1. alliance:
   Human
   Gnome
   
2. horde:
   Troll
   Undead
   

1. Armor-Cloth
   
2. Weapons-Staves,Wands,Daggers,One-handed swords
   

1. Primary-Intellect
   
2. Secondary-Stamina;Spirt
   

1. Tailoring/Enchanting
   
2. Herbalism/Alchemy
   

“What is the fastest way to grind X profession?”

I have a rather novel answer; the fastest way to grind any crafting profession is to wait until your level 40. Here’s why:

1. At lower levels you don’t have the resources to power thru anything. Yes you can gather a little ore, herbs and leather as your questing along and then you can use those resources to grind your way up to level 110 or so in your crafting profession… but you will soon find that you come to a screeching halt because you will either need resources that are beyond your skill to acquire or beyond your ability to procure them and survive. You will also find that most of the items you can make at the sub-artisan level are not worth the resources you created them with. You end up in a vicious cycle of questing to make money to grind a profession that is doing you no good – very inefficient.

2. You can’t train artisan until level 35, and Goodness knows you should be saving your pennies for your mount, it will change your life – seriously it will. Yes I know many players have alts and can fully fund their own grinding materials or have guilds that will provide them. But, you will come to a screeching halt when your level 10 dude cant train expert or your 20 dude is stuck at 225, the gateway to crafting greatness, for 15 more levels and cant train artisan. Here are the ranks for future reference:

Apprentice (1-75) Level 5
Journeyman (50-150) Level 10
Expert (125-225) Level 20
Artisan (200-300) Level 35

IMHO, lower level characters (level 40 and below) should concentrate all their efforts on questing, grinding and upgrading their equipment from the surplus of excellent, low priced gear on the Auction House or just using the quest rewards which are just fine for lower level combat. Sell everything and spend it on training and gear.

Ok Mr. Crafting genius, what should I do then?

I’m so glad you asked. At around level 30 I would pick up two gathering professions, skinning and mining or skinning and herbalism. Don’t try herbs and mining together because you can’t have both trackers running at the same time. Try to also decide what crafting profession you want to do so you know what to save and what to sell. For example, if you take herbs and skinning and you know you want to be an alchemist then bank the herbs and sell the leather. You should also do some homework, head for thottbot.com and look at the recipes and patterns listed there. Some are really easy and only require as little as one resource. Others are more complex and require multiple resources and sometimes crafted items from other professions. The trick is finding the low requirement items so you can level quickly and efficiently.

Now, you will have to spend maybe an hour (or two at the most) in a noob area (Elwynn Forest, Dun Morough or what ever that depressing Night Elf area is called) gathering low level stuff, but it will be easy because nothing in those areas can hurt you and you can quickly level up to 150 in both your gathering skills and you can bank full stacks of resources in preparation for the crafting skill you will pick up at level 40 or you can sell the stuff to help fund your level40 mount.

As you continue to grind thru your 30’s you will easily max your gathering skills simply by gathering stuff as you quest along. You will also learn where the resources you need spawn. The Gatherer mod leaves little icons on both the mini-map and the big map every time you harvest something, it makes for easy “harvesting runs” when you need to re-stock your stores. I highly recommend it.

When you finally hit level 40, you’re fully trained in your class skills and you have purchased your mount; you are now ready for a crafting profession. Drop the gathering skill that doesn’t correspond to your chosen crafting profession and go train novice. Run to the bank, grab your stockpiled resources and head back to the skill trainer. Depending on how much you gathered and how well you did your homework, you can now power thru your crafting profession. Use thottbot to find higher level trainers. You will slow down again at artisan level (225) but since your level 40+ now you are much better equipped to either go get the stuff you need to continue your ascent or raise the cash to buy your grinding supplies off the auction house. A few runs thru SM or an hour or two in Arathi will net you all you need to grind your way to the top of your profession.

But I want to be an Enchanter:

No problem, follow the same method. Above with the following changes:

At level 30 you will train herbalism and enchanting. Herbalism is going to be a supplemental cash source for you, sell everything you gather and disenchant every magic item you find that you can’t use yourself. Bank all the dusts, essences and shards you disenchant and don’t get tempted to start leveling your skills yet. Remember to combine the lesser essences into greater ones for storage purposes. IIRC you can level up to 100 just from disenchanting items, don’t smack me if I’m wrong about this it may only be 50. At level 40, you will clear out your bank and go train as high as you can with what you gathered in your 30’s. I suggest you buy (or save from your travels) a cheap bracer, 1h weapon, 2h hand weapon, shield and chest piece; keep them in your bank. These will be what you practice your chants on. From here you have a few options:

1. You can head to the the highest instance you can handle solo and hunt green items to disenchant – time consuming, but you should get xp and continue to level your class skills.
2. Buy enchanting supplies off the AH, expensive but faster
3. Be a leech and drain your guild mates dry, God knows they don’t need money or equipment to furter their adventuring and fund their mounts. Maybe one day you can pay them back with free chants – right! Every guild chanter I ever saw turned into a greedy bastige once he got high enough level to do me any good. It was either “I’m not chanting until I make level 35 because I won’t level” or “I’m broke at the moment so I can’t chant for free, I gotta charge you full price.” If you do leech, then don’t be a greedy bastige… return the graciousness you were shown even if it costs you a little. There is nothing better than calling out for help and getting 4 mates say… I’m there bud!

But, I wanna be a tailor! I live to sew!

You may say, “why should I wait?” Why shouldn’t I get started right away? Well, if you just have to start now, then be my guest but consider this. On my server:

Linen cloth sells for 25-35s/stack
Wool cloth sells for 40-70s/stack
Silk sells for around 50s/stack

That’s darn good money, especially for level 30’s and below. Your not going to make any money selling linen and wool bags in a developed economy (new servers are another story.) If you want to make bags you will be lucky to get 35s for a 10 slot small silk pack and there is no way your going make more than 40s for a stack worth of wool bags (your results may vary, don’t flame me with your whacked servers prices.) Just sell the tons and tons of cloth you will gather on your journey to level 40. Even better, make bandages! First aid is a great skill to have – it costs next to nothing to skill up in and you can’t have too many healing options in wow. Did I mention cooking? Oh, ill save that for another day. Wait till level 40, buy what you need to grind away the lower levels and then go hunt humanoids to get the mageweave and runecloth you need to make your sewing fantasies a reality. Oh and watch a lot of HGTV while you play, lots of handy sewing tips for you there too you tailor pansy!

Ok this is my opinion, its what I wish I would have done. It’s what I will do for my baby warlock (who will be an engineer) and my baby druid (who will be a leatherworker – whip it good!). If you feel differently, then get out there and show the world your crafting prowess (chicks dig crafters!)

First time around it took about 5 months to get to 60 in casual playing. This time it took about 3 weeks of intensive leveling and I thought I would post what I did for others:

1. Do as many red quests as you possibly can. Don't worry about the difficulty. Red quests done quickly give the best XP (sometimes 6000 or more).
2. Have a guildy or two help you blow through those red quests. The key here is fast.
3. Find areas that you can "grind" XP. This is the worst part. It is crucial that you do this alone, not in groups. No matter what anyone says, grinding alone gets you much more XP than any other method. I did this by turning off all sound in the game, throwing a good DVD or recorded TV show up on my second monitor and just runing around in about the same area killing as much and as fast as possible. Try to find that point at which you can continuously kill stuff without having to break for mana drinks or health regens.

I know this sounds boring, and it really is. I've read a lot of "1-60 in 2 days" posts that are simply false. I think this is the only real way of being able to get to 60 in any reasonable time. By the way, time played for my character when I hit 60 was about 12 game-days total.

From 50-60 my average xp/hr was about 22k and I did 1-2 levels a day easily.

I hope this helps!