How to pick professions in WoW Classic Hardcore Self Found to craft your own gear, bags, and more

World of Warcraft Classic Hardcore realms are receiving their first, optional difficulty modifier on February 29 when Self-Found mode goes live at 3PM pacific time. Self-Found (SF) mode prevents players from using the Auction House or trading items with others in any way, including enchantments, as well as being unable to send or receive mail from other player sources. (Want to create a character? Here’s how to sign up for Solo Self-Found when it goes live.)

In Classic Era realms, most players could rely on choosing just one crafting and one gathering profession that synergized best with their class while purchasing anything else they needed from the Auction House or trading with other players. These restrictions make players more reliant than ever on craftable items or consumables than ever, and as part of the SF challenge, players will need to spend time learning and levelling different professions.

While maxing out your profession skills is a worthwhile goal, there are plenty of useful recipes to help you stay alive as you level a new character in Classic Hardcore. These can be taught by profession trainers and while some drop as rewards in the open world, but keep an eye out for these as you begin your Solo Self-Found journey!

Pick at least one gathering profession

The Mining, Skinning, and Herbalism gathering professions are integral and form the backbone of successfully using professions to your advantage in Self-Found mode. You’ll want to level one — and possibly several to eventually acquire all of the crafted items you need — and it may be difficult choosing which one to start with. Some gathering and crafting professions synergize well with each other and with certain classes over others. In some cases, you may need to have double gathering professions to level up one profession, so keep these combinations in mind when you’re levelling:

• Alchemy/Herbalism
• Blacksmithing/Mining
• Engineering/Mining & Skinning
• Tailoring/Skinning (mostly at higher levels, early on Tailoring can function independently with another gathering profession)

Always pick up secondary professions

WoW Classic’s secondary professions are even more important to every class in SSF because their ingredients are consistently available to you. Cooking and Fishing synergize well in early zones and you can power level these skills quickly with a starter recipe like Brilliant Smallfish. Most zones have at least one cooking ingredient gathering quest that rewards you with a recipe that gives +Stamina/+Spirit buffs, with these recipes scaling in accordance with the zones level. Fishing also yields Fish to convert into oils for other potion reagents and at higher level has a chance to reward Trunks that can give you other crafting ingredients. At later levels, recipes can restore health and mana immediately and as a buff over an extended period of time. For First Aid, learning different bandages is a must as you level but so is learning Anti-Venom at First Aid level 80.

For cloth armor (and bags): Tailoring

• Woolen Bag (80) — 8 slot bag
• Small Silk Pack (150) — 10 slot bag
• Mageweave Bag (225) — 12 slot bag

Tailoring becomes a necessary profession for all classes, especially in the early zones, because it gives you the ability to create your own bags. Since cloth drops consistently from enemies of all kinds while you’re levelling, you’ll have enough materials early on to start creating bags for yourself.  It’s up to you whether you want to pivot over to another crafting profession, but it may be worth levelling to skill level 150 to learn how to craft Small Silk Packs. There are also other bags you can earn from quests and world drops to help you too.

Casters like Priests, Mages, and Druids will find double utility from Tailoring to create their own armor pieces to bridge the gap of gear received from world drops, or lack thereof. Early on, you may want to consider Tailoring and a single gathering profession until you have enough materials to make early level bags, switching to double gathering professions so you can gather more cloth ingredients, and then switching back to Tailoring when appropriate to level up your storage needs.

For must-have buffs: Alchemy

• Swiftness Potion (60)
• Swim Speed Potion (100)
• Minor Magic Resistance Potion (110)
• Free Action Potion (150)
• Nature Protection Potion (190)
• Magic Resistance Potion (210)

Alchemy (and by extension Herbalism) will be a core profession most Self-Found players will lean on because of the versatility it possesses. No one class benefits more than others because of the different stat buffing Elixirs that boost melee attack power, spellcasting power, and defensive ratings. Having a consistent source of healing, mana, and regeneration potions is an obvious benefit but there are other potions in the early levels that can be used well into the later game like the Swiftness, Swim Speed, and Magic Resistance Potions.

For crazy contraptions: Engineering

• Target Dummy (85)
• Goggles: Flying Tiger (100), Shadow (120), Green Tinted (150), Gnomish (210)
• Flame Deflector (125)
• Advanced Target Dummy (185)
• Gnomish Cloaking Device (200)
• Goblin Sapper Charge (205)

Like Alchemy, Engineering is also one of the core professions Self-Found players will lean on because of the variety of useful damage inflicting and mitigating items available at all levels to most classes. At early levels, items like Target Dummy’s to draw enemy attention and help you stay alive and Goggles (which can be worn by all classes) to give you extra buffs.

The one drawback of Engineering is at first it requires ore from Mining but at higher levels will need Leather, so eventually you need to double up on Mining and Skinning to progress your skill level and access higher level items.

For leather and mail armor (and improved defense): Leatherworking

• Armor Kits:
  • Light (1)
  • Medium (100)
  • Heavy (150)
  • Thick (200)
  • Rugged (250)

The Armor Kits from Leatherworking are a versatile item that can be used by all classes to give their armor pieces an extra stat boost which can come in handy when an item upgrade isn’t readily available or poses significant risk at your current level to obtain. The drawbacks are two-fold: it’s limited to four item slots (chest, hands, legs, and feet) and creating the armor kits requires leather from Skinning, which means you’d be taking away materials to use for Engineering.

Leatherworking comes in handy for Hunters and Druids to craft their own armor, with Hunters also having the added benefit of crafting quiver and ammo containers starting at skill level 30.

For plate armor (and extra weapon damage): Blacksmithing

• Sharpening Stones:
  • Rough (1)
  • Coarse (65)
  • Heavy (125)
  • Solid (200)
• Weightstones:
  • Rough (1)
  • Coarse (65)
  • Heavy (125)
  • Solid (200)
• Skeleton Keys:
  • Silver (100)
  • Golden (150)
  • Truesilver (200)
  • Arcanite (275)

Blacksmithing becomes more niche for the plate and mail wearers like Paladin and Warriors in Self-Found, who may find more utility investing their Mining materials in Engineering overall. Blacksmithing does give some nice armor and weapon options at higher levels but it requires a significant amount of work and ore to get there, and even then some of the world drops and quest rewards can work just as nicely which reinforces investing your time elsewhere. Conversely, turning the stone materials from Mining ore nodes into +damage buffs for melee weapons is a nice option at early levels but becomes outclassed at higher levels when you can enchant items.