously cost extra gold. You can leave a note for the crafter, plus a commission if you choose.

Crafters that pick up these orders will get a small tip for their work and skill points from crafting the item.

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