The War Within Alpha Gold Making & SoD Economy Inflation – Wowhead Economy Weekly Wrap-Up 323

As we reveal much of the content coming in The War Within, we’d like discuss a new system we’re cooking up for professions.

Inspiration

We added Inspiration in Dragonflight to try and capture the fantasy of critical hits while crafting. If you weren’t quite capped out on your gear and specializations for a given craft, or if you weren’t using max quality reagents to guarantee that max quality item, Inspiration was a way to get that lucky crit. It could save you some money (by using lower-quality reagents) and you could craft a better item than you would otherwise.

That was the hope at least, but it ended up (understandably) becoming a situation where crafters take this luck-based system, tell their customers that they would recraft an item an indeterminate number of times, and summarily charge a specific price per recraft until their Inspiration struck.

So we’re making changes, because:

• There’s a lack of decision making and agency for the crafter.
• There’s a lack of clarity for customers who just want items made.
• It’s based heavily in RNG, which was never the goal of the Professions revamp.

In The War Within, we’re removing Inspiration. In its place, we have a new ability for crafters to utilize.

Concentration

Concentration is a resource, and you’ll have a separate pool of Concentration for each crafting profession.

It represents your ability to heavily focus on your recipes and exceed your normal capabilities. You choose when you want to Concentrate using a button in the crafting window, empowering your next craft(s). Doing so will cause the craft to automatically reach the next level of quality, no questions asked.

However, such heavy focus can take a toll, costing you some of your profession’s Concentration resource. The cost is determined by how far away you are from crafting that next quality tier and is modified by a few variables such as Profession Specializations, Finishing Reagents, and whether you are crafting consumables, reagents, or actual equipment.

For example, if you’re incredibly close to being able to craft a max-quality sword, you won’t need to Concentrate too hard to finish that project. However, if you’re just barely able to craft that same sword at quality 3, you will likely have to devote most of your Concentration to craft it at quality 4.

For those who want to focus on ingenious breakthroughs when concentrating, we also have a new stat to support your endeavors. This is Ingenuity, which gives you a chance to refund the Concentration spent on a craft. The more Ingenuity you have, the higher your chance to get that full refund. Outside of these Ingenuity-fueled refunds, Concentration will also automatically regenerate over time when you aren’t sitting at its cap.

Our goal is to provide crafters with a more deterministic way to accomplish the original objectives and intent behind Inspiration. You can use it to shore up a lack of skill, gear, or max-quality reagents while still making higher-quality crafts. Maybe you just want to save some money by using lower-quality reagents in a craft you can otherwise guarantee at maximum quality. Either way, we want to give crafters more agency over their crafting, provide more room for decision-making in the professions ecosystem, and provide a resource that you can use without having to give your customers a full statistical breakdown.

Please note that much of this system is currently being implemented, and will become available for testing in future builds of the War Within Alpha.

Thank you very much!

• New Ability: Concentration – Concentration is a resource that you have a separate pool of per crafting profession. It represents your ability to heavily focus on your recipes and exceed your normal capabilities. You choose when you want to Concentrate using a button within the crafting window, empowering your next craft(s). Doing so will cause the craft to automatically reach the next level of quality, no questions asked.
• New Stat: Ingenuity – You have a chance to have an ingenious breakthrough when you Concentrate on a craft, refunding all Concentration spent.

• ALCHEMY

  Alchemy is in a near-complete state, beyond some polish and tuning work that will likely happen in broad strokes across all professions. Most, if not all recipes should be able to be crafted and utilized, and the specialization tree should be largely reflective of the final experience; all subject to feedback of course. Your good friend Instructaur and his cohort can supply you with the training and materials needed to experiment, and the items you make should be functional and ready for testing. Some additional notes:

  Phials have been rebranded to be profession effects only, retaining the 30m extendable duration. Flasks make a return with 1h durations!

  As a quality of life bonus, you can now have phials and flasks active at the same time.

Experimentation has been carried forward from Dragonflight but with some adjustments in effort to mitigate frustration while keeping with the theme.

• You now select which herb to experiment with, and can only discover recipes that utilize that particular herb.
• Experimentation now has two forms: A repeatable version that you can do with short lockouts (which can be bypassed with Formulated Courage), and a time-gated one that boasts a much higher chance at recipe discoveries.

Transmutation has been significantly expanded with a system called Thaumaturgy. This is a side component of Alchemy that boasts extra complexity which allows you to regularly transmute a variety of reagents found on Khaz Algar into other forms. While this process is highly destructive, specializations and clever choices in your inputs will ultimately bring you closer to transmuting Blasphemite, the elusive and highly coveted meta gem that is sure to catch the eye of aspiring Jewelcrafting entrepreneurs. Please take a look at the Thaumaturgy specialization tab and experiment with this feature with and without specializations and let us know how it feels!
Specializations now focus heavily on the herbs of Khaz Algar, so it is wise to evaluate the recipe list to determine which recipes appeal to you the most. Specializations for all herbs on a recipe contribute to the final rolls associated with them.

• As a reminder, recipe difficulty tuning will happen in a later pass but you can nonetheless engage with this mechanic to observe their impact on crafts.

BLACKSMITHING

• Specializations are in and ready for players to dissect!

  Developer’s note: While the hookups aren’t fully implemented, I’m hoping the Everburning Forge Specialization catches player’s attention as a way to inject a helping of profession stats deterministically.

ENCHANTING

Some of the specializations include:

Supplementary Shattering

• Learn the art of shattering the magical essences of Khaz Algar, temporarily empowering your Resourcefulness, Multicraft, and Ingenuity. Additionally, your studies will grant you +1 Ingenuity per point in this Specialization.

FISHING

• In this alpha build, the waters around Khaz Algar are populated with a single fish while we worked out a few updates to the ecosystem. However, fellow Anglers will notice a change in their Fishing Journal, namely Fishing Accessories!
• Your existing Fishing Gear from the past will lose all Fishing stats and converting them to Fishing Accessories will permanently exchange the combat stats for the proper Fishing-related bonuses.

  Developer’s note: We’re strictly looking out for any friction with this conversion, items we might have missed, or critical issues to fix before this is fully live.

HERBALISM

• In this Alpha build, Herbalism has been enabled and can be trained by Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. Specializations for herbalism have been fully implemented, and in addition to some of the fan favorites, we also have some new abilities and bonuses that you can specialize into. Finally, herbs are growing all over the Isle of Dorn, including ones that have been affected by the magics present on Khaz Algar. As always, we appreciate your time and feedback!
• The base idea behind Herbalism specializations in The War Within is the same as Dragonflight, but there have been changes and additions to some of the bonuses.

  The Botany specialization now has a Mulching sub-specialization, which allows you to make potent magical mulch and learn to utilize your Green Thumb.

  Mulching allows you to consume some of the common herb, Mycobloom, to make a consumable Mulch that gives you a large Finesse bonus to the next herb you gather.

• Green Thumb, also learned from the Mulching tree, is an activatable cooldown that doubles the amount of herbs you receive from the next herb you gather.

JEWELCRAFTING

• Dragonflight Jewelcrafters will feel right at home with the updates in War Within! A familiar lineup of recipes await your discovery, but with a variety of new cantrips and an updated set of gems. We felt that Jewelcrafting’s structure, particularly its vast array of gem choices, fit well under the new profession system and wanted bring that with us into the new expansion.
• Item quality has been removed from raw gems and there is only one tier instead of two. Enjoy the reclaimed inventory space! The same lineup of gem options and their associated stats has been carried forward. For reference:

  Amber: Stamina

• Emerald: Haste
• Onyx: Mastery
• Ruby: Critical Strike
• Sapphire: Versatility
• Weighted hybrid combinations of all of the above!

Ordinary hybrid gem cuts are now entirely sourced through Specializations rather than distributed across various parts of the game, in any order you choose. Knowing your customers and the gaps in the market is critical for maximizing your profits – but eventually all invested Jewelcrafters will be able to acquire all of the gems as usual.

LEATHERWORKING

• Leatherworkers, your profession is available to be trained by Professor Instructaur in Orgrimmar and Stormwind! The general structure of Leatherworking remains the same as in Dragonflight, crafting a variety of armor pieces for both Leather and Mail wearers. Leatherworkers will also find that they have a new market in reagents with the ability to craft Weapon Grip Wraps and Armor Banding that is used in the high-level crafts of other Professions. We’ve also removed the specialization that granted general Skill across the board, so it should be clearer what specializations you need to focus on if you want to get max quality with a particular recipe.
• The majority of the recipes are implemented, but a couple of the embellished pieces aren’t implemented. Please look for them to be fully functional in the near future!

  Developer’s note: None of the effects have been tuned yet. Values related to stats bonuses, damage, or healing are very likely to change as the Alpha moves forward.

The majority of specializations are implemented as well, except for a couple of sub-specializations within the Learned Leatherworker tree. Some of the specializations include:

• Learned Leatherworker

  Master your Leatherworking fundamentals to increase your reagent efficiency, ability to Concentrate, general stitchwork, and production process.

  This specialization tree is all about increasing your secondary crafting stats and increasing the efficacy of their effects.

Flawless Fortes

• Master the techniques of Khaz Algar to craft specialty items beyond that of standard armor.

  This specialization tree focuses on improving your crafting capabilities for embellished armor pieces, reagents, armor kits, and profession gear.