Herb/Alchemy Farmer Druid

[playingtokrush]

Yes, but you need Rugged Leather for the Runecloth 14-slot bags :)
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You won't be skinning your own kills for rugged leather until about level 50, so don't expect to be getting that until your skinner is a very high level. Besides, rugged leather is usually plentiful and relatively cheap at the AH.

[nobbie]

My goal is to develop 4 additional Level 30+ Horde "crafting characters" that cover all 10 professions, incl. my main character, the Blacksmithing/Armorsmith specialized Undead Warrior. My new Troll Hunter will do Blacksmithing/Weaponsmith (for the "Arcanite Reaper" Axe and "Hammer of the Titans" Mace), the Tauren Druid Herbalism/Alchemy (for Potions, Metal and Elemental Transmutations), the Orc Shaman Skinning/Leatherworking (for Bags, Armor and Weapon ingredients), and the Undead Warlock Tailoring/Enchanting (for Bags and enchanted Metal).

This seems really ambitious. I don't want to discourage you, but this could be a big undertaking.

First, I assume you know that to get to 300 in a skill, you need to be 35. Second, I hope you know how hard it is to become an armorsmith or master weaponsmith. I can link you to some guides, but basically it involves doing numerous quests, mining hundreds of mithril and truesilver, and farming some other rare ingredients. Some of it is hard to do solo, and may require you to be in your 50's. I assume the leatherworking specializations are equally taxing.

Finally, some of the plans you mention are extremely rare drops. To this day no one in the Alliance on my server can craft the Arcanite Reaper. In the end it may cost you less time and money to buy some of the super-items you seek then to try to craft them all.

Also, remember that 98% of engineered items can only be used by engineers, so don't expect to use tons of bombs and gadgets on your main. :)
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It's been a while since I made this post (April 4, 2005), and I now want to report back and say: "Mission complete!" :)

In April, I started my "crafting project" on the Horde side, where I wanted to cover the best professions all by myself with four characters, one main and three "twinks". Today, my first crafting twink, a level 40 Undead Warlock with Tailoring/Enchanting could finally get to level 300 Enchanting. All other professions have been completed earlier. I now have on the Horde side:

- a 60 UD Warrior (300 Armorsmith)
- a 40 UD Warlock (300 Tailor/300 Enchanter)
- a 40 ORC Shaman (300 Alchemist), and
- a 30 TAU Druid (will be a 300 Alchemist by the end of the week as soon as she is 35)

I've dumped the idea of making a Weaponsmith and a Skinner/Leatherworker, and made a second Alchemist instead for transmuting Arcanite Bars faster (now 1 per day). Yes, it was a really ambitious, time-consuming project, but it does pay off now. First, it is a pleasure to be able to make everything of importance yourself and second, I have now a very good cash flow which will allow me to get some of the very best game items, recipes and epic mounts in an acceptable time (read: 2-3 weeks) WITHOUT doing MC runs and the like over and over and over, actually without doing any high instance run at all :)

[Brista]

That's a terrific achievement, well done Nobbie!

[Watto44]

Grats Nobbie! I find leveling proffessions incredibly boring, so anyone who can level 4 of them is a grinding machine in my books. (I'm currently in the process of leveling enchanting at the moment...Ragefire Chasm huzzah!)

I missed this post first time around, and I just thought I'd chip in my thoughts on cat form.

Like everyone else (except Gnollguy) I assumed that cat form was bad while I was leveling, and left it at that. Cat form collected dust. I have recently begun to doubt that.

As Brista noted, the "trick" with a druid seems to be to think of your forms, not as a seperate "mini-class", but as a tool, and this game is all about choosing the right tool for the job. There is no point soloing as a "bear druid" or a "caster druid" or a "cat druid", you solo as a druid, with each form being used as the situation dictates. So the question becomes "when do you use cat form while you are soloing?"

The answer? Squishies! :P Cat form is great against caster mobs. Against a lightly armored mob ravage (stealthy backstabby opener thingy) hits for a little over 500 and crits for around 1000 points of damage. Add to that quick damage and a Feral Bite (finishing move) and you can use cat form to churn through the squishy mobs. (I was using this to kill the Dread Weavers in EPL the other day and found it to be increadibly effective relative to the more standard starfire moonfire bear form strategy.) Do you use cat form against heavily armored mobs? No. It just doesn't work and spells coupled with the high damage mitigation of bear form are far more effective.

So, long post short: cat form good when fighting squishies, bad when fighting tanky mobs. (Even bear form isn't that hot then. Sure, you won't die, but it's going to take a while to kill the mob. I'd rather burn some mana and root kite the thing.)

Incidently, huge thanks to Gnollguy. His post about druid builds got me thinking about cat form and started the experiments.

And congratulations to Nobbie again!

Cheers,
Watto - I'm currently having a ball experimenting with cat form in group PvP - 44. :D

[nobbie]

Thanks :) I too am not focused on any Druid animal form, I just pick whatever gets me experience faster, i.e. Cat against low-armor caster mobs as Watto mentioned. Leveling up professions means that you need to reach level 10, 20 and 35 (for the max. profession skill level 300). There is no way around it (and that is a good thing IMO). While I made my three Horde crafter chars, and also an Alliance char (Night Elf Druid), I noticed that doing the usual quest series per area for the additional quest experience bonuses isn't that hot at all. Grinding equal, or 1-2 levels lower mobs, is king here because each character can be twinked with the best possible "green" equipment for its level without making big financial investments. Green stuff, and even some of the "blue" stuff for level 1 to 35 is very cheap now that the game is a half year old. The experience bonuses you get from the usual quest lines is rather low compared to what you can grind in the same time with twink equipment. The usual Hillsbrad quest, for example, yields about 2000-2500 xp, and a dead Bear, Lion or Spider already gives 175-200 xp at level 20+. Compare that to the time required you need to find and visit the quest mobs, and you'll see that you can get these 2000-2500 xp much faster by killing, for example, spiders and lions (lower armor mobs than bears) near Darrow Hill or the Lordamere Internment Camp. So, if you intend to build crafting chars, there are three ways to level up fast: Grinding, grinding and grinding ;)

[Brista]

So, if you intend to build crafting chars, there are three ways to level up fast: Grinding, grinding and grinding ;)
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I don't think that's true, or at least not true for all players. In sheer exp over time comparing the 200 exp per mob with the time it takes to run to town and hand in the quest and get 2500 exp suggests questing wins out.

I think where there's an element of merit to your theory is in terms of concentration. It may be easy for some people to "switch off" and just kill kill kill as almost a meditative pastime. Questing requires more thinking about different things where grinding requires thinking about the same thing

The next point, not relevant to your progress Nobbie, but relevant to some others is that grinding is by far the safer of the two methods on PvP servers if you just pick somewhere quiet and, if disturbed, move

I find that if I really want to power through exp then questing as fast as possible and really concentrating on what I am doing, planning several quests at once, is far more effective. Then again, I've levelled up lots of characters now and I know the Horde quests extremely well

[nobbie]

Yes, the time it takes to run to town and hand in the quest and get 2500 exp is shorter than grinding 10x 250 xp mobs, but questing involves finding and getting to the quest mobs, plus quests are usually more difficult to solve than safely grinding mobs in quick succession. So, in the end it's at least the same xp/time ratio, I'd say ;)