Enchanting

Enchanting is a primary profession in which characters may enchant gear and craft a variety of items. The main use of enchanting is to augment the stats of gear, such as more strength, intellect, etc.; resistance to a particular branch of magic; increased spell damage or healing; increased speed (attack speed, mount speed etc.); or a variety of other effects. Enchanters also create specialty use items, such as and trade goods, such as.

Background
The following groups of characters have particular uses for many enchanter abilities:


 * Twinks. Persons who have decided to create a character to play in different brackets in the battlegrounds reach a limit on gear upgrades. The popular twinking brackets are levels 19 and 29, and less so 39 and 49. These are the most lucrative markets for those whose skill level is 300 or less in enchanting (because the better Burning Crusade enchants are limited to items of level 35 or above). Even so, only the top-end enchants are in demand, so skill level 300 and some rare enchants are needed to have success in this market.


 * Weapon glows. This is where those with lower-level enchanting skills can earn some profit. Many enchants make weapons glow in various colors. (red),  (orange) and  (blue) are three of the more popular glow enchants. As in other professions, the more popular enchanting formulas can't be learned from a trainer; they are drops and must be purchased through the AH, or in some cases can only be bought from a vendor after a certain level of reputation has been reached, one popular example for this is the agility enchant for weapons (much liked by rogue twinks). In some cases, rich players (particularly on RP servers) may pay for weapon glows simply for the aesthetic aspect.


 * High End. Characters level 35 and up can use the high-end enchants introduced by the Burning Crusade. For the most part, these enchants have made the pre-Burning Crusade enchants obsolete, although some of the older enchants still remain useful (e.g. the riding speed enchant). Again, the most desirable high-end enchants are not generally available. Many rare recipes are BoP and cannot be traded, some are boss drops (and thus are available only to raiding enchanters), others require faction grinding.


 * Products. Enchanting products can be profitable and ease the cost of gaining skills. Look into creating oils and enchanted leather and thorium. Check how expensive the materials are, and how much profit can be gained by selling the product. This may vary greatly depending on server, day of the week and several other factors. The recent addition of the inscription profession allows enchanters to use vellum to create scrolls.  Each of these scrolls can be used to enchant one item.  There are separate scrolls for weapons and armor.  The scrolls can be sold in the auction house or mailed to players using the COD (cash on delivery) system.


 * Misc Armor Type. Several items have a miscellaneous armor type (as opposed to cloth, mail, etc). These items due not follow the normal level requirements. Examples: Antique Silver Cufflinks and Lovely Charm Bracelets are both level 1 and accept +3 stam and +9 spirit, but not +7 stam or +9 stam. Formal Dangui is level 60 and accept +22 defense and +260 mana, but apparently no other LK enchants.

Low-level enchants which become available as enchanters raise their skills typically do not sell well - thus, while leveling, the most important enchanting skill is disenchanting. As an aside, disenchanting is one way to make tailoring profitable, as you can learn which crafted tailored items will generate dusts and essences—even shards—that sell for a higher price than the value of the materials. Depending on the economy on your server, it is sometimes possible with a tailoring/enchanting combination to put a considerable stockpile of gold for purchasing your mount in the bank well before you reach level 30.

Disenchanting will also be vital to your progress and success, since a vital part of enchanting is farming components. If you don't farm shards, essences and dusts, and instead rely on people bringing you the materials, you will only be paid tips like any lock picker. Considering how much you will be spending on formulas and training, it would take droves of tips to let you break even, much less make a profit. Instead, you want to farm the materials so you can include the market price for them in the cost of your services, making money both ways. That said, farming the high-demand items, such as, requires runs through level 60 or higher instances, as these can only be obtained by disenchanting high-level blue items.

As you can see, enchanting requires a fairly good understanding of the mechanics of the game. You need to be familiar with what stats are of interest to which players and why so that you can determine which enchants will be of value, and to be able to advise players who might be unsure.

At higher levels, an enchanter can enchant his or her own rings, but no one else's. The things an enchanter can do are a bit slanted toward casters; the oils, the wands, int buff is one of the early weapon enchantments. All characters can benefit from being able to disenchant; having a disenchanter along is an essential part of serious raiding.

Enchanting Training
Levels Apprentice to Artisan may be learned at enchanting trainers throughout Azeroth. The same trainers also teach enchants.

There are Master trainers at Stormspire in Netherstorm and Honor Hold as well as Thrallmar in Hellfire Peninsula. Although you need to be level 50 to learn Master enchanting from them, they also train the following 4 enchants which do not require Master, but only enchanting skill 300 (potentially available at level 35):



Blood elves (having +10 enchanting) may learn an additional 7 enchants, also potentially at level 35. These are:



Enchanters use magical formulas to grant permanent augmentation to armor, weapons and other items. Enchanting recipes require the use of special Enchanting ingredients which can be gathered by disenchanting items of uncommon or better quality or found as loot. Using these ingredients enchanters can make items more powerful.

Low-level enchants (below skill 250) require rather large amounts of expensive components, but can hardly be sold. Even attempts to give them away for free can fail. Thus enchanters frequently end up re-enchanting the same item dozens of times just to increase their skill.

At very low levels, disenchanting can level enchanting skill.

Leveling enchanting is possible just with the materials gained from disenchanting items you find yourself and items from quests, but due to the slow rate, buying materials from the AH or having friends or members of your guild supply you with items or materials can be quite a boost. Farming magic items for disenchanting is not recommended, thus enchanting is a profession for players with either backup from a guild, enough money to buy most of the materials, or a lot of patience. Buying and disenchanting underpriced items from AH can be a cheaper way to obtain materials rather than than buying them directly (particularly high level pre-TBC dusts/essences/shards). Items such as a plate armor with +12 to Spirit have no value if worn or sold, but may disenchant to materials far in excess of the item's vendor value.

A common tip is to disenchant items created with tailoring. This is an easy way to obtain dusts and essence, however, depending on the item and your server, selling either the cloth or the item and buying enchanting materials with the money gained can be more effective. In most cases, it's an excellent way to offset the costs of tailoring, since the vast majority of low level tailoring products are utterly worthless but need to be made in order to train the skill.

Faction Recipes
Some recipes are only learnable after achieving a certain reputation level with a particular faction. These are listed at the faction recipes entry.

Disenchanting
Magical elements (dusts, essences, shards, and crystals) are needed as enchanting ingredients, all of which can be created with disenchanting. Some magical elements can be found as loot or purchased from the Auction House, or even certain Vendors in limited quantities.


 * more often disenchants from Armor and less often from  Weapons.
 * more often disenchants from Weapons and less often from  Armor. Three Lesser Essences can be converted to one Greater Essence of the same type, and vice versa.
 * usually disenchants from items and rarely from  items.  Three Lesser Shards can be converted into one Greater Shard of the same type, but not vice versa.
 * always disenchants from items and rarely from  items.

Disenchanting requires a certain amount of skill to perform, depending on the level of the item being disenchanted. items can not be disenchanted.

Disenchanting items can level your enchanting skill up to at least 60.

Enchanter Crafted Items
Enchanters can create useful consumables and items for players.

Wizard Oils, Mana Oils, and some Wands are enchanter-crafted items.
 * The craftable wands,, , , and are of use, as they compete with quest reward and dropped wands in DPS.
 * If you can use wands (cloth casters: Mage, Priest, or Warlock) and do not have access to twink hand-me-downs, the Lesser Magic Wand is almost certainly the first wand you will have access to - a big advantage at low levels.
 * The craftable wands do arcane type damage.


 * The consumable Oils are applied to weapons in the same manner of Sharpening stones and Poisons.
 * They are temporary enchants that do not stack with Sharpening stones, Weightstones, Flametongue Weapon, Windfury Weapon, Poisons, or Alchemical Oils.
 * The two types of oils an Enchanter can make are Wizard Oils (additional spell damage, various strengths) and Mana Oils (additional mana recovery, various strengths)
 * Note that Blizzard is trying to phase the use of temporary enhancements out, so far there are no new oils in WotLK and ALL vanilla/BC oils cannot be applied to high level items.
 * These are (mostly?) only useful to blue bar classes.
 * Although a Warrior or Rogue with an item that casts a spell could possibly benefit from Wizard Oil - I don't know if the game mechanics take this into account, but I do know that they have better temporary enchantment options.


 * Items such as and the Runed Enchanting Rods are BOP.
 * The Runed Enchanting Rods are needed for Enchanting (for all except the most rudimentary recipes).
 * They have no use outside of enchanting.
 * They are upgraded to the next more powerful Enchanting Rod in succession; the current Enchanting Rod is consumed as a reagent in the creation of the next Enchanting Rod.
 * (The more powerful Enchanting Rod functions as all of the lower Enchanting Rods; you do not need to maintain one of each.)
 * Since they are BoP, you can expect to be making exactly one of each kind of Enchanting Rod.


 * is a crafting Reagent in demand by other Professions.

Blood elf racial bonus
Blood elves have Arcane Affinity; a racial trait of +10 skill bonus to Enchanting. Blood elves who train Enchanting begin with 11 skill and may exceed each proficiency by 10 skill. This lets you create things earlier, though the leveling disregards the +10 bonus. For instance, if you were at level 60 (50+10) enchanting, you could train in an enchant that required level 60, but as far as the colors go, you would be able to train 10 levels more for every enchant before it turns green.

Scrolls
With the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, a link between enchanters and scribes was created in the form of Vellum. These are blank scrolls for enchanters to put their enchants on enabling them to be traded and sold on the auction house. Originally there were different levels of vellums and these were segregated into two groups: one for armor and one for weapons. These varying types and levels were removed in Cataclysm, and just one vellum type exists that can be used at any level for either a weapon or armor enchant. Vellums are now also purchased from merchants, but they are also still craft-able by scribes.

Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can I disenchant soulbound items?

A: It's possible to disenchant one's own soulbound items, but impossible to do so with other players soulbound items, even in the no trade window of the Trade dialog. Also, some soulbound items that are reputation related such as the cannot be disenchanted, so be wary (do some research, see Non-disenchantable Items, before trying to get some items with the intent to disenchant them).

Q: Can I enchant a single item more than once? Can I stack enchantments?

A: Yes, you can enchant a single item multiple times, overwriting previous enchantments; no, they do not stack. A confirmation dialog is displayed before the replacement is committed. Overwriting is done to either upgrade the enchantment or to skill up rapidly, wasting the enchantments.

Q: Can ANY enchantment stack?

A: Yes, WoW distinguishes two kinds of enchantments that will stack, permanent enchantments and temporary enchantments. One temporary enchantment can be stacked with one permanent enchantment on each item. Enchanter enchantments are permanent as are item augments like for example armor kits or shield spikes. Oils such as those produced by enchanters and alchemists and poisons used by rogues are temporary enchantments. For example, you could enchant your staff with an intelligence buff and use on it.

Q: If I get the same enchant on both my main-hand and off-hand weapon (e.g., +15 agility), do I get the total of both enchants (+30 agility total)?

A: Yes, they stack.

Q: Can off-hand objects like orbs & wands be enchanted? How about Fishing Poles?

A: Fishing Poles are not considered 'weapons' and attempting to enchant them by an enchanter will give a "That item is not a valid target" error. Fishing lures are a temporary enchantment that can only be placed on fishing poles. Wands are a class of ranged weapons and currently can not be enchanted. Cataclysm level off hand items can be enchanted with intellect. At lower levels only off hand weapons and shields can be enchanted.