My favourite profession: Inscription

Hey guys,

I'm going to present my favourite profession Inscription.

What is Inscription?

This profession came along with the 2nd expansion "Wrath of the Lich King", you can mill herbs and can create glyphs, enchanting vellums, relicts, tarot cards and runescrolls with it. You need 5 herbs to mill them into pigments, which you need to craft inks.

Inscription is the only profession which can craft things with low skill points, which is needed by every player at maxlevel.

If you're a beginner or new on a Realm and you don't know which profession you should learn: choose Inscription!

This spares you reputation farming cause you can craft better shoulder enchants on your gear:

Profession bonus

Swiftsteel Inscription - 130 Agility and 25 Mastery
Lionsmane Inscription - 130 Strength and 25 Crit
Inscription of the Earth Prince - 195 Stamina and 25 Dodge Rating
Felfire Inscription - 130 Intellect and 25 Tempo

Second profession: Herbalism

You don't have to buy the herbs from the AH if you're choosing Herbalism as your second profession. Since Cataclysm you also get XP by collecting herbs - ideal for people who are leveling.

The profession bonus of Herbalism is "Lifeblood", which gains 480 tempo rating at maxlevel and heals you a little bit. (2 minutes cooldown)

Race choice

Unfortunately there is no race which gains a bonus to Inscription, but if you choosed Herbalism as your second profession, you should play a Tauren, because of the race bonus.

• Cultivation - herbalism skill increased by 15, collecting herbs takes 0,5 seconds

You collect herbs faster than other herbalists!

• Endurance - base health increased by 5 %

• War Stomp - stuns up to 5 enemies within 8 yds for 2 seconds (2 minutes cooldown)

• Nature Resistance - increases your resistance to harmful Nature effects by 81

Tauren are popular tanks.


Class choice


Classes don't give a bonus to any profession in general. But there's a really good combination:

Druid

• Travel form: available at LVL 16, increasing movement speed by 40 %

Although you can buy your first mount at LVL 20 is this travel form very helpful when you've added mobs while collecting herbs and want to get out of combat.

• Flight form: available at LVL 60, increasing movement speed by 150 %

• Swift flight form: available at LVL 70, increasing movement speed by 280 %

You don't dismount while gathering herbs and as a Tauren you're faster than other players - a really great advantage!

Your first copper with Inscription

With a skill of 35 your trainer will teach you how to create enchanting vellums. Cost: 1 Moonglow Ink and 2 Light Parchment. Those enchanting vellums are required for enchantment rolls, which are sold by many players on the auction house.

You can find those vellums by an inscription vendor, too (9 silver), but many people don't know this. So if you're tired of creating enchanting vellums by yourself, you can buy and resell them. I sell my vellums between 1 - 15 Gold. Please keep in mind that prices can be very different from realm to realm. 15 Gold isn't that much, but many pennies make a dollar ;)

With 75 skill points you can do the Minor Inscription Research, which teaches you 63 minor glyphs (you can't learn them from your trainer). Maybe you're the only one who can create all minor glyphs, so you can sell them for any price you want. I sell glyphs up to 350 Gold.

With 80 skill points you'll learn a few major and prime glyphs.

If someone's selling a glyph for about 2 Gold, it can be profitable to wait or to buy him up.

With 385 skill points you can do the Northrend Inscription Research, which teaches you 76 major glyphs. You can also use the Books of Glyph Mastery, you only need a skill of 425, to learn the rest of all major glyphs. The drop chance of those books is horrible, they cost 500 - 1500 Gold on my realm. Blizzard pronounced that it will be able to learn all major glyphs by the Northrend Inscription Research someday. Can't wait for it.

There are also a few glyph techniques:
You can buy "Technique: Glyph of Mana Shield" and "Technique: Glyph of Lash of Pain" from Larana Drome in Dalaran. "Technique: Glyph of Colossus Smash" is sold by Casandra Downs (Alliance) and Una Kobuna (Horde) in Twilight Highlands.

Glyphs are so easy to craft and you can sell them for 10 - 350 Gold. Definitely a great source of income.

Tarot Cards

You can also craft some tarot cards, which are needed to gain reputation for Darkmoon Faire. You can sell them singly, or create a deck or you can craft trinkets.

With 4.2 it isn't profitable to create trinkets because the stats are out of date and too expensive to buy them for an alt. (At least on my realm)

Nevertheless: single darkmoon cards are a nice additional income. Cards from the rogue deck are only 10 - 100 Gold worth, but all blue cards can be sold for 300 Gold and more. This is very profitable because you gain the required inks from milling herbs for your glyphs.

Mysterious Fortune Cards


You can sell those cards for about 5 - 25 Gold, or you can cook "Fortune Cookies" with them. Fortune Cookies is a bufffood which gains you 90 stamina and 90 of a useful stat. (Example: as a rogue you gain 90 agility)

If you flip a fortune card, you can read a sapient sentence and the value of the card changed. (From a few silver to 5000 Gold) the chance to get a 5000 card is very low, so it would be better NOT to flip and just to sell them.

Relicts

The production cost for blue relicts is too high to sell them in 4.2.(on my realm)

Dust of Disappearance

To remove a glyph you need Dust of Disappearance. This is sold by an inscription vendor (about 10 Gold) or you can craft it. On the auction house they are sold from 5 Gold up to 100 Gold. Also a nice additional income.


Tips

• Keep new/incoming patches in mind

• Make sure to be at the auction house when a new patch came out

• Which class is "imba" or "overpowered" at the moment? Those classes are more played so there's a higher demand for their glyphs

• Not every single glyph is useful. Check out a few class guides when you don't have a clue about a class and sell the glyphs which are mentioned there

• Do not create 300 pieces of the same glyph, it doesn't make sense. Watch the market and create according to demand

• If you're 85 and don't want to farm herbs, create a shopping list and check it every day to buy herbs as cheap as possible

• If Dust of Disappearence is expensive enough, you can buy it from the inscription vendor. Same with enchanting vellums. Keep in mind to buy in a city you're exalted with!

• To mill herbs easier, there's a macro:
• #showtooltip Milling
• /cast milling
• /use whiptail
• /use and so on

All prices are based on my experience. Maybe you can sell them better - or not ;) every Realm is different. I hope I could give you a better understanding of Inscription and I also hope that I mentioned every aspect of the profession.

Constructive reviews are always welcome!