Planning for the Trip: Professions

There's only eight days (seven if you're already in line for the zeppelin) before most of the adventurers in Azeroth, including myself and the rest of my team, head over to Northrend to see what Arthas has been up to while we were off playing with the Burning Legion over in Outland. There's also some stories about mad dragons, giants, and undead the likes of which are worse than anything we've ever seen before. Because, you know, regular zombies and abominations of nature just weren't cutting it any more. Considering what the scouts have told us and what my own research has shown, we're gonna need a plan before we go in there.

I'll be the first one to go ashore and start exploring. The group we regularly work with will need a tank for their initial work, and I think it's written somewhere that the leader is supposed to go into the dangerous places first to show his men there's nothing to fear (gonna punch the scribe that started that nonsense...). Regardless, this works out with the plans I've got in place for the team's tradeskill work. I'm the blacksmith and only miner left on the team, so I'll be able to start smithing some plate armor for myself and Solannis, our resident paladin. From what I've read, there's a few pieces of equipment from the new trainers that should compliment my current tanking gear quite nicely. There's also some caster-type plate for Sol, so that should help him.

Once I'm a fair way into my smithing work, then Sol can pick it up from there with his jewelcrafting. I wish I didn't have to split the effort, but I think the smithing work will pay off more for us while we make our way to Icecrown than cutting some slightly shinier gems to put in whatever random pieces of equipment the questgivers decide to pawn off on us for their errands. I might also get some help with materials from some friends of the team, since our little group has kind of become the local one-stop shop for most crafting work.

After those two skills are out of the way, that just leaves inscription (either need someone to send Sol herbs or to yell at the hunter/druid to get to work herbing), engineering (hunter and lock are on their own for this one for a while), leatherworking (I'll work with the shaman on this one eventually), and alchemy (need to drag Mr. Boomkin's butt through Outland first). There's also enchanting, but right now the only enchanter we've got is a mage who hasn't managed to learn how to ride a slow mount yet, so I'll have to call in some favors for that stuff.

I suppose that will suffice for a plan for profession work. Now to just figure out how exactly to get everyone from here to Icecrown in one piece. That's gonna be a bit more work.