Enchanting Guide for World of Warcraft

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What is Enchanting?

Enchanting is the ability to permanently augment armor and weapons with magical and enhancements. Enchanters do not create the original item, they need to have an item first to enchant. They need to disenchant magical items in order to gather the necessary ingredients to use when enchanting other items.

As the magical item is destroyed in the process this is the hungriest of Professions as far as resources are concerned, especially when you take into account you can not sell the dusts, essences or shards you get from items to vendors.

Enchanting is a Primary Service Profession. You may have two primary professions only.

How do I become an Enchanter?

You will need to train with an Enchanting Trainer and listed below are the known locations of Trainers and Suppliers of ingredients.

You can train to four levels of proficiency and each has certain prerequisites that need to be met before you can train to the next level.

Proficiency Enchanter Requires Char Level Required
Level potential level Enchanting Level

Apprentice 75 0 5
Journeyman 150 50 10
Expert 225 125 20
Artisan 300 200 35

Once trained you will find two icons in your Skills & Abilities book {Hotkey P} as seen on the left. Drag these down to your action bar for easy access. The first one disenchants a magical item and produces reagents {dusts, essences or shards} and the second icon you use when you are enchanting another item using those dusts or essences {amongst other reagents}.

When you train as an Apprentice Enchanter you will be given a few basic formulae (recipes) to set you on your way.

What materials do I need and how do I get them?

Enchanters need dusts, essences and shards {reagents} gained by disenchanting magical items. Obviously the better the item the better grade of dusts & essences you will receive.

Uncommon Quality {Green}

Rare Quality {Blue - guaranteed a shard}

Epic Quality {Purple - guaranteed multiple shards}

To disenchant you simply click the Disenchant icon which will make your cursor glow and then click on the item you wish to disenchant. You can be anywhere to disenchant. Once the item has disenchanted a loot box will appear with the reagents. Once a disenchant has completed you can't undo it. Whether you click on the loot to move it to your bag or not is irrelevant, simply closing the loot box will automatically move the reagents to your bag and the item will disappear. Be absolutely sure you don't wish to sell or use the item before you disenchant.

You can disenchant other people's items as long as they are not soulbound.

You can trade for these reagents from other Enchanters too, reagents are not soulbound. Some can also be bought at vendors. They all stack to 20 of a single type.

You can see that there are 'lesser' and 'greater' variations of essences and in all cases three lesser essences of one type can be combined to make a single greater essence of that type. Simply right click on the stack of lesser essences to automatically turn three to one greater or right click on the greater essence to change it to three lesser of that type.

You will require other reagents which are not gained from disenchanting items and these are listed below together with how you can get them.

Items required for enchantments gained from other sources

Item From Item From
Aquamarine Miner or Drop Ichor of Undeath Drop
Blackmouth Oil Alchemist Iron Ore Miner or Drop
Black Pearl Drop, Vendor, Fishing Iridescent Pearl Vendor, Drop, Fishing
Breath of Wind Drop Kingsblood Herablist or Drop
Core of Earth Drop Large Fang Drop
Elemental Earth Drop Rugged Leather Skinner, Drop
Elemental Fire Drop Shadowgem Miner or Drop
Elixir of Demonslaying Alchemist Shadow Protection Potion Alchemist
Fire Oil Alchemist Simple Wood Vendor
Globe of Water Drop Sungrass Drop, Vendor, Herbalist
Green Whelp Scale Drop Thorium Bar Miner
Heart of Fire Drop Wildvine Drop, Herbalist

You will also require Rods to be kept in your bag to perform Enchantments. These can be bought from Blacksmiths {players} and runed by yourself - either copper, silver, gold or arcanite depending on the level of Enchantment. You don't need to equip them to use in Enchanting, they just need to be in your bag, not your bank. Rods are the only tool Enchanters will require. Rods don't disappear after performing an enchantment as it's a tool not a reagent.

How and where do I learn enchanting formulas?

Your first port of call are the Enchanting Trainers. They will have a selection for sale and the better the trainer i.e Expert, Artisan the better the formulae on sale. Lower level ones can be bought from Enchanting Suppliers too. You can also find rarer ones from drops or trade for them with other players.

How can I get items to disenchant?

It can be a costly process in time and finances keeping a constant stream of items to disenchant. Some methods are:

Find the item

Quest rewards (you can disenchant soulbound items you own, not other players' soulbound items)

Tradewith other players

Making them with another profession such as Tailoring

Gifts from friends or guildmates

In exchange for enchanting other items another player wishes to use.

How do I enchant my items?

Unlike Blacksmiths who need a forge, Enchanters do not need to be anywhere in particular to enchant. You will need a rod {which one will be detailed in the formula you wish to follow} in one of your bags and all the reagents listed in the formula and an item to enchant.

Select the formula you wish to follow and hit 'Enchant'. You cursor will glow. Click the item you wish to enchant and that's it. You can enchant an item in any of your bags or that you are wearing.

How do I enchant other people's items?

You can enchant other people's items by using the Trade window. Get the other person to place the item in the "Will not be Traded" portion of the trade window. Perform the enchant as you would normally. Hover your cursor over the item and it will show the altered statistics and a message to say the item will not be traded {to you}. Both press 'Trade' and the newly-enchanted item will go back to the other person.


If, in payment for this service, the other person is giving you world of warcraft gold or another item which they've placed in the trade window, it will be swapped to you when you both hit 'Trade'.

Caution. If you have agreed a price either currency or another item in return for enchanting, after you've done the enchantment but before hitting the 'Trade' button they can remove the currency or item but the enchantment will not be removed. So exercise a bit of caution to make sure you don't end up giving enchantments for free for naughty scamming scumbags.

What exactly can I and can't I enchant?

You can enchant your own items in your inventory and other people's items via the trade window {weapons, gloves, boots, cloaks, and chest pieces}. They can be enchanted as many times as you want. Each enchantment will replace the previous and you will be prompted by an 'Accept/Decline' box before performing it. You can not stack Enchantments with other permanent item enhancements such as armour patches {from leatherworking}, again you'll be prompted if you wish to replace the existing one.

You can place Enchantments on items that have been imbued as imbues are temporary such as the Rogue's poison weapon imbues. Also items that have inherent magical properties can be enchanted.

As stated previously you can enchant items multiple times and this is a good way of increasing your skill. Try keeping a cheap pair of bracers, gloves and boots in your bag and repeatedly enchant them to increase your skill level. It's much quicker than trying to work your way through other players, although there's no world of warcraft gold to be made from it.

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Do enchants change the look of items?

Not the structure of them but some enchants do coat the item in a coloured glow. This also makes them more desirable enchants to trade for because of style value. Enchants such as Beastslayer make a red glow and Demonslaying add fire effect.

How do I level up my Enchant skill?

For the first few levels you can level up by disenchanting but after that you will need to perform enchants to level up. As with all professions the recipes are colour coded according to your skill level in relation to the recipe level.

The colour of the formula {in your menu} indicates whether you will gain a skill point in Enchanting when you create the item. The colour codes are as follows:

Grey = No skill increase.

Green = Unlikely to get a Enchanting skill point.

Yellow = Probably get a Enchanting skill point.

Orange = Will receive a Enchanting skill point.

Red = Can not create yet, need a higher skill level in Enchanting before being able to

So make sure you keep an eye on what formulae are selling each time you visit town.

How can I make world of warcraft gold from Enchanting?

Enchanting is such a huge money sink because whereas other players are selling their magical items for reasonable profits you have been disenchanting yours and unless you start to sell your services you'll find it extremely hard to afford your mount {100gold} come level 40.

You can make world of warcraft gold by selling the reagents to other enchanters or by selling your services as an Enchanter to other players. What you can sell either of these for can vary from server to server but what you must remember if anyone grumbles at your prices is that the reagents you use can only come from disenchanting {some low level ones at vendors} and it's this unique ability that must be worked into your sale price.

If they bring you the reagents {which they can do by purchasing them from other players} then you will need another price list for that. So, four ways of making world of warcraft gold and four price lists needed:

Selling reagents {dusts, essences, shards} to other players

Selling Enchantment and providing the reagents

Selling Enchantment with buyer providing reagents

Selling Enchantment and providing reagents and original item

You can watch to see what other Enchanters are selling their wares for to get an idea of price structure before making up your own price list. Certainly in the first instance it's worth making a list of the items you've disenchanted and the price a vendor is willing to buy them from you for. Whatever you do never sell an enchantment for less than the total of all the items you disenchanted to get the reagents!

What other professions work well with Enchanting?

Different professions suit different stages of an Enchanter's professional career. As you gain access to better formulae you will require better items to disenchant to get the higher grade reagents {shards}.

Items made with Tailoring will garner reagents for low to mid level enchantments.

Items made with Blacksmithing and leatherworking will garner reagents for mid to higher level enchantments.

Items made with Engineering will garner reagents for higher level enchantments.

Of course you don't have to have a profession to work with your Enchanting if you don't want to. Each of those professions are intensive in themselves and it's a lot of extra effort to go to in order to be able to disenchant an item. You may prefer to just trade with other players for the items to disenchant. You may well prefer to have a gathering skill and sell the ore bars/gems or herbs to make your world of warcraft gold or trade those raw materials with Smiths and Alchemists for items to disenchant or cold hard cash. There's no hard and fast rule to it, it boils down to how much time and effort you are prepared to go to.

Which class best suits Enchanting?

Any really as you can enchant cloth, leather or mail and plate items.

To recap on some basics of Enchanting

You can:

Enchant other players items {even soulbound) by using the trade interface.

Trade dusts, essences and shards with other Enchanters

Enchant weapons, gloves, boots, cloaks, and chest pieces.

Have one imbue {temporary augmentation from some other means} and one enchantment {permanent augmentation from Enchanting or some other means} on a single item.

Re-enchant the same item multiple times to increase your skill level.

Keep enchantments on items when you die as they are permanent

You can't:

Disenchant other players soulbound items

Sell dusts, essences or shards to vendors

Have more than one enchantment on a single item.

Sell items with Enchantments for more world of warcraft gold at vendors.

Reverse a disenchantment

Remove an Enchantment, it needs to be replaced by another permanent augmentation.

Related Links

Professions General FAQ

Professions Forum

Patch changes to Enchanting

Patch 1.2.0 - 17 December 2004

Enchant 2H Weapon with Intellect is now correctly giving +3 to Intellect.

Enchanter's Cowl minimum level to use set to 28 instead of 38, as was originally intended.

Patch 1.1.2 - 7 December 2004

None

Patch 1.1.0 7 November 2004

Enchanting is now complete, you can perform enchantments that require up to 300 enchanting skill.

Enchanting recipes generally require more reagents for 200-250 skill items

Living Essence and Essence of Undeath drops decreased.

Patch 0.11.0 - 28 September 2004

All equipped items made from professions have had their stats tweaked to make them more desirable.

Patch 0.10.0 - 19 September 2004

Enchanters can now enchant leather and thorium (needed for some high-end blacksmithing recipes and soon other high-end recipes in other professions).

Stats on the Smoking Heart of the Mountain changed.

Spears cannot be enchanted with 2H Weapon-only enchantments.

Fist Weapons can now be enchanted (bug fixed).

Old enchanting reagents removed from vendors (they should have been removed last push).

Patch 0.9.0 - 15 August 2004

Enchanting is completely revised and has had recipes added up to 200 enchanting skill.

Enchanting now requires the disenchanting of magical items to get the required components.

There are around 100 enchanting recipes.

You can now enchant soulbound items through the player to player trade interface.

Patch 0.8.0 - 7th July 2004

Heart of Fire are easier to find in this patch.

DRakE

Jesus thats comprehensive.. hard to ready though cos there's no real formatting. Good work tho!

NotMe

Easier to read here... with pictures and stuff.

koneko

Please put in the link or quote your source when cut and pasting, otherwise it's just plagiary. The fact these are your only posts is somewhat suspicious aswell. Thread closed.