Advertisement

Insider Trader: Highlights of Wrath crafting, Tailoring edition


Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

Wrath of the Lich King has changed many things about the professions we all know and sometimes love. Last week, Insider Trader looked at the highlights of the Leatherworking and Blacksmithing professions, showing you what's new, how to plan out your leveling, and what you can look forward to at what points.

This week, Tailoring is up for discussion. There are faction recipes and dropped recipes, as well as highlights from your trainer that you won't want to miss. Here is a quick summary:

  • New and improved exclusive spellthreads for enchanting your pants.

  • A 20-slot bag and a 22-slot bag.

  • A slow flying carpet mount as well as an epic one.

  • Specialty cloth for epic gear.

  • Frost resistance gear.

  • An 8-piece PvP pseudo-set.

  • Exclusive cloak enchants.

  • Special threads that you can sell for a profit.

  • Soul shard and enchanting bags with 32 slots.

Tailoring
Some professions have special vendors that will sell you recipes in exchange for items that you receive while crafting. Enchanters, for example, can learn new enchants by handing over Dream Shards. Fortunately or unfortunately, Tailors currently have no such resource.

The bulk of your patterns will come from your tailor, although there are some world drop shirts as well as some must-haves that can be purchased from select faction quartermasters.

You will also be able to purchase Northern Cloth Scavenging from your trainer for a few gold, which will help you find extra cloth. Where others might have found two on a corpse, you may find three or more. In fact, when you are grouped, keep an eye out for humanoid corpses after your party members have looted them. Sometimes you will find cloth just for you.

Here are the highlights to help you plan your profession leveling:

400
From 375 to 400, you will be using a fair amount of cloth to level, but you will learn to craft Green Workman's Shirt and Yellow Lumberjack Shirt at this interval, which will cost much less cloth to help you hit 405 than any of their orange contemporaries. Unfortunately, as they begin as yellow, you are depending on luck to carry you through.

You will be able to train the ability to craft Imbued Frostweave, which is going to be expensive, considering the need for Infinite Dust. Of course, if you took Enchanting, as many Tailors do, this should be no problem, unless you are trying to level both at once. You won't actually need the cloth until much later, though.

You will also learn two new spellthreads to place on pants that at first will seem underwhelming. You will notice that Azure Spellthread is the same thing as the exalted Scryer and Aldor threads, Golden Spellthread and Runic Spellthread. The Shining Spellthread is the same as well, although it awards spirit in place of stamina.

Making these might seem pointless, as they will probably cost you more to make than their Burning Crusade counterparts. If you can spare the materials, you might as well make a few while they give points, because the finished threads are used at 405 to craft your very own, much improved, threads.

405
Visit your trainer in order to learn how to sew Master's Spellthread and Sanctified Spellthread. These can only be placed on your own pants, and are significantly superior to the old threads. Each of these will consume one of the early Northrend threads, as well as some crystallized elements. These are not leveling tools, as you will not craft an actual item to keep, as these are spells that work like Enchanting.

410
At this point you will learn how to craft a 20-slot bag, Frostweave Bag. You will also be able to craft yourself a slow Flying Carpet. This mount is not consumed when making the Magnificent Flying Carpet, so there is no pressing need to create one.

If you do not have epic flight, then this will be a fun item to craft, and should count toward the achievement, Leading the Cavalry, which awards you with an Albino Drake mount.

415
At this skill level, you will train the ability to make the three specialty cloths that mirror the Outland specialty cloths. Moonshroud is similar to Primal Mooncloth, while Spellweave and Ebonweave stand in for Spellcloth and Shadowcloth, respectively.

Each can be made once every four days, and they are not on a shared cooldown. You will create one piece of cloth for each, and an extra piece depending on what your Tailoring specialization is. Just as before, the cloth must be made in special places, and you may require help in order to accomplish your goals.

420 and 425
This point is a bit of a milestone for many crafting professions, as it opens up the ability to create frost resistance gear. Such gear is a common guild requirement for the last section, the Frost Wyrm Lair, of the Northrend entry-level raid instance, Naxxramas.

Also available at 420 is your embroideries. This is a concept that is completely new to the game as of Wrath of the Lich King, and allows tailors to enchant their own cloaks. There are three options available:

  • Darkglow Embroidery. This is likely going to be the choice of healers, as well as spellcasters in general.

  • Lightweave Embroidery. Holy priests and holy tailoring paladins (yes, there are a few) might choose this for their damage/PvP sets.

  • Swordguard Embroidery. This is great for tailoring attack-power junkies. I'm sure there are some out there.

Now that you have that out of the way, you can start crafting your 420 PvP set.

At 425, you will also train the ability to craft your epic flying mount, the Magnificent Flying Carpet. If you farm your own cloth and Iceweb Spider Silk, your mount won't even be very expensive.

Faction Recipes
Argent Crusade
At exalted, with a skill level of 430, you will be able to purchase the ability to craft Brilliant Spellthread. This is the equivalent of your exclusive Sanctified Spellthread, but can be sewn onto the pants of other players. This will cost them a fair bit more than it will cost you to enchant your own, which is a nice bonus. It should also make you some money!

Kirin Tor
Once exalted, with a skill level of 430, you can purchase the recipe for Sapphire Spellthread, which works in the same way as the Brilliant Spellthread above, and is the equivalent of your exclusive Master's Spellthread.

Knights of the Ebon Blade
You will need to be revered and have a Tailoring skill of 435 in order to purchase and create the Abyssal Bag, which is a 32-slot soul shard bag for warlocks.

Sons of Hodir
If you can reach exalted with this faction, and you manage to level Tailoring to 445, you can purchase the pattern, Glacial Bag, which grants 22 slots, which is as many as the famed Gigantique Bag sold by Haris Pilton for 1200 gold a piece in a bar in Lower City. Check out our guide to hitting exalted.

Wyrmrest Accord
Once revered, and with a skill of 440, you can purchase and create a Mysterious Bag, which grants Enchanters 32 slots of pure profession goodness.

Drops
There are not many in-game dropped recipes at the moment, or at least not many that Wowhead is aware of. For Tailors who like to collect shirt patterns, there are a few world drops that you can find:

Each week, Insider Trader takes you behind the scenes of the bustling sub-culture of professional craftsmen, examining the profitable, the tragically lacking, and the methods behind the madness. Check out the highlights from the Wrath Leatherworking and Blacksmithing professions, or learn all about gathering in Northrend.