Mining Vs Skinning

Hi There,

I am a lvl 34 night elf rogue, and my current professions are Enchanting lvl 150 and Herbs 230. I did do alchemy but it did not make me too much money so i got rid of it and opted for enchanting.

Thats the background out the way, now for my problem. I have been making reasonable money from herbs, but i have come to the stage where this amount is not enough. I was thinking about getting another gathering profession like mining or skinning, and i was wondering which one in your opinion is the best at making money? Also have you any other advice you could offer me on making money?

Thanks in adavnce for your replies.

Kidest regards,

Dark Viper!|||Check the economy on your server to see which would make you the most money at different levels. That's the best way to decide IMO.|||Mining will make more money if you just sell the ore.

But it will not mix well with herbs as you can only track one of these at a time. So skinning might be your best bet, because of this.

If its herbs your planning on dropping go for mining, and if your dropping enchanting go for skinning.|||at level 34 you dont make too much from herbalism. what are you picking? liferoot?

just wait til you're 40+ and the herbs will actually get better.

also, check your server economy. there's no reason to get into a profession when the profession isnt doing well.

if you do choose to go to eithe rmining or skinning. consider these things.

its easy for you to kill beasts and skin them. they're everywhere. but you only get two things: hides, and leathers. hides dont sell well at all, but leathers sell well, simply because there's more uses for leather than there are hides.

but if you pick mining, you'll be looking for nodes instead of beasts, and that can be a pain sometimes because you'll have to find a node that's spawned. sometimes theyre everywhere, and sometimes they're on the other side of the map (where someone else is mining). you'll get about 2-4 ores per node. what many people dont tell you, and i think its very VERY important, is that you also mine stones and gems, all sellable in the AH. Honestly, i value the stones more than the ores (before level 40, when you start mining mithril), simply because they sell just as well as the ores in my server, and you get more stones per node than you do ores. in my experience anyway.

so with mining, you get more than just ores. but you have to find the nodes. with skinning, beasts are everywhere, but they only offer you leathers.|||Most servers mining makes more money since three crafting professions rely stongly on it. As far as herb/alch is concerned, post-BC the real money making is 300+.|||Quote:








Hi There,

I did do alchemy but it did not make me too much money so i got rid of it and opted for enchanting.




It's a trap!

If making money is any kind of concern to you at all, you'll run fast and run far away from enchanting. You might make a pittance from enchanting once you get it up near/at 300+, but until then it's basically a black hole for gold. I'm sure there's plenty of people out there who make a decent living off of enchanting, but I can promise you they're the extreme minority. You're either going to be losing a little bit of cash by leveling it up slowly with things you could've vendored/sold to the AH, or losing a ton of cash by leveling it up quickly if you're buying the things you need to raise your skill. Basically, going slowly with it you might lose a couple hundred gold you could've had if you weren't an enchanter - powerleveling it you might spend 1,000+ gold you could've had otherwise.

With rare enchanting recipes and 300+ skill, maybe one day you'll stand around the city hawking your wares long enough to come close to breaking even.

Is it a helpful profession to have for that one character/your guild? Absolutely, no question about it. But you can't enchant anything on your alts with it, and if you find a way to reliably/without breaking your back come out in the black with it when it comes to gold, you'll be the exception to the rule.

Skinning is always a winner, there's absolutely no way to not make tons of money with skinning. Your investment is less than a silver (for a skinning knife), and you can skin almost every non-humanoid MOB in the game, from level 1 to 70. On my server's AH, light leather is about 50s per stack, medium 1g, heavy 1.5g, thick 2.5g, rugged 5.5g, turtle scales 6.5g, knothide 12g...

Any gathering profession is going to make money, it's just a question of how much. I love skinning the most out of all of them, because there's no searching required. You don't need any add-on for it, and you'll never find yourself looking for a node. It's right there at your feet, bleeding on your greaves. And as long as you're skinning what you kill when skinning them is possible, you'll never out-level the creatures around you and have to go back to a lower-leveled area to level it up - very much unlike mining/herbalism, especially now that gaining levels is so much faster than it was pre-TBC.

For your other profession, it's a matter of flavor. If you want as much gold as possible, you should pick either mining or herbalism. Both do well, but as others have said you should check your server's AH to see which would be more lucrative. (Usually it seems to be mining, since there's so much that can be done with the ore/stones you'll be mining/selling.) If you're not terribly concerned with maximizing how much gold you make through professions, pick whatever you enjoy best. Just keep in mind, with any crafting profession it's usually going to be either a money sink to level up - or take a good deal of time and effort, if you're not powerleveling it.

Enchanting is, at least IMO, the worst gold-sink of a profession out there. I wouldn't suggest it to anyone who doesn't already have more gold than they'd ever need.|||Quote:








Enchanting is, at least IMO, the worst gold-sink of a profession out there. I wouldn't suggest it to anyone who doesn't already have more gold than they'd ever need.




Also, enchanting is best left to an alt. As everyone stated, it's a money sink.

At least with an alt, you have the option of using another crafting profession to help support it with mats. (I used tailoring on my enchanter alt and leather working from my main to supply green crafted items for disenchanting and even then I still had to buy a lot of mats outright.)

Your best course is 2 gathering profs on your main. With gold...you can always buy enchants as needed. Once your main is making good money for all your vices, then you can start an alt to support through crafting college.|||check out the values of the high level leather and ores on your server. rugged leather is the best selling leather on my server so skinning at 70 isnt as good a money maker as mining but skinning is so much easier to lvl up and aslo its easier to find beasts than mines, so time may also be important to take into consideration|||Thanks for all your replies guys i really appreciate your help. I have changed too skinning as another gathering proffession alongside my herb's. It seem's too be working out nicely at the moment.

I was talking to my guild and they said ask you guys about leaherworking, and whether it would be worth be dropping the herb's and doing that?

Again thanks for the help!!

Best regards,

DV|||You won’t make much gold with Leatherworking as with most crafting proffs.

I would keep your gathering ones until you reach 70 and then if you decide to do leatherworking you can power level it. Hopefully you will have some gold in the bank already aswell.