Professions sit on top of the crafting engine and give it identity, a level and a reason to specialise. They are managed from two tabs: one added to the character window and one added to the skill window.
⭐ You can hold every trade at once
This reversed on 3 September, and it is the single most important thing on this page. For four days a trade was a permanent, one-per-family choice. It is not any more:
- The family caps now match the size of the families - three gathering trades and nine crafting trades - so a character can hold all twelve.
- Each trade keeps its own level and its own experience. Taking up a second never costs you the first, and nothing is displaced.
- There is no waiting between them. Taking one no longer locks the rest out for a day.
- The switch lock and its cooldown are still in the table and simply have nothing left to refuse.
Learning a trade needs character level 20, and costs no gold.
If you played between 30 August and 3 September you may have been told, in a confirmation box, that a trade could never be changed. That was true then and is not true now. Nothing you picked under the old rule is holding a slot against you.
Two families
- Gathering - Herbalism, Mining and Fishing
- Crafting - Blacksmith, Weaver, Jeweler, Woodworker, Chemist, Culinarian, Lapidary, Enchanter and Cardist
The nine crafting trades are not the same size. What each one owns today:
| Trade | Recipes |
|---|---|
| Weaver | 517 |
| Blacksmith | 423 |
| Jeweler | 235 |
| Woodworker | 97 |
| Enchanter | 61 |
| Chemist | 24 |
| Lapidary | 13 |
| Culinarian | 10 |
| Cardist | none yet |
The gathering trades have small tables of their own: Mining 6, Herbalism 5, Fishing 1.
A large share of those recipes - 776 of the 1,269 dungeon and raid pieces - are for dungeons and raids that have no map built yet, so they sit in the table unreachable by design rather than being craftable today.
Which bench opens which trade is on the crafting page.
The Cardist still has no recipes at all and is shown in the panel as "not yet". Taking it now costs you nothing but the click, since it no longer occupies a slot anything else wanted.
The ladder, and what it costs
Every trade runs from level 1 to 10. The ladder was re-costed on 3 September from a rule rather than typed by hand, so each level asks for about five more crafts than the one below it instead of levelling off near the top:
| To reach | Experience |
|---|---|
| 2 | 200 |
| 3 | 500 |
| 4 | 900 |
| 5 | 1,400 |
| 6 | 2,000 |
| 7 | 2,700 |
| 8 | 3,500 |
| 9 | 4,400 |
| 10 | 5,400 |
Experience is awarded per craft and per gather, and the amount depends on what you made or picked - not every recipe is worth the same.
⭐ The mastery trials
A making trade cannot pass level 3, 6 or 9 until you have proved yourself at it. Twenty-four trials exist - three for each of the eight crafting trades that have recipes - and they are taken at Jacks, the crafting master in Gaiyan Town.
- Each asks for two pieces of your own work from the band you are being tested on, which is why the item differs per trade rather than being a shared token.
- Since 3 September the item asked for is one whose recipe needs exactly the level being tested, not the cheapest thing in the band. You cannot clear the level 9 trial with level 4 work.
- The Cardist has no trials, because it has nothing to make. The three gathering trades have none either.
Your experience keeps accumulating while a trial is outstanding; it is the level that is held, not the bar.
Ownership is by what a recipe produces
A recipe belongs to the trade whose output it is, not to the menu category it happens to sit in. If a recipe you expected is missing from your list, check which trade makes that kind of item.
The perk ladder
Each trade levels through a ladder of perks. The ones that are live:
| Perk | Effect |
|---|---|
| Bonus yield | A chance for a craft to produce an extra item |
| Gather bonus | A chance for a node to give one extra of its guaranteed drop |
| Rod tier | On fishing, a better rod stacks on top of the gather bonus |
| Gather speed | Shortens the gathering cast |
| Refund | Hands back one unit of one material after a craft |
| Field craft | Opens the craft window anywhere, with Ctrl+Shift+C |
| Field salvage | Opens the dissolve window anywhere, with Ctrl+Shift+V |
Field craft and field salvage are the two that change how you play: no walking back to a bench to empty a full bag.
The Enchanter's ten perks are drawn in the panel but do nothing yet. Its ladder - powder and scroll recovery, a better value band, a free supplement, and a floor under the worst roll at level 10 - is declared and displayed, and nothing reads it. Level the Enchanter for its recipes, not for its perks, until they are wired.
Gather speed is enforced on both sides. The client shortens the bar and the server permits the early finish - so a client that tries to finish sooner than your perk allows is simply refused and waits the full time.
When the panel says no
A refused profession action - a trade you cannot take, a gather you cannot start - now tells you why instead of ignoring the click, and it no longer blanks the panel. If every trade vanished from your card after a refusal, that was a bug fixed on 3 September; clicking a trade brought them back.
A gather that would earn you nothing now says so up front, rather than running the full cast for no reward.
Where to go next
- Crafting - the window itself and the gathering nodes
- Reinforcing - the other half of the smith's work
Reviewed 2026-09-04