One of the most integral features of World of Warcraft is the profession system – which can be said for most MMORPGs, in general. Much of the economy is heavily funded by the profession system, with players constantly in the market to buy or sell either crafting materials or finished products.
With World of Warcraft: Shadowlands creeping closer and closer every day, players are curious to know what the newest development in the profession system will be. While the system is primarily active on the Shadowlands alpha, there’s still quite a bit missing.
For example, one feature we can expect to see will be Legendary Crafting, which will be available to all regardless of professions. This will allow players to craft a piece of Legendary Armor utilizing a base item in which they’ll imbue those powers.
In order to receive those base items, you’ll either need the services of someone with a crafting profession or a crafting profession yourself. Blacksmiths, Jewelcrafters, Tailors, and Leatherworkers will be able to create these base items for legendary imbuing.
Blizzard outlines the following three points as characteristics of the incoming base items:
- Base item is a blank armor template that exclusively serves as a vessel for Legendary powers.
- Base items are not soulbound, meaning they can be transferred or sold, as well as being auctionable.
- Recipes for base items must be discovered by braving Torghast, Tower of the Damned, but are craftable anywhere afterwards.
Additionally, optional reagents will be coming as a new feature. As the name suggests, these are materials that aren’t required to complete the crafting of an item but will still be an extremely useful way to increase the quality of the crafted item.
Optional reagents provide customization that can be used to increase the item level of a crafted item, though it also will increase the required level to equip the item. This makes them ideal for leveling alts, as well as a powerful endgame option.
In using optional reagents, you’ll be able to select which two of the four secondary stats you would like to improve. This provides a bit of fine-tuning to help with specializing your character. Two secondary stats must be picked, however – you can’t just stack haste or mastery, for example, but you can stack haste and mastery.
In terms of difference, players won’t need to worry about scrapping, which was considered a rather unliked feature of Battle for Azeroth. There also is expected to be a reduction in importance of the star rank of recipes, which was used to decrease the needed materials for crafting.
