Hey Big Spender

I’m going to do it. Tonight, I’m going to spend the gold necessary to finish leveling Enchanting from 440 to 450. Ten points doesn’t sound like much, but it will probably cost me the better part of 1000 to 1500 gold.

Just doing some quick math using Wowecon to gather prices on Enchanting mats, I compared three recipes that will take me to 450: Enchant Boots: Greater Assault; Enchant Boots: Tuskarr’s Vitality; and Enchant Bracers: Superior Spellpower.

Whichever enchant I use, I will have to buy the recipe, so right there is about 120 gold unless I have a few shards in the bank (I’m not sure if I do). Then, comparing mat costs on my server, I get the following breakdown:

Greater assault = approx. 120 g per skill point

Tuskarr’s Vitality = approx. 100 g per skill point

Superior Spellpower = approx. 144 g per skill point

Without a doubt, I’ll go with Vitality and (hopefully) spend only a little more than 1000 gold to get those 10 points. Since I will definitely be putting the enchants on Vellum to sell on the AH, hopefully I can make some of that money back.

I might even make a profit. The price for a Tuskarr’s Vitality scroll varies pretty widely, but on the high end I might make as much 125 gold. That will be a pretty slim profit margin, but considering that at one time I’d have had to eat the loss entirely, or else stood barking in Trade all day, I don’t mind.

So why am I suddenly so intent on leveling my Enchanting to cap? Two reasons, really.

Formula Enchant Weapon: Bladeward

and

Formula Enchant Weapon: Blood Draining

Both are zone drops within Ulduar, and I am going to Ulduar for the first time tonight. If either of these drop, I do not want to be denied the chance to roll on them.

I still recall with some pain being excluded from a roll on an Enchanting recipe because my Enchanting was a few points lower than the 340 required to use it. I think the recipe was Dexterity, because it dropped in one of the Auchindoun instances.

That was in a guild group, and the only other group member who was an Enchanter was the group leader’s wife. I remember he asked me what my Enchanting skill was at, and without realizing where he was going with the question, I told the truth. And his wife’s glee was almost evident through my monitor as she said, “Well that decides it. I get the recipe.”

Up until that point, I didn’t realize that a person’s profession level should matter at all when handing out recipes. But I can tell you that after that, I made sure my Enchanting was maxed as soon as possible. I wasn’t about to give anyone else an excuse to deny me a roll on a recipe.

Even so, I’ve always had terrible luck on rolls. I never won a single Enchanting recipe from Karazhan, for example. Moroes still has my Mongoose recipe.