450 Engineering FTW

Just this Sunday, 2 days ago, I had become convinced to ditch Herbalism on my Hunter and learn Engineering instead. Less than 24 hours later, I had become a full-fledged Engineer of maximum skill (450). And I didn't even grind it for the full 24 hours!! Here's a recount of my journey.

My starting point was this excellent leveling guide. After a quick cost analysis (that you can see in my previous article that I linked above), I came to the conclusion that Engineering was going to be a LOT cheaper than I anticipated. I'd always heard horror stories about Engineering being the most difficult - and costly - profession to level. Well, believe you me, it's not. Far from it in fact, especially in this day and age.

Just as I predicted, my out of pocket costs were around 1500 gold. However, and you need to bear this in mind, I did have about 900 gold worth of materials already, namely everything that comes after Cobalt Bars (a shitload of Saronite and tons of Titanium Bars). There also seems to be a slight error in this guide in that I never needed a single Twilight Opal, much less the 24 that are listed there. Actually there is a single instance where I needed just 2 Twilight Opals and that was for crafting my epic goggles, the Truesight Ice Blinders.

Leveling

One big tip that I would offer for quick and painless leveling (and this applies to any profession) is to have all the mats beforehand. I hadn't really planned on this so I just bought everything from the Auction House while I was leveling. From the guide, I knew how many stacks of X, Y and Z were needed and I bought the cheapest ones I could find.

The one big snag that I hit (and the reason why I didn't go above 400 skill in the first night) was that I couldn't find any more Cobalt Bars to buy on the Auction House. So I had to wait until the next day when I purchased the rest. From there, it was easy.

One thing that I don't enjoy about the leveling process is all the running around like crazy. Get on your alt, scan AH, buy stuff, mail it to main, log off alt, log on main, grab mats, craft stuff, send finished products to alt for auctioning or store, run to/from bank, smelt some ore, etc, etc. Rinse, repeat. Sticking to the guide was great because it made leveling easy.

I did not specialize in either Gnomish or Goblin Engineering. You can level just fine without specializing. I haven't made up my mind yet, though I tend to gravitate towards Gnomish.

I did take their advice and waited until 440 to craft the Truesight Ice Blinders and the Wormhole Generator: Northrend. From 440 to 450 I crafted lots and lots of Gnomish Army Knives because the recipe was still green and I still had shitloads of Saronite Bars. I ended up simply vendoring a lot of these knives because I doubt they would sell quickly on the AH and I didn't have enough storage for them anyway. Now why would I need to make it to 450? One word: Jeeves.

Engineering Perks

At one point during my short WoW Engineering career I realized that there's one more reason why this profession is so cool for me: I'm an engineer in real life too. Not only that, but I'm also a geek and I love gadgets. So there you have it. Besides, there are plenty of devices that an Engineer can create. Here are some of my favorites.

Mote Extractor - really really sweet gadget. Unfortunately, I have yet to find my first dust cloud in Northrend. The only ones I came across were in Outland. However, the yield from a cloud seems to be very good. I got 3 motes each time I farmed it.

Mammoth Cutters - I can finally craft my own cheap ammo with my own mats. I can finally graduate from Frostbite Bullets.

Titanium Toolbox - Huge bag to store all the crap that I collected while leveling my Engineering.

MOLL-E - Portable mailbox with a 2-hour cooldown is very cool. Not as cool as Jeeves but close.

Gnomish Lightning Generator - Awesome trinket. I used it to replace the crappy one that I had. The crit it offers is plenty and the 1-minute lightning bolt is really cool. Mobs go down much faster now.

Wormhole Generator: Northrend - woohoo! Another means to move around Northrend. Too bad about the 4-hour cooldown but hey, it makes life easier.

Truesight Ice Blinders - Really cool head piece. I love the stats on it and it looks rad. I used it to replace my aging Toothslice Helm and after gemming it, it makes for a very good upgrade.

Jeeves - Right after 440 skill, I decided to go and grind for this recipe. Wowhead helped me find where it drops. I was afraid that it would only drop in a raid and I would never have access to it but it is not so. I will dedicate a whole article to this item in fact and explain in more detail how it is obtained. I haven't build my Jeeves yet for reasons which I shall explain but I've learned the recipe and it's only a matter of time before I will craft it.

In addition to all the above, I also find myself rather partial to the Box of Bombs which contains "lots" (between 12 and 20) of Saronite Bombs. Since the explosion radius is quite large, I'll be using these a lot for AoE.

So here I am at the end of a very short journey. I feel proud for becoming an engineer and I look forward to a bright future in my new career.